Yearly Archives for 2007.
Citibank is offering 25,000 bonus miles and first year free for the Ameircan Airlines business and personal mastercards and personal American Express. All cards require $750 in spending within the first four months to qualify for the bonus. These cards can generally be churned every few months, and signing up for all is 75,000 miles at a pop.
Alaska Airlines has followed the industry trend and announced a new mileage expiration policy. They’re moving from the old standard of three years to two. Now, they’re still more generous than the current reigning policy in the industry of 18 months. And any activity, earning or redeeming, will keep an account active — no worrying about which kinds of miles extend and account and which do not. And finally, there’s an explicit way to extend expired miles — within a year of expiration, a $75 fee will reactivate an account. Last year I kept my brother-in-law’s Alaska account active by signing him up for a free Points.com account. I think he earned 20 miles. The MilesLink newsletter points out that the first date that miles will expire is April Fools’ Day 2008. Heh.
Juniper Bank, which issues the USAirways Mastercard — one of the better airline mileage card values — now has a business card though it isn’t quite as lucrative. The best offers for the personal card include two years fee-free, 50% bonus miles on first year spending, and 15,000 miles with first purchase. The business card will match the signup bonus but at a $79 annual fee. (There’s a no fee version with just 5000 bonus miles at signup.)
iDine (aka Rewards Network) has a new Delta dining for miles bonus that offers both redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles (registration required). Four qualifying dines of $25 or more in October and November earns a bonus 1000 miles that even count towards status. Now, it’s just 1000 miles. But the notable thing is that the bonus offers the opportunity to earn elite status for something other than flying. Already increasingly common (and in some measure pioneered by Delta) is elite status through credit card spending. And last year USAirways offered its ‘Everything Counts’ promo at the end of the year where most miles (credit card spending excluded) counted towards status. Some Dividend Miles members became Chairmans Preferred 100,000 mile ‘flyers’ by sending a whole lot of flowers. So this is another step in that…
Traditionally frequent flyer miles are redeemed for capacity controlled awards. Airlines offer a limited number of seats for redemption that they expect would otherwise go unsold. And some travelers are frustrated they can’t find the seats. But in general there’s always been the option to spend more miles in order to get any open seat. With United, it’s the “Standard” award rather than “Saver.” With Delta, this higher mileage option has been known as “SkyChoice.” But Delta has announced that as of December 1, spending double the miles no longer gets you any seat. Instead, it just gets you access to more award inventory. Now they’re not the only airline to do this. They’re following Northwest’s lead. But they’re still in the minority. Rulebuster, Standard — or whatever you want to call them — awards…
Amtrak’s new small business program allows you to earn points in addition to the standard Guest Rewards program both for your travel and those that enter your small business program membership number. Accounts in this program earn 25% of the base points earned on Amtrak by each traveler. Through December 31, 2007 enrollment code STR07 yields a 1500 point signup bonus. (I got a copy of the offer and ignored it, so thanks to Samit for beating me over the head with it…)
Unsecure Flight has sample forms online to request copies of records kept on you and your flying by the Department of Homeland Security.
Through October 31, Chase has a new compelling offer for the British Airways Visa. In addition to 20,000 miles with first purchase, they throw in a companion ticket. They used to offer a free ticket with purchase of a full fare ticket, useless for most. The new offer is one companion ticket that is honored with purchase of any published fare. Full details of the companion ticket offer are here. The companion ticket needs to be booked by January 31, 2008 for travel commencing (and outbound flight completed) by May 31, 2008. The card comes with a $75 annual fee, and I’ve never seen a fee waived the first year offer for it, but for those who can use the companion ticket it’s well worth it. Update:Gary from Free Frequent Flyer Miles cautions: Looks like…
As a companion to the best offer for the Starwood American Express (10,000 points with first purchase, 15,000 points for spending $15,000 in six months, and first year free), there’s a new best offer for the Starwood American Express small business card: free the first year, 10,000 points with first purchase and an additional 5000 points for adding free employee cards (1000 per additional card).That’s a potential 40,000 combined bonus Starpoints.
The internet porn defense, or “I was just safeguarding my AdultCheck account.” Prior to starting Hawaiian intra-island low fare carrier Go, Mesa Airlines considered acquiring either Aloha or Hawaiian Airlines. Now that Hawaiian is back in front of a bankruptcy judge, they’re claiming their failures are a result of ‘unfair’ competition from Go, that Mesa pretended to be interested in an acquisition in order to learn their business strategies and use the data against them. (Of course, Hawaiian’s track record underscores the value of their strategies, ahem.) But Mesa had to answer the charges, and apparently Mesa’s CFO destroyed some computer files relevant to the case. Mesa had to answer in court for this, explaining that the deleted files were an accident, their CFO was just trying to erase all the porn off his computer.…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
