Monthly Archives for August 2016.
American Airlines fees for overweight bags can be as much as $450 between the US and Asia.
The standard weight limit is 50 pounds. Between 51 and 70 pounds is $100 per bag. But once you get over 70 pounds things get really expensive.
Delta’s IT systems went down overnight. Delta couldn’t send out flights that had boarded presumably because they couldn’t push flight plans or calculate required fuel. They couldn’t check passengers in for new flights. Customer service lines started snaking around airports.
IT staff everywhere no doubt had their emergency phones ringing and those on site furiously turned the power off and on hoping that a reboot would fix things.
Hyatt Gold Passport is the most valuable hotel program that flexible bank points can be transferred into. That’s true because while a single Starpoint is worth more than a single Hyatt point, it takes 3 American Express Membership Rewards points to get one Starwood point and Chase points actually transfer one-to-one into Hyatt. That makes Hyatt an extremely useful partner.
With loyalty programs regularly offering less value for their points, I’m putting together this series with background, tips, and tricks for frequent flyer programs programs whose points can be very useful to you and that you can earn easily by transferring in from bank rewards currencies.
United and Air Canada have fares between Boston and Ireland — either Dublin or Shannon — from $385 roundtrip.
Fares are available for outbound travel September 1 through October 31, and again April 1 through June 15. A Saturday night stay is required, and there’s a $300 change fee.
Hotel mergers may still just be getting started. IHG bought Kimpton in a deal that was announced less than 2 years ago. Fairmont went to Accor last December. Starwood went to Marriott after Chinese insurer Anbang dropped out of the bidding.
But the appetite for hotel mergers is hardly satisfied.
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.
Here’s a way to buy British Airways Avios at under 9/10ths of a cent apiece. 4500 Avios is enough for a flight under 650 miles outside of North America. 7500 Avios is enough for a US domestic flight under 1150 miles. And I’ve found them great for upgrading cheap business class sale fares to first class.
Deep discount transatlantic fares haven’t been limited to markets where there’s ultra low cost competition from Norwegian or from Wow Air.
And there have been great fare sales not just to Europe but also to Asia and the Pacific.
Here are 5 new deep discount international fare sales just today:
41 year old Alexander Pieter Cirk flew from Holland to Changsha, China to meet his online girlfriend ‘Zhang’ but she never showed.
She says she thought he was joking when he sent her a photo of tickets to come visit her. And besides, she was having plastic surgery the day he arrived and had “turned off her phone.”
Business Travel News interviewed Alaska Airlines’ senior vice president of communications, and surprisingly there were some awesome — and revealing — money quotes.
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 »
