News and notes from around the interweb: Barclaycard was on this a year ago. (HT: Million Mile Secrets) The Trip Sherpa is reporting that Hyatt’s fast track to top tier elite status, which was easily abused, has been eliminated. I’ve reached out to confirm this, and if true to see whether they are replacing it with any alternative way to smooth the path for elites with other hotel chains to move their business to Hyatt. (HT: @ManchesterKyle) My Ultimate Guide to Booking American AAdvantage awards needs a slight tweak, because JonNYC is reporting that the language for allowing connectings in a third region when traveling between two regions has been modified slightly for connections in Sri Lanka (SriLankan is a new oneworld airline). North America to Indian Sub Cont/Middle East Central/South America Zone 1 to…
Review: American Airlines Admirals Club Buenos Aires
You’ll Also Want to Be Sure to Read: American Airlines Flagship Lounge, New York JFK American Airlines First Class, New York JFK – Buenos Aires Review: Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Eating Around Buenos Aires: Four Notable Meals to Consider In Search Of — and Forgetting — the Past in Buenos Aires Once checked in in the departures hall, and without a bag to check, I proceeded upstairs to clear formalities. Once you cross through passport control and security, you’ll head towards gate 9 — which is in the opposite direction from the American Airlines gates, but none are especially fare — and then head upstairs. American has built a new lounge, quite stylish, and I wanted to check it out. On the same level is the LAN lounge, and as a oneworld top tier member…
The Very Best Travel Tips and Tricks in the Past Month
Here are the best travel tips and tricks, the highlights of View from the Wing posts from September. Last month I summarized the very best travel posts from September and the previous month, from August. In July the most useful and interesting developments from June. I also wrote a post with the most useful advice I’ve given, overall. It turns out, surprisingly, that this feature is really popular, at least judging by the emails I get — people that don’t read the blog every day really appreciated the recap and not having to dig through all of the posts to find the most enduring ones. These are some that were my favorites from October. I hope you were happy with some of the posts and got something out of them as well. Award Redemption The…
Free Money and Free Miles from Softcard
Softcard is the former Isis Mobile Wallet, renamed because they had a little bit of a branding problem. Via an app it lets you use your mobile phone for tap to pay transactions at retail merchants. And they want you to adopt their system in an increasingly competitive space, such as against Google Wallet and Apple Pay. So there are plenty of Softcard bonuses out there, and you can take advantage of each and every one of them if you have the requisite cards to link (which many readers will have). Here are the current Softcard Bonuses! Through December 31 Softcard will give you a $10 Amazon gift card for every 5 times you use it on a single credit card. You can do this 3 times with 3 credit cards for $30. Through December…
ACT QUICKLY: Entire First Class Cabin Open for Awards, American’s New Los Angeles-London Flight
I noted yesterday that American is launching a second daily Los Angeles – London flight. That gives American two flights, and their joint venture partner British Airways two flights. (BA used to operate three flights, but reduced frequency when they up-gauged to an Airbus A380 from LAX.) Often when flights are loaded into a system there are anomalies with frequent flyer award space. And sometimes they’re just lightly sold so award space is more available than you’d otherwise expect. (On the other hand, sometimes with a new route an airline isn’t sure what its sales patterns will be, they don’t have historical data, so they can be extra tight-fisted.) Per One Mile at a Time, when between March 28 when the new flight comes onto the schedule and May 31 the first class cabin on…
In Search of and Forgetting the Past in Buenos AIres
You’ll Also Want to Be Sure to Read: American Airlines Flagship Lounge, New York JFK American Airlines First Class, New York JFK – Buenos Aires Review: Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Eating Around Buenos Aires: Four Notable Meals to Consider I’m not by any stretch an expert, scholar, or specialist in Argentinian politics. But what I wanted most while in Buenos Aires was to see first-hand some of the political history, to try to gain a better understanding — the country is very much in the midst of transition and instability. There’s a widening gap between official exchange rates and black market rates, the government has accessed airlines of manipulating the currency, and there are restrictions for instance on the purchase of American Airlines tickets inside of Argentina — no doubt the airline is wary of…
How Aeroplan Stopped Offering 50,000 Point International First Class Awads, and Several Interesting Articles
News and notes from around the interweb: Aeroplan had a huge award pricing opportunity where they were giving members international business and first class award tickets for the same miles as a domestic award. The first thing they did when they decided to put an end to this offer was take down the ‘multi city search’ tool on their award booking page. Though they changed the underlying pricing issue, the multi city tool remains down. Hopefully it will return soon! Airbus will assemble A321neo aircraft in the US IATA launches cybersecurity toolkit for the air transportation industry What does air traffic control do when radio contact with a plane fails? Europe’s struggling airlines face more turbulence You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive…
This May Be Why New New York – U.K. Flights Make Strategic Sense for American Airlines
Earlier today I wrote about new American Airlines international routes. New York JFK – Birmingham and Edinburgh in the UK and Miami – Frankfurt. They’re also launching a second Los Angeles – London flight at the end of March. One Mile at a Time wrote about the routes as well and comes off surprised at the two new U.K. routes. He thinks they’re inconsistent with how American describes their New York strategy. The way I’ve viewed their future in New York is that they’re trying to serve mostly “local” passengers, while most passengers connecting to Europe would route through Philadelphia, for example. I can’t imagine New York to Birmingham or Edinburgh are really big enough markets if the goal is to almost exclusively fly “local” passengers. If they were relying mostly on connecting passengers, Philadelphia…
Requiem for AirTran A+ Rewards, the Program That Ends Today
Southwest acquired AirTran, and it’s been a long time in process but finally the A+ Rewards program closes down today. Many folks have already linked their accounts and transferred points. Those that didn’t have their points automatically moved over to the Rapid Rewards program. No doubt at the margins there will be some confusion, folks who did not have Rapid Rewards accounts surprised (after all the emails Southwest has been sending, no less) that they can’t access their accounts and don’t know where their points are. And with any large data migration project there will be mistakes, mostly folks that do have Southwest Rapid Rewards accounts but where addresses don’t match and so have new accounts created. No doubt some time on the phone will get that sorted. But what I want to do for…
Are Pets in Cabin Treated Better Than People — Because Airlines Make Big Money on The Fees?
Christopher Elliott writes about a girl flying on Sun Country to and from Los Angeles. in both directions see what seated near a passenger traveling with a dog. The young girl “suffers from pet allergies.” She apparently didn’t say anything on the outbound flight, and suffered from her allergies. She spoke up to the flight attendant on the return flight, and got assistance in changing seats. Sounds like a good solution and problem solved, but instead it becomes the basis for a humans versus animals in the sky piece, with passengers being treated badly by airlines. And for the obligatory Animal Farm reference…
