Chase has made things a little bit easier and more transparent with points-earning for the Sapphire Preferred Card. You earn double points on all travel and dining spend. Now you can see, transaction-by-transaction, the points you earn for each. So if you go into your account activity, when you click the blue ‘plus’ on the left of each transaction, when it expands you can see the points earned for that transaction. Here’s an Uber transaction that correctly earned double points with the Sapphire Preferred card. ‘First Friday’ points (triple points for dining the first friday of each month) display correctly as well. This feature isn’t (yet?) available for my other Chase Ultimate Rewards cards like Ink Plus or other co-brand cards like the Hyatt Visa. (HT: The #Hustle Blog) (Note that cards in this post…
American Express Adds Emirates as a New Points Transfer Partner
The US American Express Membership Rewards program has added Emirates Skywards as a points transfer partner. Points transfer 1:1. Here’s the upshot on the Emirates award chart: Awards are fairly expensive, although there are a handful of values. First class awards are exceptionally expensive. Upgrades can be a decent value. New York JFK – Dubai roundtrip in business class runs 145,000 Skywards Miles (or 100,000 miles one-way). New York JFK – Milan roundtrip in business class runs 90,000 Skywards Miles (62,500 one-way) That’s a non-crazy price if you just want to go to Dubai (West Coast departures are more, and flights beyond Dubai are more). New York – Milan, though, represents a pretty good value. Here’s the price of JFK-Dubai roundtrip in first class, though: Choke. Upgrades on the other hand? Compared to the pricing…
The American Express Centurion Lounge in Dallas: Good Food and Great Drink
American Express opened its second U.S. Centurion airport lounge this month. Dallas Fort Worth is the second location after Las Vegas. There are more lounges to come, including San Francisco. I visited the Dallas facility on a recent connection, and absolutely loved it. I wrote about the facility itself yesterday. It’s the best U.S. airport lounge I have been to. Here’s now the scoop on their food and beverage offerings. First, know that they’re serious about their cocktails here, the waitress helping me in the restaurant shared her favorites and impressed on me the processes involved in mixing their drinks. Cocktails are by Jim Meehan and wines are curated by Anthony Giglio. These aren’t the rail drinks in the major airline lounges, or the premium drinks I get by showing my non-US elite card and…
Russian Carrier Transaero Introduces Flat Bed First Class on Short and Medium-Haul Routes
Russian carrier Transaero, the airline one step removed from having a hot tub in first class, is introducing three-cabin 737s for short- and medium-haul routes. (Article is in German, quotes via Google Translate) I believe this will be the first commercial 737 with three classes o service (American’s new Airbus A321s flying New York JFK – San Francisco and Los Angeles will have three cabins, and United is transitioning away from the three-cabin narowbodies they were running on those routes). First class cabins on these planes will consist of just four seats, and the planes will serve routes between Moscow and Western Europe, former Soviet states, and Israel. As for amenities beyond flat beds: The catering will be provided by the first-class luxury Moscow restaurant “Café Pushkin” and served by private VIP flight attendants. Even…
The Department of Justice and American/US Airways Have Brought in a Mediator
From Terry Maxon US Airways, American Airlines and the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed Monday that they’ve picked a mediator to see if they can resolve any or all issues in the DOJ lawsuit seeking to block the air carriers’ merger. …It is common in lawsuits for judges to urge the warring parties to present their cases to a mediator in hopes of resolving the issues before trial. It always seemed as though anti-trust issues could be settled by the parties outside of Court – that this proposed merger proposed far fewer competitive issues than most in aviation; that divesting some slots at Washington National plus some unspecified vague promises would get government buy-in. The lawsuit was a surprise, not just to me (as someone who hoped the merger wouldn’t happen) but virtually everyone in…
Is the American Express Centurion Lounge in Dallas the Best Airport Lounge in the United States?
American Express opened its second U.S. Centurion airport lounge this month. Dallas Fort Worth is the second location after Las Vegas. There are more lounges to come, including San Francisco. I visited the Dallas facility on a recent connection, and absolutely loved it. It’s the best U.S. airport lounge I have been to. I would make the claim that it’s the best U.S. airport lounge, period, but I haven’t been to the Amex lounge in Las Vegas and I haven’t been to the Virgin Clubhouses at New York JFK or San Francisco (I’ve been to the Virgin lounge at Washington Dulles). I can say that it’s a better facility than the United Global First lounge in San Francisco (generally regarded as United’s best) and the American Airlines Flagship lounges in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New…
Milepoint Premium Status Giveaway
My friend Pizza in Motion is giving away a Milepoint premium membership. Milepoint Premium Membership is normally $49 and gets you: Hilton HHonors Gold elite status through the beginning of 2015. 1000 United miles National Car Rental Executive status 10% discount on purchase of Hyatt gift cards One free day of parking with Parking Spot (no minimum stay required) And more. The nice thing for you in the giveaway is that this isn’t one of the ‘big blogs’ which means that there may be relatively few entries — better chance to win (his last giveaway had 22 entries). So check it out and win. 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…
How to Avoid Jetlag and Get the Most Out of Your Trip
When readers shared their own travel tips and several really stood out as worth highlighting. Kerry said, One of my travel rules is “always go into town the first night.” If you’ve been traveling all day, it is very tempting to just hang out at the hotel and go to bed early, but I made that rule after I found out the next morning that I had missed the annual summer fest at a little town on the coast of France. I have scored standing room at La Scala, the Munich Opera (Aida!) and a box seat at the Folk Opera in Madrid, by pushing on and checking out what was going on in town that first night. I see this as a jetlag tip more than anything else. My first international travel as a…
What’s in My Laptop Bag?
When readers shared their own travel tips and several really stood out as worth highlighting. Erndog said, Invest in a ‘power brick’, something to keep your phone and/or tablet charged,while traveling. For an iPad, be sure it has at least 2 amp output Fortunately most of the planes I’m on have seat power, and even standard outlet plugs — my Empower adapter died after many years and it’s an outdated enough technology I didn’t want to replace it. Flying American’s older planes without power isn’t the only time I need extra juice. I do get a solid four hours of battery even watching movies and while online with inflight internet. There will be plenty of MacBook Air fans in the comments probably singing that machine’s praises for battery life, but it’s not a viable solution…
Saudia Business Class Trip Report: Saudia Lounge, Riyadh
Pakistani Correspondent continues her guest post describing the experience flying Saudia business class, which she redeemed using American Express Membership Rewards points transferred to Delta. Here’s her previous installment: New York JFK – Jeddah Saudia Lounge, Jeddah and Jeddah-Lahore CIP Lounge in Lahore, Pakistan Lahore – Riyadh And now P.C. continues with her visit to the Saudia lounge in Riyadh Welcome to Kind Khalid International Airport, Riyadh. As soon as my inbound plane got to the gate, people starting lighting up: Riyadh is a smoke-friendly airport. There were no signs about transit passengers or lounges or gates. Nevertheless, it was much easier finding the Saudia lounge and the airport had more to offer than Jeddah did. It had an odd coffee shop (which offered Wifi), and a few jewelry stores in the duty free area.…
