Russian carrier Transaero is being acquired by Aeroflot for just one ruble (and assumption of debt).
This is especially interesting because Transaero has one of the most elusive first class products in the sky. And if they joined Aeroflot in Skyteam we’d be able to use Korean Air miles (transferred from Chase or Amex) or Flying Blue points (transferred from Amex or Citi) to book the seats finally!
It’s very important to get record locators from phone agents as soon as a reservation is created. You could get kicked off of a phone call and it would be difficult to retrieve the reservation.
When reading the confirmation to you, you’ll often use a phonetic alphabet, words that stand for letters. And agents make up the darndest words…
Hilton announced a partnership today with Uber.
And when I first saw this — whoa, didn’t Starwood get any exclusivity in the hotel space when they did their Uber deal?
Over at Fortune, Christopher Elliott says that suffering economy passengers are subsidizing the perks for premium cabin passengers. In fact he has it exactly backwards.
And he has several of his facts wrong, too.
Two weeks ago Starwood Preferred Guest added Korean Air as a transfer partner. That’s fantastic because Korean has some of the best redemptions in first class (amazing availability), to Hawaii (cheap awards on Alaska, Delta, and Hawaiian), and for business class to Europe (40,000 miles each way with fuel surcharges).
I tested a one point transfer from Starwood to Korean (no minimum transfer is a benefit of being a Starwood Platinum): a Wednesday afternoon transfer appeared the following Sunday night/Monday morning.
That same Monday when I found the points in my account I made another points transfer, looking for another data point for when points would post.
I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Various frequent flyer programs, and also banks, promote the ability to get VIP tickets to shows or access to experiences that would otherwise be beyond reach. Most people don’t take advantage of them, but I really like that they offer ‘life experiences’ — the ability to leverage the relationships of a big company to gain access to things you probably couldn’t do on your own.
You can no longer search flights at USAirways.com. Instead, when you enter search information you get redirected to the AA.com website.
Now, American and US Airways flights become one on October 17. From that date onward there will only be American Airlines flights.
For travel through October 16, though, customers have been advised that they are better off booking US Airways flights directly. That’s especially true for elites — if you book an American codeshare for a US Airways flight, you cannot upgrade until check-in.
Delta laid out a plan for SkyMiles several years ago. And all they’re doing now is executing on it.
When Delta rolled out the revenue-based earning part of their big overhaul of SkyMiles, I wrote that they had planned to go to revenue-based redemption too but backed off of that late in the game.
Let’s peak behind the curtain of what they were planning.
American was pricing Brazil-issued tickets with the wrong currency conversion. This was posted on Flyertalk on August 20, and a bunch of people purchased all kinds of tickets at ~ 90% off.
American confirmed through several sources that these fares would be honored. …Now I’m seeing a bunch of reports that several folks are having their itineraries cancelled. I reached out to American to find out what was going on.
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 »
