Heels First Travel has the scoop on the US Airways triple elite qualifying miles offer. Airlines offer general, non-targeted elite qualifying bonuses generally when travel is down and their models predict they’ll have fewer elites. It’s a way to re-engage their most frequent customers. In a new world where Delta and United have adopted minimum revenue requirements for status starting next year, I fully expect programs to run the same sorts of predictive models. And especially if fares drop in the future I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become somewhat common to have double elite qualifying dollars offers. There are three kinds of targeted elite qualifying mileage offers, more or less: Incentivize travel on a new, underperforming, or newly competitive route. If a discount carrier starts throwing flights at an airline’s bread and butter…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for September 2013.
2500 Free Miles for Joining Saudia’s Frequent Flyer Program
Saudia is offering 2500 bonus miles if you join by September 30. Saudia’s award availability is amazing, flying Saudia from New York and DC it’s one of the easiest uses of Delta Skymiles. Many won’t see value in joining Saudia’s own frequent flyer program and that’s cool, but for those who do free miles are free miles. As part of this offer – in celebration of Saudi National Day – they’re offering 25% off of Guest, Business, and First Class international flights booked by September 30 for travel between November 1 and December 10. I’m confident that three of you will find this useful. (HT: MileNerd) 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…
Great Fare: $686 from Washington DC to Kuala Lumpur
Via jaunders1 on Milepoint, there’s a Turkish Airlines fare from Washington Dulles to Kuala Lumpur that prices out for less than $700 all-in roundtrip. Here’s a sample itinerary: The fare is $124.50 each way plus taxes and fuel surcharges. Fare basis is WV33XPC. So ‘W’ inventory needs to be available on all of the flight segments. And W fares do not earn miles in United’s MileagePlus program or in the US Airways Dividend Miles program. So a cheap fare but not a mileage run for most. Outbound travel must be during November, or between January 10 and March 10. Earliest return is the first Sunday after outbound travel, in other words a Saturday night stay is required. Interestingly (and irrelevantly) the fare contains a restriction that it cannot be sold in Sudan. I find Kuala…
Delta Renames its Award Price Levels
Delta went from two to three tiers of award pricing in 2008. The three tiers were called Low, Medium, and High. And that’s how they stand as I write this: Delta announced, however, that the names of its award redemption tiers will be changing to “Saver, Standard, and Peak.” To clarify our Award Travel chart, we’ve updated the Award level names to Saver, Standard and Peak from Low, Medium and High, respectively. Please note that the change of names for the Award levels does not indicate changes with the program rules or mileage redemption at this time. Visit our Award Travel page to learn more about using miles for an Award Ticket.” While some may speculate that this change is more than a wording change, we’d like to be very clear that this is only…
How to Find Business Class Awards to Asia for the Whole Family
Yesterday I wrote about how to find business class award seats for a family — not just one or two seats, but four seats on a single flight. Basic principles, More seats are harder than fewer seats. If you can split up (a family of four might fly 2+2) that makes things much easier. Roughly six months out is a good sweet spot for searching award space. Shorter flights are in less demand. East Coast – Europe is far easier than West Coast – Europe. West Coast – Asia is far easier than East Coast – Asia. If you’re on the opposite coast, be willing to connect domestically or even buy domestic connecting flights if needed. Multiple flights a day mean more award space. More total seats between a city will usually make it easier…
PointsHound 1000 Mile First Booking Bonus Through October 4
PointsHound Lets You Earn Miles for Hotel Bookings PointsHound and Rocketmiles are the two major websites that award you frequent flyer miles when booking hotel rooms. In general Rocketmiles has the biggest mileage offers, but they also have the fewest hotels and are in a limited – but growing – number of cities. Booking through Rocketmiles will not entitle you to earn points and elite stay credit through a hotel loyalty program. (Some hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt will honor elite benefits on third party bookings, while Starwood and Hilton’s policy is not to do so.) PointsHound has more hotels in more locations, a subset of which are referred to as ‘DoubleUp’ hotels where you earn miles and can still earn hotel points and elite stay credit. Earn 1000 Miles For Your First Booking…
Etihad BusinessConnect 20,000 Mile Signup Bonus — And Why This is Really Valuable
Through October 31, Etihad will give you 10,000 miles each into your personal Etihad Guest account and a new Etihad business account — just for creating that new business account and connecting your Etihad Guest number to it and that of one other traveler. Follow these three easy steps to receive an extra 10,000 miles into your personal Etihad Guest account as well as receiving an additional 10,000 miles for your company’s new BusinessConnect account: Sign your company up to BusinessConnect via the individual who manages your company travel at etihadbusinessconnect.com Connect your Etihad Guest number and one other business traveller’s number to the BusinessConnect account via the website E-mail your Etihad Guest number & Company name to businessconnectoffer@etihad.ae Once these steps have all been successfully completed you and your company will receive an extra…
Hyatt is Giving Away 16 Free Nights on Twitter Today
Hyatt is calling their series of 4 twitter chats the “World’s Largest Focus Group” and they will be giving away 4 free nights during each of the 4 chats, for a total of 16 free nights. Here’s the schedule, and each lasts one hour except the last is 90 minutes: Seamless Travel 3am Pacific/4am Mountain/5am Central/6am Eastern (whoops, missed that one!) Routines on the Road 5am Pacific/6am Mountain/7am Central/8am Eastern On the Road Rituals 10am Pacific/11am Mountain/Noon Central/1pm Eastern Traveling Like a Pro 12:30pm Pacific/1:30pm Mountain/2:30pm Central/3:330pm Eastern To see the conversation, enter #HyattWLFG in the search box on twitter. And anything you tweet should include that hash tag as well so that others will see it (and so that you will be eligible to win free nights). You can join the 30,000+ people who…
How to Find Business Class Award Seats for the Whole Family
Last month I argued that premium cabin award travel is best for families. More award seats cost more miles, and not everyone has the balances to support flying up front. But premium cabin awards in many programs do not cost substantially more than coach awards do — a business class ticket might cost 5 to 10 times the price of a coach ticket, but a business class award may be only 50% – 100% more miles. Ultimately you should redeem your points for what you value, and not everyone feels like extra room, a better sleep on long flights, or fewer hassles is worth any extra points or money. Last month I suggested ways to earn more miles instead of strategizing to economize on miles, as well as some of the compromises involved in finding…
Don’t Panic! American AAdvantage Awards on Qatar are Being Added in Error
Canadian Kilometers writes that when trying to book an award on new American AAdvantage redemption partner (and soon to be oneworld member) Qatar Airways, American is adding fuel surcharges onto the cost of the booking. Just last month American had a glitch where they were adding fuel surcharges onto award tickets flying Malaysia Airlines. They compounded the problem by telling folks that this was a new policy that would roll out across all partners. In fact it was meant to correct an issue with revenue tickets only and not awards. Like the Malaysia redemption problem it turns out that fuel surcharges are pricing on Qatar awards in error. You cannot book Qatar awards online. You cannot even search the space online in most cases. But award availability is in many cases quite good, even if…
