Monthly Archives

Yesterday I sought advice on Flyertalk for a co-worker on how to obtaina a credit card in the U.S. as a non-citizen who has just immigrated here and therefore doesn’t have a credit history attached to his new U.S. social security number. I received four pieces of advice, that I thought I’d pass along here. Go to the non-US bank where the person already has a relationship and have them set something up with a US affiliate, if there is one. In this case, the person is Canadian, so they could try to work through Royal Bank of Canada (which has the North Carolina-based RBC Centura) or Toronto Dominion (which has TD Bank North). Have their employer take them to the financial institution where the business banks, and ask a senior person there to assist.…

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This Flyertalk thread reports that new Delta Skymiles members signing up with a non-US address will receive 6000 bonus miles after their first coach flight or 11,000 bonus miles if their first flight is in paid business class. No promotion code is necessary, it apparently is automatic for new members outside the U.S.

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One Mile at a Time reports that Virgin America passengers flying paid first class from San Francisco can now use the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse there.. for an additional $40. Naturally, a move to charge folks flying in paid first class for lounge access will seem strange to many. But since most US airlines don’t offer lounge access for paid domestic first class tickets (Alaska Airlines is one exception), since the price of a one-way first class ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles isn’t especially high, and since the Virgin Clubhouse is a rather nice lounge by US standards, this seems more than reasonable to me. I’ll be visiting the Virgin Clubhouse at Washington-Dulles for the first time in a few weeks, I understand that it’s rather underwhelming for a Virgin lounge but still the…

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Webflyer.com wrote up details of Delta’s new pay with miles feature.  Skymiles members with a co-branded American Express card can now use their miles to pay directly for tickets rather than searching award availability. I haven’t previously mentioned that this was coming (I don’t think) mainly because it doesn’t merit much attention. As I expected, the best you’ll ever do by using miles as cash for a ticket is one cent per mile in value. Now, Delta miles aren’t generally worth much more than a cent, I use my United and American miles to redeem (with ease, relatively speaking) for premium cabin international awards. In recent years I’ve booked international first class tickets on tons of airlines including Qantas, Air Tahiti Nui, Asiana, United, Thai, ANA, and Lufthansa (not to mention business class on many…

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Webflyer.com has a feature called Head2Head, where you can compare any two programs next to each such that the features, pros, and cons of each are side by side. I contributed descriptions of Continental OnePass and United Mileage Plus for them. With Continental I made substantial revisions to what was already there, for United I started from scratch. I’d appeciate comments or thoughts from readers here about whether I was fair to the programs, whether I should have highlighted something I left off, etc.

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This is your last chance to vote in the annual Freddie Awards, voting ends tomorrow February 29th. This is the one that matters, there are an almost limitless number of travel awards out there and it’s always shocking the results that some of them offer (and one suspects that in some cases they’re bought and paid for). Travel providers seem to really care how they do in this set of awards, the programs almost all promote it to their members to get out the vote of those likely to support them. But even so, all the politicking in the world is unlikely to skew the vote — over 400,000 travelers will cast their ballots in the Freddies. So even when I disagree with an outcome I have to respect it. On the whole (and in…

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Here’s a little bit of creativity on Flyertalk that requires a more adventurous spirit than I have, represents a great deal, and also teaches a little something about global economics. Venezuela imposes currency controls. If you buy your tickets there, the dollar price of the fare is converted to Venezuelan currency at the official rate. But you can buy your Venezuelan funds at the much more favorable black market rate. So you wind up saving about 60% on your tickets. This only works for tickets issued in Venezuela. There’s some discussion of whether the tickets need to be purchased in Venezuela or just from Venezuela, and whether tickets would need to originate in Venezuela (think flying from Caracas to somewhere else as the first segment on a much larger itinerary with stopovers taking you to…

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I thus far had resisted the non-urge to comment on the ‘too pretty to fly Southwest’ non-story. Certainly the reason that the two girls ‘who really aren’t all that’ had a confrontation with flight attendants isn’t because they’re supposedly good looking. And apparently regularly outsmarted by cheese… I think they were just discriminating against because we were young decent-looking girls. I mean, nobody else on the plane looked like us except us,” she said. “[The flight attendants] were like older ladies. We were younger. The real story, though, is that being a bit grumpy on a plane these days can get you a one-way ticket to interrogation and detention by law enforcement. That’s not the piece of the story the media is covering. But what prompts this post is Cranky Flier pointing to Southwest using…

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The standard offer for a Choice Privileges Visa is 8000 points. But through May 31 the offer is much better. 10,000 points with first use by August 14. 10,000 points when you use the card to pay for a stay at a Choice property by August 14. The card is offered by Bank of America and comes with no annual fee. Each 5,000 points will transfer to 1,000 miles with several different airlines, or points can be used for hotel stays. (Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

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