News and Notes from Around the Interweb: If you even think you might have purchased a ticket from Southwest Airlines at a ticket counter from October 2007 through October 2012, you may be eligible for a cash payout due to a class action settlement over the airline printing full credit card numbers on receipts. A bunch of United expiring upgrades being given away Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan has really generous stopover rules… not just on one-way tickets on their international partners, but also on domestic awards when flying on Alaska itself. United is proactively taking away the ability to search for and book Singapore Airlines award tickets from its website. United is apparently “taking functionality away from your customers-friendly” — and they insist that booking Singapore awards over the phone will incur a telephone booking…
Comment Here for a Chance to Win the Million Reader Giveaway!
At the beginning of the week I shared some web stats and plans for a Million Reader Giveaway. I only wish I had realized the traffic milestones earlier for this blog, I could have reached out to my favorite travel providers and asked them to help me celebrate… with promises of riches beyond readers’ wildest dreams elite status and points. Instead, I’ve had to get creative with the sorts of things I’m able to offer on my own. So here’s part one of the Million Reader Giveaway! Prizes will include: (5) Milepoint premium packages (1000 United miles, Hilton Gold status, National Car Rental Executive status, and more) $200 Gift Cards Amazon Gift Cards Miles in your choice of several programs I might even throw in elite status and a club membership with an airline. There…
Etihad Introducing a Dallas Flight — Great Option for American Airlines Frequent Flyers
Etihad will launch Dallas service December 2, 2014. The flight will be operated three times weekly by a Boeing 777-200LR with 8 first class, 40 business class, and 189 economy seats. It’s too early to tell what award availability on this flight will be like but in general I find that Eithad’s availability is excellent, especially early on as they tend to load premium cabin award space when the schedules open. Especially interesting is that — with Qatar having joined oneworld and launching Dallas service — the move would seem to suggest that Etihad believes their relationship with American Airlines can continue. To make this flight work they’ll most certainly need feed from American. Etihad First Class Cabin – Suites Etihad Business Class American AAdvantage miles are great given the quality of Etihad’s product and…
Free La Quinta Points, Onboard Internet Goes High Speed, and Get Free Stuff For Mobile Ticket Purchase (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 12, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: 20,000 Miles & More miles for 305 euros and a 6 month international New York Times subscription thrown in! The La Quinta Returns Play & Stay Facebook game awards free points and nights, and you can try your hand at it every day through January 31. (HT: tellivais on Milepoint) You can get a free external battery from KLM if you book a ticket via their mobile site or mobile app by December 23rd. JetBlue now offers wifi on a limited number of planes. Basic service is free through June, and high-speed service costs $9 per hour. 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…
5000 Bonus Miles for a 3 Night Rocketmiles Hotel Booking
PointsHound and Rocketmiles are the two major websites that award you frequent flyer miles when booking hotel rooms. In general Rocketmiles has the biggest mileage offers, but they also have the fewest hotels and are in a limited – but growing – number of cities. (Some PointsHound bookings earn hotel loyalty points and status credits, while Rocketmiles does not offer this.) Rocketmiles is offering 5000 bonus miles on top of the regular mileage earning of 1000 to 5000 miles per night on a 3 or more night booking consumed by March 31. You can only earn the bonus one time and you start at this link when making your booking to qualify. The bonus is not stackable with other offers. You get to choose mileage earning with any of the following programs: Interestingly it appears…
IHG Rewards Introducing Round 2 of “The Big Win” as Their First Quarter Major Promotion
IHG Rewards (formerly Priority Club) ran a promotion called “The Big Win” which started in September. They’re bringing back The Big Win promotion for the first quarter of 2014. The website for the offer will go live over the weekend. InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is kicking off 2014 in a big way by offering loyal IHG® Rewards Club members more opportunities to earn free travel through the next installment of its hotel rewards promotion, “The Big Win.” This is a first of its kind promotion, which provides each loyal guest with an individually tailored set of offers. “We have found that introducing tailored offers through “The Big Win” has been beneficial for both our guests and our hotels,” said Jim Sprigg, director, Database Marketing & CRM Solutions, IHG. “So, this January, we are launching a…
Will Your American Airlines Mainline Flights Be Replaced By a Regional Jet? American Places an Order for 90 More Large Ones..
Back in January American ordered 53 large regional jets with first class and main cabin extra additional legroom seating. Largely these planes have been intended to operate in and out of Chicago O’Hare, replacing bigger aircraft. American has lagged United at Chicago, and the move was seen as a way to shrink capacity there without reducing their network. The regional jet-ification of American continues, however. That’s something that’s been expected with the US Airways merger. US Airways operates a large fleet of regional jets, flying them longer distances and on a greater variety of routes than American does. Specific routes have not yet been announced. Today American announced an order for 90 large (76 seat) regional jets and they took an option for 130 more. Thirty of the jets will go to US Airways Express…
British Airways Improves “Household Accounts”: Redeem Pooled Miles for Anyone You Wish
British Airways offers “household accounts” that allow you to pool miles from multiple frequent flyer accounts to redeem a single award. You can pool points with six people who live at the same address. That increases the usefulness of signing up family members who are just taking a single trip, since their miles aren’t stranded — you can burn them. And it increases the usefulness of credit card signup bonuses, even, each family member can sign up for the card and you can take the miles from their account towards your own accounts (pretty selfish of you, right?). The downside to creating a household account has been that you could only redeem for members of the household. You’ve given up the ability to redeem award tickets for people that aren’t linked in the household account…
Here’s What Transportation Used to Cost
I came across something I posted in 2007 and I’ve been pondering it for a bit. I recently flew Etihad’s first class suites, connecting from terminal 3 in Abu Dhabi to terminal 1 where the business class lounge is packed solid and poorly provisioned. I then wound up at a bus gate out to my business class onward flight to India. My round trip ticket cost me some American Airlines miles of course but less than $100 in taxes and fees. Here’s what travel used to cost. In England it was calculated that one horse was needed for every mile of a journey on a well-maintained turnpike road. So, for the 185 miles from Manchester to London, 185 horses had to be kept stabled and fed to deal with the seventeen changes required by the…
Abuse Your Travel Reimbursements, Find Your Receipts, and Get Banned from Wal-Mart (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 11)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: The craziest business expenses of 2013. Make your finance department happy: How to Retrieve Travel Receipts That You’ve Lost Banned from Walmart for Life for Price-Matching Too Much. At least the ban wasn’t for overusing their MoneyCenter. More American Airlines Merger News Than You Can Shake a Stick at Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal is now on Twitter. It claims to be an official presence, but their tweets sure say “Quack” a lot. 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!
