Half a dozen people have sent me articles about American’s flights no longer showing up on Orbitz. US Airways flights will be pulled from Orbitz on September 1. American sent out a press release on this yesterday, but I didn’t write about it. It’s a temporary phenomenon, basically a contract dispute. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this, about four years ago American pulled its inventory from Orbitz. It’s about pricing and about selling ancillary products through online travel agencies. Orbitz was started by a consortium of major airlines, but is no longer owned by them. The online travel agencies have considerable volume, Expedia is number one in the space. American can’t really afford to have their flights not appear as options in the major distribution sites where consumers buy tickets. But the agencies…
The True Ranking of the Very Best First Class Airlines — And Which Are Overrated!
Earlier this month FlightFox put out their rankings of the best first class products in the air and along with those the best prices they’ve found to actually buy each ticket. I expressed some disagreement with their rankings. For instance, I didn’t agree that Singapore Airlines has the best all-around first class. For instance, I don’t find their seat all that comfortable for lounging although it is good for sleeping, I don’t really find their ground services to be special (although they do a great job with food in The Private Room in Singapore), and they need to work on their snack menu. The folks at FlightFox underscored though that they were only talking about Singapore’s A380 Suites. Fair enough. I didn’t agree that Lufthansa has the 5th-best first class. I’d take Qantas’ A380 First…
Citi Improving Its Thank You Points Program With a New Transfer Partner!
I receive compensation for many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, and other banks are advertising partners of this site. I do not write about all credit cards that are available — instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). Citibank emailed yesterday to share that they’ve added Air France KLM’s Flying Blue as a points transfer partner in their Thank You program. Thank You Premier and Prestige cardmembers can now transfer points to: Air France-KLM Asia Miles Etihad Airways Guest EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Garuda Indonesia GarudaMiles Hilton HHonorsTM Malaysia Airlines Enrich Qatar Airways Privilege Club Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus Of these, Singapore…
Act Now: Two 50,000 Point Bonus Offers Disappearing Soon
I receive compensation for many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, and other banks are advertising partners of this site. I do not write about all credit cards that are available — instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). There are two 50,000 point signup bonuses expiring soon. Both offers are much better than ‘normal’ for the cards, so if you’re open to a new Chase card (United) and a new American Express card (Delta) now could be the best time to act. United Explorer has a 50,000 point signup bonus through September 2nd. The spend requirement is just $2000 within 90 days, there’s no fee the…
40% Bonus on Purchased Alaska Airlines Miles is Back!
Alaska Airlines is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased miles through October 14. This isn’t all that uncommon an offer. Sometimes it’s 30%, sometimes 35%, and sometimes 40% — as often as not Alaska offers some sort of bonus on purchased miles. But this is as good as I’ve seen it. A purchase of 40,000 points earns 56,000 miles at a total cost of $1182.50 or ~ 2.1 cents per mile. Key things to know:
Devaluations Without Notice are the Worst Thing a Program Can Do, Don’t Give British Airways Too Much Credit
I mistakenly saw possible signs of a British Airways pending devaluation. It wasn’t inevitable, and I didn’t think anyone should make speculative bookings, but it seemed worth not waiting to make planned bookings. That was based on seeing astronomically high prices from BA’s sister program Iberia Plus (the two airlines have similar programs, both us points called ‘Avios’, and both are owned by the same company). Iberia hadn’t changed its chart for partner redemptions, they just finally published it. A few folks like Dan’s Deals and Matthew at Live and Let’s Fly were right not to be concerned, but in some cases for the wrong reasons. One meme I’ve seen repeated over and over is that British Airways gave plenty of notice when they made big changes to their program in November 2011. That’s not…
The Singapore Suites Route With the Most Availability (By Far)
Singapore Suites are one of the holy grails of frequent flyer redemptions. There was a time that Singapore charged about a million miles for Singapore – Los Angeles roundtrip. They started making seats available to their own members for the A380 suites class at the saver level a couple of years ago. A handful of routes started making two seats available to Singapore members only a year ago. But did you know that there’s a route where availability is wide open — and not just using Singapore’s own miles, but seats that are bookable by their partner airlines, too? This won’t be extremely useful to the vast majority of readers, I suppose, for a handful of you this will be an amazing tip. Here’s a search using Aeroplan miles (so partner availability) for the Delhi…
I Love Seeing Heads of Loyalty Programs Getting Ice Thrown On Their Heads!
Jeff Zidell of Hyatt Gold Passport took the ALS #IceBucketChallenge. And since I filmed my own video at a Starwood hotel, and Randy Petersen issued his challenge to me from a Starwood property as well, I thought it appropriate to name SPG head Chris Holdren to take the challenge. He did. Good sports, all! And no surprise here, he issues challenges out to executives at SPG partners — American Express, Delta, Caesars, and LiveNation. Let’s see more loyalty executives take the challenge! You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Does a Passenger Have a Right to Recline Their Seat in Coach?
Scott Mayerowitz reports that a United flight was diverted today when a fight broke out onboard. One passenger was using the ‘knee defender’ to stop the passenger in front from reclining their seat. The flight from Newark to Denver diverted to Chicago, where the TSA deemed it “a customer service issue.” The flight continued to Denver and arrived 98 minutes late. The fight started when the male passenger, seated in a middle seat of row 12, used the Knee Defender to stop the woman in front of him from reclining while he was on his laptop… A flight attendant asked him to remove the device and he refused. The woman then stood up, turned around and threw a cup of water at him, the official says. That’s when United decided to land in Chicago. The…
How Iberia Made Us Believe They Devalued — When They Simply Got More Transparent
Iberia published new, much more expensive award charts for travel on partner airlines recently. That was pretty scary, not because Iberia points were worth less (nobody cares), but because of what it could mean for British Airways points. The two programs are structured similarly. The airlines are jointly owned. And points transfer between the two fairly freely. Commenter Prospero offers some good insight into what’s going on. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that Iberia published this partner award chart online, which they hadn’t done before, but the rates themselves aren’t actually new. Iberia hadn’t posted the chart before Few people booked partner awards with Iberia. You couldn’t book most partner awards online with Iberia for a long time, and you can with British Airways. The Iberia awards are non-refundable. Non-refundable awards you’d have to…
