United is offering a 25% bonus on hotel points converted to miles through August 31.
When they ran a similar bonus in the fall (with a higher cap), Starwood was excluded. This time Starwood transfers — still a poor value to United — are eligible.
The baddest credit cards for earning miles and points, and offering benefits, don’t always look the coolest.
Sure, Chase Sapphire Preferred isn’t just one of the best bonuses, fastest earning cards, and with points that are among the most valuable — it’s also gorgeous. It’s heavy, a metal card, and without raised numbers or letters. It’s a sleek piece of plastic. And you can’t even shred it, or destroy it with a blow torch. AndyAndy tried.
But if you don’t have one of these cards and want one you can have one made.
Ever since Air Canada spun off its frequent flyer program a decade ago, the big financial revolution in loyalty that never happened was taking mileage programs public.
Much larger programs than Air Canada’s were believed to be able to command tremendous valuations, at the time some said United’s MileagePlus was worth $15 billion as a standalone entity.
American Airlines is continuing to roll out more food offerings to its clubs. So far I’ve most appreciated the soups, which are really delicious, and the other offerings — things that most travelers I talk to value — aren’t as much to my taste.
American has recently introduced new morning and afternoon choices in lounges at 5 major airports, taking feedback, and planning improvements across their network for the fall.
An Australian man is suing Etihad because his seat opponent on a Sydney – Abu Dhabi flight was:
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By combining Starwood’s generous points to miles transfer bonus, a short-term bonus for transferring points from the airline, and a sweet spot in an award chart you can get two roundtrip business class award trips for just 120,000 Starwood Starpoints and even have 10,000 miles left in your account when you’re done!
If you set the combination of your frequent flyer accounts to 1-2-3-4-5 (or your luggage), that’s not secure and anyone can guess it.
Delta and United now award miles for flights based on the cost of a ticket instead of distance flown.
Though the airlines would have you believe that ‘on average’ they’re awarding the same amount of miles under the new program as the old, and just redistributing those miles — more miles to big spenders, and fewer miles for less expensive tickets — that’s not really true, as a look a second quarter operational results demonstrates.
Amidst revelations that the TSA misses bombs and weapons about 95% of the time, I predicted (and feared) this would mean a crackdown at the checkpint.
And indeed the new head of the TSA declared they needed to become less efficient. Now the TSA is planning its overhaul.
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 »
