Pakistani Correspondent continues her guest post describing the experience flying Saudia business class, which she redeemed using American Express Membership Rewards points transferred to Delta. Here’s her previous installment: New York JFK – Jeddah And now P.C. continues with the Saudia lounge in Jeddah and arriving in Lahore, Pakistan. Welcome to King AbdulAziz International Airport, Jeddah. The airport is fairly small but the signs for the Saudia lounge were misleading. Also, as an unacompanied female, I was not allowed to remain in transit for more than 18 hours but this wouldn’t be a problem because my onward flight was supposed to leave long before that. Eventually, I found the lounge on my own because no one wanted to talk to me and kept redirecting me to talk to someone else, or asked if I was…
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Bits ‘n Pieces for October 22, 2013 (Including Free Points!)
News and notes from around the interweb: Enter Virgin America’s Facebook contest for 250 free points. You just need to provide your name, email, and frequent flyer number. Hyatt Olive 8 appears to have updated its Diamond breakfast benefit again. Reader Dave N. reports that they’re offering a credit of $26.50 per person, for up to 4 people, and that the hotel remains quite loose about whether all four need to be registered guests or outside friends are welcome. The credit can be taken with room service or in the excellent restaurant. Hyatt will be opening a Hyatt House property in Manhattan, in the Chelsea area, in 2015. JonNYC over at TravelingBetter.com warns AAdvantage members about Alpha Flight Guru, an award ticket brokerage company. Reading between the lines I’m guessing that some folks working with…
Air France KLM Flying Blue Discounting Awards to Twice the Usual Number of Cities for Five Months of Travel
The Air France KLM Flying Blue Program has new promo awards out to double the usual number of destinations and for a full five months of travel. So in many ways much better than past promo award offerings, hence calling it “The Great Take-Off” although many destinations are discounted only 25% and not a full 50%. Book between October 30 and November 30 for travel November 1 through March 31. North America-Europe business class offerings are: Europe-Boston for 46,875 miles each way on Air France Europe-Cancun for 46,875 miles each way on Air France Europe-Chicago for 31,250 miles each way on KLM Europe-Detroit for 46,875 miles each way on Air France Europe-Houston for 31,250 miles each way on Air France Europe-Montreal for 46,875 miles each way on Air France Europe-New York JFK for 46,875 miles…
NBC’s TODAY Show is Looking for Someone That Has Had a Bad Experience With Trip Insurance
From the comments this morning on a post I wrote about why travel insurance usually isn’t a good deal. Sarah Heidarpour said, Hi. I work for NBC’s TODAY Show. I”m looking to talk to anyone who bought travel insurance for a trip and then due to a circumstance, they cancelled and then were NOT reimbursed for travel. Please email me at sarah.heidarpour@nbcuni.com. Anyone that has had a situation like Ms. Heiderpour describes please reach out to her directly by email. I’d love to hear your story in the comments as well. 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…
Alaska Airlines 40,000 Mile Signup Bonuses for Personal and Business Credit Cards
Bank of America is now offering the Alaska Airlines Visa with 25,000 miles on approval and another 15,000 miles for spending $2,000 per month for each of the first 12 months. This offer is available for both the personal and for the business card. It’s an interesting offer, one that’s doable to the extent you get the card and make it primary and/or pay close attention to it on an ongoing basis. It’s not a ‘get it and forget it’ way to maximize your Alaska miles. While they’ve offered 40,000 miles in the past, the usual more aggressive offers have played around with different approaches like 30,000 miles or 25,000 miles and a $100 statement credit which is of course more than the $75 annual fee for the card. It’s nice to see a 40,000…
Double Miles on United Domestic Flights Through November 21
United is offering double miles for flights within the 48 Continental United States (so excludes Alaska and Hawaii) for tickets purchased and travel between October 21 and November 21. Registration is required, tickets purchased prior to the promo period are excluded, and while most paid fares are eligible (“F, A, J, C, D, Z, P, Y, B, M, E, U, H, Q, V, W and S”) the cheapest fares are not. It’s a good offer if you have to buy tickets still for travel within the next month, but I hate that they exclude tickets you already may have bought. The offer is not for double elite qualifying miles, and codeshare and partner flights aren’t eligible. (HT: Wandering Aramean) You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign…
More American Express Lounges in the Near-Term Pipeline, Possibly Even Before San Francisco!
On Thursday I reported the rumor that San Francisco would get the next American Express Centurion lounge after the new one that opened in Dallas last week (and that Platinum cardholders would have complimentary access to). American Express has since confirmed to me that they are building a lounge in San Francisco. However here’s the intriguing part — they have other lounges in the pipeline, and while they’re building one in San Francisco it may not be ‘next’. We may see another city come online even before San Francisco. Here’s what my contact told me, Yes, SFO is a future location… It also may not necessarily be “next” based on construction, etc. So we can actually keep speculating on which will be the ‘next’ to open but the good news seems to be that there…
American Express Platinum Still Does Provide American Airlines Lounge Access Benefit
I wrote this morning that several readers have been commenting that some American Express Platinum card web pages have stopped referencing lounge access with American Airlines as a benefit. Some readers report that they’ve even seen paper applications, not just web pages, that make reference to US Airways and Delta lounge access but not to American lounge access. And I’ve even gotten concerns from Business Platinum cardholders and Mercedes-Benz Platinum cardholders that they’ve been told they would not have access. This last bit about people being turned away seemed wrong to me — a given rogue agent can make a mistake of course, and at the very least several American Express websites still do list the benefit. I figured it was an error, but it was possible these agents had heard something they had just…
Really Good Frequent Flyer Advice from The Onion
The Onion tries to be funny but actually dishes some pretty good miles and points advice. Check this: Conversing with teammates during practice Friday, Spurs center Tim Duncan urged San Antonio’s players to be smarter with their frequent-flyer miles by accumulating the reward points for one big trip rather than squandering them little by little. “I can’t stress enough how important it is to practice restraint and never cash your miles for a domestic flight, even if it’s for a vacation,” Duncan was overheard telling guard Kawhi Leonard, at one point bringing the 22-year-old over to a whiteboard to explain how it was more prudent to save the frequent-flyer miles for a trip to an international destination. “Just remember to keep your composure and wait. You never know when an emergency might pop up and…
Understanding What Awards Are Possible With Virgin America’s New Partnership With Emirates
Virgin America has introduced a mileage earning and redemption partnership with Emirates. That makes sense. When Emirates lost their relationship with United they went looking for new partners to feed them U.S. traffic. It helps fill their planes to have a marketing relationship that takes passengers beyond their destinations in the U.S., and that brings passengers from other U.S. cities to their international flights. A couple of years ago I expected that Emirates might connect up with American, I do know they had some discussions at the time, but then American brought on Etihad as a partner… and subsequently Emirates Mideast rival Qatar has become slated to join oneworld (in a matter of days). That’s left Emirates hustling up bilateral relationships such as with Qantas and Alaska Airlines. This announcement fits their current strategic pattern.…
