Last week Emirates flight EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Dubai was involved in an accident. The Boeing 777-300, registration number A6-EMW, caught fire after touching the ground in Dubai. It was an incredible incident with the plane catching fire, but all of the passengers and crew onboard got out. Only 13 passengers were injured.
But one of those passengers may just be The Luckiest Man in the World.
Airlines and their frequent flyer programs are known to play monkey see, monkey do copying each other’s policies and promotions. But rarely do passengers bring monkeys into the cabin on a flight. However Tuesday night’s Frontier Airlines flight from Columbus, Ohio to Las Vegas had a monkey on board in the passenger cabin. And it got loose. According to a Las Vegas airport spokesperson, Frontier staff reported to them that: “the monkey was loose, or got loose” briefly during the flight. However Frontier’s official line is that the monkey “was always with the passenger it was traveling with” so it wasn’t actually loose. Initially it was reported that a man smuggled the monkey onto the plane because a flight attendant noticed the monkey inside the passenger’s shirt. It was an emotional support monkey and he…
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.
United suffered a significant data hack at the end of 2014. Miles are regularly for sale on the Darknet. So IT security is something that many programs are doing more than paying lip service to. Hilton even gave out points for changing your password.
I’ve seen this header at the top of my United MileagePlus account for awhile and pretty much ignored it. Perhaps you’ve logged into yours, gotten a notice about a password or security questions and ignored it too. I talked to United about it — they gulped a bit that I’ve been ignoring it, like millions of other MileagePlus members. And it’s time not to ignore.
Non-stop award space in premium cabins between the US and Australia is one of the toughest things to find out of any frequent flyer award in the world.
And American has been anything but generous with premium cabin international award space generally, except during spurts when they open up space. So when they do you need to act quickly. And when they do for Australia and New Zealand it’s worth paying attention.
It can make sense to pay a fee to use a credit card to pay bills like rent when earning a big bonus like that, but it usually doesn’t make sense to pay a 2.5% fee (Plastiq) or 3.5% fee (Radpad) for everyday spending.
However through the end of the year you can pay your rent with no fee and the credit card of your choice.
One of the great things about American Express Membership Rewards points is their flexibility, the ability to transfer points to a variety of different airline programs – most instantaneously.
And since they offer cards that earn more than 1 point per dollar on a variety of different kinds of spending you can earn miles in the program you wish quickly. It’s even more leveraged when they offer transfer bonuses.
Now British Airways is offering a 50% transfer bonus through October 10. That means 1 Membership Rewards point transfers to 1.2 BA Avios.
With loyalty programs regularly offering less value for their points, I’m putting together this series with background, tips, and tricks for frequent flyer programs programs whose points can be very useful to you and that you can earn easily by transferring in from bank rewards currencies.
Here are 20 things a US-based frequent flyer should know about the Marriott program:
United appears to be discounting domestic economy awards by 20%. This looks like an unannounced sale, with short haul flights under 700 miles in distance pricing at 8000 MileagePlus miles each way (instead of 10,000) and other domestic flights pricing at 10,000 miles (instead of 12,500).
In addition, United just posted a redemption discount to Asia which is 25% off North Asia awards and 22% off South Asia awards.
In May I shared that Suzanne Rubin would be leaving as head of the American AAdvantage program. She led the program since December 2011 when Maya Leibman became the American’s Chief Information Officer and brought stability to a role that had seen several leaders in a short time.
American announced today that Bridget Blaise-Shamai has been promoted to Vice President – Loyalty and President of the AAdvantage program. Bridget’s role had been Managing Director, Customer Loyalty and Insights – the position Suzanne held before becoming AAdvantage Vice President. She was the the senior person on the team once Suzanne left and the manager in charge in the interim.
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 »
