Monthly Archives for May 2015.
Visa Infinite is a prestige card in countries around the world, but for the most part hasn’t been available in the U.S. Now a bank is issuing one — and it has no fee the first year, plus a whole lot of benefits like lounge access and an airline fee credit. Should you jump on this opportunity?
An American AAdvantage Executive Platinum member gets caught making fictitious premium cabin reservations to boost own upgrade changes. American kicks them out of the program.
He argues he should be able to keep the miles and status he had earned from US Airways, since he ‘only’ defrauded American (or only got caught defrauding American)…
Dave Siegel is out as CEO of Frontier Airlines, Frontier says it’s because of their poor operational performance and customer service issues but it probably isn’t really. He wasn’t ‘the guy’ of Frontier’s new ownership, and he hung around about 18 months. He also probably wasn’t the right fit for Frontier anyway (and doesn’t exactly have a strong track record running airlines to begin with).
Departing the Park Hyatt Maldives, you take a boat to the airport and then an hour long domestic flight to get back to the country’s capital of Male. Here’s the boat and domestic Maldivian flight experience.
In the latest entry in the Germany or Florida game, the winner is Florida: A man clad only in his underwear and toting Japanese fighting sticks was shot with a stun gun after he dashed into the main concourse of Tallahassee Regional Airport claiming he had a plane to catch…
United launched a ‘bug bounty’ program where they will provide miles to the first person who identifies and submits a security vulnerability.
They’ve joined the ranks of ‘real’ IT companies by rewarding the general public for identifying software glitches.
A collection of interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.
Small business programs are great for double dipping — you earn miles in your own account, and in the business account, when you fly. American’s program has a partnership with Budget car rental where you can earn bonus points for your first rental. And that one rental alone earns enough for a reward.
Hilton and ANA have a new marketing tie-in, and they’re starting by bringing Hilton Hawaiian Village meals to ANA lounges and their Honolulu flights.
These sorts of tie-ins can be great for passengers, funding service improvements, and United, Delta, and American could take a real cue here.
Earlier in the week I wrote about a credit union that will sell you $500 Visa gift cards for $3.95 and take a credit card for the transaction. When you open an account with this credit union you can make an initial deposit charged to a credit card for up to $1500. The credit union confirmed they treat this as a purchase. Any given credit card company may code it differently, but my transaction with a Chase card showed up as a sale and earned points. Some followups and updates worth sharing: You need to make sure you make yourself eligible to join the credit union. If you aren’t an employee of an eligible federal agency, a resident of Washington DC, etc. don’t say that you are. Anyone can join via a $20 membership in…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
