Singapore Airlines offers very good award availability to its own members, but not very good availability to partners. I’ve written about excellent first class award space Los Angeles – Tokyo and great business class space Houston – Manchester.
If you want to fly long haul premium cabin awards with Singapore, you need to use Singapore’s own miles. Chase, American Express, and Citi points all transfer to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer.
One of the big mistakes people make booking awards is to assume that when you want to travel you go to your frequent flyer program’s website and enter where you’re flying from, where you’re going to, and you’ll be presented with your options.
If you go to the American Airlines website and say you want to go to Bangkok there will be no availability, ever. And that’s not because there’s no availability, although that’s what most people assume it means.
Briggs & Riley is one of the better luggage brands, I have two of their bags. They have a lifetime warranty, and stand behind it the way that Tumi used to years ago.
The Briggs & Riley Torq Hardside 29″ 4 Wheel Spinner is 40% off right now at Amazon, so $569 $339. It’s available in three colors at this price.
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.
Thursday night’s American Airlines Raleigh – Washington National flight, AA5580, got out of hand.
Two women sitting next to each other on the Bombardier CRJ-700 regional jet got into each others’ personal space. One woman describing herself as “fat” says her seat opponent was unhappy she was spilling over into the next seat.
That’s literally a 114% increase for business class and 167% increase for first class.
Search Air China award space on the United, Aeroplan, or LifeMiles sites and then ring up Virgin to book. Have them set up the award over the phone and then transfer points online while you wait with the agent to issue tickets. I’ve only ever booked roundtrip but reportedly one ways are now possible.
On May 11 Amazon is raising the cost of Prime from $99 to $119 — a 20% hike on their 100 million members.
I get value out of it at $10 a month, but I’d rather pay less. There are several discount programs – and a way to lock in current pricing indefinitely, too.
In January China flexed its muscles against Marriott at a time that the US President began making rumblings of a trade war. They shut down Marriott’s booking engines in the country. Marriott Marriott fired an hourly worker who rather innocuously ‘liked’ a tweet about Tiber and even removed a banned book from one of their hotels.
At the time I wrote that China would be cracking down on airlines, too. American’s website for instance listed Taiwan separately from China.
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.
I wrote the other day that the draft FAA bill being debate by the House included criminalizing passenger speech. If you ‘verbally assault’ an airline employee, you probably shouldn’t be allowed to fly, but this law will raise the stakes with law enforcement too.
That’s not all that’s in the bill that passed the House and now moves on to the Senate.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
