Delta Skymiles are Skypesos, since they’re worth so much less than competitor currencies. But what about United miles now that they’ve announced an absolute bloodletting of their award chart? Frequent Miler suggests “Stardust.” After Continental took over at United, United’s million miler frequent flyers were promised that they would continue to get annual upgrades. Almost immediately, though, those were taken away. The ‘new’ United increased change fees on award tickets. They prioritized individual transactions over long-term loyalty by giving single trip full fare elites — even Silver elites — upgrade priority over 100,000 mile flyers. They started selling cheap upgrades to anyone at check-in rather than upgrading elites. And they prioritized ‘supported’ upgrades, such as mileage upgrades, over elite upgrades. So a general member with a co-branded Visa could upgrade ahead of an elite domestically.…
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Category Archives for General.
Packing Tips that are Actually Really Good
Holiday Inn Express brings you packing tips that are actually really, really good. Very few packing tip videos are. This guy is a whole lot better at folding a shirt than I am! He tells you how to use a television to charge electronics and how to turn a coffee mug into a speaker for your music, too. What are your best packing tips? (HT: Head for Points) You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
United’s Frequent Flyer Award Prices are Going Up, Up, Up. Redeem Now (for Premium Cabin Partner Travel Outside the Americas).
United devaluation: I woke up this morning to an announcement of some really nasty changes to the United MileagePlus award chart. These changes don’t go into effect until February 1, so you will want to issue tickets you may be considering before then (and not make changes to tickets after that). What United has done is Announced an increase in the price of many of its awards Bifurcated its award chart so that partner awards will often cost a whole lot more than awards on United’s own flights There aren’t actually very many changes to awards in North and South America. There aren’t very many changes to awards in coach. The biggest bloodbath is to first class partner award pricing. Here are .pdfs of the current chart and the new chart. But to make it…
The End of the “No Electronics Below 10,000 Feet” Rule is Going Away is a Bigger Deal Than You Think
We’ll Soon Be Able to Use Personal Electronic Devices During Taxi, Takeoff, nd Landing Today’s big news was that the ban on using personal electronics onboard aircraft that are below 10,000 feet would be lifted. JetBlue hopes to be certified to lift the ban on its flights tomorrow. This change applies to both domestic and international flights on US airlines. Each airline has to submit a plan for how it will allow such use safely, and will be able to implement its own rules within FAA guidelines. But very soon we’ll be able to use electronics below 10,000 feet. We won’t be able to use broadcast signals, any such devices will need to be in ‘airplane mode’. And cell phone use will remain banned, since that’s an FCC rule and isn’t address here, because cell…
Earn Quadruple Points on JetBlue
JetBlue is offering quadruple points on tickets purchased by November 13 for travel through December 31. They undoubtedly don’t want the expense of awarding points to people who don’t know about the offer and book tickets anyway, or who don’t care about the offer, so registration is required. Tickets purchased prior to registering do not earn the bonus (hate that – punish your regular customers who loyally already purchased their tickets, but I do understand the desire not to spend to incentivize transactions that have already been made). Nonetheless, quadruple points — meaning 12 points per dollar, and not faking it by including the 3 points per dollar for booking on their website, so up to 15 points per dollar — is a good bonus for anyone flying JetBlue. (HT: Wandering Aramean) You can join…
Bits ‘n Pieces for October 30, 2013: United Becomes Less Transparent, Award Nights on Sale, Free Points and More!
News and Notes from Around the interweb: Sri Lankan airlines will join oneworld by April 1200 free Shangri-La points for playing games Pay service Expertflyer.com will no longer show United upgrade inventory and elite award space IHG Rewards has revealed their PointBreaks list for hotel redemptions through the end of the year. It should become bookable November 1. Qatar is now officially a member of the oneworld alliance. You could already redeem American and British Airways points for travel on Qatar. Now you can book American’s distance-based awards and include Qatar in the itinerary. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on…
Chase Makes it Easier to See the Bonus Points You’re Earning With the Sapphire Preferred Card
Chase has made things a little bit easier and more transparent with points-earning for the Sapphire Preferred Card. You earn double points on all travel and dining spend. Now you can see, transaction-by-transaction, the points you earn for each. So if you go into your account activity, when you click the blue ‘plus’ on the left of each transaction, when it expands you can see the points earned for that transaction. Here’s an Uber transaction that correctly earned double points with the Sapphire Preferred card. ‘First Friday’ points (triple points for dining the first friday of each month) display correctly as well. This feature isn’t (yet?) available for my other Chase Ultimate Rewards cards like Ink Plus or other co-brand cards like the Hyatt Visa. (HT: The #Hustle Blog) (Note that cards in this post…
American Express Adds Emirates as a New Points Transfer Partner
The US American Express Membership Rewards program has added Emirates Skywards as a points transfer partner. Points transfer 1:1. Here’s the upshot on the Emirates award chart: Awards are fairly expensive, although there are a handful of values. First class awards are exceptionally expensive. Upgrades can be a decent value. New York JFK – Dubai roundtrip in business class runs 145,000 Skywards Miles (or 100,000 miles one-way). New York JFK – Milan roundtrip in business class runs 90,000 Skywards Miles (62,500 one-way) That’s a non-crazy price if you just want to go to Dubai (West Coast departures are more, and flights beyond Dubai are more). New York – Milan, though, represents a pretty good value. Here’s the price of JFK-Dubai roundtrip in first class, though: Choke. Upgrades on the other hand? Compared to the pricing…
Russian Carrier Transaero Introduces Flat Bed First Class on Short and Medium-Haul Routes
Russian carrier Transaero, the airline one step removed from having a hot tub in first class, is introducing three-cabin 737s for short- and medium-haul routes. (Article is in German, quotes via Google Translate) I believe this will be the first commercial 737 with three classes o service (American’s new Airbus A321s flying New York JFK – San Francisco and Los Angeles will have three cabins, and United is transitioning away from the three-cabin narowbodies they were running on those routes). First class cabins on these planes will consist of just four seats, and the planes will serve routes between Moscow and Western Europe, former Soviet states, and Israel. As for amenities beyond flat beds: The catering will be provided by the first-class luxury Moscow restaurant “Café Pushkin” and served by private VIP flight attendants. Even…
The Department of Justice and American/US Airways Have Brought in a Mediator
From Terry Maxon US Airways, American Airlines and the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed Monday that they’ve picked a mediator to see if they can resolve any or all issues in the DOJ lawsuit seeking to block the air carriers’ merger. …It is common in lawsuits for judges to urge the warring parties to present their cases to a mediator in hopes of resolving the issues before trial. It always seemed as though anti-trust issues could be settled by the parties outside of Court – that this proposed merger proposed far fewer competitive issues than most in aviation; that divesting some slots at Washington National plus some unspecified vague promises would get government buy-in. The lawsuit was a surprise, not just to me (as someone who hoped the merger wouldn’t happen) but virtually everyone in…
