Apr 29 2016

Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program should be interesting to U.S. frequent flyers for several reasons.

They offer one-way awards. They are an American Express Membership Rewards and a Citi Thank You points transfer partner. They have far more award space on their own flights than Delta has access to. They have most of their partners available for online booking.

Unfortunately their call centers are frustrating, their website can be too (and has been known to show ‘phantom’ award availability, seats that look available but aren’t really here to book).

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Apr 29 2016

Whether or not you think Donald Trump should be President, he did up his qualifications on Wednesday night by staying at a Holiday Inn Express.

Trump, it turns out, has a thing for reviewing Holiday Inn Express properties.

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Apr 28 2016

I live in US Central time. My job is on the East Coast.

I keep my computer set to Central time, it’s that way all the time when I travel except… When I go to DC for work, when I’m in the office, I reset my computer to Eastern time.

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Apr 28 2016

A couple of years ago government taxes ostensibly for security were increased from $2.50 each way not to exceed $5 per roundtrip to $5.60 each way.

The $2.50 per direction fee had been constant since the February 2002, until it went up in 2014, though revenue has consistently grown. The Obama administration is proposing to raise the fee from $5.60 per direction to…

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Apr 28 2016

Korean Air has the easiest first class award availability in the world. It’s the most generous program if you want to redeem first class awards for a family and not just for two passengers.

They have great partner awards — 80,000 miles in business class to Europe and cheap Hawaii awards to. And they have some of the lowest fees and most generous award hold policies of any airline.

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Apr 28 2016

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.

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Apr 28 2016

Dining for miles is one of the easy and free ways you can rack up points. Register, use your credit card when you dine out, and if it happens to be at a participating restaurant you’ll earn miles automatically.

Through July 1 you can receive instant VIP status just for registering to earn United miles for your dines. That means you earn at a higher rate, 5 miles per dollar spent. And you also earn up to 5000 bonus miles on your first dines.

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Apr 27 2016

A week ago I shared Donald Trump’s failure to keep the registration up to date on his Cessna.

Now the plane is back in the air thanks to some sleight of hand: Donald Trump sold the plane to himself.

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Apr 27 2016

I spent a few minutes listening to Delta SkyMiles Karen Zachary this morning recapping the program’s first year having moved to revenue-based earning for flights.

She pitches is as a resounding success, and of course Delta is successful overall relative to its peers. Delta has been successful relative to its peers prior to the change. And they had long viewed the SkyMiles program as the weak spot at the airline internally, or so Delta executives had told me.

Her overarching claim is that the program now awards high spenders more but also provides more value for everyone.

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Apr 27 2016

The TSA considered ending security screening at some of the smallest airports but lawmakers killed the idea.

No one is going to bother wasting a terrorist act on a 19 seat plane out of a market with zero media. And a hijacked 30 seat plane isn’t the same risk to infrastructure that a Boeing 757 is.

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