The American AAdvantage shopping portal has another bonus running, this time for up to 1500 miles based on spend through February 14. Thanks to Pizza in Motion for sharing this. You’ll earn as follows: $150 in collective spending on the AAdvantage eshopping portal earns a 500 mile bonus. $300 in collective spending on the AAdvantage eshopping portal earns a 1,000 mile bonus. $450 in collective spending on the AAdvantage eshopping portal earns a 1,500 mile bonus. No registration is required. Back in November they ran a 2500 point bonus. Those points posted for me earlier in the month: While the company that runs the shopping portal doesn’t always show the love with customer service, as long as points from transactions do post (and my luck has been good), the bonus itself should post as well.…
40% Bonus on Unlimited Purchase of Alaska Airlines Miles
Alaska Airlines is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased miles through March 15. Here’s the breakdown of the bonus: Limited Time Offer: up to 40% Bonus Purchase miles between February 1 and March 15, 2014 and get up to 40% more miles! Buy 5,000 – 19,000 miles: get a 20% Bonus Buy 20,000 – 34,000 miles: get a 30% Bonus Buy 35,000 – 40,000 miles: get a 40% Bonus This isn’t all that uncommon an offer. For the majority of November and December they were offering up to a 35% bonus. This offer of 40% is, of course, better than that. 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: You can buy up to 40,000 miles per…
What Good Does it Do to Require Minimum Spending for Elite Status When Your Systems Can’t Properly Track the Spending?
This Year Delta and United Are Requiring Minimum Spending to Earn Elite Status for 2015 Delta made their announcement back in January and United followed with theirs in June. Both require spending on airline tickets, not just flown miles, in order to reach status. And they’ve tied that spending at 10 cents per status mile — 25,000 mile status level requires $2500 spend 50,000 mile status level requires $5000 spend 75,000 mile status level requires $7500 spend United’s 100,000 mile status level requires $10,000 spend Delta’s 125,000 mile status level requires $12,500 spend These requirements apply to frequent flyers whose accounts list addresses in the United States. Somewhat surprisingly I haven’t heard of accounts being shut down (yet?) for “moving abroad” to skirt these spending thresholds. It’s Not Just Total Revenue That Matters It’s a…
Attention Christopher Elliott: Frequent Flyer Programs are Ladders of Opportunity
Christopher Elliott, who likely deserves a patent on making unsupported — and unsupportable — claims in columns about travel, has a new one: “Have travelers lost the class war?” He pegs his piece on class warfare in the skies on the introduction of American’s new premium configuation Airbus A321 which will begin flying New York JFK – San Francisco next month. Oddly the class warfare didn’t begin when the plane started flying JFK – Los Angeles last month. Nor did lie flat seats on either route generate a class war when those were first offered by the incumbent competitors on the routes. Here’s the meat of Elliott’s class struggle argument: Meanwhile, ordinary passengers languish in crowded waiting areas and are wedged into airline seats that seem to shrink between flights. When they complain, they’re often…
US Airways Credit Card Holders Get a 100% Bonus When Buying Miles
US Airways is running another targeted 100% buy (and gift) miles bonus offer, this time for their co-branded credit card holders. That allows you to buy miles at 1.88 cents apiece. When you go to the purchase miles offer, you have to verify your account details. Then if you’re eligible you’ll see: Get 100% bonus miles when you buy miles Use your US Airways MasterCard® or Visa® credit card to buy and you’ll get or give a 100% bonus – up to 50,000 miles. The offer says ‘use your US Airways…card’ and indeed you not only need to be on record as having one (to be targeted for the offer), it appears as though the payments page will only give you the offer to pay with one. I’ve not tested whether a different Visa or…
A Big Signup Bonus for US Bank FlexPerks Visa – How Big Depends on the US Olympic Team!
US Bank has upped the signup bonus on their (proprietary points) FlexPerks card. These are points that are useful for buying you paid airline tickets, not points that transfer to airline miles. In general they won’t get you much value for premium cabin international awards. But it’s a good signup bonus, a fun promotion, and they offer good value in the spend category of charitable donations so that’s a unique feature. Here’s the offer: You get a minimum of 20,000 FlexPerks points after $3500 spend within 4 months Then you get an additional bonus based on how many medals the US wins during the Winter Olympics — each Gold is worth 500, each Silver 250, and each Bronze 100. Results from the last Winter Olympics would have yielded a bonus of 29,550 points so ~…
You Can Use Your HHonors Award Nights in the Afterlife, or Let Your Family Use Them Here On Earth
Hilton HHonors had a rule against transferring points at death, but in practice allowed it. Now they’ve made their practice official, updating their terms and conditions to make the ability to transfer points to a designee when you pass official. Of course, after last year’s devaluation, it shouldn’t be all that hard to use up every last HHonors point long before you die. Interestingly, last year Delta changed its rules so that miles only expire at death and are no longer transferable. I can’t say that I fully understand the logic of a frequent flyer program’s choice in this regard — I suppose it’s a tradeoff between breakage and encouraging loyalty while a member is alive (to the extent they’re cognizant of a program’s policies), or perhaps these calculations don’t go into a decision to…
What Could Be More Dishonest Than That? Wyndham Cuts The Value of Transfers to Miles in Half With No Notice
Wyndham devalued their points for hotel redemptions last year, but they gave about a month’s notice of it. Sure, they were somewhat disingenuous at the time. They had already implemented a no-notice devaluation, and then rolled some of those back a couple of weeks later with their devaluation announcement, claiming to be reducing rather than raising the cost of award nights. And they didn’t actually share the list of hotels whose points requirements would be changing until basically forced to do it by member outrage. But it was notice. What’s worse is that they’ve now reduced the value of points-to-miles transfers and they implemented it overnight, said sorry it’s already done. Redemption rates have changed as of January 31, 2014. Redeem now starting at 6,000 points. Points used to transfer to airline miles at 8000…
2500 Bonus Points for New Southwest Rapid Rewards Members
Southwest is offering up to 2500 bonus points to new members: 2,000 bonus points for joining 250 bonus points for signing up for their email summary 250 bonus points for signing up for email update (HT: Free Frequent Flyer Miles) You can join the 30,000+ 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!
$1450 Roundtrip First Class on Etihad, Colombo – Dallas
Etihad has a fare that allows business or first class travel — roundtrip — originating in Colombo, Sri Lanka and traveling to Dallas Fort Worth and back for ~ US$1450 all-in. The most natural routing that comes up most often and most easily is Colombo – Abu Dhabi – Chicago – Dallas. But the Abu Dhabi – Chicago flight (EY 150/151) doesn’t offer a first class cabin. For first class you’d want to route via New York JFK, Washington Dulles, or Europe (e.g. Paris, Frankfurt). Europe routings would mean flying American’s first class transatlantic. If you can swing a London routing you’d get American’s new 777-300ER in first. Here’s an Orbitz multi-day grid of available fares, searching business class: And here’s a sample itinerary priced on the Etihad website: One-way travel originating in Colombo is…
