How to avoid AirBnB fees, a Lufthansa First Class downgrade and Delta now meltdown champion (Saturday Selection)

Delta shows Southwest how a real “air line” melts down, a trick to avoiding AirBnb conversion fees and the another Lufthansa downgrade story. All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to the original articles are embedded in the titles).

An easy trick to avoid one of those pesky AirBnB fees

There’s not a lot of things that get our FM blood flowing so fast as being able to squirrel out of some of the plethora of fees that hang out like stinky barnacles on so many travel purchases these days. Vacation rentals offer quite a slice of “feedom,” with cleaning fees, pet fees, service fees, host fees, etc. On April 1st of this year (appropriately enough), AirBnB introduced a fun one: a new 2% “conversion fee.” This fee applies whenever someone makes a booking in a country whose currency is different from the currency that’s set in your account, sort of like when a hotel asks you at check-out if you want to pay in USD or local currency (always local currency)….except AirBnB isn’t asking, it’s just adding a fee whether or not you like it or even know that it’s there. Point me to the Plane offers a quick tip to get around this new conversion fee: change the default currency setting in your account. It’s that simple. If you’re paying in British Pounds (GBP), set the default currency on your account to GBP before booking and that 2% will magically disappear. Now if someone could just tell me how to do the same magic trick with resort fees…

Another Lufthansa downgrade…to SWISS First Class

Last month Greg the Frequent Miler wrote a heartbreaking story about being involuntarily downgraded from Lufthansa business class coming home from the Europe. The short version is that Lufthansa oversold the cabin and told Greg that he was among the last two to check-in, so since there were unsurprisingly no volunteers, he ended up getting the (very) short end of the cabin. Turns out, Greg isn’t alone. Last week, Ben at One Mile at a Time wrote a post about his father being involuntarily downgraded from Lufthansa First Class, a highly-touted product that can be difficult to book if you’re not a Lufthansa Miles & More member. In the elder Schlappig’s case, the downgrade wasn’t due to overzealous sales on Lufthansa’s part, but rather an equipment change to a plane that didn’t have a first class cabin. Luckily, Ben did some quick-thinking and tried to find availability on SWISS First Class, which is owned by Lufthansa and normally can’t be booked with partner miles. The agent he spoke with agreed to do it, and his father ended up with another bucket-list first class flight across the Atlantic, finally solving the riddle: “How do you book SWISS First Class with partner miles?”

Delta pulls a Southwest and melts down…over…and…over

In 2022, Southwest Airlines got itself in a teensy bit of hot water around the holidays. After a series of weather events cancelled flights from all carriers over a 24-36 hour period, Southwest came apart faster than the Texas power grid, its centuries decades-old tech overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stranded passengers, crew and aircraft. After that unfortunate episode, we thought that Southwest had forever sealed the record books and thrown away the key when it came to being the King of Meltdown Hill. In reality, they could barely hold the crown for a year.

Delta likes to describe itself as the most reliable airline air line in the country; an industry leader of the ragged group of miscreants we call “US airlines.” It evidently took that industry leadership a bit too far last week, after some bad code in Windows update managed to almost grind worldwide air traffic to a halt. Most airlines recovered in a day or so…but not Delta. Over a period of seven days, Delta cancelled over 5,500 flights, stranded millions of passengers, and completely lost the ability to track vast quantities of luggage. The degree of faceplant was so complete and cringeworthy, someone tweeting as “Southwest” couldn’t pass up a public bit of Schadenfreude. It will probably take quite a bit of time to figure out everything that happened…and even longer to get everyone’s luggage back. But Thrifty Traveler published a great post-mortem last week that serves as a compelling timeline of how Delta went from hero to zero in a matter of hours.

The world’s heaviest credit cards

Let me come right out and say it: I hate metal credit cards. I know that puts me firmly in the points and miles minority, but they drive me up the wall. They’re thick, heavy and unwieldy. They take up too much space in my wallet and stretch out the credit card pouches, especially when there’s two cards in one – which I sometimes have to do because, you know, the modern wallet-maker doesn’t understand the volume of cards a points collector might sometimes want to carry on their person. After all that, I can’t just cut one up when I’m done with it. I have to send it back to the bank, which usually doesn’t bother to give me self-addressed envelopes to do it with. This has left me with a stack of, at last count, 28 defunct metal cards that I can’t shred and have to get rid of, Shawshank Redemption-style, by nonchalantly taking them out into the prison yard one at a time. After all, there’s only so many ice-scrapers that a guy needs. In any event, as I said, I know that points and miles people love them so metal cards – the clunkier and thicker the better. For all of you heavy metal fans out there, US Credit Card Guide publishes an annual list of the heaviest credit cards in the world, ranked by measured weight in grams. This year, there’s a new king of the hill: the Robinhood Gold card, which weighs in at a shocking 36 grams; equivalent to three Delta Reserves.

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