May 29 2016

I’d love some reader advice on what wallet to carry for someone who has a lot of credit cards and doesn’t want to leave them all in a drawer… but without spending a ton of money and still getting something decent-looking that I can take out in a business environment to pay for a meal.

For a few years I had a great wallet. It wasn’t great because it was a $265 Ghurka wallet. In fact, I had never heard of Ghurka when I bought it, I got it for free by stacking multiple deals at Vente-Privee and I only wanted it because it had five credit card slots on each side. And, of course, I could stick more than one card in each slot.

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May 29 2016

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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May 29 2016

Many things go into whether or not a flight arrives on time. American’s management argues that what they can most control is whether the flight departs on time, and if it does, that’s going to be the single biggest driver of on time arrivals.

So American Airlines management is singularly focused on what they refer to as “D0” — departing exactly the minute that a flight is scheduled to depart (the government considers a flight to be ‘on time’ when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule).

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May 29 2016

United’s only flight to the continent of Africa is its Houston – Lagos, Nigeria Boeing 787 service. That route will be terminated June 30, with the aircraft supporting United’s increase in San Francisco – Tel Aviv frequencies to daily this fall.

Rumors that United simply got taken in by a 419 scam are, apparently, unfounded.

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May 28 2016

Hipmunk’s overall hotel bookings are up year-over-year, while bookings at Trump hotel properties are down. In the first quarter of 2015, Trump Hotels represented 1.7% of bookings on Hipmunk, and that was down to 0.7% in the first quarter of 2016.

Here’s the change to several Trump Hotels’ share of bookings at Hipmunk from the first quarter 2015 to the first quarter 2016.

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May 28 2016

Bank of America has increased its public offer on the Alaska Airlines Visa to 30,000 miles after $1000 spend within 90 days.

This co-brand crédit card plays center stage in how Alaska plans to make their Virgin America acquisition work out. The ability to sell the card to Virgin America’s customers, gain signups in California and the Bay Area in particular, is one of the things they explained will turn the deal positive. And they highlighted the plan for a bigger signup bonus as part of that — Alaska leadership has portrayed the 5000 extra miles as a big deal, which struck me odd.

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May 28 2016

A Home Depot employee was arrested for selling more than $50,000 of gift cards to customers using stolen credit cards.

Over three days a man and a woman who remain unidentified bought $51,128 in gift cards and merchandise which the clerk allowed them to do entering card numbers, rather than swiping actual cards, above the store limit of $50 that a cashier would normally be able to process.

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May 28 2016

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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May 28 2016

Cathay Pacific will use the B/E Aerospace MiQ seat as their new premium economy seat.

Interestingly, this is the same seat that American Airlines will be using for their international premium economy product that will debut later this year on the Boeing 787-9 and is also using on reconfigured legacy US Airways Airbus A319s for first class (sans footrests).

Naturally, though, Cathay’s will be better.

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May 27 2016

In the depths of the financial crisis, airlines got liquidity from their co-brand issuing banks by taking loans — in the hundreds of millions of dollars — backed by frequent flyer miles. These amounted to pre-purchase of miles at a deep discount. (Along with the drop in fuel prices, American Airlines only recently finished prepaying the billion dollars they got from Citibank.)

It wasn’t surprising, with low miles costs, to see big signup offers. The first 100,000 mile offer I recall was for the British Airways Visa in 2009. In 2010 we saw a 100,000 mile offer for the basic co-brand AAdvantage card. In 2011 Capital One ‘trumped’ with a 110,000 point offer.

Renegotiated deals have gotten much more expensive for banks. United, Southwest, Delta, and American have all gotten new credit card agreements since that era (and American is negotiating again).

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