Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for May 2008.

Citi Platinum American Express Offer

Via Frugal Travel Guy, the Citibank Platinum American Express has comes packed with goodies: 15,000 Thank You Points after spending $300 on the card Free Priority Pass annual membership, with first three lounge visits included ($24 thereafter) For the first 24 months of cardmembership, receive 5 Thank You Points per dollar spent at supermarkets, drug stores and gas stations and 3 ThankYou Points per dollar on all other purchases. Annual fee waived the first year ($125 thereafter, I’ll consider keeping it for year two given the spend bonuses but definitely won’t keep it for year three). Thank You Points can be deceptively valuable I haven’t checked to see whether this card is eligible for Citi’s fixed point redemption chart, but if you link it to an Expedia account the points can be used with the…

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Up to 6,000 Worldperks Miles for New Northwest Members

Via Frugal Travel Guy, Northwest is offering new members who enroll by July 15 up to 6,000 bonus miles for flights. You will receive 1,000 Bonus Miles for any flight you take on Northwest Airlines or KLM within six months of enrolling. If you take a second roundtrip flight on Northwest Airlines or KLM during this six-month period, you receive 5,000 Bonus Miles.

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United Raises Fees on Award Redemption and Changes

United is increasing a variety of fees for redeeming awards effective May 15. Change fees go from $100 to $150 (matching changes United made to many of its revenue fares). Telephone ticketing goes from $15 to $25. “Close-in Processing Fees” (1) now $100 (from $75) for ticketing less than 7 days from departure (2) $75 (from $50) for tickets less than 21 days from departure — where the $50 used to apply less than 14 days from departure, so they’ve stretched out the period for this fee. This doesn’t appear to change the fee waivers of United 1Ks (100,000 mile flyers) who can still change their award tickets at no cost over and over, constantly striving for better routings and carriers to meet their needs (thank goodness). (Hat tip to One Mile at a Time.)

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A Snippet from Expedia’s Elite Customer Service

I booked a South African Airways ticket on Expedia yesterday. The person I booked it for wanted to include their South African frequent flyer number with the reservation. But Expedia doesn’t include South African in their long drop down box of potential programs. So I dropped a note to the Expedia Elite Plus email address. A couple of hours later I received this strange reply: Unfortunately, due to technical, regulatory, and/or other limitations, we currently do not support frequent flyer programs from all airlines. In this light, you would need to contact South African Airways directly and provide them with the passenger’s frequent flyer number. The number is 800-722-9675. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Technical, regulatory, and/or other limitations?Certainly there’s no regulatory barrier to adding a South African Airways frequent flyer number…

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A Mileage Run Primer

Lucky walks through how he goes about constructing mileage runs. A useful narrative for those that have thought about taking an extra trip to earn the next level of status (which is how I generally recommend mileage runs) or to earn redeemable miles.

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