Airlines Might Let You Take Calls Mid-Flight

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British Airways is testing in-flight phone calls with Starlink, as luxury hotel brand Montage doubles down on slow growth and hotel giants sit on billions in unredeemed loyalty points.

On today’s Skift Daily Briefing, Sarah Dandashy breaks down why in-flight calls could reshape cabin etiquette, how Montage is scaling luxury without losing its identity, and what the growing “loyalty IOU” really means for travelers.

This episode is presented by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Lodgify!⁠⁠⁠⁠

Articles Referenced: Honorable Mention: @AskAConcierge on IG
British Airways Will Allow In-Flight Calls With Starlink
How Montage Is Scaling Luxury Brands — Slowly, and With Purpose
The $7 Billion Loyalty IOU: What Marriott and Hilton Owe Members

Welcome back to the Skift Daily Briefing.

It’s Tuesday, April 7th.

I’m Sarah Dandashy, and today we’re talking about British Airways letting passengers make in-flight calls on Starlink, how montage is scaling luxury slowly and deliberately, and the growing loyalty IOU that Marriott and Hilton owe their members.

Let’s get into it. First up, British Airways will allow in-flight calls with Starlink. Yep, you heard that right.

British Airways is taking an unusual and frankly, a controversial step. It’s going to allow in-flight phone calls on planes equipped with Starlink Wi-Fi.

Now, British Airways’ guidance is basically saying, use your indoor voice at 35,000 feet, but keep your voice low, use headphones and don’t turn row 23 into your open office floor plan.

Now, Starlink is popular because it makes onboard Wi-Fi fast enough for real streaming and real work, and airlines love that for premium and business travelers. But calls are the third rail of cabin etiquette for a reason.

Even a quiet call can fill a cabin when everyone else is trapped in forced politeness. The bottom line here is that this is a big bet that passengers can self-police and history suggests, well, we’re not always so great at that.

Next up, the Montage is scaling luxury brands slowly and with purpose. Now to a very different kind of growth story. Montage is basically the anti-hyperscale luxury brand right now.

It operates 14 properties across two brands, Montage and Pendry, and it’s taken 20 years to get there. That pace is the point. Skift’s on experience piece paints the philosophy in a simple moment.

At Montage Deer Valley and Pendry Park City, teams like Sales and Marketing jump in during peak ski rush to help guests with boots. Not because it’s a manual, but because it’s what the experience needs in the moment.

Culture as behavior, not a slide deck. The founder’s core idea is restraint. Montage would rather turn down deals than expand into markets where the rates can’t support true luxury service.

Because once you compromise consistency, the brand promise starts to unravel.

So the takeaway from this, in a world racing to plant flags everywhere, the montage is betting that saying no is how you protect the yes when guests are actually paying for it.

And our final topic for today, the $7 billion loyalty IOU and why that’s not bad debt. Finally, hotel loyalty.

Skift’s analysis of financial filings found that seven major hotel groups collectively owed loyalty members about $11.6 billion in unredeemed points at the end of last year. Marriott alone was nearly $4 billion and Hyatt was close to $3 billion.

Now, this sounds alarming until you remember what it really is. Deferred value funded by real spending, especially co-branded credit cards. And with many travelers earning points faster than they redeemed them.

So hotels don’t treat this like traditional debt. They treat it like proof that the loyalty engine is working. The bottom line here is that those points are a promise to travelers, but they’re also a powerful financial flywheel for the hotel giants.

Well, that’s it for today’s Skift Daily Briefing. For more travel industry news and analysis, head to skift.com. And as always, subscribe to the Skift Daily Briefing.

Go to skift.com/daily. Thanks so much for listening.