Monthly Archives

Nov 22 2015

For the last couple of weeks the American Airlines website has intermittently been having problems with booking awards. Sometimes it will just error out, or it will be slow.

Also recently American’s call center agents haven’t been able to see Etihad award space correctly. Search for the awards correctly on the Etihad website, American generally does have access to the same saver (“Guest”) award space Etihad offers to its own members, call American agents and they will say they don’t see the space.

Here’s how to snag the award space even when American’s call center agents do not see it.

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Nov 22 2015

A roundup of 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.

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Nov 22 2015

Marriott is buying Starwood and Starwood Preferred Guest members are nervous.

Marriott’s CEO spoke directly to members in a new video, and says “Devaluing points or member benefits is not the way to preserve and strengthen these programs.” With due respect to the Marriott’s distinguished CEO, I do not think he’s familiar with the Marriott Rewards program.

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Nov 22 2015

Two parables from frequent flyer history tell us a lot about the AAdvantage devaluation that was announced this week: that the fault for it lies with you (mass noun) and why American doesn’t take as much heat as programs that devalued earlier and thus gets away scot-free.

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Nov 22 2015

If you want to have the best change of an upgrade, you want to fly when there’s the least amount of competition for scarce upgrade seats.

However even routes, days, and times where upgrades are usually easier will see increased competition for 3 of the next 4 weeks. And January will be worse.

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Nov 21 2015

A roundup of 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.

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Nov 21 2015

Changes in the travel industry are often a rorschach test for one’s own priors. Matthew Yglesias says “Marriott/Starwood merger is another case of the rich getting richer” but he gets it exactly backward.

I’m not going to make any points about income inequality in the United States or the world. But I am going to make a point about the particulars of how Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest work, and about his take on American AAdvantage devaluations. Because they simply do not get him where he wants to go in making broader claims about society.

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Nov 21 2015

IHG Rewards Club – the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and related brands — is offering a 100% bonus on purchased points through November 30.

This means you can buy points at just $0.00575 apiece which is a lower price than what they’re worth.

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Nov 21 2015

At Paris-Orly airport, Air Traffic Controllers use a system called DECOR to “communicate weather conditions to pilots.”

The system runs on Windows 3.1 and it crashed on Saturday.

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Nov 21 2015

Reader jamesb2147 reports that he was able to use the internet traveling in China without restrictions of China’s Great Firewall while roaming with Google’s Project Fi, and suggests that any sort of roaming on a cellular network should behave the same way.

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