Via Ben, American Express is offering a bonus on transferring points over to Delta through the end of the year. Registration is required, for every 50,000 points transferred you will receive a code later to apply to your Membership Rewards account to rebate 15,000 points. (No limit.) Strictly speaking then, the offer is for a 30% rebate. Which means that you have to have available (or be able to borrow, or purchase) all of the points needed for the award you want to book through Delta Skymiles. A 30% rebate is mathematically equivalent to a 43% bonus. Under this offer a net cost of 35,000 Amex points generates 50,000 Delta miles. A net cost of 70,000 Amex points generates 100,000 Delta miles, which is enough for a business class ticket on Europe and in my…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for November 2011.
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card as King of the Credit Cards?
This morning on Milepoint someone posted a question prompted by my blog post yesterday on whether Aeroplan fuel surcharges reduce the value of American Express Membership Rewards points and whether that changes my overall advice on best credit card. The question was about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s been all the rage with ‘in the know’ frequent flyers for months now, I only broke down and got the card myself over the summer, as Chase has improved the program substantially. I’ve referenced it several times as part of larger posts, such as my advice on the best mix of rewards credit cards but I haven’t given it real standalone treatment. As recent posts will tell you, I still love American Express Membership Rewards. I’ve even been defending Membership Rewards against naysayers who argue that…
The Sky is Not Falling, Why American Express Membership Rewards Points Remain Valuable
I like Ben, Ben is a friend of mine, but this morning he goes a bit over the top at One Mile at a Time with his declaration of the death of American Express Membership Rewards as a valuable program. Of course, I already used the program selectively — the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card was my choice for airfare (triple points) and groceries (double points) and that’s the crux of why my credit card advice hasn’t changed. See, unlike Ben I still value 3 Membership Rewards points from airfare more than 2 Chase Ultimate Rewards points for the same purchases. And I value 2 Membership Rewards points from groceries more than 1 Ultimate Rewards point for those. (For the uninitiated, Chase Sapphire Preferred earns double points on travel.) I don’t think these calculations…
How the Department of Transportation Regulates Twitter..
.. or at least airline tweets. Via Frequently Flying, the DOT’s enforcement unit is monitoring airline twitter activity for regulatory compliance. Sounds to me like an excuse for DOT staffers to spend all day at their desks on Twitter, but here’s what they’re after: if an airfare is mentioned and if any taxes and fees are not included, there must be a hyperlink “adjacent to the stated fare” that “takes the viewer directly to a place on a separate screen where the nature and amount of taxes and fees are prominently and immediately displayed. Likewise, if a roundtrip purchase condition applies to an advertised each-way fare, this must also be disclosed in the tweet.” However, HTML layout on this separate disclosure link matters — links taking the user to “a page or a place on…
What We Learned from Hyatt Gold Passport’s Live Milepoint.com Chat
Mommy Points offered a useful summary of the live Milepoint.com chat with Jeff Zidell, the Hyatt’s Vice President for the Gold Passport Program. A transcript of the chat is available here. Loyalty Traveler offers a pretty critical take. Bottom-line is that Hyatt didn’t break a lot of news in the chat, but they weren’t expected to, as Randy Petersen explained There was some talk to only have chats when a program is ready or has just made some major change, thus there would be a specific news purpose. However, we asked Hyatt to come on despite there not being a particular news item they were releasing right now. They have been wonderful in their support of the MegaDos, wonderful in support of various other frequent traveler and very much supportive of the young and new…
Aeroplan Adjusts Fuel Surcharges Again
Yesterday Aeroplan began adding fuel surcharges on several airline partner awards. Previously they had been adding those charges only to awards on Air Canada flights. Now they’ve dialed it back a bit, and are adding fuel surcharges only on Air Canada and Lufthansa flights. Awards on All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai are pricing out without fuel surcharges. Aeroplan has not made any statements about their intentions beyond that they are adding the charges to awards booked on Air Canada and Lufthansa — nothing about whether other airlines will be added in the future, or when. But they seem to suggest that fuel surcharges on other carriers may be coming down the pike. Effective November 9th 2011 at 7pm, Aeroplan began applying, at Air Canada’s request, fuel surcharges to flight rewards on Lufthansa. Members making voluntary…
Why the Introduction of Fuel Surcharges for Aeroplan Awards DOESN’T Change My Credit Card Advice
[Offers in this post are no longer current] Aeroplan has started adding fuel surcharges to many partner awards, including on Lufthansa, All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai. One of the common internet memes is that this is a real blow to American Express Membership Rewards. Because Amex points transfers was one of the key ways that folks in the U.S. were generating Aeroplan points. Certainly the change to Aeroplan with no notice whatsoever makes their program less valuable. And it means that points that might have been transferred into Aeroplan have a bit less value, since the transfer option is worth less. An equally big kick in the teeth to Aeroplan came in July with their massive award chart devaluation (and that wasn’t even the only recent cutback). Of course, American Express also lost Continental as…
Does The TSA Tradeoff Between Liberty and Security Make Sense?
Here’s a surprisingly well-reasoned discussion of the TSA, airport security, and the tradeoffs between liberty and security. It’s by an academic, Professor James Otteson, professor of philosophy and economics at Yeshiva University in New York, who says that the TSA takes away our liberty to make the choice beween freedom and security. He acknowledges it’s a complex question, and one that people can come down differently on, but that we clearly don’t choose security over liberty in all cases, such as car crashes which cause more deaths than terrorist attacks, or swimming pools which kill more people than accidental gun shootings. Hardly the last word on the subject, but interesting points in a quick video.
The World’s Best Airport Lounges and Why They Matter
CNN.com covers my favorite airport lounges, and in order of preference even. I admit I haven’t done the Qantas first class lounges in Sydney and Melbourne since they’ve been remodeled, it’s been about five years since I’ve been in them actually, so they aren’t included. But certainly they’d compete. Readers of this blog will find no real surprises. I do like the Thai first class ground experience in Bangkok better than any other, from the personal service to the spa. Theirs is unlike any other airport spa offering, with private treatment bungalows and hour-long Thai massage, plus excellent bath amenities to shower up afterwards (you’re choosing your oils, after all, and probably don’t want to leave those on during the long flight). And Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt remains a special experience, though the…
Hipmunk Adds Killer App Functionality, Has Potential to Become Booking Service of Choice
When people ask where to search for airfares I usually just tell them to check out Kayak.com. It’s not where I search for flights and fares, but it offers reasonably powerful functionality and a pretty easy-to-use interface. My first stop has long been ITA Software. Specifically, Matrix1.itasoftware.com, I know that the ITA Software folks don’t like that but the ‘old school’ interface is much more to my liking. They’re not going to support it forever, and the newer one has gotten better to work with over time, but the simply entry format and cleaner page just works well for me. ITA Software is a software company, recently acquired by Google, which provides back-end functionality to several airfare booking engines. But on their website they offer more functionality than the public booking websites offer, no doubt…
