Monthly Archives for October 2015.
A new Federal Reserve working paper finds that people enter long-term relationships with others who have similar credit scores. When people who have divergent credit scores form relationships, they’re more likely to break up. And credit scores even seem to say something about one’s ability to commit in relationships.
This morning I wrote about the very first offer from the new Inside Flyer (of which I’m a co-founder): a 150% bonus on the purchase of 100,000 – 150,000 miles from Star Alliance frequent flyer program LifeMiles, combined with short-term award redemption discounts of up to 50% on Star Alliance partners.
That means you can buy up to 375,000 per person at a price of ~ 1.5 cents apiece. I’ve gotten several questions about the offer, so thought I’d take the time to walk through it.
Most premium Visa products in the U.S. are offered as Visa Signature — this includes Chase Sapphire Preferred and even President Obama’s Palladium card.
But there is one Visa Infinite card. And it now offers a 100,000 point signup bonus, and a $0 annual fee the first year.
The most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Milepoint was launched in 2011 as a frequent flyer community where members could talk about their travels and loyalty programs in a friendly way on a new platform. I’ve enjoyed the many interactions with folks I’ve had there, and have been privileged to be a part of the community I helped to found. Although I don’t think it reached its potential, and we certainly didn’t do everything with and for it that we’d always talked about.
That’s changing.
Delta doesn’t run many promotions these days, except matching other airline transatlantic bonuses (sometimes). They’ve tightened up elite status rules. And they’ve gotten pretty close to Starwood hotels.
Yet they continue to run a year-end promotion with Hilton that can help you earn your Delta status faster.
It’s amazing how much airports spend and often go over budget. I’ve written about massive cost overruns in Denver and how even their budget for monitoring costs went massively over budget.
It’s striking to me that yesterday Dallas Fort-Worth airport rolled out a new logo. DFW is ditching their blue and white logo for orange and adding the tagline “Travel Transformed.” Of course, “I’d fly out of DFW but I don’t like their logo” is something said by no passenger ever. But I was interested to see what this project cost the airport.
Long haul airlines often have the best reputations. We slog through hundreds of short domestic segments on US carriers, and don’t think much of them. Then we board airlines whose specialty is flying great distances and they do tend to do well on those sectors.
Last month I wrote that big changes will come to American AAdvantage… but not yet.
The focus through October 17 (and ultimately beyond) is integration with US Airways. They’re running out the clock to make big changes for 2016. Now as we enter the fourth quarter of 2015 it really would be unprecedented to upend the mileage and elite status earning features of AAdvantage for 2016.
The most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
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 »
