American Express Platinum may have lost access to American and US Airways lounges a few weeks ago and will be losing guest privileges at Delta lounges May 1, but there’s a growing network of lounges that the card does get access to. This month Citibank will give American club lounge day passes to Amex Platinum cardholders. Increasingly though you don’t need to belong to one airline’s club network in order to have lounge access. United’s clubs are off-limits to credit card holders of a bank other than Chase with a lounge access product. And American’s and US Airways’ lounges have been withdrawn from the Priority Pass program. But there are independent pay-in lounges, there are lounges operated by banks, and there are lounge networks like Priority Pass (and sister program Lounge Club). In fact, The…
Uber Reducing New Member Referral Credits In Two Weeks
Since I’ve covered Uber extensively in the past, I thought it worth flagging that Uber: Appears to be cracking down on being able to stack new member referral credits with promotion codes (generally you have to choose one or the other, otherwise they’ll remove the latter from your account). (HT: Deals We Like) Is reducing new member referral credits from $20 to $10 after April 25. That means using a referral credit a couple of weeks from now will only get you $10 towards your first ride (and only get the person who refers you $10 as well). Here’s the email I received from Uber on this second point: One last opportunity for double referrals* — score $20 in Uber credit for every friend that takes a ride before April 25th with your invite code.…
Getting Taxed On Your Miles? Here’s How to Dispute It
This is the last weekend before tax day. I finished most of my tax return but I haven’t filed it yet. I do it myself with tax software, rather than going to a professional, because anyone who will do taxes for someone like me isn’t someone I would trust to do my taxes. I’d rather use the software, put together by real experts, than have someone not in a position to work on more lucrative accounts than mine working on my account. Here’s some important tax advice for mileage junkies. While in the U.S. frequent flyer miles are not generally taxed (even though theoretically miles earned through business travel, or business expenses charged to your credit card and reimbursed, could be) there is an exception — prizes you win, or incentives you receive that aren’t…
What’s On Your Mind?
This is a Friday afternoon open thread, I would love to hear what you’re thinking. What have your travels been like this week? What are you wondering, or what would you like to know? Booked any great awards? How’s your team doing? The comments are yours to do with as you wish, please express yourself, and I may drop in here or there with answers or use your suggestions as a jumping-off point for posts. Hope you’re preparing to have a fantastic weekend ahead! 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!
The Only Two Things You Should Redeem Your Points For
Depending on your purchase patterns, the new Amex Everyday Preferred card may be a better Membership Rewards points-earning card than the Premier Rewards Gold (since it has bonus categories but also a 50% bonus on all points earned with 30 swipes in a month). The one really valuable use for Membership Rewards points is transfers to airline miles. For instance, they partner with Singapore Airlines and Singapore offers outstanding premium cabin award availability to their own Krisflyer members (albeit with fuel surcharges). they partner with ANA whose distance-based award chart can be extremely valuable, including business class JFK – London roundtrip for just 63,000 points (again, with fuel surcharges). There are millions of things you can do with Membership Rewards points. Most of those things are bad. With the Everyday card, they’ve found much greater…
Staples Rebate on Gift Cards and Sexy Flight Attendant Uniforms (Bits ‘n Pieces for April 11, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: LAX appears to be violating federal law by diverting some of its revenue to the LA Police Department 85 Thoughts Everyone Has at the Airport (HT: P.C.) Buy $300 or more in Visa gift cards at Staples and get a $20 Visa prepaid card between April 13 and 19; after Easy Rebate; limit one per household. This is stackable with the $20 back at Staples on a $100 purchase American Express offer. Japanese low cost carrier Skymark Airlines has new flight attendant uniforms. And they’re controversial. (HT: sobore on Milepoint) Inside United’s new lounges in London 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…
TSA Refuses to Let a Mute Stroke Victim Fly Because She Can’t Speak Her Name
A woman who left mute by a stroke she had 10 years ago was set to fly from Los Angeles to Phoenix. Her drivers license was expired. The TSA document checker insisted she state her name, but she couldn’t, because she’s mute. So she wasn’t allowed to fly. A TSA representative says “it could have been handled differently by the family” (along with the TSA itself) and that it won’t happen to this family next time because they now know about the special programs the TSA offers for disabled people. Apparently document checkers are not required to know about such programs, however. The problems began when Heidi, who was left wheelchair-bound and unable to speak or write after a stroke a decade ago, was stopped by the Transportation Security Administration due to an expired driver’s…
Gogo Internet Spies for the NSA, Italian Cronyism Shuts Down Emirates, and New Award Space Alerts (Bits ‘n Pieces for April 10, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: I’ve been a huge fan of gogo inflight internet, I’m so much more productive as a result, it makes my life so much easier since I’m no longer hopelessly behind when I land. In fairness I thought it was worth highlighting the news that gogo has apparently built in special accommodations to allow NSA monitoring of its traffic, far beyond what’s required by law. My guess is that this was a trade to get permissions to even operate its service (victims of blackmail, essentially). But do know you’re being watched. Italian airlines (with the support of Delta) sued to block Emirates from flying New York – Milan. And they won in an administrative court, which rules that fifth freedom rights cannot be granted to a non-EU nation. Emirates…
Here’s Why I Still Trust American AAdvantage. Should You?
This week American AAdvantage made several changes to its program: Rolling out a new three-tier pricing model for AAnytime awards (paying extra miles when regular award seats aren’t available). Eliminating free stopovers on international awards at the North American gateway city Eliminating distance-based oneworld explorer awards Increasing the telephone booking fee from $25 to $35 (they still do not waive this fee for awards that cannot be booked online, and most airline partner awards cannot be).
One Change American AAdvantage Now Must Make
American is going to have to change its award ‘routing rules’ — a perhaps unintended consequence of yesterdays announced changes. Without changes, members are going to face some absurd results. As American and US Airways integrate, they’re looking at each element of both frequent flyer programs to figure out what to keep and what to change. While I’m not surprised at the loss of distanced-based oneworld explorer awards, one thing that now must change as a result are American’s award routing rules. One of the more arcane rules of AAdvantage award travel is that you cannot connect in a third region — award travel between two regions cannot touch a third region unless a specific exception is in place. So you cannot fly from the US to Asia via Europe.. You have to fly direct…
