General

Jul 20 2016

With the growth of Chinese aviation, more and more Chinese people fly. I’ve written about how air travel is increasingly democratized and just as there are problematic people on the ground, there are problematic people in the sky.

In China it’s even more likely in the U.S. that you’ll have passengers unfamiliar with social norms of air travel, as rapid growth and industrialization has meant bringing rural Chinese into contact with development and air travel for the first time. The Chinese government has tried to crack down on the behavior of its citizens while traveling abroad, and so has the Thai government.

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Jul 20 2016

Famous-for-being-famous Paris Hilton, the great granddaughter of Hilton Hotels founder Conrad Hilton, is working to launch a chain of Paris Hilton hotels.

Paris Hilton hotels are not to be confused with the Paris Hilton hotel in Paris. The brand’s first three cities are expected to be Dubai, New York, and Las Vegas — so they’re also not to be confused with the Paris hotel in Las Vegas.

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Jul 20 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Jul 19 2016

There’s been lots of discussion first about the Citi Prestige card signup bonus likely changing after today, and also about other changes to the product itself.

For instance, I wrote that starting late next July Prestige cardholders will no longer get access to American Airlines lounges.

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Jul 19 2016

This is a difficult time for the Turkish people. Erdoğan is a strong man and a disaster who invoked Hitler to justify new powers he seeks in the aftermath of the coup attempt in his country.

While I’m not inclined to make discretionary trips to Turkey now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the huge opportunities for transiting the airport enroute to the many destinations that you can conveniently reach via Istanbul in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

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Jul 19 2016

I used to think that miles would always be worth at least a penny. But even that’s not a guarantee. Like most things in US aviation, Delta is at the forefront — including with devaluations.

It’s useful to think of miles as a currency. They’re a proprietary currency with no currency board or independent central bank. And there’s a huge incentive to devalue, to monetize the debt.

Last week I was telling a past award booking client they’d do better using their American Express points to buy flights to Europe they wanted to gift their friends than transfer those points to Delta and redeem an award.

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Jul 19 2016

Citibank has posted to the Citi.com website that the Citi Prestige Card will offer access to American Airlines lounges (when flying the airline) until June 20.

That’s 11 months’ notice that the American Airlines lounge access benefit will end, which is reasonable, although hopefully Citibank will proactively communicate this to cardmembers as well as posting it to their website.

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Jul 18 2016

The Citi Prestige Card offers 50,000 points after $3000 spend within 3 months. That’s been the strong offer since Citibank increased it last spring.

And now is the time to get the card if you’ve even been on the fence about it. There reporting that the signup bonus for the Citi Prestige Card will be changing tomorrow. I don’t have any direct information on what the new offer will be, but it seems like you’re going to be much happier signing up now than you would be waiting.

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Jul 18 2016

The most consumer-unfriendly change ever to a loyalty program has to be when LatinPass became GlobalPass and required people to re-earn the miles in their account with purchases through their shopping portal. But LatinPass hadn’t been attached to a single airline, it was a coalition program.

The most consumer-unfriendly change ever to an airline frequent flyer program wasn’t made by Delta. It was made by United.

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Jul 18 2016

On Friday I wrote about United fares between US hub cities and Southeast Asia for less than $500 roundtrip. These fares are still around, and it gets even better.

I noted that you can fly Newark, Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and Houston. So mostly from United hubs, which is unusual, fares like this are almost always used to attack the hubs of other airlines. (For a little more fares are available from other cities as well.)

It turns out you can book an open jaw itinerary for even less — fly into one city and back from another from $355.

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