Priority Club is offering 1,000 bonus points for every qualifying night stayed between June 1 and September 3, up to 20,000 bonus points. Registration required, though the link hasn’t yet gone live. (Via the indispensable Priority Club Insider.)
About Gary Leff
Delta Adds Virgin Australia Flights to Online Award Booking
The toughest frequent flyer award there that there is out there is North America to Australia/New Zealand non-stop. There’s not a lot of flying to Auckland these days, Qantas has pulled their Los Angeles – Auckland flight and Air New Zealand tends to release business class award seats about two months out during peak season (if at all). Meanwhile, getting Qantas seats to Australia can be a real challenge. They’re conservative about releasing award seats (though business class to Brisbane is among the most available). And seats released when the schedule loads are accessible by British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Qantas’ own members, plus Alaska Airlines members, weeks before American AAdvantage members can access thsoe seats — because Qantas opens their schedule nearly a year out while American only books flights 331 days out. United…
Frequent Flyer Blogs With Simple Lessons on How Your Family Can Travel for Free
Last summer I wrote about how to convince people that frequent flyer programs are worthwhile. They’re my passion of course, and I get stares and jealous comments from colleagues, people say they want to know ‘how to do what I do’ and yet most of the time they don’t follow through. It just seems so far outside their experience and comfort zone, they don’t make the leap. And yet some people do, I did, many readers of this blog did, what made that difference? That’s the very nut that Dave Code wants to crack in this Huffington Post piece. He begins with the big value proposition of credit cards, making it sound simple to take your family overseas for free: Parents, you may not realize you have a chance to dramatically increase your family’s quality…
American Will Be Going 10 Across in Coach on their 777s
Yesterday I attended American’s event announcing new premium cabin enhancements. The biggest deal was their plan to reconfigure the business class cabins on all of their international widebody aircraft with the same seat they’ll be getting with their new Boeing 777-300 aircraft, the same industry-leading seat that Cathay Pacific has been putting in their planes. That’s huge news, it’s a better seat in my opinion than anything that any other carrier (other than US Airways, which offers a similar seat in all its A330 aircraft) offers across the Atlantic. But it’s going to take a long while to get the reconfigurations done, we won’t see the first one in service for about two years. Buried in the discussion, along with rehashing all of the other improvements coming down the pike — pajamas in first class,…
American Announces Their New Business Class Seat Fleet-wide and Other Premium Cabin News
I flew out to Dallas for an American Airlines media event focused on new premium cabin enhancements. Folks were directed through the main security checkpoint in D, by the Grand Hyatt. Boarding passes were apparently a bit confusing at first for the TSA, since they read as being “from Dallas” and “to Dallas.” But American managed to straighten that out before I turned up. An American widebody was parked at Gate 23 and our boarding passes got us on. When I walked on the plane I immediately recognized one of the flight attendants from the oneworld Mega DO charter, and as it happened we had three of them onboard for the event. Some American Airlines regulars may recognize her as well, from the safety video. Rob Friedman, American’s Vice President of Marketing and a former…
A Quick Trip to Dallas and a DFW Airport Overnight
American Airlines invited me to their media event on premium cabin enhancements, and I jumped on it figuring any extra travel to Dallas means travel on American when I’m earning quadruple miles (from a post-oneworld Mega DO promotion). I looked up airfares, saw that without much advance purchase and for the flights I needed given work schedules, that I’d be staring down the barrel of a $1700 ticket. I wound up booked in T class instead, that’s a coach award. No miles earned, not upgradable. And last minute, so the available seats weren’t great either. Not a fantastic way to start a premium cabin improvements discussion, eh? But I watched seat map availability (thanks, Expert Flyer) and an exit row opened up. And then an exit row aisle. I was all good. Great crew, I…
Star Mega DO 4 Launch Party Announced — Spots Are Limited!
A Mega DO is the ultimate frequent flyer adventure — fly around on a chartered aircraft and party with the heads of your favorite airlines, hotels, and loyalty programs while taking advantage of once in a lifetime behind the scenes opportunities whether it’s a private party in Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt, visiting not open to the public parts of Boeing, or evacuating an aircraft on the slide and into the water. The last event, the inaugural oneworld Mega DO, was covered in USA Today and also in an Associated Press piece that was picked up in about 70 papers around the country. Here’s the Wall Street Journal piece on September’s Star Mega DO 3 and the Journal’s coverage of the first Star Mega DO in September 2009 which was also written up in…
Live Online Chat With Former TSA Adminstrator Kip Hawley TONIGHT
Milepoint.com is hosting a live online chat with former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley tonight. The chat will be at… 9pm Eastern 8pm Central 7pm Mountain 6pm Pacific You can ask your questions live or if you prefer you can also get into the queue in advance since there’s a Milepoint thread to pre-ask questions. I know I want to give him a piece of my mind… As I said earlier, I call the 1 quart ziploc bag within which my 3 ounce liquids are supposed to go a “Freedom Baggie.” Others refer to it as a “kippie,” named for Kip Hawley. I know I’ll let him know what I think, and hear what he has to say, especially considering that he seems to have had a change of heart… Please join us…!
Is Marriott Devaluing Their Elite Upgrade Benefits Even More?
Regular readers know that I’m generally unimpressed with Marriott Rewards’ elite program. Their Platinum level is the most stringent top tier status to qualify for of any major hotel program requiring 75 nights in a year. And yet: Breakfast benefit only applies during the week (though some properties go above and beyond) Late checkout on request only, day of departure Suites are excluded from upgrades per terms and conditions Free health club access isn’t a top tier benefit Virtually no benefits on resort stays — late checkout (even based on availability) doesn’t apply, breakfast doesn’t even apply. And it’s those resort and leisure stays where I often care the most.. Several years ago Marriott added ‘excluding suites’ from the upgrade terms and conditions, the benefit once simply said best available room and there were often…
Are Airfares Getting More Expensive?
Via Today in the Sky, airfares have continued to decline in real terms – prices had already fallen by more than a third between 1977 and 1992 and new Bureau of Transportation statistics data shows that prices are now lower still. Now, fares are up 10% in a year. And fees are up too. But it’s hard to get too excised about that given the long run trends. (Fuel) costs are up markedly as well. According to this report, Cincinnati is the most expensive airport to fly in and out of. Nate Silver would think that means the pricing is unfair, but if it were somehow uber-profitable to be flying Cincinnati routes then Delta wouldn’t be pulling back from the airport, and certainly other profit-hungry airlines would jump in and ramp up service to take…
