The 10 Best Airport Lounges in the World

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2016

For the most part airport lounges are comfortable places to wait before a flight, to relax and make travel a bit less stressful. The very best make travel truly effortless by escorting you from the moment you enter the airport until the moment you leave. When you never even know what gate you’re leaving from — as with the Lufthansa First Class Terminal and Air France La Premiere lounge — that’s truly the top level of ground service. It’s someone else’s job to worry about that for you.

I’m not going to make claims about the rank order of 1, 2, 3, etc. We can have great discussions about what makes for the ‘best’ lounge — whether it is spaciousness, personal attention, food, a spa or a car service from lounge to plane. Instead I will offer four ‘groupings’ that total 10 lounges. I’m not making a rank-order claim within each grouping.

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Double the Value of British Airways Points and Get 2 Europe Roundtrips for a Single Credit Card

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2016

I’d say an opportunity to earn a total of 100,000 Avios from the British Airways Visa Signature® Card with a $95 annual fee is one of the best deals out there right now, especially if you’re strategic with them.

That’s because if you’re going to put $20,000 in spend on the card to earn the full 100,000 Avios bonus, push farther and hit $30,000 spend and you will earn a companion award ticket called a ‘travel together’ ticket. That lets two people travel on the same award itinerary for the mileage cost of one ticket.

Spend $30,000, earn a 100,000 bonus, you’ll have 130,000 Avios which you can use for two passengers to travel on an award that would cost up to 130,000 Avios apiece.

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Citi Adding New Electronic Gift Card Option for ThankYou Points

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2016

Citi’s ThankYou Rewards program has added Wonder as a way to use points to cover part or all of digital gift card purchases (which are made via the Wonder app). It’s both a convenient platform for points redemption and a way to broaden out options for retailers from which to obtain gift cards.

Citi has done a lot to build out the points-to-miles transfer program for their premium ThankYou cards. It’s nice to see them building out options which will appeal most to the rest of their members too. (More choices are good for premium card members too of course — it’s just that those cardmembers already have better redemption options than this.)

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Starwood and Marriott Know They Have a Problem With Their Merger. And They Don’t Know How to Fix It Yet.

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2016

For all the talk of financial synergies, scale in dealing with online travel agencies, and the operational skill Marriott brings to managing Starwood hotels, at core there’s still guests of the chain and in particular Starwood Preferred Guest members who drive an outsize portion of room nights. Marriott doesn’t want to lose Starwood’s customers to competitors.

Meanwhile American Express is desperate to find a way to keep its Starwood Amex intact with Marriott buying Starwood.

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Flew Short American Flights This Year? You Might Have Been Shorted Elite Qualifying Miles

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2016

Elites earn a minimum of 500 frequent flyer miles on short flights, still, with American AAdvantage plus their elite bonus. Dallas – Austin is just 190 miles one-way but as an Executive Platinum I earn a 100% bonus on miles flown. Thanks to the 500 mile minimum I earn 1000 miles for the segment.

The same 500 mile minimum is supposed to apply to elite qualifying miles. And it does. Except that hasn’t been working properly with American’s new bonus qualifying miles on premium fares that started this year.

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No, “The Left” Didn’t Ruin Air Travel. Why Do You Ask?

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2016

My Facebook feed was littered with shares today of a piece titled “How the Left Ruined Air Travel” and with many such attempts to use the narratives of frustrated travelers to advance a political agenda, author Josh Gelernter doesn’t appear to know enough about the subject to make the case stick.

Far away airports certainly won’t make travel better. “Conservative mayors” aren’t going to mean big close-in infrastructure projects. And lack of airport facilities isn’t the binding constraint in most cases standing in the way of competition.

But if you want more airline competition and to drive better service and low prices, you need to end corporate welfare. And that’s equally a Republican and a Democrat problem.

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