It takes a traveler to know travel.
Pete Buttigieg is arguably the most prominent Secretary of Transportation to serve since the cabinet position was created in the 1960s.
Some of that is just smart politicking.
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Americans have become increasingly frustrated with airlines and air travel. Since taking office, Buttigieg has been visible at the forefront of various Biden administration initiatives and has pushed for passenger rights, limits on “junk fees” and better operational performance among the airlines, while working through a decadeslong air traffic controller shortage that’s reached a critical level. Holding the airlines to account is an easy populist win.
But another part of it is that Buttigieg is a frequent flyer for work and an overall travel buff and AvGeek.
“Air travel is a miracle,” Buttigieg told TPG during an interview Thursday following a press conference at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT). “The fact that I’m reading memos in a seat in the sky as part of how I start my Monday morning.”
“There’s a magic to that, even 100 years into the aviation age, that I hope we never lose track of,” he added.
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It’s an energizing perspective for someone who travels for work at least once a week, almost entirely on whatever flight he can grab (like most high-ranking officials, Buttigieg has occasionally flown on government aircraft when commercial options weren’t viable for various reasons).
And while those trips are all for a purpose — for meetings with stakeholders, events, for the chance to see the real-world impact of various policies — the flights themselves, and the chance to visit various parts of the air travel system firsthand, are useful to him as the industry’s chief regulator, he said.
“You see patterns,” he said. “It’s one thing to see one air traffic control tower; it’s another thing to be in 10 of them.”
But for Buttigieg, travel has always been about more than the infrastructure and logistics, he said.
As have points and miles.
Buttigieg’s father immigrated to the U.S. from Malta while pursuing his doctorate degree. He often flew to Italy in the course of his research, Buttigieg said, which meant accumulating a decent stash of miles over the years.
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“He would save up those miles and points and every couple of years, it meant we could go to Malta to see my family,” he said. In the classic tradition of award travel, sometimes that could mean taking a wild routing to score seats at a lower tier on the award chart — like flying from South Bend, Indiana, to Chicago to London to Rome before finally flying on to Malta.
“It took two or three days, but it meant that I got to see my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and as a kid, it was just such magic,” Buttigieg said, remembering that his father used to keep a log of every single flight he’d taken — something many travel aficionados still do today, with digital services like Flightradar24’s flight log or the Flighty app.
Recalling those trips to see extended family, and the way that saving miles for a few years was a viable strategy, Buttigieg alluded to the Department of Transportation’s open investigation into frequent flyer programs and allegations of misleading behavior on the part of airlines.
“I’m concerned about some of the arbitrary devaluations of points, or these fees that get attached to everything,” he said.
Buttigieg, meanwhile, collects plenty of miles during his work travel, just like any other passenger, though he said he pays less attention to his status — he prefers to decline upgrades to avoid any false appearance of…
This article was originally published by a thepointsguy.com . Read the Original article here. .