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.
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’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.
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.
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.
It’s important to “do gardening” on your bookings, especially ones that you make relatively far in advance.
By gardening, I mean tending to the bookings — checking up on them, and doing minor maintenance.
Here are the things that can go wrong, but they are preventable mistakes!
Last week I needed to be in San Diego for one night. There aren’t any non-stops between Austin and San Diego, I rather expected Southwest might have one, but I wound up on American through Dallas. My flight into Dallas was a few minutes early but we had to wait about 20 minutes for a gate.
I wasn’t concerned as my relatively short connection time dwindled. I didn’t need to make it to my connecting gate before boarding started — for a simple overnight I just had my laptop bag and didn’t need any bin space. I’d be happy to be the last to board.
Chase has said “we have restrictions related to the number of new cards customers can receive in a period of time.”
The conventional wisdom is that Chase seems only to want to approve people for this card if they haven’t applied for 5 new cards in the past 24 months.
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’ve argued many times that the greatest luxury in air travel is space and privacy. As a result there’s no first class product that comes close to Etihad’s First Apartment on the Airbus A380. There’s an inflight chef, an onboard shower, but that’s all extra.
It’s the sheer spaciousness of the suite that makes this the best first class in the sky — and I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to fly it again and to be redeeming miles to do so.
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 »
