The old days of 5000 mile awards for interisland roundtrips are going away October 15th. Redemptions on IslandAir go up to 5000 miles each way. The same holds for new partner Hawaiian Airlines. It’s not surprising, really, as that’s a fairly standard price across other carriers for such awards and also because the price of interisland travel has risen somewhat since Aloha’s bankruptcy and closure. But sad nonetheless.
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New Best Offer for Hilton American Express
The previous best offer that I was aware of for a Hilton American Express was ‘up to 52,500 points’ as a signup bonus: 10,000 bonus points at first purchase, 2,500 bonus points for each of your first four Hilton stays charged to the card, 30,000 bonus points for spending $1,500 on the card within 3 months of approval, and 2,500 bonus points for adding a free additional cardholder to the account. Now they’ve upped the ante a bit more with basically the same offer but an extra 10,000 Hilton points with first purchase, for a total of 20,000, bringing the total signup offer to ‘up to 62,500 points’.
Fly transatlantic without fuel surcharges, eg New York to Rome for $296
Basically this is just a trick that avoids fuel surcharges of about $230. Start at Kayak.com, enter JFK as your starting city and FCO as your destination. Price will come up at about $526 for multiple airlines/1-stop in each direction. What you’re looking for, and in most cases this will come right up, is a combination of United (JFK-IAD) and a United flight sold as an Air One (Lufthansa partner) codeshare (IAD-FCO). When it comes up this way and you click through it takes you to Cheaptickets which gives you a message, “Great news! We found an even lower fare for this itinerary. Act fast to take advantage of this fare before it expires. (Message 102b)” The price falls $230 — down to $296. This trick also seems to work for San Francisco-Milan (price comes…
Virgin America Finally Offers Redemption
Virgin America’s eleVAte program has been rather vexxing, you earn points but since the airline’s inception you couldn’t do anything with them. In fact, you didn’t even know what you would eventually be able to do with them (ok, flights were a good guess!) or at what price. My understanding is that the delay here was related to IT problems. I guess they’ve finally started getting those worked out, as they’ve just added redemption to their website. It looks like you need to be logged into an account to see the details, but helpfully there is a Flyertalk thread laying them out. (Helpfully for me because I have yet to fly Virgin America and have no eleVAte account.) What I’m seeing so far doesn’t really excite me. There are no confirmed upgrades to first class…
Delta: 100% Bonus on Miles Transferred from One Account to Another
Delta is offering double miles on mileage transfers between Skymiles accounts from October 1 through October 31. They seem to be worried about folks creating fake new accounts in order to transfer miles back and forth to themselves, so they’ve added a little clause into the rules that Skymiles accounts must have been open 60 days and have earned some miles in the past in order to be eligible for the bonus. Of course adding such things into the rules just points out the obvious, that if you’re looking to purchase miles inexpensively this is a great way. For example, Transferring 30,000 miles will cost $330, and yield 60,000 miles. Transfer 30,000 miles back to your friend for $330 and they receive 60,000 miles. On net you’ve created 60,000 bonus miles for $660 or 1.1…
British Airways Concorde Room Champagne Bar: No Cristal
British Airways on the whole does a nice job across the Atlantic. Certainly their product bests anything offered by US carriers in premium classes, and is superior to most European flag carriers as well — Lufthansa offers better food and ground service at Frankfurt, and most would probably prefer Swiss, but BA has in my view the best seats and entertainment. (Here I’m excluding fifth freedom routes operated by airlines such as Singapore.) But while their product is reasonably good, this review of British Airways first class really overdoes it with hype as exemplified by: Things started to brighten up a little when we finally arrived at Terminal 5 and headed straight for BA’s Concorde Lounge. I planted myself directly at the fabulous Champagne Bar and immediately ordered a glass of Louis Roederer Crystal and…
$3+/night for Dream Hotel Bangkok
The Dream Hotel in Bangkok is pricing out rooms starting at a bit over $3 a night beginning in January, 2009. I haven’t been there myself, but it’s very well-regarded on TripAdvisor. Now, hotel mistake rates are never guaranteed. And rates booked directly with a property’s website even less so. But this is a great opportunity nonetheless. Some nights will even include a junior suite on offer from ~ US$5/night. Rates are published in Thai Baht, so 100 Baht is about $3… (Hat tip to Flyertalk.) Update 9:08pm: A commenter notes the deal is gone.
United’s Award Filtering Makes the News
In what’s the first instance I know of the mainstream media picking up on United’s underhanded practice of refusing to book award tickets that their partners are offering, the Washington Times runs a piece that touches on United’s filtering and rebuts some common explanations for it. United Airlines, however, has decided that, in addition to its own award inventory, it should “manage” that of its partners as well – more precisely, seats made available for booking with United miles by fellow members of the Star Alliance, a global network of 24 carriers. “We manage award availability on our Star Alliance partners just as we do with United’s own saver awards,” said Jeff Kovick, a United spokesman. The piece outlines how it’s possible to use US Airways to book partner award seats that United won’t permit…
Airtran Elite Status: No Longer for Life
In late 2003, Airtran offered elite status matches. Not big news, most US airlines have offered something like that. Except that Airtran status was more or less ‘for life.’ Once you achieved elite status there was no requalification requirement. I haven’t seen Airtran offer status matches since then, and I was happy to have gotten in on the offer at the time five years ago. Unfortunately along with the introduction of new elite benefits, Aitran is apparently now Airtran elite status will start expiringgoing to require that elite members requalify or lose their status. Understandable, but personally disappointing.
United’s Domestic (Non-)Meal Service
I still remember my very first ever upgrade, to United’s business class from Los Angeles to Washington-Dulles on a Boeing 777 in March, 1998. There was a fabulous shrimp appetizer, and I had a perfectly nice steak. And that was a lunch flight. I wasn’t ready for the flight to end. It’s truly a different world today. Lucky summarizes domestic premum cabin meal cutbacks at United. Massive Premium Service (PS) cutbacks in first and business. Staffing in first goes from two FA’s to one, and as a result service is now done on trays. The business appetizer has been cut and the gourmet meals they now offer are along the lines of hot dogs and cheeseburgers. No more pre-arrival snack for breakfast flights. This service would now more appropriately be called POS. Hawaii catering has…
