The Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan award chart will get more expensive for many premium cabin awards on Air France and KLM, effective June 11. North America – Europe Flights between North American and Europe go from 100,000 to 125,000 miles roundtrip in business class, and intra-Europe awards go from 45,000 to 50,000 miles roundtrip. North America – Africa Flights between North America and Africa go from 120,000 to 140,000 miles roundtrip in business class. What’s Not Changing There’s no change to the price of coach awards, and there will be no change to the price of awards to Tahiti. Symmetry with Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Program The Flying Blue program is bumping up the cost of premium cabin awards in June, and in fact North America – Europe goes from 100,000 miles to 125,000 miles…
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Bits ‘n Pieces for May 6, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: TSA PreCheck to be offered on some international itineraries. Very annoying not to get the three beeps even when connecting domestically to or from an international trip (almost enough to make me want separate tickets). So possible good news on this front, significantly short on details. Qatar Airways is looking to join oneworld in October merely a year after announcing their plans to join. I don’t know if they’ll make it, but I like that hey have an aggressive timeline. They also intend to launch Philadelphia service, no doubt because oneworld will have a hub there with the US Airways/American merger. Pizza in Motion liked Black’s BBQ in Lockhart, Texas almost as much as I did American Airlines may be adding inflight entertainment to their 737s flying transcon…
Why the $2500 Minimum Spend (Non-Affiliate) Offer is Best for the Lufthansa Mastercard
See update below. Here’s the affiliate link offer with $5000 minimum spend which many commenters believe is the better option. Here’s the non-affiliate link with $2500 minimum spend required. Barclays bank has upped their signup bonus on the Lufthansa Premier Miles & More World MasterCard to 50,000 points — 20,000 after first purchase and 30,000 more after meeting minimum spend within 90 days. The card comes with a $79 annual fee, and the points are surprisingly useful (though I recommend that even if you do get the card and collect Miles & More points, that you’re 25% better off earning them via the Starwood American Express than through this card). Miles & More is a great way to get domestic premium cabin awards on United (35,000 miles roundtrip compared to 50,000 miles in the United…
Watch This Video Before You Even THINK About Checking a Bag!
Dozens of Alitalia baggage handlers were caught stealing from passenger luggage once hidden cameras were installed in airplane cargo holds as part of an investigation at half a dozen Italian airports. Apparently 29 baggage handlers were recorded in the midst of their thefts, and “another 57 people were placed under investigation.” There were over 2000 hours of recordings made since the investigation began in 2011. And while I get a desire to come up with a comprehensive understanding of the scheme and everyone involved, this suggests that investigators also knew what was going on for quite some time while customer luggage continued to be pilfered from.
Piddling on the Weekend in the World of Miles and Points
Being home on the weekend without fixed appointments and obligations can be one of the simple pleasures. There’s a feeling of getting caught up, of moving slowly but ticking things off of a list, feeling productive even if you’re only doing things that themselves will allow you to be productive like buying paper products and doing the laundry. Several years ago I moved within walking distance of my office. I saved myself an hour and a half a day in commuting time. And it means that when I’m not flying, I’m always pretty close to home. I rarely drive. So my life exists around the world or within one mile radius of my front door (plus, occasionally, wherever DC’s metro will take me). Yesterday was a great ‘catching up day’. I set off on my…
Self-Help When Flights are Delayed and Cancelled, What Are the Best Mobile Apps and Websites?
Bloomberg carries a piece on travel apps that’s really about how to take control of your own travel during irregular operations. I always try to find my own way of getting where I’m going, arm myself with a knowledge of what’s available, and then prepare to ask for exactly that — rather than rely on the options presented to me by an airline agent, either at the airport or over the phone. When something goes wrong before the airport I can usually take care of it over the phone. Sometimes at the airport I do the same thing. If there’s a club lounge that I have access to, that’s usually the best place to get help — friendlier agents often times, certainly less stressed most of the time than the customer service agents in the…
Looking Forward to the Next Frequent Traveler University!
Frequent Traveler University, Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, Sept 27-29 Last weekend’s Frequent Traveler University in Northern Virginia was a whirlwind. It was the biggest gathering of frequent flyers ever with about 650 people in attendance. I admit I was scared that the logistics would be a challenge with such a big group, and I didn’t get a chance to meet everyone or spend as much time with a lot of the people I did meet as I would have liked. But things worked out pretty well (with room for improvement) on the logistics — certainly the smoothest FTU so far. Some of the feedback was that sessions were too basic, for others too advanced, not every session was pitch perfect for all 650 attendees — but we did have three concurrent sessions during much of…
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 3, 2013
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Man detained on arrival after failing to flush the lavatory toilet. (HT: Milepoint) Tipping for more luxury on vacation Happy second birthday to Mommy Points! American has announced plans to slug it out in the New York-Los Angeles market with hourly shuttle service starting next year. That’s on top of the nine new Los Angeles routes they announced last month. I’m really looking forward to trying out American’s new narrow-body A321 premium cabin seats between New York and Los Angeles/San Francisco. While competitors offer lie-flat products, American’s will be the only three-cabin offering offering on the route. Meanwhile, Joe Brancatelli outlines the competitive landscape at LAX and is way too kinds to the airport facilities.
They Don’t All Look Alike: Airline Products Are No Longer Just a Chair in the Sky
Airline seats used to be thought of as interchangeable. You have a seat that gets you from A to B. In many cases you have to connect, through a hub, and most of them have similar degrees of efficiency. Airlines pretty much competed just based on price, and given how technologically advanced pricing is the price of a trip on most airlines is going to be about the same. Sometimes airfare will vary for a given flight but there’s usually a reason — either that flight is mostly sold out, or perhaps there’s competition with a low fare carrier… so the major airline matches the price only on their flight that’s running at about the same time as the competition’s, while charging more for flights at different times throughout the day. That’s a terrible business…
Are Travel Blogger Who Take ‘Press Trips’ More Ethical Than Traditional Travel Media?
BBC runs a piece on travel junkets for bloggers and ethics policies, and how blogger travel compares. I came away from reading the piece with the sense that the ethical boundaries are less clear than sometimes thought, and also realizing that some publications are taking free travel that I never realized. Traditional media, where journalists aren’t “taking a free trip,” may have the assignment arranged between the advertising and publishing department. The magazine may be bringing in more than enough on the advertising side to cover the trip expenses, and this still generates editorial coverage. Lonely Planet makes exceptions to their no freebies policy “when it is the only possible way to research a destination.” I took a trip (that I paid for, while others were comped) where an industry publication representative explained that they…
