Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for August 2016.

How to Still Earn 100% of Flown Miles on Cheap American Airlines Tickets

airline cabin
Aug 11 2016

American Airlines joined Delta and United in awarding miles for flights based on the cost of a ticket rather than the distance you fly.

But if you aren’t an elite (giving you a reason to credit to American), and your ticket isn’t super expensive (where you’ll earn as many miles as before), there’s still a program that will award you 100% of your flown miles on nearly all American Airlines fares.

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American Express San Francisco Lounge Gets New Chef, Menu — and He’s Really There!

Aug 11 2016

Earlier in the month American Express announced Daniel Patterson as the new executive chef.

Patterson is best known for his two Michelin-starred restaurant Coi in San Francisco which he is stepping down from he says because he’s too busy and isn’t comfortable with a role where he’s chef ‘in name only’. So I was surprised to see the American Express tie-in. Here are his new menus for the lounge.

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Luckiest Man in the World Survives Plane Crash, Wins Lottery

Aug 11 2016

Last week Emirates flight EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Dubai was involved in an accident. The Boeing 777-300, registration number A6-EMW, caught fire after touching the ground in Dubai. It was an incredible incident with the plane catching fire, but all of the passengers and crew onboard got out. Only 13 passengers were injured.

But one of those passengers may just be The Luckiest Man in the World.

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UH OH: A Monkey Got Loose on a Flight to Las Vegas

Aug 11 2016

Airlines and their frequent flyer programs are known to play monkey see, monkey do copying each other’s policies and promotions. But rarely do passengers bring monkeys into the cabin on a flight. However Tuesday night’s Frontier Airlines flight from Columbus, Ohio to Las Vegas had a monkey on board in the passenger cabin. And it got loose. According to a Las Vegas airport spokesperson, Frontier staff reported to them that: “the monkey was loose, or got loose” briefly during the flight. However Frontier’s official line is that the monkey “was always with the passenger it was traveling with” so it wasn’t actually loose. Initially it was reported that a man smuggled the monkey onto the plane because a flight attendant noticed the monkey inside the passenger’s shirt. It was an emotional support monkey and he…

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Pay Attention to United’s New MileagePlus Account Security By Thursday

Aug 10 2016

United suffered a significant data hack at the end of 2014. Miles are regularly for sale on the Darknet. So IT security is something that many programs are doing more than paying lip service to. Hilton even gave out points for changing your password.

I’ve seen this header at the top of my United MileagePlus account for awhile and pretty much ignored it. Perhaps you’ve logged into yours, gotten a notice about a password or security questions and ignored it too. I talked to United about it — they gulped a bit that I’ve been ignoring it, like millions of other MileagePlus members. And it’s time not to ignore.

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AWARD/UPGRADE SPACE ALERT: American Business Class to Australia/New Zealand for Spring

Aug 10 2016

Non-stop award space in premium cabins between the US and Australia is one of the toughest things to find out of any frequent flyer award in the world.

And American has been anything but generous with premium cabin international award space generally, except during spurts when they open up space. So when they do you need to act quickly. And when they do for Australia and New Zealand it’s worth paying attention.

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