Back in June I wrote about Hotelied, a new site that offers you hotel discounts based on your social media profile.
It turns out they target a broader set of people than I thought for discounts — including frequent flyer program members — and they have promotion codes that stack with these discounts. They claim an average savings per booking of $275.
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.
Bloomberg ran a long piece purporting to tell the story of how American Express came to lose to Costco co-brand deal, and along the way details the challenges American Express faces to its business model.
It begins with narrating the cultural differences between American Express and Costco and then suggests that an insult may have caused American Express to lose the deal.
American Express says the deal ended for purely economic reasons, and I suspect that’s right. I’ve suggested that as costly as it was for American Express to lose Costco, it would have been more costly to retain Costco.
Yesterday Jeff P. emailed me from the gate area of American Airlines flight AA70 from Dallas to Frankfurt. The flight was delayed in a little over an hour because “approximately 1000 bees have swarmed the cargo door and the crew can’t access it. A beekeeper has been called in.”
Apparently they had two swarms of bees, and a beekeeper had to be called in twice…
Stack a British Airways sale, the $400 AARP discount (anyone can join) with the 10% BA Visa discount and you have dirt cheap business class US-London.
Alternatively you can take advantage of a promotion to use British Airways Avios at 2.5 times their usual value when partially paying for a ticket. 30,000 points saves ~ $750 and stacks with the AARP discount.
This is available from several US cities but must be purchased by 11:59pm Eastern October 16.
All American Airlines hubs with London service have wide open business class award space on American’s non-stop flights for a minimum of 2 passengers most days next summer. That’s really rare.
Many flights are even available with four business class awards — including Los Angeles – London flights onboard American’s Boeing 777-300ERs.
Delta is tough for international upgrades. They can be tough for domestic ones too, now that they’re monetizing 58% of their forward cabin premium seats.
Though they’ve gotten more generous with top tier elites the past couple of years offering confirmed upgrade certificates from any fare (which they didn’t used to do, and lagged both United and American with their international elite upgrade benefit as a result), they’re still pretty tough.
Still — there are things you can do to find upgrade seats.
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.
I’m planning to fly American Airlines — on a legacy US Airways route — on Saturday morning. That’s the day when US Airways flights become American flights, and so American Airlines as a single airline will be the largest carrier in the world.
I’m flying out and back to a former US Airways hub city on the day the two airlines are combining as one in order to see the merger integration in action. On the whole airlines do not have a very good track record at this, although indications so far are that American’s is going very well.
I’ll be on a 6 a.m. flight so I can watch the start of the day, I’ll leave security on arrival and poke around, and take in the airport experience as passengers fly and employees operate as American Airlines for the first time.
I got an email from United yesterday telling me that this year’s new revenue-based mileage earning program is great because on a recent expensive short flight I earned an extra 456 miles.
Only flyers on the whole aren’t better off, earning more miles than behind. And the miles they’re earning are worth less. But if United says they did it for your own good often enough they’re hoping you believe it.
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 »
