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.
Routes are often discounted when flights aren’t full, suggesting that there should be good availability which is what we’re seeing for New York JFK – Paris Orly premium economy.
You can connect elsewhere in Europe if you wish. American Express, Chase, and Citibank points all transfer to Flying Blue.
Virgin Atlantic miles aren’t worth as much as other miles. However they do have strategic uses and I believe the single best one is ANA first class roundtrip from the Central U.S. and East Coast for just 120,000 miles per person. (San Francisco and Los Angeles is just 110,000 miles roundtrip, while business class runs 90,000 or 95,000 miles depending on the city.)
Another strong use of Virgin Atlantic miles is Delta business class between the US and Europe for 50,000 points each way, which becomes an amazing deal witht he 30% tansfer bonus. There are other award chart sweet spots, like Australia and New Zealand.
I’ve written in the past about the great auction values at Luxury Travel Diary, many of which seem to go for 30% – 70% off, probably because there just aren’t that many people bidding so you can scoop up bargains. Folks who already know about these auctions won’t like the added attention.
If you want to go to Asia with the family in business or first class, there’s one airline that’s got you covered and even one best route though there are several good routes.
Star Alliance member Asiana simply offers fantastic award space. The United website is great for seeing this quickly at a glance. Their award calendar will show you which dates have availability — in this case non-stop availability from Los Angeles to Seoul for four passengers. Dates with solid lines have coach award space and dates with dotted lines have premium cabin award space.
It seems to me that if checked bags are going to be separately charged, then customers should be refunded if their bags are lost and offered compensation if their bags are delayed. But it’s a special type of gall to raise the price of checked bags and not offer such basic assurances in return.
At the beginning of the week I spoke with Marriott’s Senior Vice President for Loyalty David Flueck for an update on the integration of Starwood accounts onto the Marriott IT platform as they launched their new loyalty program on August 18th.
I reached out to Marriott for another update on where things stand fixing issues.
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.
A couple of weeks ago we learned that if you have an Android phone, Google tracks you even when you turn location history off. Although Google says that when you turn location history off “the places you go are no longer stored” an Associated Press investigation found that isn’t true and “turning off your Location History only stops Google from creating a timeline of your location that you can view. Some apps will still track you and store time-stamped location data from your devices.” Now we know that Google has a deal with Mastercard – and possibly with other payment networks – to track retail purchases and compare those to online ad clicks in order to help determine the effectiveness of online advertising beyond immediate online purchases. Google then shares date with a test group…
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 »
