News and notes from around the interweb: Discounted United awards to Hawaii Bonus for points transfers into Aeroplan. Unfortunately Membership Rewards transfers aren’t eligible. Starwood transfers are, though — 80,000 Starpoints would yield 125,000 Aeroplan points instead of the usual 100,000. How to make my heart stop: This came into my email inbox: Fortunately this isn’t word that my Suntrust Delta debit card will no longer earn miles for purchases. It’s just that they’re redesigning their online banking site. Which I could care less about since I only use my Suntrust account for debit purchases (and to deposit money into the account, to make more debit purchases). Everyone checking into Marriott Courtyard hotels today get 1000 bonus points to celebrate the opening of the 1000th Courtyard property in Walla Walla, Washington. (HT: Paul B.) They…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for March 2015.
Wyndham New Program Starts May 11: Drops Price of Award Nights By As Much As 70%
It seems like hotel programs have been incentivizing booking low end hotels — keeping those cheap, making the points cost even cheaper than before — while pricing top end awards astronomically. We’ve seen massive ‘category creep’ at Marriott. Two years ago Hilton increased the price of their top awards as much as 90%. Hyatt created a new category 7 with higher prices for their most expensive properties. Wyndham is going the opposite direction. They are creating a single award chart price of 15,000 points per night. That’s an increase for the cheapest hotels, and a decrease for the most expensive hotels. Wyndham Grand Rio Mar, Puerto Rico
New Safety Concerns: Should You Fly Thailand’s Airlines?
The International Civil Aviation Organization has “significant safety concerns” about Thailand’s aviation regulator‘s standards (not about Thailand’s airlines). ICAO, a UN agency, informed governments around the world about its designation of Thailand as a “significant safety concern” on March 20. ICAO’s designation came after it determined that the “corrective action plan” submitted by the Department of Civil Aviation on March 2 to address the issues raised by ICAO were “needing revision’, ACM Prajin said this weekend. The designation is seen as a possible prelude to ICAO’s downgrading of the kingdom from the so-called Category 1 to Category 2 as result of its January audit, which reportedly showed that the DCA was able to meet only 21 out of 100 ICAO requisites. The audit covered a broad range of areas relevant to aviation safety and airline…
New York Police Officer Unleashes Rant on Uber Driver
There’s a video going around of an incident yesterday in New York where a police officer unleashes a rant on an Uber driver (“How long have you been in this country? … The only reason you’re not in handcuffs and going to jail .. is because I have things to do.. because you’re not important enough.”). Uber released a statement, The behavior in the video is wrong and unacceptable and we appreciate the NYPD investigating the incident. We are in touch with our driver-partner who was subjected to this terrible experience and will continue to provide any support he needs. From the video, posted to YouTube by a passenger in the vehicle at the time: Police abuse of Uber driver in New York City. In an unmarked car, the policeman was allegedly attempting to park…
Were British Airways Accounts Hacked… Again?!
British Airways reported that about a million of their accounts were hacked and they locked down those accounts. Mine was among them, and I had to reset my password to regain access to my account. Once back in, I learned that they had temporarily removed all of my points. Yesterday those points were restored. Then this morning I received another email, and I thought oh bloody @!#!@#, not again! We have now locked down your online account to protect it from further access. As part of the lock-down process we have also changed your password and you will need to reset it before you are able to use your account. Except… my account wasn’t locked and I have no problem accessing it. Perhaps their mass email database was hacked this time!
Park Hyatt New York Finally Making Reward Night Reservations Consistently Available
The Park Hyatt New York was one of the most anticipated hotel openings last year. A new luxury property in New York, you can expect to pay a minimum in the high $600s per night on prepaid rates when the hotel expects to be relatively empty. It’s a Hyatt Gold Passport category 7 hotel, meaning 30,000 points per night. The problem has been that getting reward nights at that hotel has been a challenge. The hotel opened before all of its rooms were fully online, and there’s a limited number of ‘standard’ rooms there eligible for points redemptions. In fact, only about 12% of the hotel’s rooms are considered ‘standard’ — a practice I consider to be quite dirty pool. Fortunately award availability appears to be thawing there. I’m finally finding free night awards available,…
How to Use Status From One Airline While Crediting Miles to Another (and Why You’d Want To)
Reader Joe asked, I am US Chairman, and I have a trip to Alaska this fall (EWR-SEA-ANC). I would like to somehow get into First. I’m thinking I could do an Elite Match with AS to qualify for an upgrade. But I need the AA EQM’s to re-qualify for top AA status. Can I change the FF #’s after securing an upgrade? This is an interesting challenge but one that has broader implications for members looking to use one airline status for benefits (perhaps they have status through a status match with a foreign airline and want waived checked bag fees and lounge access) while crediting miles to their main US program. Why Airlines Status Match Airlines will often give customers with elite status on one airline status on their carrier — or at least…
Strategy to Search for United Awards And Book Them for Less Using Amex Points
Reader Ryan asked, I’m interested in using Amex MR points on ANA to fly United, but I can’t seem to understand how that works, or if there is YQ on those flights. And everyone raves about using ANA’s website to search, but I can’t seem to make it work without putting miles in my account, but I don’t see an easy way to put a few miles in the account. Any ideas? Using the ANA Program to Book Star Alliance Award Tickets American Express Membership Rewards points transfer to ANA’s frequent flyer program. But the process is not instantaneous. That means if you find award space and then move the points, that space could disappear in the 36-48 hours or so it can take for the points to turn up in your account. ANA has…
How Do You Manage So Many Credit Cards?
Reader Craig asked, I would like to start opening up credit cards for my wife, but don’t want to need to have two separate user names to track for each of the banks. Any way to combine to make tracking easier? Managing myriad frequent flyer accounts, and credit card accounts, can get complicated. In general you’re going to need to create a separate online account for each person with each bank (and sometimes more, my Chase business cards have a separate login from personal and the same is true for Citi and Bank of America). One thing that can help though is adding your credit card accounts to Award Wallet so that your access is all in one place, single click login. More generally though is — how do you manage what cards to use…
How to Use Your Miles to Fly on Your Airline’s Partners
Reader Dee asked, I’d love to know more about how to transfer points from one airline to flying on a partner (example: AA to Cathay Pacific). Sites seem intentionally vague on how to do this and how many points it would cost. Am looking to fly ORD-PEK roundtrip as an example. THANK YOU This is actually a very simple point but one that’s often misunderstood. You do not transfer points from one airline to another when you redeem points to travel on an airline partner. When redeeming a partner award, the number of miles you need depends on where you’re going, and it depends on the frequent flyer program whose miles you are using. For instance, a frequent flyer program like United has a zone-based award chart. That means you look up the region of…
