Star Alliance member Air China often has very good premium cabin award space from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston to Beiing. Air China rarely ever has much premium cabin award space from New York (or Washington Dulles) to Beijing. That’s changed, and award space on their flights — with a new, very good product — is so good that it has to be a mistake and cannot last. Starting in December you can find award space in a premium cabin almost every day. There are plenty of dates where first class is wide open — not just two seats but four or six. And there are even a handful of dates where eight business class seats are available. Air China has two daily flights. Here’s a day where I was searching for four seats:…
About Gary Leff
Which Frequent Flyer Programs Are the Most Generous In Offering Bonuses?
Frequent Flyer Bonuses has crunched some numbers and put together the airline programs which offer the most bonuses. Now, they say this ranks the most generous programs overall: We’re often asked, which is the best airline or hotel program for value? And while there are many variables to weigh and consider when answering that question, one common theme has emerged as a key differentiator; frequency of bonus offers. In fact, it doesn’t even rank which programs have the most generous promotions. It only lists which programs have the most bonuses. Nonetheless, that in itself is interesting. For instance, in the run-up to a revenue-based program Delta virtually exited the promotions game entirely. In 2013 I really only remember seeing them match others with big bonuses for premium cabin travel to and from London Heathrow, and…
Here’s When You’re Protected Traveling on Two Separate Tickets
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve written about this, and I actually forgot I had done so. But I was warning someone about the risks of booking two separate tickets — that they needed lots of extra connecting time, that they needed to have a backup flight if the first one was cancelled — and that reminded me the advice isn’t always true. If you’re going to take a once-daily international flight, and it’s important not to miss it, but maybe you need to buy a separate ticket in order to get to the international gateway city there’s always a risk. Maybe your first flight gets cancelled. What do you do? I run into this myself. Often when booking an award ticket I need to buy positioning flights. Not everything may be available…
Delta’s New Lounge Food and the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations
Delta is pretty clearly running the best all-around airline these days. Not in every dimension of course, the Skymiles program is poor compared to competitors (though it isn’t the worst). Even United’s miles are better which is saying something. But the airline itself — reliable operation, (relative) quality product, and profitability — is performing well. In fact, they might even be some reasonable percentage close to as good as they think they are.
Your Upgraded Flight Gets Cancelled? Keep Your Business Class Seat!
Often times upgrades are at the ‘bottom of the barrel’ — I’ve certainly been told “sorry” before when I have a confirmed upgrade on a flight that gets cancelled and the airline is offering me options for re-accommodation. They’ll happily put me on another flight, in the class of service that I paid for on my original ticket, but I can kiss my upgrade goodbye. There’s a several years old policy at American, though, that I was just reminded of and that’s detailed at TravelingBetter.com. Upgraded tickets that encounter a schedule irregularity may be protected into the upgraded cabin on any of our oneworld partners. If your flight, for instance, from DC to New York to catch American’s onward service to London gets cancelled, your upgrade on New York JFK – London can be protected…
Marriott Really Disappoints With Their New MegaBonus Promotion
Yesterday I wrote that Marriott’s perennial MegaBonus promotion would be back. Based on past experience, here’s what I expected: This is usually, for most members, ‘two stays earns a free night’ which: Can be earned up to two times And redeemed for stays at any participating Marriott property up to category 4. Some people get targeted for redemptions up to category 5. Others get targeted for bonus point offers. Bonus point offers may be something like: Stay 25 nights during the promotion period and earn 45,000 points Stay 20 nights during the promotion period and earn 35,000 points Earn double points after your second stay up to 25,000 points Only MegaBonus is here and it’s worse than usual. Here’s the offer, or at least the default offer shown without logging in: To earn up to…
Free Lounge Access, Someone Was Shot at Your Hotel, and Someone Stop that Plane!
News and notes from around the interweb: Get free access to the new Regus lounge at London Heathrow’s terminal 5 $17 off access to the new Plaza Premium lounge in London Heathrow’s Terminal 2 Someone’s been shot at your hotel. What should management do next? (HT: Alan H) Your Uber Driver Reviews You DEA improperly paid an Amtrak employee ~ $850,000 for confidential passenger information that it could have gotten free Next week an Aloft hotel near Apple’s corporate campus will begin testing a robot bellhop. (HT: Alan H.) Woman tries to stop a plane at Halifax airport because she thought her husband was cheating. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to…
A New Twist on Keeping Kids from Crying Inflight: Clowns
Here’s how not to handle crying children on a plane. Because while crying children who just won’t stop is a perennial challenge for both parents and for other passengers, beating up other peoples’ kids just won’t end well for anybody. El Al has an innovative solution, though. Clowns. On daytime flights with clowns, including Westbound to New York during the summer, a clown: …roams the aisles, telling stories and riddles to children and handing out coloring books, crayons and games. The clown also selects 10 children on each flight to serve as clown assistants and, as a reward for completing a variety of assignments, those children get to visit the captain in the cockpit. This is apparently not even new. And somehow I didn’t know about it. Presumably the endeavor continues because fear of clowns…
Star Alliance Gold Status With Just One Roundtrip!
Next week — on August 20 — SAS is launching new all-business class service between Houston and Stavanger, Norway operated by Privatair 6 days a week (every day except Saturdays). The flight will be on a 737 configured with 44 seats. Houston is already the number one business destination SAS operates, based on customer surveys, with nearly four-fifths of travel between Scandinavia and the US energy hub being business-related. Bonusfeber has details of the offer and fortunately Google Chrome does a nice job translating. Even better, it pointed me to the offer itself in English on SAS’ website. Register by August 28 and fly between August 20 and October 31, and then: one roundtrip gives you EuroBonus Gold status two roundtrips gives you EuroBonus Diamond status EuroBonus Gold is Star Alliance Gold which means lounge…
Marriott’s MegaBonus ‘Two Stays Earns a Free Night’ Promotion Returns Tomorrow
Marriott will bring back its MegaBonus promotion tomorrow. This is usually, for most members, ‘two stays earns a free night’ which: Can be earned up to two times And redeemed for stays at any participating Marriott property up to category 4. Some people get targeted for redemptions up to category 5. Others get targeted for bonus point offers. Bonus point offers may be something like: Stay 25 nights during the promotion period and earn 45,000 points Stay 20 nights during the promotion period and earn 35,000 points Earn double points after your second stay up to 25,000 points Especially for elite members, Marriott has in the past been willing to switch members on request to an offer other than what they were targeted for but their willingness to do so varies. You’ll be able to…
