Category Archives for Discounts & Deals.
New Air France points pricing is live and often makes no sense. Some awards are more expensive, some less expensive. Instead of a hidden award chart they have a calculator.
It’s interesting how this plays out with their promo awards, which are now out for July booking and September/October travel.
Qantas is notoriously stingy with award space. And US-Australia awards are notoriously tough to get. It’s a long flight, business class does sell, and increasingly airlines are putting smaller Boeing 787s on the route rather than planes that might have excess seats for sale. Getting to and from Australia during winter is even harder.
Bookable via Priceline, Mexico City – Santorini is bookable from $988 roundtrip. Dates are very limited at this price but under $1000 roundtrip to Greece seemed worth a mention.
Delta partner China Eastern, a SkyTeam member, is running an amazing fare from Los Angeles to Beijing. This may be the best non-mistake fare business class deal to Asia in 20 years: just $1137 roundtrip.
You can earn 90,000 Avios for under $300. Iberia is giving out 9,000 Avios per trip for up to 10 trips. That’s amazing considering there’s no minimum fare involved. Iberia is honoring this deal and in practice you won’t even need to take the flights.
More importantly this deal scales. Have a family of 7 or lots of friends? You could earn 630,000 points for ~ $2000.
Alaska Airlines is offering a 40% bonus on purchased miles through July 13.
Alaska Airlines allows a free stopover on each one way award. And they have some of the best redemption prices of any program.
Starwood is offering a 35% discount on buying Starpoints through July 20. They’re actually letting you buy points at a price which those points are worth which is great.
Technically Starwood Preferred Guest will still exists August 1, but that’s a legal distinction. Marriott, Starwood, and Ritz-Carlton will all have the same program at this point just with different names because contractual issues prevent them from calling it one program. For all intents and purposes though this is the last sale of Starpoints qua Starpoints.
American Airlines is offering premium economy from $994 roundtrip between San Francisco and Hong Kong. That’s an amazing fare for not coach. It’s also broadly available.
British Airways is running an award sale, 50% off. This is coach. And you still pay taxes and fuel surcharges, those aren’t discounted.
Book by June 17 for travel between September 1 and May 31, 2019. This is available one way or roundtrip.
You can fly Chicago to Europe for 11,000 miles each way. That’s coach, but it’s still a great deal since fuel surcharges are modest on economy awards. That really stretches the miles. San Francisco awards are available too.
American Express, Chase, and Citibank points all transfer to Flying Blue.
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 »
