United is having a 20% off sale on coach award tickets to Europe. You need to book by November 19 for travel between January 13 and March 11. Basically book now for flights during United’s low season to Europe — after the New Year’s travel bump and before transatlantic travel picks up again. This offer applies from the U.S. or Canada but excludes Hawaii and includes travel to all of Europe. Partner flights aren’t eligible for the discount. Roundtrip travel is required, stopovers are not permitted, but open jaws (e.g. fly into one city and back from another) are. United sees planes flying with empty seats, so getting some revenue from MileagePlus even at a discount is win-win. This is becoming a common time period for United to offer a discount. They offered 25% off…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for November 2013.
Oneworld Airline Iberia Adds Draconian Seat Selection Fees
The Spanish Iberia, a member of oneworld and owned by the parent company of British Airways, has introduced new seat selection fees that would make the chintziest of low cost carriers blush. Now, British Airways is no slouch in the advance seat selection fee arena. BA charges even business class passengers who are neither elites nor traveling on a flexible ticket to select their seats prior to online check-in. An upcharge for business class passengers to choose their seats! And many low cost carriers charge to choose an economy seat in advance. If you’re flying Spirit Air or Allegiant, and you want to pick you seat from the seatmap before check-in, it’s going to cost you. Of course, since it costs everyone else too and folks flying those carriers tend to be price sensitive many…
What Mileage-Earning Debit Cards are Left, and How You Can Take Advantage of Them?
Bank of America Appears to Be Getting Out of the Mileage-Earning Debit Card Game Frequent Miler reports that Bank of America will end the Alaska Airlines debit card program on May 31. Separately, Hack My Trip suggested that this Sunday may be the last day to apply for one. Of course if you get the card you’ll only have a little more than six months to take advantage of it. And it’s hardly the most rewarding product to begin with. You earn 1 mile for every two dollars spent. But having options to earn miles via a debit card is valuable because there are a whole bunch of transactions for which you can use a debit card but not a credit card. Why Most Banks No Longer Offer Mileage-Earning Debit Cards The Durbin Amendment to…
Is Alaska Airlines the Real “Friendly Skies”..?
United brought back it’s “Fly the Friendly Skies” slogan, but redefined it to mean that their features likes routes and seats – rather than people – are friendly. Alaska produced a video showing their people being friendly and helpful, and indeed in my experience their people generally are. Their flight attendants aren’t Singapore’s or ANA’s. But relative to North American standards they’re quite good. This appears to be a six year old video, but it was new to me, and thanks to Roger K. for sending it along. The video is set not to allow embedding but you can view it here. I was surprised to see a flight attendant in the video actually helping a passenger get their carryon bag out of an overhead bin. Shocking. The scenes are as much their people helping…
Are Airline Scales Systematically Cheating Passengers With Overweight Baggage Fees?
Although airlines are regulated exclusively by federal law under the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, they aren’t exempt from all state laws — US Airways has been fined for state liquor law violations in the past, and occasionally there are state weights and measures investigations that find airline luggage scales to measure improperly, exposing carriers to state fines. Arizona found several inaccurate luggage scales in Phoenix and Tucson. (HT: mapsmith on Milepoint) These scales get a ton of abuse. No doubt they aren’t all consistently well-maintained and adjusted. I’m quite sure the phenomenon isn’t limited to Arizona. I’m actually rather surprised there hasn’t been an airline whistleblower working with a plaintiff’s attorney, as given the money involved in checked baggage fees and overweight baggage fees to the extent that scales are systematically off due to…
Starwood is Selling Points at 25% Off — Here’s When You Would Want to Buy
Starwood is offering up to a 25% discount on purchased Starpoints… should you buy any? Save Up to 25% on Starpoints now through December 13, 2013 Buy Starpoints® now through December 13, 2013, and receive up to 25% off the regular price when you buy 5,000 Starpoints or more. The more you buy, the more you save. • Buy 500–4,500 Starpoints: N/A • Buy 5,000–12,500 Starpoints: SAVE 20% • Buy 13,000–20,000 Starpoints: SAVE 25% The ‘normal’ price on Starpoints is 3.5 cents per point. Ouch. Fortunately, unlike airline miles, you don’t pay an additional tax on top. And there’s not also a ‘processing fee’ like many of the airlines charge. If you max out on the discount, and buy 20,000 points (which is what you are permitted to buy each year), it would cost you…
More Credit Card Issuers Likely to Offer Free Access to FICO Credit Scores
Yesterday I wrote that the Barclaycard Arrival PlusTM World Elite MasterCard® and other Barclays cards now provide free access to real FICO credit scores through their online account. The nice thing is that these are real scores, and free, whereas many free services are effectively simulations rather than the data that lenders would see. It turns out that eventually many more card issuers may be providing free FICO scores as well. FICO plans to let card issuers who use its scores make those scores available to consumers for free. Barclaycard and First Bankcard (First National Bank of Omaha) are the first two banks offering this but FICO is working with other banks on potentially doing the same. (Note that cards in this post offer credit to me if you’re approved using my links. The opinions,…
Today Only: 5000 Bonus Miles for a Rocketmiles Hotel Booking
Rocketmiles is running a one-day anniversary promotion, offering 5000 bonus miles on top of the usual miles earned for your reservation when you book a hotel stay between 8:00am and 9pm Central time on November 5 for a hotel stay completed by December 31 (check-out date). You have to book through their anniversary promotion page and the offer isn’t stackable with any other bonuses such as a first-time booking referral bonus. This bonus is good no matter which mileage-earning partner you choose: It is, however, open to anyone to take advantage of. Unlike other recent offers this is not a first-time customer bonus. There’s a limit of one bonus per customer under this offer, however. And they even have terms and conditions that say you can’t cancel an existing Rocketmiles booking and re-make that same…
United MileagePlus Has Devalued its “Standard” Award Chart, Too
Traditionally US frequent flyer programs offered to let members book any seat on any flight for twice the miles. That way if there wasn’t any “saver” award inventory, it would still be possible to use your miles. Now it wasn’t always precisely twice the miles. Sometimes it was less than double! Up until October 2006 United Airlines Mileage Plus offered awards from North America to Australia in business class at 90,000 miles roundtrip at the saver level — or 150,000 miles for what they called “standard” or rule-buster style awards where you could have any empty seat instead of constraining yourself to award space. At the time that award struck me as one of the best in the world. Delta and Northwest at the time both charged 150,000 miles for their capacity controlled awards to…
Signs a Settlement May Be Near in the American/US Airways Anti-Trust Lawsuit
Via Milepoint, Attorney General Eric Holder directly addressed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against the US Airways-American Airlines merger and indicated their openness to a settlement. American Airlines shares jumped on the news. A merger is great for American Airlines shareholders because they actually get a payout rather than being completely wiped out by the airline’s bankruptcy. Shares of companies in bankruptcy can fluctuate wildly even on the slimmest of news, but a big reaction is indicative that the market believes the Attorney General’s comments were meaningful. The Justice Department wants US Airways and American Airlines to divest landing and take-off slots at Reagan National and other “key” U.S. airports as a condition to drop its effort to block a proposed merger, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday. …Holder said that talks with the…
