The initial schedule for American’s incoming Boeing 777-300 aircraft, featuring their new first class and new business class products, has been announced. Beginning December 13 they’ll run it Dallas – Sao Paulo, and in February it’ll start on Dallas and New York – London. Time to start looking at airfares and flights with confirmable upgrade space, I’d love to be among the first to fly in the new business class seats. According to Expertflyer there appears to be reasonably good confirmable upgrade space on the 777-300 for Dallas – Sao Paulo service. Executive Platinum eVIP upgrades are valid from any fare and book into C inventory. I just got back from Sao Paulo on Sunday but this is tempting… (HT: AAdvantageGeek)
General
Category Archives for General.
New Online Shopping Portal with the Biggest Cash Rebates
Whenever I’m doing any sort of online shopping, I search EV Reward to find the best deal. Most online shopping sites offer some sort of rebates, for instance if I’m going to buy something at Target.com I search Target.com at EV Reward and find that I can get 3% cash back through Ebates (which offers a $5 bonus after your first purchase), 3 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, 3 American miles per dollar, or several other options. Given this information, I’d probably choose 3 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at Target.com. EV Reward is a useful tool, but it isn’t updated in real time and offers from the various cash back and mileage sites change all the time. So what they list as currently-available offers may vary from the offer you see when…
United’s 787 Seat Map
Now that United has loaded its first 787 into the schedule, Denver-Tokyo beginning March 31, you can see the seatmap for the aircraft by walking through a dummy booking on the website: There are 36 business class seats, 63 economy plus seats (presumably rows 16-22, not highlighted on the seatmap), coach has been announced as 120 seats though the seatmap would appear to show 135 seats — presumably some of the blocked/unavailable seats aren’t. They clearly haven’t put the finishing touches on the seatmap since economy plus isn’t so-flagged. Nine across in coach seems tight to me, considering that All Nippon and Japan Airlines are doing eight across with their 787s. It’s notable that Denver – Tokyo is announced as the first 787 route for United, they had previously indicated they’d inaugurate the 787 on…
New Priority Club PointBreaks (Discounted 5000 Point Reward Nights) Hotels Available Through July 31
Priority Club’s new PointBreaks list is out. This is the deepest discount in award travel across any hotel brand, a handful of properties are offered at any given time for just 5000 Priority Club points per night, even properties that may cost 40,000 points per night normally. I usually look for Intercontinental properties, which offer the steepest discounts when they’re participating, but there are other interesting options as well such as the Hotel Indigo Atlanta Midtown and the Hotel Indigo Shanghai on the Bund. Intercontinentals participating this summer are Cleveland, Houston-Galleria, Cyprus, Bucharest, Mauritius, Cairo, Nairobi, Lusaka, Fiji, Wuxi, Kuala Lumpur, Puebla, Buenos Aires, Tegucigalpa. That’s a more extensive, richer list than I’ve seen in a long time. (HT: Milepoint)
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 22, 2012
Lots of Loose Ends and Little Things: Is Hilton playing games with the cash portion of their cash and points awards? Loyalty Lobby details AviancaTaca’s 100% bonus on purchased miles which is running through the end of the month. If you don’t already have a LifeMiles account you won’t be able to take advantage of it this time around, but may want to open for the next go-round of the offer which seems to come around with some frequency. The airline is expected to join Star Alliance this year, making the miles potentially more useful. Accor is selling Motel 6 to Blackstone. I’m guessing not, but it would be interesting to see whether that portfolio is added to the Hilton HHonors program. For a limited time last year, Accor’s A|Club (now Le Club Accorhotels) allowed…
Registration for Park Inn 44,000 Club Carlson Point Bonus Now Live
Last week, Club Carlson’s giant promotion launched for two of its brands, where you effectively can buy a cheap hotel night and earn enough points for a stay at any of their hotels in the world. The most famous and historically lucrative hotel promotion has been Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights, every two stays is a free night, and you could do a couple of cheap airport stays and redeem for, say, the Park Hyatts in Paris or Tokyo. (We haven’t seen that offer in a couple of years and it is missed by many.) This takes things a step further, it’s effectively buy one get one free but since it’s points you don’t have a short timeframe within which you have to redeem your stay (as long as you keep your account active) and you…
How to Save on Rental Cars
Michelle Higgins has a great piece in the New York Times on how to save money renting cars. Her list, my comments. Let go of name brands. Certainly Fox, Payless, and others will often have lower rates than Avis and Hertz. The question is whether the lower rate is worth the extra hassle, and that’s a personal tradeoffs question. The lesser known brands may be off-airport in several cities, so more of a hassle to get to the car. And they don’t all have the streamlined checkout and checkin processes that you can at least sign up for with Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, and National — I hate a long trek to the car, or taking more than one bus, and I don’t ever want to stand in line at a rental counter if I can…
United Sees Some MileagePlus Members as “Over-entitled”
Reader Joe C. sends me to a Flyertalk thread where someone listened to United CFO John Rainey’s talk at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Transportation Conference on Thursday, and reported back that Rainey referred to some members of the United MileagePlus program as “over-entitled.” Audio of the talk is on the UnitedContinentalHoldings.com Investor Relations page. The Flyertalk thread apparently went to nearly 200 posts within 4 hours before a moderator decided to shut it down (where it remains as of this writing, but it may be re-opened). I listened to the audio, and what he said about Mileage Plus members was We had certain groups in this program that were over-entitled if you will. And now we’ve re-aligned the benefits of that program with what the customers and program participants are actually providing…
20% Off All Alitalia Flights This Weekend
Alitalia is offering 20% off all flights in economy or business class (not in premium economy) network-wide through noon local time on May 21, for travel through April 15, 2013. Details thanks to translation skills of The Google: USE THE CODE: SPECIAL20IT This week you reserve an offer not to be missed. Buy online between 12:00 on 18 May at 12:00 on May 21, 2012. For you a special discount of 20% of all destinations of the Alitalia network. Discount of 20% applies on the total ticket price (taxes, surcharges and service sales included), all of the destinations of Alitalia network purchased in Classic classes of service – Economy, Great and Magnificent – Business, Premium Economy with the exception of – Classic Plus Offer ‘valid for flying from May 22, 2012 April 15, 2013. I’m impressed that the discount isn’t just…
United Award Tickets on Asiana Sometimes Cancel Themselves – How to Make Sure You Don’t Get Shafted
Prior to merging with United, Continental Onepass awards booked on Star Alliance partner Asiana would sometimes disappear. It was rare, but occasionally Asiana segments would drop out of a reservation. Continental wouldn’t notify customers. They’d either check online and see the segment gone, or they’d go check in and they wouldn’t have a reservation. Continental was already pretty good about fixing the situation, to the extent they could. They wouldn’t be able to get the Asiana flights back if there was no award availability on those flights. But they’d go to great lengths, generally, opening up seats on their own aircraft to use instead. Sometimes it would take a call or two to get someone who was helpful and would escalate this to the level necessary. But in the end things usually worked out, albeit…
