Delta Now Charging More Than Half a Roundtrip for Many One-Way International Awards

by Gary Leff

delta plane
May 02 2019

Ever since removing their award charts from public view, Delta has seemed to go out of their way to find more and more ways to stick it to their SkyMiles members like imposing basic economy restrictions on the least expensive awards and eliminating high value upgrade awards.

Now they have a new trick to charge you more miles — and since they don’t tell you how their pricing works you might never even know it and wind up spending more miles than you have to for the same itinerary! Delta now charges more than 50% the roundtrip cost of an award for many international redemptions.

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Wyndham Now Offers Room Service Via DoorDash, and Points Whenever You Order Food Delivery

by Gary Leff

hamburger and fries in box
May 02 2019

Wyndham Rewards members receive waived DoorDash delivery fees when ordering food to any Wyndham Rewards hotel with promo code WRD. In addition they’re offering 250 Wyndham Rewards points per order, whether delivery is to a hotel or not by starting the order through Wyndham’s site.

It’s an interesting partnership and if you order via DoorDash anyway, you might as well collect Wyndham points when you do.

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American Airlines Plans Three Key Inflight Improvements

by Gary Leff

airplane seats
May 01 2019

American Airlines is planning to make three changes that involve listening to customers, revisiting past decisions, and fixing pain points. That’s great news.

The plan is to make changes to their new domestic first class seat to offer greater comfort and more underseat storage. They’re going to improve their international wifi, moving towards the quality improvements they’ve made domestically. And they’re going to install working dividers between center seats in business class to provide passenger privacy.

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American Airlines Now Lets You Volunteer for Bump Compensation Electronically

by Gary Leff

switch flights flyer
May 01 2019

Airlines are going to new great lengths to avoid involuntarily denying boarding to passengers — selling more tickets than there are seats and then not having enough volunteers to take a later flight for compensation when more passengers than expected show up. Some airlines are overbooking less. Others are paying out more compensation to get more passengers to volunteer to give up their seats.

We’ve seen stories about Delta giving a passenger $4000 in travel vouchers for agreeing to take a later flight and United giving out $10,000. American’s Day of Departure Desk will also authorize substantially more compensation than before.

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Hyatt Brings Back “G-Bonuses” for New Hotels and Introduces 50% Rebate on Miraval Redemptions

by Gary Leff

hawaii
May 01 2019

Hyatt used to offer lucrative property-specific bonuses of 500 to 2000 points per night. These were colloquially referred to as ‘G bonuses’ because of the bonus codes attached to them. Combined with whatever promotion Hyatt was running (Faster Free Nights) and the fact that Hyatt used to give 2500 bonus points per night at properties whose club lounges were closed on the weekend meant that the old Gold Passport program was super lucrative, indeed.

We haven’t seen much in the way of property-specific bonuses in the past 8 years, but those are back for hotels that are brand new to Hyatt. And there’s a new 50% rebate on Hyatt’s most expensive redemptions.

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