There are several ways to figure out how much miles are worth. When I was growing up the rule of thumb used to be 2 cents, which was wrong on many levels but made intuitive sense to someone that hadn’t thought about points for very long: “25,000 miles pays for a $500 cross country ticket.” Of course not all tickets were cross-country, many tickets were less expensive, award travel gives up earning miles, using a domestic ticket as the benchmark ignored some of the best uses of miles, and of course capacity controls (and back then, even blackout dates) weren’t factored into the value. Award chart changes and tighter capacity certainly has changed the value of a mile since then. But how much are miles worth today? I’ve written in the past that the value…
The Most Important Things You Missed Over the Holiday Weekend
If you spent the long US holiday weekend mostly offline, you missed quite a bit in fact some of the better or more important things on View from the Wing in the past month. So I wanted to highlight a few posts. If you’ve been constantly clicking refresh waiting for new posts throughout the Thanksgiving respite, you can skip this! The Best Mileage Purchase Deal: US Airways share miles is back, offering points at a big over 1.1 cents apiece. How to Make Your Holiday Travel a Smoother Experience The Craziest Things People Have Done to Earn Miles How to Ensure Your Family Can Sit Together on a Flight “Fuel dumping” as a Tool to Reduce Airfare Prices, Explained What to Do if Your Frequent Flyer Account Gets Audited Six Things You Can Do to…
And the Winners of $1000 in Marriott Gift Cards Are…
Marriott is running a Cyber Monday sale today, 30% off of bookings made this Monday at ~ 350 participating Marriott hotels in North America for travel between December 20 and March 31. The deal is available here. And to promote it Marriott provided (2) $500 gift cards to give away to View from the Wing readers. I asked folks which sale property they’d like to visit. And I’ve now drawn the two winners with the help of random.org. They are: Winner #1 Claire wrote, The Marriott Marquis in NY Winner #2 Stephen wrote, JW Marriott New Orleans! Congratulations to you both, winners will be getting a note soon to arrange delivery of their prize. Thanks to all who entered, and enjoy some great deals out there for Cyber Monday! You can join the 30,000+ people…
American Express 33% Transfer Bonus to Hilton — And the One Time it Makes Sense to Do It
American Express Membership Rewards is running a 33% bonus on transfers to Hilton HHonors through January 31. This means that instead of transfer at a ratio of 1:1.5 you transfer at a ratio of 1:2. Frankly, you can normally get a 1:2 transfer ratio by transferring American Express points to Virgin Atlantic at 1:1 and from there to Hilton at 1:2. (And for that matter you can do the same with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, making Hilton a stealth transfer partner of Chase.) It’s even better to make the Hilton transfers when American Express is running a transfer bonus to Virgin. (One ended yesterday.) Of course, transferring directly to Hilton is faster and involves one less step. That said, I do not recommend it. I wasn’t even a huge fan of transferring to Hilton before…
How I Confused a Hotel into Giving Me a Free Suite Upgrade
An interesting thing happened on a recent stay at the Hyatt Regency Austin. I wound up with a ‘free’ upgrade to a suite with view of Lady Bird Lake and a patio. And I almost got kicked out of that suite! I’m not going to do a full review of the hotel, as I’ve already written about this property here and here (so didn’t feel the need to write about it after several subsequent stays, natch). Hyatt Gold Passport offers complimentary upgrades to Diamond members, but those upgrades exclude suites. Some hotels will give out available suites to diamonds if available anyway, but the program doesn’t promise it. If a Diamond wants a suite, they can confirm one at time of booking four times per year (for up to 7 nights on each stay) using…
This Week the Supreme Court Will Hear the Case of the Rabbi Kicked Out of His Frequent Flyer Program
Back in May I discussed the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case of the Rabbi whose Northwest account was closed for complaining too much. Ginsburg sued. His complaint was dismissed in federal district court on the basis that state law can’t be used to address airline price, route or service issues since those are pre-empted by the federal Airline Deregulation Act. A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling disagreed, and now the Supreme Court will hear the issue. Reader and attorney Eric M. Fraser updates us on the case, as it prepares to go to oral argument in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Eric M. Fraser is an appellate and antirust attorney with Osborn Maledon. He is an active flyer and reads View from the Wing to help keep his preferred status…
US Airways 100% Bonus on Sharing Miles is Back – the Best Mileage Purchase Offer Returns!
US Airways is offering up to a 100% bonus on shared miles (miles transferred between accounts) between December 2 and December 6. Don’t transfer points today (December 1) — wait until this promotion goes live. You can earn up to 50,000 bonus miles with the offer, which should appear instantly with the transfer. The cost for this is “$0.01 per mile plus a processing fee of $30 and a tax recovery charge of 7.5%” — transferring 50,000 miles from one account to another will deposit 100,000 in that account at a cost of $567.50. Since that’s a net increase of 50,000 miles you’re buying miles at $0.01135 per mile. At that price I’m a buyer. What I love about US Airways is awards in premium cabins on Star Alliance partner airlines, and a generally reasonable…
$25 Off $75 at Amazon.com from American Express
American Express is offering a $25 statement credit when you spend $75 or more on a single purchase. Sign into your American Express account and you may find this offer under the “My Offers” tab (that’s all I had to do). You can also tweet #AmexAmazon to register. You need to have synced your American Express card and twitter account. Be sure to register right away, before the offer disappears. If you don’t have an immediate $75 Amazon purchase, but want to lock in the $25 savings, just buy a $75 Amazon gift card. Then you can split the purchases of into amounts below $75, or make the purchase(s) at any time in the future. This is another example of American Express’ new partnership with Amazon.com that can even get you free Amazon Prime. (HT:…
Seats on a Plane: How to Make Sure You Can Sit Together During the Busy Holiday Travel Season
It can be really hard to get seats together for flights during the holidays. Flights are full. More families are traveling together so more people are trying to sit together (compared to solo business travelers). And more and more airlines are holding back the number of seats they assign for ‘free’. For most passengers, your ticket doesn’t come with a ‘seat’. Obviously that isn’t literally true, since safety rules require all passengers to be seated. But there’s a limited number of seats on the seat map that airlines will let passengers reserve in advance unless the passenger: is paying the exorbitant full fare is an ‘elite’ frequent flyer doing 25,000 miles or more a year (usually) on the airline pays a fee for a ‘premium’ seat which sometimes just means an aisle or being closer…
Bits ‘n Pieces for November 30, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Marriott is running a 30% off Cyber Monday sale this coming Monday, and has given me (2) $500 Marriott gift cards to give away to readers. Enter here, all you need to do is leave a comment. The Economist has a video explaining fuel dumping. Ihis journalist did reach out to me to talk about the phenomenon of dropping fuel surcharges out of international airfares in order to get lower prices, but it wasn’t a subject I was especially open to discussing. Early in the year I did write a post, though, explaining the basics of fuel dumping. The Singapore Airlines Cabin Crew Employment Application The stress of the holidays brings out the extreme narcissism of some travelers. And the public-spirited exhibitionism of others. Add in inflight wifi…
