General

Category Archives for General.

American Losing Another Mileage Partner: Gulf Air Exits April 30th

Nov 15 2017

Gulf Air was a reasonable way to connect via London, Paris, Frankfurt or Athens on through their Bahrain hub to various destinations in India and Pakistan. They also fly to places tough to get to on European carriers such as Iraq and Sudan.

Meanwhile American hasn’t been adding partners recently. Or benefits. There hasn’t been great news for AAdvantage members in awhile.

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Finally a Hyatt Promo! Register for Double Points But Don’t Inhale

hyatt room
Nov 15 2017

Hyatt went without promotions from December 2016 through March 2017. And they only ran one program-wide promotion in 2017, double points for April through June. There’s been no promo for all members and all stays since July 1.

It seemed like they’d go the full second half of the year without a promo even as other chains are leveraging their loyalty programs to put heads in beds. But Hyatt has surprised us.

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Huge Bill Payment Service Suspended by Paypal, Will Plastiq Step Up?

calculating money via paper and calculator
Nov 15 2017

TIO is the largest bill payment processor for telecommunications, wireless phone, cable and utility payments. They serve 16 million consumer accounts, and work not just with utility providers but they also serve as the backend for several products servicing unbanked customers.

They were acquired by Paypal in July. Paypal suspended the service at the end of last week citing security vulnerabilities they had discovered.

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$1003 Business Class Roundtrip Cairo – New York on SkyTeam

Nov 15 2017

To take advantage of a fare that originates in Europe or the Mideast you don’t need to live there. Redeem a one-way award to get there, by the ticket coming back. It doesn’t always make sense to redeem miles when airfares are cheap. Redeem one way. Buy the other direction.

Or better yet redeem a roundtrip to the region, nest a ticket originating there inside the roundtrip, and you have two trips. And cheap business class fares are the new mileage run.

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YouTube Star Sold T-Shirts Out of An Emirates A380 First Class Bathroom

Nov 15 2017

Normally you get half an hour in the shower spa, and 5 minutes of water that you can start and top. However if the flight isn’t full and you book your spa midflight instead of just before landing you could presumably take more time. Which appears to be what Logan Paul, the fastest person ever to reach 10 million subscribers on YouTube, did.

He turned the Emirates shower spa into a pop up shop for his clothing brand.

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Argentina Detains Air France Crew After Refusing to Upgrade Politician’s Daughter

air france plane
Nov 14 2017

Argentina is said to have detained Air France flight crew who refused to upgrade the daughter of a politician.

Reportedly the daughter of a former Deputy Minister of Justice (and current magistrate) was onboard October 29th Air France flight AF228 from Paris to Buenos Aires. She asked for an upgrade to business class and the crew (correctly) turned her down. She then claimed her seat opponent behaved inappropriately and asked to change seats, which was accommodated (but still not in business class).

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Great American Airlines Business Class Availability to Rio for the Whole Family

Nov 14 2017

American AAdvantage says award availability is going to get better starting later in the year however in the meantime on the whole finding saver award space on American’s own flights is an almost pointless task much of the time.

However they do open space from time to time, in spurts and usually for 24-48 hours at most. When they do you need to grab it, it doesn’t last.

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