Earlier today I wrote about the world’s best first class airline products. I know a lot more about first class than I do business class, though I’ve flown my share of the latter. cb writes, Can you do such a list for business class too? I’d especially be interested in the most consistently good business class products — i.e. carriers that don’t have hidden traps where an equipment change leaves you with terrible old recliner seats. The truth is this:
About Gary Leff
Forget Everything You’ve Read, These Are the 9 Best Airline First Class Products
Business Insider runs a piece on “10 First-Class Airplane Seats That Are Nicer Than Your Apartment” and it’s probably better than many of these pieces since it actually lists products that are mostly actually good (United and American do not make the list). On the other hand, it includes products that don’t exist yet — Etihad’s 3-room Residence which will debut in late December on the airline’s new A380, and Air France’s new La Premier cabin which features curtains instead of doors and doesn’t much impress me. And it does include products like British Airways’ which simply doesn’t belong, classy a cabin as though it may be. My own view is that it’s really hard to put together a list like this if you haven’t flown a lot of the products involved. And that the…
The Business Class Award Routes to Europe United Doesn’t Want You to Know About
The most natural thing in the world for a frequent flyer member to believe is that one can go to their airline’s website, type the city they’re starting from and where they want to go into the search box, and that website will return results showing all the ways they can travel. Seasoned frequent flyers know that isn’t true at all — some airline partners may not appear on their program’s website at all, the search technology may not check all possible routings, and any number of other technical glitches may interfere — but there’s no reason why in modern times that should be true, or that a program’s 70 to 100 million members ought to be expected to know that it is true.
Big Virgin Atlantic Economy Bonus Plus Surprising Facts About China, Egypt, and Lufthansa (Bits ‘n Pieces for May 17, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Lufhansa fact of the day: Animals outnumber people when connecting in Frankfurt Transatlantic bonus of the day: Virgin Atlantic is offering double tier points and 50% bonus miles for economy China fact of the day: In the two years of 2011 and 2012 China produced more cement than the US did in the entire 20th century. Egypt fact of the day: They will change their clocks four times this year apparently because of Ramadan. 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 the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
2000 Miles From Each of American and US Airways for Your First Dine in Their Free Restaurant Programs
On Thursday I showed you how to earn 500 miles just for signing up for United’s free dining program plus more miles if you actually use it. Now word of a new bonus of 2000 American miles for joining their dining program and making just one qualifying dine within 30 days. Here’s the scoop: There’s an identical offer from the US Airways Dividend Miles dining program. It’s well worth registering for these programs even just in case you go to a participating restaurant, I’ve often earned miles I wasn’t even expecting. And if you happen to find one that’s convenient and that you actually like it can be a goldmine. You’ll wind up fighting for the check and collecting lots of cash from co-workers and friends, and making it your go-to for all reimbursable meals……
Saturday Morning Up in the Air
Talking about Up in the Air a couple of days ago, and what we’ve learned since then, brings back a certain nostalgia for that earlier and in some ways more innocent time. Here’s another edited down scene to go along with the one that I shared on Thursday. What was your favorite scene in the film? 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 the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Here’s How to Find Airline and Hotel Mistake Deals
Earlier in the week I write about the very best airline and hotel mistake deals that we’ve seen. Naturally several readers wanted to know, but how do you find these? And that’s a subject of an entirely different post. This one. Two things to understand in your quest for fat finger discounts (leaving out digits on a fare or rate), currency conversion errors, and other special opportunities. There aren’t as many airline airfare mistakes as there used to be. Airlines have better tools, especially for international fares, to catch mistakes before they’re actually published. Those tools began rolling out in 2009, and now it’s mostly international airlines that haven’t really learned to use them that wind up publishing international mistakes. (This refers to price mistakes, but other kinds of mistakes like routing rules still persist.)…
Should You Take Advantage of This 50,000 Point Bonus? Can You Get Expedited Immigration? And Should You Jump on Amex Daily Getaways? (Bits ‘n Pieces for May 16, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Lots of buzz that the 50,000 point Southwest Visa signup offer is back. It’s a very good offer, worth over $700 in airfare when redeeming for ‘Wanna Get Away’ fares. But it never did go away, Chase just hadn’t been marketing it. I’ve been writing with it regularly and including it on lists of best offers. The Miles Professor talks about how she uses Paypal to generate spending and miles and offers her perspective on how not to raise Paypal’s ire while doing so. Tons of digital ink spilled over American Express/US Travel Association Daily Getaways deals that come around once a year. I haven’t covered them because I haven’t seen any that have especially appealed (today for instance you can speculatively pre-purchase one night at a Super8…
Kim Kardashian Is Redeeming Miles to Bring People to Her Wedding.. And the Guests Are Angry
Apparently Kim Kardashian’s entourage would prefer to be earning miles rather than flying on free tickets. Or something like that. Kim Kardashian is cutting corners wherever she can to save a penny and will be bringing her entourage to their wedding using her frequent flyer miles! …Kim is so cheap that she is using her frequent flyer miles to fly her entourage to and from the wedding,” the source told Radar. “She is not paying for any of their transportation and is she is putting them up in a crappy hotel. They are not getting any money from her for their services, nor are they getting any special treatment.” Her entourage has to fly coach. They aren’t getting transport to and from the airport covered. And there’s real sour grapes brewing over it, or so…
Pay Your Mortgage and Other Bills Directly With a Credit Card (and Earn Miles)
Three months ago I wrote about a great way to pay your bills via gift card. Buy gift cards, earn bonus miles, and turn them back into cash by using them to pay bills. Read the post if you haven’t already, and then come back. The major downside is the limited number of vendors you can do this with via the method I discussed. Yesterday Million Mile Secrets wrote that you didn’t need to buy gift cards first, because the service — Evolve Money — would actually take credit cards. That they said it needed to be a debit card (and many gift cards work), but that if you entered a credit card number into the site instead of a debit card it would work. Lots of alarm bells went off for lots of people!…
