The Financial Times ran a ‘big read’ piece last week on the battle for customers between credit card issuers, and featured my advice getting started with rewards and credit cards.
The piece began with a hypothesis from the author that blogs like this one have helped educate consumers about the value of points, and really compare offerings, so that consumers are much better at discerning differences — and therefore banks are having to really spend more to compete.
Kuwait Airways no longer flies between New York JFK and London because it would have had to carry Israeli passport holders to do so under US law, while the government of Kuwait does not recognize the state of Israel.
But they do fly non-stop between New York and Kuwait City. And they offer one of the least expensive premium products in the world. Historically that premium product has been awful (and they’re a dry airline to boot) but it’s cheap. For instance, here’s Cairo – New York JFK in business class for $592.
The Flight Deal writes about New York JFK to Oslo or Stockhom from $212 roundtrip but you can travel for even less than that!
The trick here is that several of the airline’s international websites create the possibility of savings through currency arbitrage.
Aircraft manufacturers have highly inflated ‘list’ prices. When they announce sales, they announce the value of an order based on list prices rather than what an airline will actually pay for the planes.
They try to keep secret actual purchase prices, because they don’t want to broadcast to all potential buyers how much of a discount they’ll really give. At the same time it’s hardly a secret that no one pays list.
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.
Still need to make a last minute gift to someone? Go online and use your points to donate to almost any charity you could choose and let them your friends or family know you’ve done so for the holidays.
A passenger was arrested upon landing after KLM flight 605 from Amsterdam to San Francisco on Wednesday after fighting with his girlfriend, smoking onboard, and biting a flight attendant’s ear.
Our hero Jonah Cayle Snow got into a fight “after flight attendants asked the allegedly already heavily-inebriated Snow to put out his cigarette and refrain from drinking.”
With planes full and stress high during the holidays, passengers can go to extreme lengths to be terrible. But we don’t usually hear of such bad behavior on the ground as a man who had several drinks before going to the Memphis airport, needing to ‘go’, and deciding to do so “beside a woman who was sleeping inside the terminal.”
The routine and efficiency of frequent travel were captured beautifully — albeit harkening back to before pre-check and mobile boarding passes, and you don’t have to swipe offer your elite card when returning a car at Hertz — by George Clooney in Up in the Air:
But now it’s the holidays. I’m grateful after a year of travel not to be going anywhere this season, to put some time in at home. When I do travel on peak holidays I do my best not to travel the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or the Sunday after, or the last business day before Christmas. These are amateur days.
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 »
