Previous Installments: Introduction and Trip Planning Etihad Lounge, Washington Dulles Etihad First Class, Washington Dulles – Abu Dhabi After walking from terminal 3 to terminal 1 as a transit passenger, I arrived at the terminal 1 business class lounge. I would have been entitled to use the first class lounge, but there is no first class lounge in terminal 1 where my flight would be departing from and I preferred to be closer to the departure gate. There’s no security or passport checks heading from terminal 3 to terminal 1. Security is done at each bank of gates, rather than for the terminal as a whole. (Since there’s one screening as you enter terminal 3, you do go through security when transiting the opposite direction from terminal 1 to terminal 3, before getting to the…
About Gary Leff
Prepare for a New Year of Travel, Don’t Let the Government Destroy Your Flute, and You’d Better Give United Big Money Or You’re Over-entitled
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: US Customs destroyed 11 of flute virtuoso Boujemaa Razgui‘s instruments upon his return home to the U.S. because they were deemed “agricultural products.” This seems far worse than anything United did to Dave Carroll and much, much worse than Delta banning Lynn Harrell from the Skymiles program for attempting to earn miles for his instrument. Stephanie Rosenbloom offers good tips to be ready for a new year of travel: keep your passport up to date, don’t carry knives through TSA security, have the right mobile apps to respond to irregular operations during travel, prepare for lounge access, and have the best mileage-earning credit cards. She recommends my credit card advice page. Mommy Points sums up United’s new minimum revenue requirement for elite status. I covered this extensively when…
A Quick Jaunt to Southern India: Etihad First Class, Washington Dulles – Abu Dhabi
Dec
31
2013
Previous Installments: Introduction and Trip Planning Etihad Lounge, Washington Dulles I flew Etihad first class earlier this year both New York JFK – Abu Dhabi and also Abu Dhabi – Dusseldorf. In some ways this Etihad first class flight was better than either of those, though my return flight to DC would be better still. Etihad’s premium cabin award availability, certainly booking far in advance, is amazing. At times they’ve seemed to go through cycles where their entire first class cabin or at least the majority of it on both the New York and Washington DC routes has been open for awards. Most of the time there are 2 first class award seats. And from the US they partner only with American, which means the bulk of demand for the seats comes from American’s frequent…
14% Off Airfare, $109 Suite, But Buy Your Own Lounge Food (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 31, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: The Alaska Airlines lounge at LAX now offers food for sale. Frontier Airlines is offering a 14% discount with promo code FLY2014 on tickets purchased by January 5 for travel between Jan. 6 and March 12. TravelZoo has a suite at the Anantara Bangkok Sathorn for $109 Australian Dollars per night including daily breakfast for two, free wifi, and a free cocktail per guest. JetBlue offered its own version of the WestJet Christmas, trolling Craigslist for people looking for rides home and offering them free flights instead. (HT: Don H.) You can join the 30,000+ 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…
IHG Rewards Introducing Free Internet for All Members — Whether Staying as a Hotel Guest or Not
IHG Rewards, the loyalty program formerly known as Priority Club which includes Intercontinental (for points-earning and redemption), Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and other brands has updated its terms and conditions to include internet access not just for elites but for all members throughout most of the world, and to offer that access for free whether the member is even staying at the hotel or not. This benefit doesn’t apply in Europe, where only IHG Rewards elite members will receive complimentary internet. Internet Access for Members: Beginning January 2014, standard internet access will be available to all IHG® Rewards Club members at no additional cost at all IHG hotels located in the Americas, Greater China, Asia, Middle East and Africa with or without a hotel reservation and/or qualifying stay. Furthermore, IHG® Rewards Club Elite members will…
What’s the Best Business Airline? Has Pot Been Legalized at the Denver Airport? And What Would Abolishing the TSA Look Like? (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 30, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Forbes looks at the best airlines for business travel in 2014. My take: A good business airline gets you where you want to go with multiple fight options a day, and lets you be productive while getting there,” Gary Leff, head of the popular View from The Wing blog tells me. “That means the major network (legacy) airlines are the better business airlines. The two best are American Airlines and Delta Airlines for letting you stay connected with inflight wireless internet while offering frequent schedules across their broad networks. Of course I choose American between those two due to their far superior mileage program. Photos of Lufthansa’s new lounge at Newark Colorado’s marijuana legalization allows entities controlling property to ban pot on their property. Denver’s airport is utilizing…
Award Ticket Redeposit Charges: Unfair Junk Fees?
Christopher Elliott is outraged by mileage award cancel and redeposit fees. [Peter DeForest] saved up enough frequent flier miles on Virgin America, an airline with a stellar reputation for taking care of its customers, to fly himself and a companion from San Francisco to Las Vegas. But shortly before the trip, his companion fell ill. He asked Virgin if he could cancel the trip and get his miles back. Sure, a representative told him. If he paid the airline a $100 per reservation “redeposit fee.” Seriously? “It’s ridiculous,” he says. “It’s nearly the value of the points themselves.” I agree with him. I actually agree with Elliott who agrees with DeForest, at least that redeposit fees can be counterproductive — a bad idea — though hopefully for more nuanced reasons than Elliott suggests. Award tickets…
Here’s How to Book 2 Singapore Suites Award Seats Together on the Same Flight
Singapore Airlines Award Availability Is Awesome — If You Are a Singapore Krisflyer Member Singapore Airlines makes much better award space available to its own KrisFlyer members than they do to their partners. Sure, some partners (like Avianca’s LifeMiles) seem to have access to more space than others do (like United, US Airways). But the award availability Singapore offers its own members is really quite amazing. Singapore Airlines Krisflyer is a partner of American Express Membership Rewards, and also of Starwood Preferred Guest. That means plenty of people in the US have points that can be transferred, if Singapore Airlines premium cabin awards are the goal. I’ve written in the past about how Singapore opens up two first class (saver) award seats pretty much every day on their San Francisco – Seoul – Singapore flight…
19 Million Reader Giveaway Prizes Have Now Been Awarded!
Earlier in the month I featured my Million Reader Giveaway where I promised 15 prizes in exchange for your travel tips. I’ve been remiss in awarding those prizes, because over 1300 entries is a lot especially when some of the prizes are being awarded based on subjective evaluation (that’s 1300 travel tips that I have to think about!). But since I want to be able to give you all elite status and points, plus I have these gift cards sitting on my coffee table that I’m going to have to start resisting the temptation to turn them into money orders and deposit them back into my bank account, I went ahead and put together some winners. And I decided to give away more than the 15 prizes promised. Since I’m a co-founder of the Milepoint…
How Car Rentals and Credit Cards Advance Human Civilization
It struck me, looking at the requirements to sign up for an Air China co-branded credit card, just how important miles, points, and travel are to the advancement of civilization. It’s hard to imagine a more important question in public policy, and in the history of human society, than economic growth. It makes most other questions possible. We can talk about eradicating poverty only once we have resources with which to address such problems. Indeed, we can’t even conceive of ‘poverty’ until at least some have risen out of it. Without economic growth what we think of as poverty is just ‘the human condition’. And what we now think of as poverty would once have been incredible riches — indoor plumbing, satellite TV (many of the slums in Mumbai even have satellite tv), there’s even…
