Cash back shopping site Ebates (new members get $5 cash from the site or $10 gift card after first $25+ purchase when signing up through my referral link, feel free to leave yours in the comments) is offering 9% cash back on all Intercontinental Hotels Group bookings. That means you can earn a 9% rebate on reservations with Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, and related brands when you go to the IHG website by clicking on it through the Ebates portal. Even bigger rebates were available a year ago, but then IHG disappeared as a cash back option. It returned about a month ago at 4.5%. It’s great to see this (likely limited-time) doubling. Currently Marriotts are available through the site with a 2.5% rebate, Hyatt at 2%, Hotels.com at 3.25%, Starwood at 1.5%, and…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for January 2014.
American’s New Aircraft Paint Job Will Stay
A couple of weeks ago CEO of the newly merged American Airlines-US Airways announced he would let employees decide whether to keep the new aircraft tail paint job or revert to the old one. The vote is in: 52% of employees voted for the new American flag tail. More than 60,000 of the Fort Worth-based carrier’s 100,000 employees voted, with 52 percent in favor of the flag tail that was unveiled a year ago — just before the merger of American and US Airways was announced. The merger was completed last month. The new paint job stays – and is thus how US Airways aircraft will be painted, though one imagines there will be some “heritage” planes showing the history of airlines that make up what will become just American Airlines. You can join the…
The Price to Buy United Elite Qualifying Miles Has Dropped
United sells miles paired with the purchase of tickets online at its website. You can buy redeemable miles based on the number of miles flown on the itinerary. On top of that you can also buy elite qualifying miles, too. Some people do this during the year in order to qualify for elite status more quickly. Others may do it right at the end of the year when they realize how many miles short they are going to be for status. In fact, some use this feature just to straight up buy the qualifying miles, without actually flying the itinerary that those miles are sold with. That’s because when you buy the miles, they post right away and are not refundable. But remember that any United itinerary purchased on the airline’s website can be refunded…
5% Cash Back, 35,000 Points, and Cheap One-Way Awards (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 2, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: “A photograph taken by another passenger showed a man restrained in a seat with his legs bound and also appeared to have his arms tied.” (HT: Claire M.) PFdigest says that it may still be possible to get the old American Express Blue Cash card offering unlimited 5% rebates on gas, groceries, and drugstores after your first $6,500 in annual spend. 35,000 miles for the Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard is back, the card now issued by Barclays. This interests me not at all, their partner awards are generally expensive and you can’t combine partners on a single award, and transfers to Hilton are no longer as interesting post-devaluation. It could be useful for getting to Hawaii from a city Hawaiian flies to, of course. This past summer’s Aeroplan devaluation,…
A Quick Jaunt to Southern India: Etihad Business Class Lounge in Abu Dhabi and the Flight to Chennai
Previous Installments: Introduction and Trip Planning Etihad Lounge, Washington Dulles Etihad First Class, Washington Dulles – Abu Dhabi After walking from terminal 3 to terminal 1 as a transit passenger, I arrived at the terminal 1 business class lounge. I would have been entitled to use the first class lounge, but there is no first class lounge in terminal 1 where my flight would be departing from and I preferred to be closer to the departure gate. There’s no security or passport checks heading from terminal 3 to terminal 1. Security is done at each bank of gates, rather than for the terminal as a whole. (Since there’s one screening as you enter terminal 3, you do go through security when transiting the opposite direction from terminal 1 to terminal 3, before getting to the…
Prepare for a New Year of Travel, Don’t Let the Government Destroy Your Flute, and You’d Better Give United Big Money Or You’re Over-entitled
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: US Customs destroyed 11 of flute virtuoso Boujemaa Razgui‘s instruments upon his return home to the U.S. because they were deemed “agricultural products.” This seems far worse than anything United did to Dave Carroll and much, much worse than Delta banning Lynn Harrell from the Skymiles program for attempting to earn miles for his instrument. Stephanie Rosenbloom offers good tips to be ready for a new year of travel: keep your passport up to date, don’t carry knives through TSA security, have the right mobile apps to respond to irregular operations during travel, prepare for lounge access, and have the best mileage-earning credit cards. She recommends my credit card advice page. Mommy Points sums up United’s new minimum revenue requirement for elite status. I covered this extensively when…
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