It seems as though Northwest Airlines may not be enforcing the Saturday night stay rule on award tickets in order to be eligible for their standard (“PerkSaver”) mileage pricing. Developing…
It’s been rumored for what seems like forever, and Alaska Airlines has finally announced service to Hawaii.Seattle-Honolulu starts October 12th; Seattle-Lihu’e begins October 28th; Anchorage-Honolulu starts December 9th. They have some great introductory fares of $109+tax each way, but don’t count on finding any seats left (after a day!) at that price. Instead, fares of around $160+tax each way are still available — which is pretty darn good. Alaska will apparently allow use of the Bank of America Visa $50 companion tickets on these routes, and the flights are upgradeable with miles and MVP Gold Guest upgrade certificates. If you have or can score a $50 companion ticket on a $350-ish all-in ticket, and there’s upgrade availability, two people can fly first class from Seattle to Hawaii for $450 or so roundtrip + 40,000 frequent…
Nearly four years ago British Airways stopped letting just anyone sign up for their frequent flyer program. Riiff raff, non-full fare paying passengers be gone! They’ve apparently, quietly, reversed course. British Airways is once again letting anyone enroll in their Executive Club program. You no longer need to use this Starwood promo link or similar ones, eg from Diners Club, to sign up for the program.
Dockers is offering a free roundtrip ticket with purchase of $125 in mens clothing. It’s one of those really difficult, restrictive promos which require picking from a list of departure and destination cities and being really flexible with your travel. But several Flyertalkers have some interesting approaches for making the most of the promo.
SAS is giving out free luggage tags to all SAS Eurobonus members. Just email eurobonus@sas.no with the subject BagTag and include your EuroBonus number in the email.
The Wall Street Journal reports that mortgage payments by credit card may be on the way — for a fee.Details are still sketchy, and your financial position/amount of your mortgage payment/choice of rewards program will determine whether it’s worthwhile… I wouldn’t mind picking up 35,000 Starwood points at a cost of a penny a point in the first year, and no incremental cost in future years, should that be how this shakes out. Developing…
Northwest’s Last Minute Packages (formerly ‘CyberSavers’) are offering a fantastic deal — promo code LMP2007 is taking $300 off a trip of $300 or more. Per Northwest’s promotional email, it’s only supposed to be taking off $25. One Flyertalker writes I just snagged a trip for Fri. night – Sun. night to the Chicago vicinity with two nights at a Radisson for $5.91 all-in. So if you’re still looking for something to do Memorial Day Weekend (or the following weekend), this may be the deal you’ve been waiting for.
United awards elite flyers (4) 500-mile upgrade certificates for every 10,000 miles flown on United (and United Express and Ted.. rar!.. planes). They also sell ’em. And they can be used to upgrade domestic flights a few days in advance of travel subject to availability, the specific length of time governed by your particular status with United. Currently, if those upgrade certificates expire unused, they each convert to 500 frequent flyer miles. June 1 this practice is no more. I knew about the change back in January when it was posted on Flyertalk and didn’t see it as an especially big deal. It used to be that the old paper 500s converted just to 250 miles, and you had to mail them in to boot. Then when they went electronic it actually improved to the…
It’s been reported on Flyertalk that when Alaska says “Award Levels to Increase”, what they mean is that the 20,000 mile domestic coach award is going to be available only for online redemption. If you have to call to make the booking it will be 25,000 miles. No big deal in my view, 20,000 is already better than almost all other competitors (cf. Frontier Early Returns and their 15,000 mile awards). So Alaska’s gone from the model of rewarding website bookings to making off-line bookings more expensive. I’m naturally not a fan of the change, but I can live with it. But their other change really hits me where it hurts: Effective August 1, 2007, First Class Mileage Redemptive Upgrade award rules will be changing. Redemptive Upgrades awards booked after this date will be available…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
