United, American, and Hilton all suffered recent data breaches. Indeed, Hilton points have been among the most available for sale on the DarkNet. Hilton accounts used 4-digit PIN numbers. That’s not a lot of unique combinations, and Hilton decided that’s not secure enough. In February Hilton reached out to let me know that they’re moving to passwords.. At the time they offered 1000 points to get you to update your password. But their IT wasn’t ready for their announced changes. On March 12 they said they were ready. According to Krebs on Security their password change process actually created a huge security vulnerability. Once you logged into your account you could change the HTML code of the website to gain access to any account. After that, they could see and do everything available to the…
To Redeem Awards, You Must Find the Flights Yourself and Spoon Feed Them to an Agent
Reader Mike asked, I’ve booked myself a flight to Hawaii but having trouble finding a good one home in F. I’m looking at AS,AA & UA since I have points for all & UA seems to have the most options in general, just not to MSP. My idea is to do separate award searches to one of the hubs, then from the hub to MSP and see what I can find. If I do find something, can I call United to feed the agent segment by segment, even if the website does not list my proposed itinerary as an option when searching HNL to MSP? . Simple answer: Yes Mike is asking about a very important principle in award search. Airline computers are pretty limited in what they’ll search for you. They will come up…
I’m Using Miles: Why Do My Award Tickets Have Such High Fees?
Reader Carol asked, When I try to make a reservation using my American Airline miles, there’s always a fee of $500-$1200 included. Do you know why? Yes, I do know why! It’s because you’re looking at award tickets involving travel on British Airways. And because awards on British Airways incur fuel surcharges. The idea is that the miles pay for the base airfare of the ticket only and not taxes (which is normal) or fuel or other miscellaneous charges. American collects these fees on British Airways awards, and in a miniscule amount on Iberia awards. (Only oneworld carrier LAN will issue British Airways awards without fuel surcharges — all other British Airways partners, including Alaska Airlines, collect them.) The challenge here is that American usually offers little award availability in premium cabins on its own…
American and US Airways Expect to Merge Frequent Flyer Programs in Just 6 Days!
On March 13, American sent out word that the American and US Airways frequent flyer programs would be combined within 30 days. Or in American parlance, that’s when they’d move to ‘Single Frequent Flyer Program’ (SFFP). When the 2015 program and details of how the US Airways and American programs would be combined were released in October, we were told the combination would happen during the second quarter of 2015. At the time I wrote, They haven’t set a target date, and there’s lots of IT work to do, but they sounded optimistic to me about hitting their deadlines on the early, rather than late, side of the calendar. Throughout I’ve been predicting early in the second quarter rather than later. Unless they were certain of being able to hit the second quarter (meaning they…
You Can Still Book Free One-Way Awards When You Redeem Miles. These Mileage Programs Let You.
Reader fauxblogger asked, Which foreign airline mileage programs permit tag flight to/from [North American] gateway city to [North American] home city on a single award when redeeming its own program’s miles? I think I understand what fauxblogger is asking. This reader wants to know what mileage programs allow stopovers on award tickets. The reason they asked the question the way they did is that American Airlines — up until April 8 last year — permitting stopovers on international award tickets, but only in the North American gateway city. In other words, the city you arrived or departed North America in/from. You could fly back to the gateway city, say you lived in Dallas and landed in Dallas from abroad. And ‘stopover’ there. Instead of ending your itinerary you would add another domestic flight, say to…
How to Stretch Hyatt Points and Get Great Upgrades
Reader Christian asks, I have a lot of Hyatt award nights booked for this fall in Asia and planned for next summer in Europe. While building up my points, I’d intended to do a Diamond Challenge early this summer, to have the status for this year and next. Now, with the Challenge effectively dead, I can (and likely will) get the Hyatt card later this year, but it only comes with Gold status. I value breakfast and club access, but am a bit dubious as to whether Gold status will get me anywhere, especially in Europe. I don’t have the points to move up to a club room for more than a few nights. Any thoughts or ideas? Hyatt used to hand out temporary Diamond status — complete with confirmed suite upgrades — pretty much…
What is ‘Minimum Connection Time’..?
Reader Jon Parent asks, I am looking to fly [Boston – Fairbanks] on [American] in June. I found availability for [Boston-Anchorage] only at first saver. However, when I search [Anchorage-Fairbanks], I find business availability as well at the perfect time. I am wondering why [the award search website] doesn’t display all of the segments [to get me from Boston all the way to Fairbanks]. Could it be because the connection time [in Anchorage before connecting on to Fairbanks] would only be about a half hour? Thanks and keep up the good work. Assuming that your arriving flight and departing flight are on time, there’s a certain minimum amount of time you can expect to take to deplane your arriving aircraft and make it over to your connecting gate to board your next flight. Different airports…
American Airlines Ends Inflight Duty Free
Apparently American Airlines has ceased selling onboard duty free. Delta dropped duty free last summer. It was characterized in media as a dispute over contract details with their outsource provider, the same company I believe which American worked with (DFASS Group). Duty free is said to be a $3 billion industry, although that strikes me as surprisingly high. Duty free purchases of high tax items like alcohol and cigarettes are popular as are jewelry and cosmetics, especially in Asia and the Middle East as well as Scandinavia flights. You’ll just have to buy your duty free here instead. US airlines don’t have the same volume of duty free purchases as Asian and Middle Eastern carriers. I’ve read that Korean has a standalone duty free display for shopping throughout the flight on the A380 (I’ve only…
Review: LAX Star Alliance First Class Lounge & Business Class Lounge
I kicked off my relaxing trip to the Maldives with a first class award redemption on Etihad. The first flight was Los Angeles – Abu Dhabi, and I had Etihad’s chauffeur service pick me up at the Sheraton LAX. I realize that the Sheraton LAX has an airport shuttle, but the chauffeur service is complimentary and — though my recent visits the shuttle has been reliable, I have a history of waiting for shuttles to come by there that have been full. Utterly gratuitous I suppose, but coming clean — yes I did that. For DC departures I’ve had the car service (Empire CLS) ring me 2-3 days before. For this trip it was just one day prior. They’ll usually show up early to be absolutely sure they’re there on time for you. And indeed…
Spirit Airlines Will Give You Miles if You Borrow Money to Fund Your Vacation, Because That’s a Good Idea..
Spirit is promoting personal loans from Prosper: 200 points for checking your rate online (no hard credit pull, apparently) and 1 point per dollar borrowed up to $35,000. Whether you need to break free from work or some scary credit card debt, we understand. That’s why we’ve partnered with Prosper, an online lending marketplace that offers access to low, fixed-rate loans that you can use for your next vacation or nearly anything else you need. Prosper offers affiliate links, they’d happily pay referral fees to any blogger that wanted to advocate you borrow money from them. I do not have links from them, because I think this is a Very. Bad. Idea. And it’s not any better of an idea when you get Spirit’s Free Spirit miles for doing so. Look, I’m a defender of…
