This week I ran a contest to give away a new TORQ bag from Briggs & Riley. I admit I’m a little jealous, I don’t have one of these yet myself. But it’s time to draw a winner out of 1275 eligible comments. I asked readers to answer both: Do you have different bags for different seasons? Do you have different bags for different missions – such as vacation travel and work? Here’s the winning comment: Andrew said, 1. I don’t change up my bags with the seasons. 2. I do not travel for work. I usually take a standard black rolling bag for most weekend travel. However, on trips where I must check a bag (usually hiking or SCUBA related), I take a small hiking daypack instead. You’re not Andrew? No problem, I’ll be…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for June 2013.
Bits ‘n Pieces for June 7, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Spirit Airlines now offers wine in a can. Garuda Indonesia will join Skyteam in March 2014. Will they be the first airline that takes miles out of your Delta Skymiles account when you fly? Are they safe? JetBlue plans to introduce a premium cabin on its transcon flights — suites with doors. (HT: Cranky Flier) Top American Airlines executives learn their fate in a post-merger company today. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. Don’t miss out!
More Details on the New Hyatt-MGM Resorts Las Vegas Points & Benefits
I had some questions for Hyatt, some of them reader questions after my post sharing the news about the new benefits between Hyatt Gold Passport and MGM’s M Life Resorts in Las Vegas. So I followed up with Hyatt Gold Passport to get some answers. They were surprisingly forthcoming. In general, details of how MGM Resorts work will be simply following MGM’s policies. In the case of how the two programs interface, there are things they simply don’t know yet — the elite status matching starts in August, and things like re-upping that status will happen sometime later still. So the nitty gritty technology? They’re still ironing out details, and they were candid about that. Here’s the Q&A: If I match my Diamond status to M Life Platinum, what happens after a year? Do I…
Not Sure What it is About Hotel Rooms and Coke…
I’m not sure if this is new but I hadn’t seen it. Every Thursday through Saturday check-in at a Sheraton will receive a $25 MasterCard prepaid card – for stays booked between May 13 and August 31, and completed by September 1. In addition you get a Coke travel cooler and two cans of Coke. The prepaid card can be earned up to three times. You have to book the Coke rate plan SISUMR and stay no more than 4 nights to be eligible. The offer is available in the US, Canada, and the Bahamas. And may not always be even close to the best rate you can get. I really hate promotions that promise extras and then simply charge for them. A search of the Sheraton Premier Tysons Corner next week shows me rates:…
The Tunnel Between United’s B and C Concourses at O’Hare
I was talking about the tunnel that connects United’s B and C concourses at Chicago O’Hare yesterday, and someone mentioned that it “felt like Disney.” Another friend scoffed, and I insisted, “No, it really does…” So I went and found the story, shared years ago by frequent flyer PremEx (whom long-time readers will remember as the man I learned more about how to approach travel from than anyone else). Most folks [love “The Tunnel”] although some repeat customers do often say it can become irritating after a while. Of course the intention was to add beauty and distraction to the otherwise boring and utilitarian nature of such a loooong underground passageway. In this I think it succeeds, but not as much as it might have. Why? Because I happen to know a bit about how…
Google Wallet Has its Limits
Amazon Payments went after paypal, and they will let you send $1000 to someone via credit card each month with no fee. Now Google Wallet has also entered the space, and they’re waiving credit card processing fees as well. Google Wallet lets you send money to someone’s gmail account. They’re still in ‘beta’ or at least I haven’t heard that they’ve come out of it, and are limiting signups. But anyone who gets sent money automatically gets to join (even if they are sent only a penny). Unlike Amazon Payments, they started off not capping you at $1000 a month fee-free for credit card transactions. Roughly speaking it seemed transactions under $1000 process instantly, larger transactions took a few days. But there has always been a limit, as reader A.A. points out to me with…
The One Person Who Drives Me More Crazy Than Anyone Else
And believe it or not, it isn’t Christopher Elliott. No, it’s Peter Greenberg. He’s famous. He’s a big deal. And almost everything he says is wrong or at least misleading. Here’s today’s column on redeeming frequent flyer miles. Every year, I tell you how the airlines are devaluing frequent-flier miles. And since they control the inventory, some airlines make it harder than others to redeem those miles for seats. A new study from IdeaWorks ranks airlines around the world based on their availability of reward seats. And guess what? The low-cost airlines fared the best. We’re talking Southwest and JetBlue in the U.S. Internationally, Air Berlin, Brazil’s GOL, and Virgin Australia ranked high. Meanwhile, US Airways and Delta tied for last place, and American Airlines was in the bottom five. The IdeaWorks study is highly…
Where Did All of the British Airways Award Seats Go?
Lucky noted a lot of recent chatter about British Airways award space drying up in the past few weeks. He says it just isn’t so — space dried up a long time before that — and I agree. I’ve even had a note to myself since December to write about “where have all the premium cabin award seats on BA gone?” Although he’s also correct that there are plenty of cities where you can still find seats. Ben notes Boston (this has always been a great place to look for transatlantic awards), Seattle (Lufthansa space from here is good too), Philadelphia (I used to see 7 award seats in first class from Philly but no longer, Houston too), Washington Dulles (used to be great for first class but now seems mostly good for business), and…
Inspector General: TSA Behavior Detection Doesn’t Work, Racially Profiles
Two years ago I wrote about the introduction of the TSA’s “sophisticated behavioral inspections” known as spot that “requires screeners to make quick reads of whether passengers pose a danger or a terror threat based on their reactions to a set of routine questions…” At the time I was very skeptical that this would do anything to enhance security: Four days of classroom instruction and 24 hours of on-the-job training. To do psychological evaluations of passengers in a matter of seconds, after three questions. ..[T]he point here is that the Israeli security model doesn’t scale. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport processes 12 million passengers a year. Orlando handles about 33 million, and that’s not even one of the ten busiest airports in the United States. When you roll out a project that may work at…
Delta Puts the Lie to the Skyteam Alliance Value Proposition
I suggested earlier that Delta’s change to elite status mileage earning on partners undermines the idea of a global airline alliance. Beginning September 1, flying on Skyteam alliance partner Korean Air will not earn any “Medallion Qualifying Miles” at all. Which is completely contrary to the consumer-facing purpose of the alliance. It undermines what Skyteam itself markets as a primary consumer benefit. Here’s the Skyteam website‘s highlighted (with a box around it!) claim: This website claim is simply no longer true. It’s stretching the truth with Delta already, since status will require a minimum amount of spending — that partner airline tickets for travel on those partners will not count towards. But starting September 1 it will literally no longer be true since it will not be the case that joining ‘any’ Skyteam program will…
