Is Delta Buying Virgin America?

by Gary Leff

Mar 24 2016

News broke yesterday that Virgin America had received a takeover offer and was shopping itself to potential buyers.

We can eliminate United as the acquirer — the Justice Department would pretty quickly shut down such a degree of consolidation in San Francisco where United has a hub and Virgin America is based.

I suggested it was conceivable that JetBlue, a more boutique-style carrier focused on New York, could bulk up on the West Coast by aligning itself with Virgin America. I’m not predicting it but it would increase competition overall rather than reducing it. And it would presumably pass muster with anti-trust review.

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Hilton Just Revealed Hotels that Will Cost More Points (and Less) Starting March 30

by Gary Leff

Mar 23 2016

After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly three years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year.

Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of ‘transparency’.

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Earn the Ability to Pay Bills By Credit Card With No Fee

by Gary Leff

Mar 23 2016

Plastiq, the service that lets you pay bills online and charge them to a credit card, has a new referral program.

For each person you refer that makes a payment of $20 or more, you earn $400 worth of fee-free credit card payments to use yourself.

The person you refer will earn $200 in fee-free payments as well. So they’re better off signing up through a referral link than signing up without one.

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Man Steals Pizza Hut Delivery Truck to Get to the Airport (And Gets Away With It)

by Gary Leff

Mar 23 2016

A tourist in Jackson Hole, Wyoming stole a Pizza Hut delivery truck because he needed a ride to the airport.

The crack detectives figured out the scheme, and worked with their counterparts across jurisdictions to try to find him. However police were too late to catch him at his connection in Denver. Instead the game plane was to meet his gate on arrival at his destination in Chicago. But the cops went to the wrong gate and missed him.

Neither Uber nor Lyft are available in Jackson Hole as of this writing.

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Buy Up to 144,000 Hilton Points at Just $0.0056 Apiece

by Gary Leff

Mar 22 2016

Through February 8th Hilton is offering a bonus of 80% on purchased points.

Hilton usually charges a penny apiece for points, so with this bonus is selling points for a little over half a cent each. That’s not the absolute cheapest I’ve ever seen (back in June they offered a 100% bonus). Here they’re selling points for just a little over what they’re worth.

This will certainly appeal to newly minted Hilton Diamonds who took advantage of the end of year status match opportunity…!

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CONFIRMED: Hyatt’s New Promotion Up to 75,000 Points (Very Valuable, Yuge Even)

by Gary Leff

Mar 22 2016

Earlier today One Mile at a Time detailed what was ostensibly going to be Hyatt’s new spring promotion, shared with him via a reader, although caveats “The above comes from an unofficial source, though does seem to be Hyatt’s second quarter 2016 promotion. If that’s in fact the case, I’m sure it will be announced shortly.”

I’ve confirmed the details with Hyatt, between April 1 and June 30 Gold Passport members will be able to register and stay for up to 75,000 bonus points.

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