Last month Hilton removed the benefit promise of ‘high speed’ internet for elites from its terms and conditions. And now we know why. Hilton is going to introduce two-tiered internet access at its Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites, and Home 2 Suites brands. Basic internet will be free, but high speed access will be ~ $3.95 a day. And elites will have to pay if they want higher tiered access. If this was going to be higher speed than currently offered, while maintaining current free offerings, that would be fine — pay more to get more than you already receive. But I’m skeptical, why invest in what’s free when failing to do so becomes a revenue opportunity? As a guest I need access to internet wherever I go, and I bring my own…
Hyatt Will Buy Your Drinks, Passengers Will Bite You, and Southwest Shanghais American (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 30, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Drunk passenger kicks another traveler in the testicles, bites flight attendant. In court the passenger claimed she “would have calmed down if the cabin crew had left her alone.” So I guess it was their fault. The head of Hyatt’s Gold Passport program is buying drinks for Milepoint members. You can even win a free trip to Chicago to join in. TopCashBack’s 3% rebate on Hyatt reservations is ending in 3 days. Turns out they’ll be bumping the rebate up to 4% for about a week. Southwest is the big winner in the concessions the Department of Justice wrangled out of the American-US Airways merger. Not only did they pick up slots at New York LaGuardia, but they’re going to get to add 27 flights at Washington National…
The First US Airways Plane Has Been Repainted American
The first US Airways plane (an Airbus A319) has been painted in the ‘new’ American Airlines paintjob. Their process takes 10 takes to paint a paint, removing the existing paint, sanding, power washing, sealing, painting, and doing final touch ups. They use 80 gallons of paint on an A319. One of the reasons for keeping the ‘new’ American paint job is that there were plenty of American planes that had already been rolled out with it — 212 total mainline and Eagle planes, with 350 to go. Repainting all planes rather than just the un-repainted American planes and the US Airways planes would have been even more expensive, and taken planes out of service for more time. That the airline chose the cheaper option led me to wonder whether it was ‘really’ left up to…
Getting the Most Out of an American Airlines Award: Ultimate Guide to AAdvantage Rules
Three years ago I wrote an extensive guide to booking US Airways tickets. US Airways miles have been so easy to get, and their rules so opaque, that the guide was useful for many folks in figuring out what they could accomplish ‘within the rules’ of the program. Of course US Airways is unique in that agents manually apply regions to awards for pricing purposes, and routings are validated manually. Combined with a general lack of geographic knowledge, it has been possible to accomplish almost anything with US Airways miles if you’re persistent enough. Routing an Australia-US award via South America and Europe? Check! We already know that as part of the merger between US Airways and American, that the combined program will be American AAdvantage. A few days ago it was announced that when…
Up to 20% Off Virgin America Flights
Virgin America is offerig up to 20% off of flights through April 3 using promo code SPRING20. Take 10% off Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday flights, and enjoy 20% off Tuesday and Wednesday departures. Book by Thursday to travel February 25 to April 3. This offer ends at 4:00AM PT on January 30, 2014. Travel must occur between February 25, 2014 and April 3, 2014. …Promo code is valid for non-refundable Main Cabin only. Promo code is valid for a 10% discount off the base fare for travel on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and 20% discount off the base fare for travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Promo code is not applicable for travel on Sundays. Additional blackout dates are 3/21/14 – 3/22/14 and 3/28/14 – 3/29/14. …Promo code may only be used for bookings…
Virgin Atlantic May Have The Worst Miles, But There Are 8 Great Ways You Can Use Them
Best use of Virgin Atlantic miles: Virgin Atlantic may have one of the worst frequent flyer programs in the world, at least compared to major world airlines as opposed to regional players (I mean, I’d take Virgin’s miles over Frontier’s for instance). Their award chart is expensive (many flights take a whole lot of miles compared to what other airlines charge for the same itinerary). They add fuel surcharges onto award tickets, so you play a lot of miles and cash They have partner airline awards, but many of those are roundtrip one (no one ways) and you can’t mix and match partner airlines on a single itinerary. Virgin Atlantic’s miles aren’t even the best for redeeming travel on… Virgin Atlantic. Delta will let you redeem for travel on Virgin, and if you begin your…
The Most Important Things to See, Do, Eat, and Know When Visiting Washington DC
Meagan tweets, Excited to head to DC this weekend. Do any travel bloggers have tips/tricks/places I need to know? Giving tourist advice about your home town can be hard, at least it is for me, I’m not a tourist in DC — I live here. I’ve shown visitors around, for sure, and set up tours of the Capitol and whatnot. But it’s also easy to let the attractions blend into the background. So I had to give this a little bit of thought. Go to the Spy Museum. Just go. The rest of the museums are great, the Smithsonian unfortunately only displays something like 1% of its collection. You can’t miss Air and Space, or Museum of Natural History. The Newseum is worth seeing, and the Holocaust Museum is important. Get your tickets for that…
United Wants You Flying Singapore Airlines Coach Even Less Than You Do, Delta Will Shine Your Shoes, and American Will Sell You Your Status (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 28, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Singapore Airlines offers fantastic award availability to their own Krisflyer members (and American Express and Starwood points transfer well to Singapore) but very little long haul premium cabin space to their partners. Since you can’t book business and first class on Singapore using United miles anyway, it wasn’t such a big deal that United pulled Singapore Airlines award availability off its website and misled membes that it was somehow Singapore’s doing. Now it turns out that United is having trouble ‘seing’ Singapore Airlines coach award space for flights to and from the U.S.. But United promises it isn’t intentional. Chase is sending out targeted spending bonuses to their Hyatt Visa cardholders. How to Fly Spirit Airlines (A guide for the perplexed.) Delta is going to test making their…
American to Add Seats to Aircraft, Wants to Cramp Your Style Just Like Their Competitors Do
American is adding seats to aircraft, with a goal of becoming just as cramped as United and Delta. “The seating configurations we’re going to are the same number of seats on the 737, for example, that Delta has. We haven’t finished the analysis on the 777 yet, but it will be consistent with what airlines like Delta have,” Kirby said. …“We think it’s important to be competitive with United and Delta. You can have a premium product, but a premium product in markets where there is premium demand and customers who are willing to pay for it,” Kirby said. American’s MD80s already have had more seats added, and 737s will be getting more seats soon. Both of these moves were reported last June. Now they’re working out how they’ll add seats to their 777-200s as…
100,000 Mile Signup Bonus for Citi Executive American Airlines MasterCard
Last week I wrote about an offer for a 75,000 mile signup bonus for the Citi Executive / AAdvantage World Elite Mastercard. I applied and was approved for that card myself. It requires $7500 in spending within 3 months, comes with a $100 statement credit, and is the $450 annual fee card that includes American Airlines lounge membership. The card also offers 10,000 elite qualifying miles after $40,000 in spend during a year. In the comments to that post, reader MilesAbound noted that there seemed to be a 100,000 mile offer for the card out there. And it turns out that he was correct. Here’s the application link. 100,000 American Airlines miles after you make $10,000 in purchases within 3 months of account opening. $200 in statement credits on purchases within 12 months of account…
