Oddly enough, with United’s big devaluation that goes into effect February 1, there are actually some awards that are getting cheaper. Did you know that even the price of some first class partner awards have gone down? After the devaluation announcement, after looking at the increases that United is pushing through (including of its standard award chart), I compared United’s new award chart to American’s and Delta’s. These comparisons were of awards to and from North America, though. Flyers in some other parts of the world, traveling to some destinations, will actually see decreases. Most of my readers are based in North America, so lot of good that does you, right? Well, sometimes putting together complicated award trips all over the world you might find yourself needing a one-way award flight between Central Asia and…
Up to 2500 Bonus Miles (10x Per Dollar) Through American’s Shopping Portal
The American Airlines AAdvantage Shopping portal is offer a holiday shopping bonus that will give you an extra 10 points per dollar at each spending threshold. There is no minimum spending requirement on a given purchase, they will take your total spending between November 12 and December 2 and add it together to see what threshold bonus you qualify for. No registration is required. Some current lucrative offers are Magazines.com at 20 miles per dollar, Nordstrom and Sephora at 12 miles per dollar, and Restaurant.com gift certificates at 11 miles per dollar. 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…
25% Off Most Qatar Flights Through Wednesday
New oneworld airline Qatar is running a 25% off sale on both economy and business class tickets. Qatar flies to Washington Dulles, New York JFK, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and Houston. You have to purchase tickets by November 13th, and the deal is valid for travel through June 19. There are blackout dates: 8th – 23rd December 2013 2nd – 12th January 2014 Itineraries originating in Doha or terminating in Doha are not eligible (unless the itinerary originates in Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, or Yemen), you need to use Doha as a connecting city only. Qatar’s flights between Bali and Singapore and between Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires aren’t eligible either. A three day minimum stay is required, and a maximum stay of one month is allowed…
Join Me for a Web Chat Tomorrow with the Guardian Newspaper Online
The Guardian is hosting me for a live chat about making the most of your miles and points, and tips for holiday travel, at noon Eastern tomorrow. Have you ever used credit card points to pay for a taxi? Do your frequent flyer miles end up spent on magazine subscriptions the day before expiration? Credit card rewards and airline points, like coupons or spare change, can languish unnoticed and gathering dust, when they ought to be smartly used to save a bundle. Gary Leff, travel expert and blogger at View from the Wing, will talk with Emma Keller about how to read the fine print and turn points into tangible rewards. Apparently my chat session precedes the Guardian’s NSA chat. That one will probably be pretty popular. Hope you’ll join me. You can join the…
Why Delta’s Increased Mileage Prices for Awards are Good for Members of All Programs, Everywhere
Delta’s Untrustworthy and Frequent Changes to Award Pricing I gave Delta a pretty hard time on Friday for announcing changes to their award chart effective immediately, for travel between February and May. They had previously announced award chart changes for travel beginning in June. The clear implication at the time was that we could use the current award prices for travel until June. But they didn’t stick to that. And as is Delta’s practice they made the changes immediately, with no notice to their members. I do not think Delta is honest about what customers can expect and I find absolutely zero credibility in their claim that they are legally precluded from providing their members with advance notice of changes. Other airlines do it. Delta has done it in the past (what’s more their SEC…
20% Bonus on Most Points Transfers to Air Canada’s Aeroplan
Aeroplan is offering up to a 20% bonus when converting other partner program points into their miles. Registration not required. You can earn up to 25,000 bonus miles when you convert points over to Aeroplan by December 9. At each threshold the bonus is 20%, but you don’t get bonus points for amounts in between each bonus level. This bonus doesn’t require a single transfer to be as large as a bonus threshold. Aeroplan will count the total miles transferred in from eligible partners when calculating the bonus you earn. Hotel partners, Hertz, and points.com are eligible for the transfer bonus. Diners Club Club Rewards is eligible, but other credit card partners like American Express Membership Rewards are not. If you use Points.com, only exchanges are eligible for the bonus and not points trades with…
In All My Years of Travel, a New Hotel Mistake for the First Time
I’ve stayed at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables several times this year, and I’ve written about it a couple of times here and here. It’s a good solid hotel for what it is, I find it convenient to the Miami airport (it’s not an airport hotel) and friendly staff. They take care of Gold Passport Diamond members well, with good upgrades (the two reviews above involved complimentary upgrades to junior suites) and good breakfast beenfits (they let you take your breakfast benefit via room service if you wish). So imagine my surprise when I showed up there recently with no reservation. I’ve made some booking mistakes in the past. Four and a half years ago I showed up at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok with a reservation for the wrong month. And I’ve turned up…
Hyatt is Increasing Prices for Award Nights and Upgrades – But It’s Only Really Bad for 6 Hotels
I choked a little at first — Hyatt is changing their award chart, too? They’re the program that has resisted award chart inflation while all of the other programs substantially devalued over the past year. I’ve long said that the best values never stay quite as valuable over time, so enjoy them while they’re around. It doesn’t surprise me that Hyatt is making changes. And for most people the changes aren’t all that bad — they seemed a whole lot less bad than I thought at first once I was able to stick the changes into spreadsheets and dig into them. But here are the top-line key changes: 27 hotels go up in category, 17 hotels go down in category The price of category 5 hotel standard rooms go up 11%, the price of category…
How to Override Your Hotel’s Thermostat Controls and Make it as Cool or Hot As You’d Like
Hotel thermostat hack: As the sun beats down on my room in the late afternoon, I wanted to crank the a/c up and set the temperature lower than the hotel normally allows it to go. So I pulled up this four year old post where I passed along a tip for how to override your hotel’s thermostat. Holding down the “display” button While holding that button, press “off” Release off, continue to hold down display, and Press the “up” arrow button Release all buttons And I did just that. The thermostat read “VIP” and I was able to adjust it all the way down to 60. But since it’s almost 2014 now, someone else did me one better. They created a YouTube video of themselves pushing the buttons, which may make the tip even clearer.…
Class Action Fuel Surcharge Lawsuit Against British Airways Going Forward
Last summer I wrote that a law firm was preparing a class action suit against British Airways over fuel surcharges. The case was filed and a federal judge has refused to dismiss it. Fuel Surcharges Briefly Explained Award passengers are frequently shocked to learn that their ‘free’ mileage ticket costs as much as $1000 in cash when redeeming points of certain frequent flyer programs. Fuel surcharges are a fixed amount of money added to a fare. The amount will usually be the same across all fares for a given city pair. In other words, all “New York – London” fares that an airline publishes will add the same amount for fuel surcharge. Fuel surcharges are an easy, efficient way for airlines to alter their airfares across a given market. They can change one number —…
