It’s been a long time since we’ve seen amistake fare as good as this. And while British Airways has pushed back on honoring these sorts of things in the past it seems pretty clear that under new FTC guidelines they’ll really have no choice. Your trip has to be entirely on British Airways, and originate in Seattle or New York (please add a comment here if you find it from other British Airways cities, but I haven’t seen it work from anywhere else yet) but apparently you can fly from those cities to anywhere in Europe for about $120 all-in. The exact price will vary just a bit based on the airport taxes of your destination, and I haven’t been able to get it to work for just London (you need to connect beyond London…
General
Category Archives for General.
US Airways 50% Bonus for Shared (Transferred) Miles in April
US Airways usually offers a bonus of some sort for shared miles or purchased miles. When they run a 100% bonus on purchased miles the cost to buy miles directly is 1.87 cents apiece, something that many consider. Their best offer is a 100% bonus on sharing miles — transferring miles from one account to another, with the amount of miles transferred being matched by the same number of additional miles. That lets you buy additional miles at just a penny apiece. April’s offer isn’t as good as either one, but will be strategically useful to some that need to top off an account towards an award or clear out an orphan account with just a few miles in it. Limited time offer: Give a 50% bonus when you Share Miles! Share miles from from…
Frequent Traveler University in April is Sold Out — Book Your Tampa Tickets Now
Next month’s Frequent Traveler University in Northern Virginia has been sold out for months. Some folks have been able to secure tickets because, while tickets are non-refundable, they are transferable up to about four weeks before the event. So folks who bought tickets speculatively, or who discovered they had work or other conflicts, were able to transfer tickets to those who remained alert and jumped on the opportunity. Today marks the last day where April Frequent Traveler University tickets can be transferred. In all, we expect 650 people at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner April 26-28 — the biggest gathering of frequent flyers ever. They’ll come to hear from me, Randy Petersen, The Points Guy, Lucky from One Mile at a Time, Million Mile Secrets, Seth of Wandering Aramean, Frequent Milers, Rapid Travel Chai, plus…
Last Day to Cast Your Vote in the Freddie Awards
The Freddie Awards are in their 25th year of representing the voice of the frequent traveler, honoring the best in airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs during the previous year. Today is your last chance to vote for your favorite programs, the ones you believe did the best job for their members in 2012. Last month I predicted that you would be among more than 1,000,000 frequent flyers expressing their collective voice. In fact – and I don’t have final numbers yet — it appears that nearly three million people have participated so far. I’ve had the great honor of serving as Chair of Nominations for the Freddies, so I’ve been in touch with leadership at scores of frequent flyer programs over the past couple of months preparing for this. And as a co-founder…
“Mystery Flights” Ain’t New: Extreme Price Discrimination and a Vacation Adventure Saves Money
Alex Tabarrok writes about GetGoing.com, the website that has you pick two destinations and they book you non-refundably into one of them. It’s a price discrimination trick, they should be able to sell you cheaper tickets because you’re the most price sensitive kind of consumer — not one booking based on destination (since you don’t even have final say over that destination), but one truly booking on price. To maximize profit, airlines want to charge higher prices to consumers who are willing to pay more (inelastic demand) and lower prices to those who won’t buy unless the price is low (elastic demand). In essence, this comes down to charging business travelers more and leisure travelers less. In our textbook, …Business travelers, for example, are more likely to want to travel at the last-minute so airlines…
TMZ Airport Edition: Shirtless Justin Bieber and Monkeys at Security and Customs
Yesterday anabolism posted the news on Milepoint that Justin Bieber went through airport security in Poland with his shirt off and pants down below his underwear (photos and video). Apparently he wasn’t ordered to disrobe and he didn’t put his shirt back on post-security. Personally I’m most surprised that he was going through a public security checkpoint considering he was flying private, but I’m not at all familiar with Polish security procedures for private aircraft. Today, tom911 flags on Milepoint that Justin Bieber’s pet monkey has been seized by customs in Munich. monkey has been seized from pop star Justin Bieber after he flew it into Munich from the US on a private plane. The pet, a capuchin called Mally, is thought to have been given to the singer for his 19th birthday on March…
Just Because Your CVS *Appears* To Be Out of Vanilla Reload Cards…
At my local CVS, Vanilla Reload cards are supposed to be here: See, all the way down at the bottom on the right. Just where the red arrow points! (CVS isn’t quite that helpful, I had to add that in a photo editor. :p) But today, this is where they were: Can you see them? No? As a refresher, this is what the cards look like: Now let’s look again: See them now? Nope. But they were there. They were hidden behind the XBoxLive cards. So whatever frequent flyer out there thought they were clever, sorry dude! I found your stash! That CVS is mine… Moral of the story is just because Vanilla Reloads aren’t apparent, doesn’t mean they aren’t there, somebody might have hidden them. Behind the XBoxLive cards or the Red Lobster gift…
Starwood Honoring Phoenician Mistake Rate… With a Discount
As The Miles Professor noted in the comments, Starwood has made a decision on how it will handle the $30 rates at the Phoenician in Scottsdale for this upcoming December. They are unwilling to do $30. But they’ll do $130. Depending on the dates that folks booked, paid rooms are available in the $400 – $500 price range (and award nights are 12,000 Starpoints). I am contacting you today in regards to your December 2013 reservations for The Phoenician. Unfortunately, due to a systems error on March 27, the resort temporarily listed the incorrect and very low accommodation rate of $30 per night. While the Terms & Conditions on our website indicate the right to cancel if a reservation resulted from a mistake or error, we value your business and would like to extend an…
Earning Points for Dining at a Hotel Restaurant When You Aren’t a Registered Guest
Both Starwood and Hyatt allow their loyalty program members to earn points for dining at a hotel restaurant… when not a registered guest at the hotel. Starwood has done this for years, and Hyatt rolled out the benefit for the most part across their hotels in 2012. (I got to use the benefit with Hyatt for the first time back in November when I had dinner in DC with Mommy Points) Starwood makes it easy, while you’re supposed to be able to hand over your member card with the bill and have them credit you in my experience folks in the restaurant often don’t know about the benefit let alone how to credit points. So you wait for the points not to post, then submit a missing points request — I send in an email…
Bits ‘n Pieces for March 29, 2013
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Delta will be squeezing four more coach seats into their 737-900s by shrinking the lavatories. More Than Mary has started a series with my advice on getting a little extra luxury for your travel spend, the first part of the series focusing on hotels – with a tip a week for the next six weeks, I believe. SAS will be eliminating intra-European business class. Possibly short-sighted move, if my conversation with a British Airways exec a couple of weeks back is any indication — BA loses money on their intra-European business product itself, but maintains it because it’s key to be able to sell long haul premium cabin seats (they believe cunnecting premium cabin passengers would book away without an intra-European premium product). Le Club Accorhotels instant top…
