Voting for the Freddie Awards is Now Open! Since 1988 the Freddie Awards have been recognizing the best in travel loyalty programs. What’s unique is that the best of the best are voted on by members. You’ll be able to express your opinion on which programs are delivering the most value to you in several categories: Best Promotion Best Customer Service Best Redemption Ability Best Loyalty Credit Card Best Elite Program Program of the Year You can vote in one region or in each of the three regions of the world, whichever you wish. And as a truly global awards program, balloting is available in several languages. This is the largest awards program, and one respected by the industry. The awards ceremony will be held at Boeing’s Museum of Flight in Seattle at the end…
About Gary Leff
Here’s My Strategy for Keeping Elite Status With American
My paid travel has been relatively light so far this year, I’ve flown far more award miles so far than paid miles. Of course we’re only six weeks into the year, and that balance is about to change. But I care a great deal about my American Airlines Executive Platinum (100,000 mile flyer) status. So to make sure I’m in a position to keep it I’m doing all I can — and I don’t really mileage run, the cost of my time is just too high independent of the cost of tickets. I prefer to mileage run from home. With credit cards. My US Airways MasterCard gives 10,000 elite qualifying miles after spending $25,000 in a year. I’ve done that, and my 10,000 status miles have already posted. So now I am working on earning…
Redeem 100,000 Miles for a Real Flight Simulator Experience
I’ll admit I have accumulated more miles than I am comfortable with. I believe that miles are never going to be as valuable tomorrow as they are today, miles should be used in the near-term for travel and then more miles earned going forward for future travel. In that way you’re earning and redeeming miles based on the same rates and charts, and aren’t really affected by inflation. But I continue to earn more miles than I redeem even with four multi-person international premium cabin redemptions on the books for 2014. And while I tend to think that non-air travel redemptions usually don’t provide very good value (LCD toasters, anyone?), there can be some unique experience redemptions that make the cut — largely because you get access to the kinds of things you couldn’t do…
Another Devaluation — This Time It’s Airport Parking
We’ve seen devaluations in airline mileage programs, such as United and Delta. We’ve seen devaluations in hotel loyalty programs, such as Hilton; Starwood; Wyndham; Marriott; Hyatt; and IHG Rewards. And we’ve even seen devaluations of rental car and online travel agency programs. But here’s a new one. Reader Steve J. passes along the devaluation of an airport parking program: Park ‘N Fly had a “frequent parker” program that allowed members to accrue a free day of parking for every eight days your car spent on the lot. A member could then spend all days earned in one free stay or pay only for those above their available free days. I myself had earned 7 days over the course of several years flying out of [Minneapolis]. That’s over 56 days at about $12 a day. Recently,…
Elite Status Signup Offer, Save 5% on Hotel Taxes, and Uber Skywriting Offer (Bits ‘n Pieces for February 14, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Etihad Guest Silver status and GHA Discovery Platinum status for joining a travel club Uber is offering on-demand skywriting in New York City today for $500. Answering ‘business or pleasure?’ correctly saves you 5% on your hotel room in Berlin. Two of the TSA’s panic buttons weren’t working at LAX the day of the shooting there at the beginning of November. But no one tried to use them anyway. Which is sort of like how the Emergency Broadcast System wasn’t activated on 9/11. 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 follow me on Twitter for the latest…
How Airline Auto-Rebooking During Major Weather Events Makes Travel Worse Not Better
More flights have been cancelled this year than at any time since DOT cancellation statistics began 25 years ago. Many travelers aren’t aware that they can get a full refund when they cancel, one of the more common questions I get is “if the trip I’m getting rebooked on doesn’t work for me, am I just flushing this ticket down the toilet?” No, you’re not, if your flight doesn’t operate you can get all of your money back. Airlines aren’t always clear on this point. But rebooking options don’t always work for passengers. Planes run much closer to capacity these days, which means there isn’t a lot of slack in the system to re-accommodate folks whose flights have been cnacelled. It’s tough to get through to airlines to sort things out. You’d expect websites to…
You Know There’s Bad Weather and Flight Disruptions When…
I suppose this is why Google is such a great tool for understanding the world, what’s collectively on people’s minds. Here are the top search terms that brought people to my blog yesterday: There were about a thousand views of this post. Sometimes the shelf life of content can be rather long. Interestingly as well, search terms exhibit a pretty long tail, there were only 3 queries for “corportion of hilton said i didnt cash my check” (yes, with that spelling). 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 follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
$85 Discount on a $200 Hotel Stay
Hotel booking website TravelPony offers new members a $25 first-time booking credit, but ups that to $35 if you’re referred by an existing member. That credit is currently stackable with promotion code KATE50 which provides $50 off of a $200 reservation (and it seems to work even when you reach $200 total only inclusive of tax). So you can currently save $85 on a $200 booking, which is 42.5% off. They’ve got some great rates, sometimes, especially on higher-end properties and especially hotels that are part of smaller chains. Loyalty Traveler finds that TravelPony’s rates can be good but are sometimes higher than the best rates you might otherwise find. So they’re not a slam dunk all the time, outside of when you’re able to use discount codes they’re offering. This is my referral link,…
United.com Will Now Show Brussels Airlines’ Great Award Availability
Transatlantic business class space to Europe using miles from a Star Alliance airline like United or Air Canada is often easiest to find into and out of Brussels… both on United and on Brussels Airlines. Brussels Airlines has been a Star Alliance member for four years but with award space only in the past few days made searchable on United’s website. (Previously you could search it using the ANA, Aeroplan, or FlightStats websites.) Ironically United.com adds this functionality two months after United proactively removed Singapore Airlines award space from their website (and lied about it being Singapore’s fault). And, of course, after United jacked up the price of partner awards. Check it out yourself, though — for quite some time I’ve been pointing out how good the award availability is. And since Brussels Airlines hubs…
Camera Falls from a Plane, Lands in a Pig Pen. Watch What Happens Next!
Supposedly this camera fell out of the sky and into a pig pen. Fortunately it didn’t crash down (and kill) any pigs. Watch the end. I’m somewhat skeptical of this, or at least surprised that it landed facing upwards, in working order, having come down from the sky. Supposedly it was found by the farmer eight months later and posted to Youtube. At this writing it’s been viewed over 4 million times in 3 days. (HT: Ron S.) 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 follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
