General

Jul 05 2015

I value my American miles for partner awards, but most members look to redeem American miles on American flights and that’s gotten very hard. It used to be exceptionally easy. Sometime in mid-2012 premium cabin awards to Europe really tightened up. About 18 months ago premium cabin awards to Asia tightened up, and awards to South America did as well.

About a week ago I wrote about American removing saver awards entirely from some domestic markets. Starting a month from now, there were only three days through the end of April where you could find a saver award flying Austin – Dallas. That’s a short, cheap one hour flight where American offers at least 14 flights a day.

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Jul 05 2015

Expert Flyer is one of my favorite tools. It has several important uses for frequent flyers — but since September Delta has prevented the site from displaying anything about the airline’s flights.

Fortunately they’ve brought back searches for Delta saver awards, and that means you can use their automated tool to email you when the award seats you want on a given flight open up!

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Jul 05 2015

As American retrofits its Boeing 777-200 fleet, their only aircraft that will retain a first class cabin is their Boeing 777-300ERs.

The 777-200s get a good business class seat (similar to American’s 787 business seat), but once reconfigured no longer have a first class cabin.

Effective December 17 American is putting reconfigured 777-200s in for 2 of their 3 New York – London flights, apparently to free up aircraft for Sydney service.

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Jul 05 2015

I’ll take a good quality restaurant breakfast (not the standard US airport hotel buffet) over a club lounge, foregoing evening options. But for a mediocre restaurant breakfast I’ll prefer the quick service of the lounge.

There are hotels that offer some amazing breakfast spreads, especially in Asia. If I had to pick one city with the highest average it’s Kuala Lumpur. The best single hotel breakfast I’ve had was probably the St. Regis Bali. And the chain with the best breakfast benefit for top elites is unquestionably Hyatt.

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Jul 05 2015

The choice here is ultimately going to be driven by availability, although there are plenty of airlines worth checking given the miles that are available.

Consider that it’s entirely possible to use a different airline for the outbound as the return — not just to try different products, but because schedules and availability may differ, especially for an outbound to North Asia and a return from Southeast Asia.

I’d generally rank the first class products of airlines flying from the US West Coast across the Pacific as follows:

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Jul 04 2015

Some people sign up for credit cards in the name of family members (who are willing participants) — they want the bonus miles, but spouse or sibling doesn’t want to deal with meeting minimum spend and doesn’t themselves value the miles.

Things get tricky when it comes time to cancelling, a male voice may have a hard time calling to cancel a woman’s card (so cancel by mail or online). And meeting minimum spend either needs to be done with an authorized user card, or online.

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Jul 04 2015

A collection of the most interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.

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Jul 03 2015

Frequent flyer miles are proprietary currency where the issuer offers the promise of redemptions (although airlines at least have no obligation to honor that promise).

What if a retailer created their own currency but didn’t promise to accept it for redemptions? That seems to me like a bad idea, but there’s a company promoting just such a thing. Somehow other businesses would still accept the currency as payments for their merchandise.

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Jul 03 2015

Planes can get pretty hot on the ground during the summer, especially when they’re not running the air conditioning with auxiliary power.

Passengers are often asked to close the shades upon landing, keeping out the sun keeps the cabin from heating up as much. On boarding all the windows are closed and most passengers leave them that way. Once the engines start running, and the plane gets up in the air, things cool down quickly.

American Airlines will board a plane if the temperature is less than 90 degrees, though as always this is at the discretion of the pilot. US Airways’ policy has been an 85 degree maximum…

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Jul 03 2015

Reddit user spambox odered a bacon and egg sandwich at Edinburgh airport, apparently from the EAT cafe.

And got the smallest egg and tiniest piece of pork, ever. It cost £3.20 (about $5).

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