Estimated read time: 3 minutes and 47 seconds
The New York Times asked a flight attendant for their 12 etiquette rules when on an airplane. You can read through their list here. And, take notes! š
Good morning and happy Wednesday, or as I call it, āMarriott day.ā
You see, I pick a day toward the beginning of every month when I call Marriott to fix all of the issues and mistakes theyāve made over the course of the previous month.
Yep, I literally have to do this every monthā¦
Make sure you pay attention to things like Elite Nights, points, etc., that are supposed to be in your account - itās extremely common for hotel programs (mainly Marriott) to get these things wrong about 25-30% of the time, or not credit you at all.
Now that weāve gotten the first travel tip out of the way, hereās the good stuff:
š¶ How to save 25% on award flights for kids
āļø United makes a major accessibility update to its planes
š Meet Tom, the worldās most frequent flyer
š¶ How to save 25% on award flights for kids
So I was doing some research recently around families and kids. As it turns out, there are some people in the world who have kidsā¦ and traveling with them can be tough.
Mainly, itās tough to find enough seats for a whole family when booking with points. And when you do, it can get expensive.
Thankfully, Flying Blue (the points program for KLM and Air France) offers a 25% discount on award tickets for kids!
Hereās how this works:
The child must be traveling with an adult to get the discount
The discount only works for Air France and KLM flights, NOT partner flights
The discount is only valid for kids between the ages of 2 and 11
Screaming children will be charged an extra $5 per scream during the flight
That last one isnāt true, althoughā¦ Iām not opposed.
Booking a ticket with this discount is surprisingly easy, as you can do the whole thing online and avoid talking to any of those pesky humans we all hate interacting with.
On the KLM or Air France website, simply add a passenger in the search area and select āChild.ā š
The search results will reflect the discount already and show you the total amount of points, taxes, and fees for all passengers.
For example, I ran a search for Dallas to Vienna for later this year and selected one adult and one child.
As you can see, the resulting flight I found automatically incorporated the 25% discount on the childās ticket, saving around 5,000 miles.
Obviously, if you have a bigger family, the savings here could be significant.
Now I know what youāre wonderingā¦.
If you book a Promo Reward (the monthly Flying Blue discount award flights), will you still get the discount?
In theory, yes, you should, according to the policy. In practice, however, when I ran some searches for promo rewards, the child ticket price stayed the same as the adultā¦Ā
So the juryās out on that one. š¤·āāļø
When it comes to promo rewards like the one above, the prices are already so low that I wouldnāt be too concerned about the 2,800 points youād otherwise save with the 25% discount.
Still, this is an awesome hack for family travelers looking to save money and points on a trip.Ā Flying Blue has some of the cheaper award flights to/from Europe as it is, so this added discount makes their program even more enticing for a wider variety of travelers.
āļø United makes a major accessibility update to its planes
This is really cool, yāall. Any opportunity that allows more people to get out and travel is a definite winā¦ and United is doing just that.
The airline recently announced that theyāll be adding Braille to their planesĀ in order to help visually impaired and/or legally blind passengers find their designated seats and navigate the lavatory with increased independence.
Courtesy of United
This type of tactile signage will be displayed on the overhead bins to designate specific rows and seats, and youāll also find it both inside and outside the lavatories.
United is also considering expanding beyond this initial Braille signage to include things like raised arrows throughout the cabin, but to date, that hasnāt been implemented.
For those of us who donāt have a visual impairment, such āautomaticā tasks like finding your seat or navigating to the bathroom are things that we all take for granted, Iām sure.
Itās still kind of crazy to me how far behind the airline industry is when it comes to accessible guidelines that you find pretty much everywhere else (and that are required and standard practice).
BUT itās super rad that weāre starting to see more of these changes take place š
So far, United has retrofitted about a dozen of its planes, but itās hoping to add this Braille signage to its entire fleet by the end of 2026.
The next time I fly United, Iām definitely going to take a look around to see if the Braille signage has been added to my plane!
š Meet Tom, the worldās most frequent flyer
Here at Daily Drop, we think it pays to be loyal to an airline - especially when you care about perks like elite status, etc.
But this guy has taken airline loyalty to a WHOLE new level by racking up a whopping 23 million miles flown on United Airlines.
Thereās actually a super interesting story about how and why heās able to fly SO much with United, so I recommend you check out this fun article by Ben over at One Mile at a Time. š
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ā¦or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. š
Thatās all for today, yāall! I was pretty impressed to learn that United has a loyal member whoās flown 23 million miles JUST with Unitedā¦ Thatās pretty insaneā¦ #lifegoals, I guess.
Which airline are you most loyal to? Have you ever flown with kids?Ā Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.
Have a great day ā¤ļø