Alitalia has an awesomely good award chart for many destinations as I’ve covered in the past. Here are some of their business class partner redemption rates:
FARE ALERT: Southeast Asia from $436 Roundtrip
Via Airfare Spot use airfare metasearch site Momondo to find fares between Chicago and Southeast Asia from $436.
Flights are available for November travel, departures on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
You May Be Surprised By What IHG Rewards Club Expects From You As a Member
In updating its terms and conditions, IHG Rewards Club updated its right to update its terms and conditions.
Specifically, they made clear the right to devalue the program and what they expect you to do to find out if they’ve made changes to their rules (hint: they don’t have to tell you).
Big Discounts on Luxury Hotels, a $500 Booking Credit, and More
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.
US Reaches Agreement for Drunk Air Marshals to Party in Cuba
Drunk air marshals are now going to be on Cuba flights. This was a safety priority.
Hilton Just Revealed Hotels that Will Cost More Points (and Less) Starting October 12
Since Hilton’s award chart changes in 2013, there haven’t been huge additional changes.
Hilton decided to alter the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of transparency.
Doha Airport Has a Theme Song and Music Video — But It Doesn’t Come Close to Munich’s
Doha’s still-new Hamad International Airport is over the top in many ways. For instance there’s the giant Teddy Bear sculpture. It’s made out of bronze, is 23 feet tall, and weighs nearly 20 tons. A member of the Qatari royal family apparently purchased it for about $6.8 million. It had previously been displayed in front of the Seagram’s Building on Park Avenue in New York. There’s now a big clay sculpture there.
Amazing Award Availability: Use Delta Miles to Take the Whole Family to Asia
Delta is moving its Minneapolis – Tokyo Narita flight over to Tokyo Haneda airport at the end of October and award availability is amazing.
Most days there are 9 or more business class saver awards available, although I’ve put together calendars showing when there are 6 or more business class seats. These cost 80,000 miles per person each way.
American Screwed Up Its Brand New Business Class Seat
American’s new business class seat is the B/E Aerospace Super Diamond going into their Boeing 787-9, Airbus A350, and later retrofits of Boeing 777-200s.
The B/E Aerospace Super Diamond is one of the world’s best business class seats, but American seems to have made one very poor decision customizing theirs.
Here’s Why ‘Earn and Burn’ is the Best Strategy
We’ve known devaluations were coming for a very long time. It was obvious when I wrote ten years ago that I was afraid the great values wouldn’t last.
I suggested that as more and more miles were printed, without a corresponding growth in airline capacity, we’d see devaluation. And truly outsized-value? I’ve always said that you should take advantage of the best awards, the ones that are orders of magnitude better than average redemption value, because they aren’t going to last.