Shape magazine wants you to be a terrible airline passenger. They aren’t asking you to take off your socks and clip your toenails while resting your feet on the arm rest of the passenger in front of you. Instead they want you to take up a ton of space in the gate area and stand on the airport’s chairs.
A couple of days ago I wrote about Delta One business class suites to Asia for as little as 47,000 points each way with availability for 4 or more and sometimes even 9 passengers per flight.
Now two transferable points programs are running transfer bonuses to Virgin at the same time. In addition to a 30% bonus transferring American Express Membership Rewards points to Virgin Atlantic through July 1, points transfers from Citi ThankYou Rewards to Virgin Atlantic receive a 30% bonus through June 22.
Hotels and resorts that make their money on gambling or in-house services want to fill their properties, and keep guests on property. Old School Vegas did this by treating guests well, especially their big spenders. And they did this through lavish buffets and shows offered at surprisingly affordable prices.
Mohegan Sun, the Connecticut casino hotel a couple of hours from Boston and about three hours from New York, has a cheap rate that comes with decadent meals and unlimited top shelf alcohol. It shouldn’t be hard to eat and drink more than the cost of the room on any given night, and that’s the sort of value proposition only old school casino hotels can offer.
You can use Chase Ultimate Rewards points for Southwest Airlines award tickets. You can do this either by transferring Chase points from a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, or Ink Business Preferred Card to Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program, or by using Chase points directly to purchase the ticket.
For some time it hasn’t been possible to use Chase points to buy Southwest Airlines tickets. But the ability to do this over the phone is back.
Water cannon salutes are a common way to celebrate or mark an aviation milestone. Fire trucks line up to spray water over an arriving or departing flight. This may last a couple of minutes and use up to 3000 gallons of water.
The U.S. has warned airlines that they may be ‘mis-identified’ flying over the Persian Gulf as well as the Gulf of Oman.
In a Notice to Airmen the US government declares that US air carriers (and operators of US-registered airships, except when operated by foreign air carriers) must exercise caution in the region because of risk of accidental military targeting, GPS interference, and GPS jamming.
When things go wrong, either because a hotel doesn’t deliver promised benefits or because something doesn’t work right on the back end with an account, it’s almost impossible to get swift any resolution from Marriott Bonvoy. Customer service is a problem.
When things go smoothly – as they do the majority of the time – Marriott has, in my opinion, a better program than Hilton or IHG. But when they fail the issues are magnified because these failures are primarily happening to their highest volume most loyal members and because there’s no mechanism to fix the issue. That’s a problem, but it’s one that can be fixed.
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.
Chase is surveying how to design an airline card. I’d normally think they would be look at the United product, since Chase and United have been in ongoing and vigorous discussions about how to improve their program (although the United card was recently revamped).
There are two references in the questions that suggest to me they could be thinking through the British Airways product: carrier surcharges on award travel and European destinations.
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.
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 »
