.. this started as, and in many ways, just remains my personal blog. That lots of folks join in and read, for which I’m extremely grateful. With that I offer News and notes from around the interweb: Malaysia Airlines plans to lay off 30% of its workforce and downsize some routes as part of restructuring. Declaring that you plan to fire your CEO in a year though doesn’t seem like a great strategy for having motivated leadership when you need it. (HT: Alan H.) Aeroflot wants a new jingle. (HT: Len M.) I was on MSNBC Wednesday just before noon Eastern talking reclining seats. A short, live interview, I didn’t find the clip online. It sort of scares me to see the photo that >Mommy Points tweeted, though. I seem to have odd TV impressions,…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for August 2014.
Airline First Class Thunderdome: Two Blogs Enter, One Blog Leaves
Lucky posted about his rankings of first class airline products. This followed my ranking of top first class airlines list. You can see our full rankings, side-by-side, at FlightFox. Click ‘Flight Blogger Ratings’ on the upper right hand side. You can then sort by his and by mine. He threw down in a couple of places, offering disagreements. And I think that comes down to a few key differences.
Half Off Award Redemptions to Europe!
Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program should be interesting to U.S. frequent flyers for several reasons. They offer one-way awards, which Delta won’t have until next year. They are an American Express Membership Rewards and a Citi Thank You points transfer partner. They have access to award space that Delta won’t let you have. They have most of their partners available for online booking Unfortunately their call centers are frustrating, their website can be too (and has been known to show ‘phantom’ award availability, seats that look available but aren’t really here to book). And they add fuel surcharges onto award tickets. One of the great values, historically, has been their ‘promo awards’. Award tickets at half the cost of their regular award chart can be a great value, for a relatively short booking window…
Malaysia Airlines First Class Awards Available!
Malaysia Airlines is struggling financially, with very low load factors (read: empty planes). They aren’t losing nearly as much money as Qantas, of course. I genuinely feel bad for them. Lots of employees affected, generally not at all their fault, the carrier getting restructured. I much like the airline. They have my favorite satay. Although there have been big cutbacks — a couple of years ago lobster in the first class lounge now the options are much more limited. Not surprising, they were struggling even before recent events. Overall though I consider theirs the 10th best first class product (Lucky disagrees). For the frequent flyer, though, it’s worth noting that first class award space on Malaysia Airlines is back. Generally only one seat for long haul Europe – Kuala Lumpur, but back nonetheless. Here’s a…
Court Rules Bank Account Points Redemptions are Taxable
Taxation of frequent flyer miles: Via William T. and others, a Tax Court has ruled on the taxability of points programs under certain circumstances. The Tax Court yesterday required the taxpayer to include $668 in income as reported by Citibank on Form 1099-MISC as the value of an airline ticket received by the taxpayer upon redemption of 50,000 “Thank You Points” from opening a Citibank account. Shankar v. Commissioner, 143 T.C. No. 5 (Aug. 26, 2014).
Why Delta Miles Haven’t Suddenly Become ‘Great’ – But I Still Work Hard to Earn Them
I receive compensation for many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, and other banks are advertising partners of this site. I do not write about all credit cards that are available — instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). Offer Expired. Lucky asks Is the relative value of Delta Skymiles increasing? And technically the relative value might be — if they’re a 2 on a scale of 1-10, and United used to be an 8 but has dropped to a 6 then Delta miles are, relative to United, more valuable than they used to be. But that really doesn’t tell us much. Here’s why it matters: The…
Business Class Award Availability for the Whole Family to Australia!
Back in June I wrote about finding at least four business class seats non-stop between the US and Australia almost every day. That was using Delta miles on its partner Virgin Australia. Virgin Australia awards are even bookable on the Delta website and Delta no longer adds fuel surcharges to Virgin Australia awards. Then last month all of a sudden Virgin Australia’s business class inventory simply dried up. It was gone, pretty much across the board, with only a few stray dates available. At the time I said DON’T PANIC. Virgin Australia inventory goes in cycles. So there was reason to believe it would come back. And it has.
The End of Using Gift Cards to Pay Mortgages
Evolve Money has been one of the easiest ways to earn miles at little cost. It’s a bill pay service that at one time even took credit cards, but in general has been useful for using gift cards to pay big bills like mortgages. In June they began limiting payments to a single vendor to four per month. That was still useful, though not quite as leveragable. Now it seems they’re only allowing one payment per month per payee. Chandler W. tweeted me about this, Tom S. emailed. And I got the sad email as well. Dear Evolve Money Customer, Due to changes in our risk and regulatory compliance policies, Evolve Money will be implementing a limit of one payment per biller account per month. This change takes effect September 1, 2014. There are no…
What Happens When There’s an Impossible Schedule Change on an Award Ticket?
Ronald A. asks, I’ve got an Aeroplan award ticket for two booked for next Spring on Turkish Airlines and Brussels Airlines (Istanbul-Brussels-Washnigton Dulles). The Brussels Airlines flight has had a huge schedule change which causes a misconnect in Brussels, so I’ll need to rebook. It looks like there is nothing with saver availability in business class for my dates on Brussels Airlines for the transatlantic segment, so I’d imagine they’ll want to flip me over to Austrian, which has availability, but that has fuel surcharges on a normal booking. Will I be charged the fuel charges for an involuntary rebooking like this due to a schedule change? Also, given that it’s a huge schedule change, is there any chance they can contact revenue management at Star Alliance (or something to that effect) and request that…
British Airways New Business Class Seat Patent Revealed
Australian Business Traveler carries the details on a new business class seat that British Airways has patented. It offers clues into how BA is thinking about what comes next for business class. This may not be the actual or final seat they use, there could be more than one under consideration. Here’s BA’s patent application (.pdf). It was filed May 19 and published August 13. Here’s the ostensible seating configuration, gone would be the dorm-style 8 across seating. Currently I’d prefer flying joint venture partner American between the US and London for their 4-across seating on the 777-300ER. Here British Airways goes all-aisle access 4-across as well. The patent application describes the challenges of seat weight (because weight means fuel burn) and safety (such as the ability “to survive deceleration of 16g in a takeoff/landing…
