… as captured by the camera on my blackberry. This was the biggest ‘under 2 years old’ lap infant I’ve ever seen: It’s time for US Airways to update their interiors to, umm, their own logos. They aren’t America West anymore. This was my post-takeoff beverage, water: Wine with dinner is served in the same plastic cups. But then perhaps that’s appropriate, considering US Airways’ classy passengers up front.
General
Category Archives for General.
20 Free Drink Coupons and More from Delta’s Small Business Rewards Program
Airline small business programs are an interesting way to ‘double dip’ on rewards. They’re designed to encourage businesses to focus on one airline and make their employees fly that airline. They offer the business rewards in addition to the miles earned by the traveler. I’ve found American’s Business ExtrAA program useful in the past, I gifted gold status to a friend recently and mostly have used small points totals for club passes and the like. Even a solo regular travel can earn enough points in a year for a reasonable reward, you don’t need to actually be a separate business with plenty of travelers to benefit from the program. In contrast, United’s Perks Plus is less friendly to the solo traveler just looking to double up on rewards. Delta’s program is SkyBonus and they’re currently…
Free Priority Club Points for Quick Surveys (with Answers!)
This post on Flyertalk notes 3 quick Priority Club surveys which offer free points: 100 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/unfvmw Answers are : C,D,B 100 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/fhaidt Answers are: D,A,D 300 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/mwpvwj Answers are: D, D, D, D, C I had already taken the second and third surveys, it wouldn’t let me take them again. But it did let me take the first one.
Airlines that Tax You When You Redeem Your Miles (and Those that Do Not)
TM Travel World runs down the fuel surcharges added to award tickets by various carriers. Bottom-line is that most North American programs do not add fuel surcharges to awards, most programs in the rest of the world do. However, there are exceptions. Air Canada Aeroplan adds thesef fees to flights on Air Canada only. American adds them to flights on British Airways only. On the one hand it can seem worthwhile to pay them with American — British Airways availability in premium cabins tends to be excellent, and they offer a very good business class seat. But flying multiple long haul BA flights can really get costly. US to London, stopover, London to South Africa, and then back to the US via London can be more than $1000 cash per person in addition to miles…
Review of an Excellent Noise Cancelling Headset with an Awful Name
I recently got an email from a marketing guy who wanted to send me a pair of Denon noise cancelling headphones in order to give them a try and review them here on the blog. I told him that he was welcome to send them along, but I wouldn’t promise to review them and of course I wanted him to know up front that I’d write whatever I thought. He was confident enough in the product that he sent them to me anyway. A few years ago someone sent me a set of PlaneQuiet noise cancelling headphones, I tried them on a trip and my take was that they were better than not having noise cancelling headphones, they did cancel some noise and it was better to watch movies with them than a pair of…
Does the Arizona Tragedy Mean that Members of Congress Should Be…. Exempt from Airport Security?
Former House Majority Whip and current Assistant House Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn has perhaps the strangest take on the recent tragic shooting of several people in Arizona including a Member of Congress, Judge, and young girl. He believes it means that the TSA should give special treatment to Members of Congres at airports. A top House Democrat said the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) should change how members of Congress are screened at airports. “I really believe that that is the place where we feel the most ill at ease, is going through airports,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who serves as assistant minority leader in the House, said on “Fox News Sunday.” .. “We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else,” he said. “Well, the fact…
How Hyatt Undercuts Their Own Web Rates By Selling Stay Certificates for Less
Loyalty Traveler offers an extensive rundown of Hyatt stay certificates. The prices on the three bottom categories have recently gone up a bit, but the thing that’s made them less useful than they used to be is that the categories that hotels are assigned to, and thus the prices of some of the hotel values, have gone up substantially. But there are nonetheless some real values to be had. In the olden days I used to make Hyatt certificate stay reservations, and only buy the certificates once I was certain of my plans. The reservations themselves are cancellable. And if I still needed to cancel the stay after buying the certificate, that’s fine, I could always use the certificate on a future stay within a year. The cost of many of these stay certificates are…
Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…
I’ve already written about Starwood’s first quarter promotion, and of course Marriott and Hilton have theirs, now Loyalty Traveler writes up Best Western’s lucrative offer: one free night after three stays between February 6 and April 11, 2011, plus bonus points for staying in each of their three levels of hotel, Best Western, Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier. Now you can only earn one free night during the promotion, that’s even a bit more limiting than Marriott. But when Best Western is aggressively on the promotion train you know that everyone is and you’d best not be left behind. Hence titling this post, “Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…” Your promotions are usually ezcellent. Just please don’t keep them a secret!
A Big ‘Thank You’ For All of Your Comments Recently!
I’m not sure the reason. Perhaps it’s because I’ve run some contests and that’s gotten people to sign up to be able to comment — that it’s not worth the hassle just to leave a comment on a blog post, but the possibility of a prize helps overcome the hurdle? But clearly more folks have signed up to be able to comment. And I do apologize about the hassle it may take to be able to comment, I try to keep the blog comments relatively spam free and the system in place does a pretty good job of that, but it also means making commenting for the first time a bit inconvenient. Regardless, I appreciate all of the comments lately, there’s been a nice uptick and I admit I really value the feedback. Sometimes you…
Cancelling Non-refundable Advance Purchase Travel Bookings
TM Travel World offers suggestions of what to do if you book a non-refundable hotel and change your mind. He points out that Marriott will actually let you cancel a non-refundable room if you do so by midnight the following day. Beyond that, call the hotel chain and say you made a mistake and see if they can help. And if they can’t contact the hotel directly, perhaps a hotel manager bill let you cancel the booking to keep a future customer happy. I’d add a few points: If the hotel won’t let you cancel, consider asking them to let you change the dates into the future to another time when you might be able to use the reservation. At least it won’t be a total loss that way, and the hotel may be more…
