Aeroplan is offering 5000 bonus miles for converting hotel points into 20,000 miles or more. Registration is required, and the bonus can be earned once per hotel partner. With this promo, 20,000 Starwood points become 30,000 Aeroplan miles. The offer also allows 1000 bonus Aeroplan miles for converting hotel points to 5000 Aeroplan miles. This is valid for transfers through August 31. Aeroplan really is one of my favorite programs. They have a favorable award chart for most destinations, no blocking of partner award inventory, and favorable routing rules as well. It takes 120,000 Aeroplan miles to book a roundtrip in first class from North America to Asia. You can make two enroute stopovers (or one stopover and an open jaw) and you go either via the Atlantic or the Pacific or cross one ocean…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for June 2009.
Fighting Corruption in Kathmandu
The Nepalese government plans to issue pants to airport workers that have no pockets. A spokesman said trousers without pockets would help the authorities “curb the irregularities”. The move comes after the prime minister of Nepal said corruption was damaging the airport’s reputation, AFP reported. The Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) said it had sent a team to the airport to “observe the growing complaints about the behaviour of airport authorities and workers towards travellers”. “We discovered that the reports were true,” spokesman Ishwori Prasad Paudyal told the AFP news agency. “So we decided that airport officials should be given trousers with no pockets.” He said the Ministry of Civil Aviation had been instructed to put the measure in place as soon as possible. “We believe this will help curb the…
Why Travel Insurance is Usually a Bad Deal
Via Wendy Perrin on Twitter, the New York Times has a column on one family’s difficulty securing a refund from a travel provider after purchasing insurance and needing to use it. In this case, the travel provider offered the promised refund in the form of a travel credit, which wasn’t useful as one of the travlers has since passed away. The family thought the coverage offered them a cash refund but the terms of the coverage in fact did not. In this case I’m less sympathetic than the columnist and probably most readers. In the end it sounds like the family got cash, depsite the terms of their policy. And considering most of the travel insurance stories I’ve heard they were lucky to be offered travel credits. Thus, let me offer Five Reasons Why Travel…
Silly Arguments for Re-Regulating the Airlines
AirFareWatchdog thinks there’s a compelling case to re-regulated the airlines. In this view, he cites at length a press release about a study co-authored by liberal American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner. That study is either incredibly ignorant about the manner in which the airline industry was and is regulated, or is incredibly dishonest – conflating issues and blaming things on deregulation that have nothing to do with it whatsoever. When we talk about airline deregulation we mean that airlines are now permitted to decide for themselves the routes they fly and the prices they charge. That’s it in a nutshell. The government is no less involved in safety regulation. And on the whole the aviation remains one of the most heavily government-infused industries in the country — flying almost exclusively between government airports, following government…
50% Off Delta In-flight Internet
From Gogo Inflight, 50% off in-flight internet valid through July 19 using promo code 156FLYDA. The 757 fleet is still hit or miss at best, but the MD-80s are good to go.
Mark Sanford’s MILEAGE AWARD TICKET to Buenos Aires
Politico reports that Mark Sanford’s trip to Argentina was booked using Delta Skymiles. And indeed, award availability on the Atlanta – Buenos Aires flight, historically difficult to secure, has been much much easy of late. However, this revelation raises more questions for me than it answers. What class of service was the award booked in? Did he secure a traditional Skysaver award, or did he have to spend extra miles for the seat? Is Sanford a Delta elite? Does he carry a Delta American Express credit card? Put another way, when did he book the trip and was he subject to a close-in ticketing fee? Grover Norquist apparently quipped yesterday that the Sanford affair demonstrates that men who want to cut spending at the local level are irresistable to women. But what kind of fiscal…
20% Off Expert Flyer
ExpertFlyer is offering a 20% discount to new subscribers through July 15, discount taken off of the first monthly or yearly bill (so the savings are much greater on an annual subscription) with coupon code PKYGEZFT. The discount also works for gift certificates. There are basically two pay services that advanced flyers use. Expert Flyer is one, and is of especially good use for American Airlines flyers looking to upgrade internationally, and for Delta upgrades, for instance and because the site will keep searching for inventory to open up on routes you designate and ping you when it does. Personally I use the KVS Tool. It lacks award availability for Swiss (which is a drawback for me, but I workaround the problem via the Lufthansa JetFriends program) and it lacks the ExpertFlyer feature of automatically…
Hawaii Airfare Deals, $256 roundtrip from Newark to Honolulu
Beat of Hawaii points to United Airlines deals to Hawaii from Delta and Continental hubs. For instance, Fare Compare is showing Newark – Honolulu from $256 all-in.
$5/night Suites at Hilton New Orleans
The Hilton New Orleans/St. Charles Avenue is available for $5/night prepaid, non-cancellable from July 12 through July 17 or dates inside that period. (It may be available other dates as well, but I haven’t found other periods where the rate is offered, and no other dates have been mentioned in this Flyertalk thread as yet.) All room types including suites appear available at this price. If you book at Hotels.com you can earn a $75 prepaid Mastercard for the booking under this current promo for 4 night or longer stays. As always, you might consider waiting to book airfare to see whether the deal is honored (although sometimes booking airfare can help if you’re negotiating with the hotel to get them to honor the rate). My preference is not to book until they’ve had time…
Delta to Honor Miles Promised By Clear
The demise of Clear security lanes at airports has been much discussed, which is precisely why I’ve remained quiet about it. Of course, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone. The original promise was that Clear would mean basically skipping security (‘trusted traveler’) but the TSA didn’t go forward with that, and it just meant skipping lines (‘reigstered traveler’). But Clear was only in about 20 airports, most of which had elite security lines as well. The market for paying to skip lines was frequent business travelers who essentially got the same thing free from the airlines. In spite of several free trial offers for Clear I never had a desire to go through their process and sign up, it offered virtually no incremental benefit to me. The one piece of the story that does strike me…
