News and notes from around the interweb: Crowdfunding an airline ticket so you can monitor your girlfriend. What could possibly go wrong? Skyteam’s alliance-wide online award booking tool should be rolled out globally by the end of the year American official arrested for bringing a firearm through the Islamabad airport. If he hadn’t done so, he’d likely have been the only one not armed there, right? Emirates launches a daily flight to Bali starting June 3 operated by a two-cabin 777. More American employees who don’t like the new uniforms This week’s non-story. RyanAir ‘refued to fly’ an organ transplant child — because the family arrived at the airport after the cutoff time to buy a ticket for the flight. They took the next flight 70 minutes later. United Express carriers’ contractual commitments. Do you…
Where Should You Credit United Flights to Now That They’re Awarding Fewer Miles?
With United’s new revenue-based frequent flyer program for earning miles from flying, you earn miles based on the price of your ticket and not based on the distance you fly when traveling on United. The ‘break-even’ price to earn the same miles in 2015 that you would have earned in 2014 is a ticket that costs about 20 cents per mile. But United’s average fare is significantly less than 15 cents per miles. So on average folks are positioned to earn fewer miles from their flying under the new program. As a result, it is worth asking whether — if you must fly United — to credit those miles to the MileagePlus program or to credit to a partner airline. If you are going to earn elite status, credit to United. You may earn fewer…
For the Best Airfare Deals (Including Mistakes), Follow The Flight Deal
Several readers asked how they could have found out about the American Airlines mistake business class airfares to China from earlier this week. That one was on FlyerTalk first, I believe, but it was also posted at TheFlightDeal.com. They had the $1700 3-cabin first class deal to Seoul and the $178+ fares to Abu Dhabi, India, and Africa. They also had this month’s $500+ Air France premium economy deal to Istanbul (a $2500 – $3000 ticket normally). Scanning their site just this morning I see: Chicago – Jakarta for $795 roundtrip Los Angeles – Copenhagen for $651 roundtrip New York – Bangkok for $756 roundtrip San Francisco – Stockholm for $654 roundtrip Seattle – Hong Kong for $536 roundtrip They have a daily email list and they tweet out deals as well as listing deals…
US Airways Credit Card in the Process of Disappearing…
Via Doctor of Credit, the US Airways MasterCard has disappeared from the Barclays website. As many readers know, with the merger of US Airways and American, Citibank becomes the exclusive issuer of new American AAdvantage cards Barclaycard will still be able to service existing cardmembers Last week American announced that the programs would be combined within 30 days That leaves a very short window to still get the US Airways card and its concomitant 50,000 mile signup bonus. The card still appears on the US Airways website and there’s still a link for the card that works. Barclays has sent out some emails indicating that it will be available until April 12, and others that it will be available until April 17. Little by little though the window is closing on both this card and…
This One Mileage Offer Is Everything People Hate About Marketing, and Fine Print
Star Alliance frequent flyer program Avianca LifeMiles has a new promotion running through April for you to sign up for their co-brand credit credit card. And it’s everything customers hate about marketing, and fine print. Triple miles could be exciting, right? In fact, it’s your ticket to paradise! With triple miles you can even plan the getaway of a lifetime. In addition to the standard signup bonus of 20,000 miles with first use, you’ll earn triple miles on all of your purchases for the first 45 days as a cardmember… “up to a total of $1,000.” Put another way, this offer gives you the opportunity to earn an extra 2000 miles which is apparently your ticket to paradise. If LifeMiles offered bus service redemptions to Paradise Valley, Arizona. And if your life were especially boring,…
American Will Honor $22 Business Class Shanghai Fares — $0 Beijing Fares Remain a Question
On Tuesday evening American published fares of $0 and $22 plus taxes and fees for business class between Washington DC and both Beijing and Shanghai. For the most part, the expectation has been that: American would honor the fare for those who ticketed American would not honor the fare for those who merely held the reservattions but did not ticket. Indeed, American had cancelled reservations for most people that had held the flights but hadn’t issued tickets. Wandering Aramean got his cancelled tickets which had been held reinstated. Apparently that shouldn’t have happened. According to Traveling Better, American intended to cancel merely held reservations, and agents were instructed not to reinstate those as American’s intention was not to honor them. $22++ fares between DC and Shanghai are being honored. However, there’s an open question it…
The New Super Chic Air France Safety Video, and 5 Reasons Why These Videos are Great Investments
Air France has a new ‘super chic’ safety video. I’ve not been keen to fly them in recent times (mostly because of how long it’s taken for them to start rolling out a lie flat business class), but I kind of like this video. My first five thoughts watching it: I wish Air France crews were this smiley. I usually can’t get more than a tiny glass of water from them, and it always feels like I’m hassling them when I ask for more. They’re not even, like, showing safety features inside a plane. There’s sort of a plane-ish background. I think it works, but it’s strange. Most Air France crew – and passengers – do not look like that. Passengers have books and binders with “France is in the Air” written on the front.…
My Ultimate Relaxation Trip Report: Etihad and Emirates First Class, Food in Sri Lanka and Returning the Maldives
I’m beginning to write up the report of my most recent trip to the Maldives, and this is a basic preview and outline of the trip I’ll be sharing. Regular readers know that I love the Maldives. It’s not for everyone and I hope to give you a sense both of why I like it so much and also reasons why not everyone will. For me the distance is a feature, not a bug, I need to be that far away to really disconnect and the time zone difference helps too because I’m getting up in the morning when the business day ends on the US East Coast and I have the entire day ahead of me undisturbed. I’ve now gone back to the Park Hyatt Hadahaa Maldives four consecutive years. I love it there,…
When You Can Throw Away Segments of Your Airline Tickets–And Why You Want to
Reader Paradocs asked, If I book a trip as two one ways and skip the final destination on the outbound is my return affected? Thanks for your help Gary! As long as you’re only skipping the final segment of the ticket you’re not going to cause problems for your return. What Paradocs is asking about is throwaway ticketing (not using the last flight coupon of a ticket). If you skip any other segment, you risk having the rest of the unflown segments on your ticket cancelled. This is useful, most of the time, with paid tickets (although I’ve also explained how to use this to get lower award prices and also to save on fuel surcharges on award tickets). With paid tickets you’re using ‘point beyond ticketing’ where you’ll fly from your start city through…
A New Star Alliance Frequent Flyer Program is Now Online, Here’s What You Need to Know.
The new Star Alliance frequent flyer program — CopaAirlines ConnectMiles — is now online. 1000 Free Miles to Start Enrollment will start in May, and the program will be live in July. If you subscribe now for email updated with the same address you register with later, you’ll get 1000 miles. Full Mileage Earning! They advertise one mile earned per one mile flown, and 500 mile minimums, plus class of service bonuses. So far they’ve only posted earning charts for Copa flights and not for Star Alliance partners. But they promise 1 mile = 1 mile “never less.”
