Through October 5 Hilton is offering a bonus up to 75% 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. They’re selling points for just a little over what they’re worth.
$4.8 million cash severance; vesting of $3.5 million stock; a performance bonus (!); full family benefits for the next 4 years; flight benefits and parking (and cash to cover taxes on those benefits) for life. He also gets to keep his company car.
But there’s a kicker…
For a long time the way to get free United Club access has been to match status to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles. They’ve been inconsistent over the years in how they’ve accepted matches (first via email and then via web form), how long they’ve taken to reply (quickly vs months), and what status they’ve been willing to match (sometimes United status, sometimes only competitor alliances, sometimes only top tier status). But it’s status that lasts two years.
It turns out there’s another Star Alliance program offering status matches, and there are successful reports from United and American elites both of getting matches that allow for United Club access.
I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Jeff Smisek is out at United, brought down by the scandal and United’s involvement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He’s not being kicked out by what he did to the airline or its customers, but since United’s problems seem to stem from the top there’s at least some hope today for the future.
Delta launched its Frequent Flyer program in 1981. It wasn’t re-named SkyMiles until 1995.
Avianca LifeMiles is offering up to a 135% bonus on purchased miles through the end of the month. A promotion they’re running in conjunction with a Brazilian blogger gets you an extra 10% bonus (making it 145%). This lets you buy miles at ~ 1.35 cents apiece.
Star Alliance frequent flyer program Avianca LifeMiles is offering a tiered purchased miles bonus through September 30 — from 50% to 135%. That gets the cost to buy miles down to 1.4 cents apiece.
This is of course the program that will monetize everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d sell you printed copies of your mileage statement. They straight-up sell Star Alliance Gold status.
Several days ago I asked readers for questions and I’ve started writing posts that answer many of them.
However I thought I should also highlight where I don’t know the answer to questions being asked. Maybe readers will. I do have my limits.
I sought to limit the questions to travel or miles and points but readers asked other things as well, again some of those were outside my area of expertise.
There’s a current call for the federal government to impose ‘minimum seat standards’ on US airlines. However there’s absolutely no evidence that current seat sizes ‘threaten health’ or ‘safety’. But requiring bigger seats and more legroom will have one obvious effect: raise prices.
Right now consumers can choose the level of comfort and price they’d like to buy. Proposed regulations would simply make current inexpensive options illegal and force everyone to buy a product they may not want to pay for, especially shorter people or for shorter flights.
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 »
