Citi appears to be changing its rules for welcoming back past cardmembers with a signup bonus.
They’re basically following Chase’s approach here (although not to the best of my knowledge also clamping down on approvals for the products themselves), and not going in the direction of American Express limiting customers to one bonus per card product in a lifetime.
Qantas is selling Los Angeles and San Francisco – Auckland, New Zealand roundtrip for as low as $225. That’s the cheapest I have ever seen a ticket to New Zealand!
This is available for trips that begin July 1 through September 1, and October 28 through November 30. You can fly either a Qantas codeshare on American’s new Los Angeles – Auckland flight, or you can fly Qantas to Australia and connect across to New Zealand.
Yesterday I wrote about a twist on the sub-$600 Australia roundtrips that could bring the price down to $385. These were from several US cities, predominantly Delta hub cities.
If you didn’t jump on these and wish you had, it’s not too late, because Los Angeles roundtrips have joined the party! United is now selling Los Angeles – Australia roundtrip itineraries for $566.
Starting tomorrow, IHG and Coca-Cola are back with their ‘Share Forever’ promotion. We don’t know the details of the promotion yet, though it will presumably be similar to last year’s.
Last year’s promotion offered between 68,500 and 115,500 bonus points plus a maximum 58,500 bonus points to share or keep.
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airberlin is a oneworld airline, partner of American and British Airways, that’s largely controlled by UAE-based Etihad.
They have a great business class product for long haul travel, and they do not add fuel surcharges to their fares. That means when redeeming miles, even British Airways miles for travel across the Atlantic, there are no fuel surcharges.
airberlin award space isn’t searchable at aa.com. You can search for it on the British Airways website and the Qantas frequent flyer site, then call American if using AAdvantage miles.
Yesterday I wrote about some amazing airfares on United Airlines between the US and Australia.
The fares were ~ $550 roundtrip from many of Delta’s hubs — not a mistake fare, but clearly a fare war aimed at Delta. Those fares are still available. And you can get the fare down as low as $380 by starting in any of these cities and returning to Los Angeles.
Oh, Air India. Your pilots refuse to fly unless you send them women. You fire co-pilots that have already quit. Your catering carts have rats, and you feed customers from them anyway figuring it’s your passengers that are the bigger problem anyway.
Bus gates are the bane of your existence. So it should really come as no surprise that when it was time to retire an old Airbus A320 to a training facility, they decided to use a crane that apparently couldn’t withstand the weight of an aircraft.
Back in February I detailed Starbucks plans to gut their rewards program for many customers. As is the trend in the airline loyalty game, Starbucks is moving to a revenue-based program. High-spenders will mostly break even. Folks who just buy a cup of coffee will see their rewards slashed drastically.
Starbucks is informing members that the IT work for the changeover starts tomorrow, with new earning going into effect on Tuesday.
A British Airways flight attendant who tried to hide being drunk by keeping her nose in a book has been fired. She gave up the game because she was holding the book upside down.
She was fired by BA. She appealed. She lost her appeal. Then she took her case to an employment tribunal. One claim was that while “she was seen swaying from side to side and stumbling ..dressed in her BA uniform, before she fell over” it was actually several hours before the flight she’d be working. And the officer who questioned her really smelled alcohol from a nearby bar, not her breath.
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 »
