Alitalia Just Did What?! Doubling of Award Pricing Overnight?

by Gary Leff

Oct 16 2016

SkyTeam member Alitalia has the strangest frequent flyer program in the world. Instead of expiring miles, the program itself used to expire. With each new program every few years you could credit flights to your account to earn back the miles you had.

Now, without notice, the award chart ‘expired’ on Friday and there’s no new published chart. There are reports of awards costing twice as much as before. Hopefully no one took advantage of the current American Express transfer bonus to Alitalia.

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Great Award Availability on Hawaiian’s New Lie Flat Seats to Japan and Australia

by Gary Leff

Oct 16 2016

Hawaiian Airlines is retrofitting its Airbus A330 aircraft with lie flat business class seats. They’ll have three rows of six seats, so only the middle seats have direct aisle access, but it’s generally a good product for Hawaii flying.

The product launched in June, and they’ve been adding US West Coast flights. New international routes will be getting the seats before the end of the year. We’ll see them on Tokyo, Brisbane, and Auckland (December 5) as well as Sydney (December 13.

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DON’T WAIT: Buy Your Holiday Airline Tickets Now

by Gary Leff

The way airlines are pricing tickets has changed. You can often buy cheap fares at the last minute now. You used to have to buy 14 or 21 days in advance for the lowest fares, and that’s one way airlines separated business from leisure travelers, but ultra low cost carriers like Spirit, Frontier and Allegiant have changed that model and advance purchase alone is no longer a guaranteed way for airlines to charge business travelers more.

You can still get the best airfare deals in advance though (last minute can be a risk). And those last minute deals are especially unlikely to happen around holidays, because planes will be full.

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Are People Transferring More Points to Marriott or to Starwood, and How are They Redeeming?

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2016

There are some important lessons to be learned from traffic flows. For instance which way traffic went over the Berlin Wall said almost everything you needed to know about socialism.

We’ve got some early indication of which way points are flowing now that members can freely move points between Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest at a ratio of 3 Marriott points to 1 Starwood point.

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$100 Airfare Discount is an Authorized User Benefit?!

by Gary Leff

Ritz-Carlton Rewards® Credit Card Earlier this week I wrote about how to leverage the $100 Visa Infinite companion airfare discount that’s one of the many great things about the Ritz-Carlton Rewards® Credit Card. The card offers Gold Elite status (which is honored at Marriott hotels (complimentary the first year and that you retain each year you spend $10,000 on the card); a $300 Airline Fee credit, $100 Global Entry credit, and unlimited use $100 Airline Ticket discounts when buying for 2 or more passengers; 3 complimentary upgrades to The Ritz-Carlton Club® Level each year valid on paid stays of up to seven nights; plus airport lounge access and a premium concierge, the card gives you: And it has a great signup bonus of 3 complimentary nights at any participating Tier 1-4 Ritz-Carlton hotel after $5,000…

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