Via Traveling Better: Effective October 1, 2014, AA will no longer through check bags when the passenger presents separate tickets at the ticket counter except as noted below. …Customers traveling on separate tickets will only be able to through check bags when the ticket is for travel on: American Airlines and American Eagle US Airways and US Express oneworld partner airline For all other carriers ticketed separately, bag will only be checked for the AA, US or oneworld partner flight. The customer will need to recheck their bags with the other carrier for the continuing travel. Department of Transportation rules that went into effect in July 2012 mean that a customer pays one set of fees for their entire journey, and ultimately limits how much an airline is keeping of their own fees when checking…
Why Can’t JFK (and New York) Get Better Hotels?
Barbara DeLollis notes that bringing on New York hotels is really, really hard not least of which because of labor negotiations. The old 487-room Ramada Plaza hotel has been closed for 5 years. The property is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey which doesn’t help matters. And they haven’t been able to come to terms on a labor agreement. Hotels in New York, and many Northeastern cities (and to a certain extent California) are faced with highly restrictive union agreements that play out in some interesting ways. A hotel may have to close down an entire service like a restaurant or room service in order to re-negotiate labor conditions or wages — lay off workers since the service is no longer offered and then bring the service back under new…
A Great Deal Comes Crashing Down: The End of Lifetime Star Alliance Gold Status
When Aegean Airlines joined Star Alliance about four years ago it offered the easiest path towards top tier Gold status within the alliance. Indeed, what they’ve been offering is lifetime Star Alliance Gold status. They’d give you 1000 miles just for signing up. Then if you earned 19,000 more qualifying miles within the first year you’d earn Gold status. For life. With the only caveat being that you had to keep your account active by earning a qualifying mile every three years. (There were occasionally signup bonuses that would do 2000 miles, which count towards status.) Things got a little harder with US Airways leaving the Star Alliance. US Airways flights all earned 100% of flown miles when crediting to Aegean. Discount United miles only earned 50% credit. Still, for lifetime status many found it…
Where to Buy Money Orders and Earn Miles
There have been plenty of opportunities to generate lots of miles, ‘tricks’ if you will, over time — like buying savings bonus with a credit card from the federal government, buying travelers checks from AAA, and buying coins from the US mint (see among other posts here, here, and here). But there have never been as many – or as complicated – tricks as you are today. People try to “buy money with money” and earn points in the process, which keeping costs as low as possible. Thanks to the Durbin Amendment to Dodd-Frank financial reform, we’ve mostly seen the end of mileage-earning debit cards… but we’ve also seen: The costs to a bank to offer traditional accounts rise (and offsetting profit opportunities on those accounts fall) Which leaves more people outside of traditional banking…
Free Points, a Suggestion for Every Hotel, and a Huge Congratulations!!
News and notes from around the interweb: Former Frequent Traveler University speaker Chris Guillebeau’s new book on quests and lessons learned from visiting every country in the world, which I wrote about two weeks ago, has debuted at number 3 on the new York Times’ bestseller list! Congratulations Chris! Definitely check out The Happiness of Pursuit! Low hanging fruit: It makes sense why hotels that charge for internet require you to log in for access. But I don’t understand why hotels offering free wifi make you log in. Just a thought about how to make travelers’ lives better in a small way but that would improves things at the margin every day. 1000 free Best Western points The government has shut down the original Chinatown bus line The first American Airlines retrofitted Boeing 777-200 with…
I’d Like to Share Some Personal Thank You’s — and Related Observations
The Samsung Galaxy S5 really does take good photos, even in low light and even with someone at the controls who cannot do more than point and shoot (and isn’t great at holding steady). And Las Vegas is beautiful at night… from a distance. View from Mix at the Delano Many thanks to Randy Petersen and his staff for hosting a great weekend conference on blogging. Thanks to Lucky from One Mile at a Time, to Summer from Mommy Points, and Ed from Pizza in Motion for great conversations as always. It was wonderful to re-connect with folks like Jetsetter’s Homestead and Chris McGinnis, and finally meet others like Head for Points and Travel is Free. Congratulations to Heels First Travel for being added as ‘featured’ at BoardingArea.com. The speakers — from Google, USA Today,…
American Express Centurion Lounge Las Vegas – the Original is Still Very Good
I receive compensation for many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, and other banks are advertising partners of this site. I do not write about all credit cards that are available — instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). I’m a big fan of American Express Centurion lounges in US airports, which I get complimentary access to as a Platinum Card from American Express cardholder. I was in Las Vegas the past couple of days, and I stopped off in the lounge on arrival for a quick bit to eat and freshen up, and on departure for a meal so that I wouldn’t have to rely on…
A Better Mileage Deal than Others are Writing About, and Time to Book Air China Award Tickets Again!
News and notes from around the interweb: Aeroplan had a glitch booking tickets with Air China that prevented making bookings But that’s been resolved. Gogo inflight internet is pretty good about giving you make-goods when you complain.. How to keep Spirit Airlines miles from expiring Since I saw mentions elsewhere of earning 30 United miles per dollar ordering flowers, it seemed worth mentioning that you can get 30 United miles plus 250 mules from FTD, or a flat 1500 miles if you make an order small enough. Even better you can still earn 30 American miles per dollar at FTD and American AAdvantage elites get 100 miles on top of that. Frequent Traveler University will be in Amsterdam November 21-23 You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day —…
Travel Tips to Save Money, Earn Miles, And Fly for Free
In early July I wrote a post about the most useful and interesting developments in miles and points over the previous month> It turns out, surprisingly, that the feature was really popular, at least judging by the emails I got — people that don’t read the blog every day really appeciated the recap and not having to dig through all of the posts to find the most enduring ones. I didn’t do a similar feature in August, but I thought I’d revisit the 170 posts I wrote in August. I hope you were happy with some of the posts and got something out of them. These are some that were my favorites from August. Saving money Always enter car rental confirmation numbers into AutoSlash for free and easy savings. Get instant free status from Avis…
Two New Hotel Sites Get You Better Rooms for Less Money
AutoSlash for Hotels Monitors Prices and Upgrades Point Hacks writes about new pay service Stay Angel which will: Keep checking your hotel reservations for price drops Compare your bookings against better rates at online travel websites to identify opportunities for best rate guarantee claims (and submits the claims for you) Identify when prices of suites drop to close to your room rate in case you want to buy up. They monitor Hilton, Starwood, and Hyatt. And they also flag big price movements, letting you know when hotels that they track are at least 50% below their normal price. (See also How to Find Airline and Hotel Mistake Fares.) There’s a free membership and a free trial for their premium service. The free account only tells you when your reservation has been upgraded, and alerts you…
