I was emailing yesterday with Ben and after discussing something on a completely different topic, and mentioned I needed to write about the addition of a new footnote in the US Airways award chart. He replied, “was *just* writing it as you emailed. Hah!” Of course Ben is a professional blogger and got his thoughts up right away. I, on the other hand, had my first day in a new office. I have been overseeing the construction and permitting (egads, it involved getting a County re-zoning), which all completed last week — just in time for move-in. So things were a little bit chaotic. And I’m about 16 hours behind. US Airways Updates Their Award Chart to Say Lufthansa First Class is Not Offered The US Airways partner award chart (.pdf) has been updated to…
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American Airlines Pilots Approve Transition Agreement for Merger with US Airways
Former American CEO Bob Crandall told the pilots they needed the details of a transition approved in advance. It had to be clear how the pilot work groups between American and US Airways would be merged, how seniority would work, and — he suggested — even what would happen to their pilot bases. They made clear that they agreed, it did need to be sorted in advance, and that was seen as a barrier to a merger happening prior to American exiting from bankruptcy. After all, US Airways’ pilots weren’t able to agree on these issues amongst themselves after the America West merger. The work groups still haven’t merged. Was this all going to be universally agreed-upon in the coming weeks? Apparently it looks like that may have already happened. The American Airlines pilots union…
Reducing the Cost of Delta Skymiles One-Way Awards
While we’re on the subject of getting the most out of Delta Skymiles, I wanted to point out that it’s possible to get one-way awards for less than the published price on their award charts. First, some context. United, American, and British Airways (among other programs) offer one-way awards for half the cost of a roundtrip. Alaska Airlines and Aeroplan offer one-way awards for half roundtrip cost only on their own flights and not on partners. US Airways and Delta do not.allow one-ways at all for a discount, they charge the full roundtrip award even if you only fly one-way. Different programs have different features, and this in and of itself isn’t an indictment of the program. But I do find it to be a real drawback, since I can’t combine Delta miles one-way with…
Top Eight Best Uses of Delta Skymiles
What do Delta Skymiles redeem for? I give Delta Skymiles a hard time, and deservedly so. I’m known as the guy who coined the term ‘Skypesos’ for their currency, on the whole their miles are worth less than miles in the United, American, and US Airways frequent flyer programs. They’re harder to use. They don’t permit one-way awards for half the cost of roundtrip (neither does US Airways). Their agents are clueless, their award booking website offers limited partners and is generally quite broken. International first class awards aren’t allowed. But because I give such a hard time to Skypesos, I also feel like I have a special responsibility to help figure out how to make the most of them. And I’m the first to say that the miles you should collect and use very…
My Points.com Amtrak Points Posted — And I’ve Already Redeemed
This morning I blogged about points.com offering crazy good transfers of Priority Club points into Amtrak, so good you’d even potentially make money by buying Priority Club points and then transferring those points. It seems that Points.com was offering about 10 times as many Amtrak points per Priority Club point as they had intended to, and they quickly pulled the option. They even cancelled several of the transfers that had already been made. It’s hard to complain too much when they react within a matter of hours. Their cancellation emails could have been a little bit better, though: Thank you for performing an exchange transaction on Points.com. Unfortunately, your exchange has been cancelled as we were unable to process it. If you would like to try again, please visit Points.com. They ‘were unable to process’…
Suites, Treats, and Eats, a Malaysian Mileage Thanksgiving: Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles
Introduction: Constructing — and Re-constructing — the Award Trip American Eagle DC – New York and the New Nicest JFK Airport Hotel, the Hilton Cathay Pacific First Class, JFK – Hong Kong The Wing lounge in Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong – Kuala Lumpur Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Kuala Lumpur – Langkawi The Andaman Langkawi Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Langkawi – Kuala Lumpur Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur Things to See and Do in Kuala Lumpur Korean Airlines First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles It was a short walk from the lounge, down the escalator and over to our gate at the very end of the terminal. The first line encountered wasn’t for…
Great Deal: Double the Value of Your Priority Club Points Today
Update: Deal is dead. Some folks have received cancellation emails as well. Points.com is almost never a ‘good deal’ — the website lets you transfer points from one frequent flyer program to another, but almost always at a substantial devaluation — often greater than 90%. I would use the site about once a year to earn a partner activity credit in the US Airways grand slam promotion, perhaps transferring about 4 American Airlines miles into 1 US Airways miles. The idea there was any activity with Points.com moving a mile into US Airways would count towards a bigger bonus. Sadly that promotion didn’t come back this year, and I’m quite confident I didn’t use Points.com in 2012. There are occasionally really good values — arbitrage opportunities — and years ago I would earn eBay Anything…
Suites, Treats, and Eats, a Malaysian Mileage Thanksgiving: Korean Air First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul
Introduction: Constructing — and Re-constructing — the Award Trip American Eagle DC – New York and the New Nicest JFK Airport Hotel, the Hilton Cathay Pacific First Class, JFK – Hong Kong The Wing lounge in Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong – Kuala Lumpur Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Kuala Lumpur – Langkawi The Andaman Langkawi Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Langkawi – Kuala Lumpur Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur Things to See and Do in Kuala Lumpur Korean Air First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles After a 50 minute straight shot out to the airport we were at KLIA again, and walked straight up to the Korean Air check-in counter. The check-in process was…
New ‘Official’ 40,000 Point Signup Bonus for the US Airways Mastercard
US Airways Premier World MasterCard® 40,000 miles after first purchase I’ve been touting the 40,000 point signup bonus for the US Airways Mastercard for awhile, the link I’ve been using has been www.mostmiles.com/chairman. Because it’s been the best available offer, 40,000 points after first purchase and fee waived the first year. Every time I post about this, I get questions. Because the web page says it is an “Exclusive Offer for Chairman’s Preferred Members Only” — people who fly 100,000 miles or more on US Airways each year. Although I had no problem getting the card using that offer, and I am not a US Airways elite member. And I haven’t heard of others with difficulties either. The application page recently changed to say that it was only for US Airways employees. It asked applicants…
The Hotel Rate Ethicist: Corporate Discount Codes, and Your Advice Needed on Whether I Should Renew AAA Membership?
I’ve had AAA membership for awhile, largely because I book AAA rates at hotels frequently. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked for proof of membership at check-in, however. The Hilton and Hyatt websites both ask you to enter AAA numbers when making reservations online, they don’t check that an account is currently active but presumably check to see that the digits are plausible. AAA rates aren’t always the best, for instance there are often better corporate rates where if you were an employee of a given company you’d be entitled to a lower negotiated rate — which sometimes codes with added benefits like free or discounted parking, or a much more generous cancellation policy than standard reservations (such as 6pm on day of arrival rather than day prior to check-in). I’ve never been asked…
