A trip report in five parts Air France A380 Business Class, Washington Dulles – Paris Park Hyatt Vendome Mostly Eating in Paris British Airways Paris Orly – London and the Concorde Room British Airways “New” First Class, London – Washington Dulles The return trip was going to start at Paris Orly airport, that’s the ‘close-in’ and some would say convenient airport, which mostly services intra-Europe flying. Really, though, it’s a pit of an airport, old and without modern facilities. But since the goal is to get in and out, and not spend time there, it’s relatively compact. If you can time it so that you breeze through formalities and without much to do airside, it’s a perfectly convenient place. I had checked in online, having learned from my outbound with Air France that I don’t…
About Gary Leff
United Knows You Better Than You Do, And Will Be Changing Your Name Accordingly
With most airlines you can book tickets and specify your name and then it’s a different set of fields where you enter your TSA ‘Secure Flight Data’ — the name, date of birth, and gender that will be transmitted to the TSA. I especially like this because ticketing done by airline agents sometimes involves name misspellings, no matter how many times you have them go over it and no matter how clearly you spell things out using the zulu alphabet. Which won’t ultimately matter because the TSA at the security checkpoint doesn’t generally create issues over minor misspellings. But you still want to transmit the correct name for ‘Secure Flight’. MileagePlus posted on Milepoint that they will no longer separate ticket name from TSA Secure Flight name. tarting this weekend, on Jan. 20th, we will…
Delta Suntrust Debit Card Now Available to Everyone Online – And How to Use it to Earn Large Amounts of Miles Cheap
Mileage-earning debit cards make no economic sense for banks. The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd Frank financial reform law signed in 2010 limits the cost to merchants of debit cards. Banks don’t earn very much any more off of debit card transactions, so it doesn’t make sense to ‘pay’ consumers to make those transactions. In fact, buying miles costs the banks more than the fees they earn. So mileage-earning debit cards are almost a thing of the past. They still exist in a couple of places, such as with Bank of American’s Alaska Airlines debit card (earns 1 point per 2 dollars in spending). And from Suntrust Bank, which issues the Delta Skymiles World Check Card and offers 1 Delta mile per dollar spent. All I can fathom here is that Suntrust — one of…
Are Starwood Cash and Points Awards Really Still Worth it After the Price Increase?
When writing about the upcoming changes to Starood’s cash and points awards, I said that it’s good that cash and points will become available for premium rooms and suites, and also good to the extent cash and points awards will be more available than before. It’s bad to the extent that you could have gotten a standard room cash and points before at a lower price, and the rooms that had been available before will now cost 21% – 25% more. But I also said that cash and points remains a good deal relative to standard award nights. I didn’t go indepth into the analysis of why that’s true. Reader RQ commented, I think it’s awful Gary. In most cases it now costs more than 2 cents per point to “buy” the difference in starpoints…
Nude-o-Scopes are NOT Going Away at Airports
Lots of misleading headlines today, such as this one from Gizmodo: “TSA to Remove Naked-Image Scanners From US Airports” The machines we have to work through at major airports — collectively dubbed ‘nude-o-scopes’ by many passengers whose bodies and privacy are invaded by them on a daily basis — are going to continue to be used. What’s going away are the backscatter x-ray machines, and those are being replaced by millimeter wave machines. Backscatter machines have already been gradually removed from major airports, and moved to less trafficked airports. Now, since the company that manufactures them seems unable to hit contract targets for software that obscures our private parts (and may have even faked test results), the TSA is pulling the plug. Those machines will wind up being used elsewhere in the government. All that…
Starwood Raises the Price of Cash & Points Awards — Why That May Not Be a Bad Thing
Starwood posted on Milepoint that they are increasing the price of cash and points awards starting March 5, and also introducing cash and points awards for upgraded rooms including suites. Here are the current cash and points award prices And here are the prices starting March 5. In order to figure out how big a price increase this is, I needed to put the award charts side-by-side and use a common currency (money) to compare simultaneous changes in both cash and points prices. I decided to use a points price of 2 cents for the exercise, but the results aren’t particularly sensitive to that assumption. The changes represent about a 21% – 25% increase in price depending on category, with no change in category 7. I still see cash and points as a better deal…
Icelandair Redemptions on Alaska Airlines are Back: Buying Miles for First Class Award Travel to Hawaii
Just last week I mentioned I use changedetection.com to track when websites update — like the Icelandair Saga Club site, waiting for the return of Alaska Airlines redemptions with those miles. Back in August lots of folks were hitting Icelandair pretty hard with their partner redemptions on Alaska Airlines. Over the summer you could straight up buy miles and redeem them on Alaska for first class to Hawaii for about $350. This morning I got the alert. Icelandair brings back Alaska Airlines redemptions, effective January 20. Although they’ve raised the price of Alaska Airlines awards. Alaska Airlines awards used to simply be 20,000 miles in coach and 30,000 in first class. Here’s the thing. For some it may still make sense to buy Icelandair miles and redeem them for premium cabin travel on Alaska to…
40% Off Most Hotels, Anywhere
Slickdeals has a post that has since spread like wildfire to other blogs — an opportunity for 40% off of virtually any hotel, anywhere. But the deal is already coming to an end, it seems, even though it was originally scheduled to last through January 19th. Read on, though, both because it’s an interesting story and because some good deals are still being eaked out of this one. Last night folks discovered that Explore Cruise Travel, a USAA partner, was offering USAA members 40% off all hotels booked through January 19th. It turns out anyone can join USAA. I did. I answered all of their questions honestly, I am not in the military, my parents are not in the military, I am not related to a USAA member, I once saw an action flick in…
Delta Confirms Revenue Requirements for Elite Status Next Year
I reported yesterday that Delta had leaked changes to elite qualification requirements on its website and then quickly removed the information. One suspects just sticking up the details on the web page wasn’t how they wanted to roll out changes to elite qualifying mileage earning for some fares and a minimum spending requirement along with miles or segments flown in order to earn elite status. Delta confirmed the changes today. First, it’s true that we’re introducing a new requirement for earning status on Delta for US-based SkyMiles members. Starting January 1, 2014, Medallion status will be earned with MQMs or MQSs and a new threshold – Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs). MQDs will be paired with our existing MQM/MQS requirements at each tier level and will include base fare and applicable surcharges (excluding taxes and fees)…
American’s New Logo Will Take 3-5 Years to Roll Out, and Next Up New Uniforms
American unveiled their new logo and aircraft paint scheme today. It’s been much-anticipated. There’s little question that: American’s current brand identity has been in place for decades, so it’s not unreasonable to look to a refresh As you conclude a bankruptcy process, a new brand identity can help generate the feeling of new beginnings and forward momentum And American has been shopping around the idea that it’s not just desirable but also necessary to update the silver bird, the unpainted bare metal planes, because they’ll be bringing the Boeing 787 into their fleet. That new aircraft is made of composite materials that call for painting, you don’t just get the shiny metal look from unpainted aircraft. Still it’s been curious timing — they are concluding merger discussions with US Airways, and if a combination of…
