Picking a Program, and When and How to Book What Program You Should Use Depends on the Destinations You Want to Redeem For The Myth of Booking Award Tickets at Midnight 330 Days Out Placing Award Reservations on Hold (Rather Than Ticketing Immediately) How to Book Awards to Australia and French Polynesia Program-specific Advice on Booking and Maximizing Awards Using US Airways Dividend Miles to Book Star Alliance Awards United’s Generous Award Routing Rules Add Free Segments to the End of an American AAdvantage Award Booking How to Make Delta Miles Work for You Improving Delta Award Itineraries When Schedules Change
Amtrak Northeast Offer: Free Summer Roundtrips for 2-3 Roundtrips in Winter
Amtrak Guest Rewards is offering free trips in addition to standard points earning for travel between January 4 and February 29. (Registration required separately for the Acela and for the Northeast Regional offer, for which you’ll need to be logged into your account. Three Acela trips earns a free Acela trip, and two Northeast Regional trips earns a free Northeast Regional, with free travel having to be taken between July 4 through August 30, 2012. Acela redemptions are subject to time restrictions on weekdays. The offer on the Amtrak Guest Rewards website only references the Acela deal, but Amtrak Guest Rewards representatives have communicated online that it applies even more generously to Northeast Regional trains. (Post updated thanks to commenter Cameron)
Don’t Forget to Add a Segment to the End of American AAdvantage Award Bookings
American Airlines and partner awards don’t allow ‘free’ stopovers (visiting an extra city along the way) except at the North American gateway city. Many airlines will let you stop over, say, in Tokyo on the way to Hong Kong or Bangkok. American Airlines will charge extra miles for this. (Unless you are using one of their distance-based oneworld awards which require flying two oneworld airlines other than American, which permit no changes to routing after issuance, and which do not allow flying on non-oneworld airlines.) The exception is that you can stopover in whatever North American city you leave the country from, or first return to. If you live in New York, you can fly New York – Tokyo – Singapore on Japan Airlines, come back Singapore – Hong Kong – New York. And you…
2012 Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminar Dates Announced
Rick reports that dates for the 2012 Chicago Frequent Flyer Seminar have been set: We have firmed up the dates for the 2012 Chicago Seminars. They are October 12, 13 and 14, 2012 back with our friends at the Holiday Inn Elk Grove Village. I have been assured that we will be able to book hotel rooms by the first of next week at the same rates as last year. I’ll surely be posting when rooms are available for booking. Rick will be co-organizing the event this year with The Points Guy, and I’ve been asked back to speak for a third time. (Lucky from One Mile at a Time has been as well.) Here’s a summary of one of the days at the 2011 event from Frequently Flying. Here’s how I described the logistics…
2500 Free Citi Thank You Points
I cancelled my Citibank Thank You Points-earning card about three years ago when they last devalued the program, I used to get 3 cents a point in value by booking domestic business class tickets then cancelling and retaining a credit that I would use towards other travel. By booking Delta tickets, I’d be able to split up the credit into multiple itineraries (and even use the credits not just for myself but – after the first ticket re-issue – for others as well). Back in the day Citi Thank You Points were even more valuable than that, since they didn’t cap the price of tickets they’d buy for you… .. but when the program basically became 1.25% cash back towards travel I became a whole lot less interested. However, in my December credit card churn…
Priority Club Increasing Points Requirements for Reward Nights on January 18
As reported by Live from a Lounge, Priority Club sent out their monthly e-statement with this ominous note, Effective 18 January 2012, Priority Club will make changes to the number of points required for Reward Nights. No clue as to what the changes would be were included. However, at this moment, the Priority Club Reward Night page brings up new award levels when using the Google Chrome browser, strangely when using Internet Explorer only the old rates come up. It’s not an across the board devaluation. Rather, whereas Priority Club has historically charged a single points level based on the brand of hotel you were redeeming for, and in recent years has added some segments within each brand (so that an Intercontinental might be 30,000 or 40,000 points). Now they’re adding greater segmentation: Candlewood Suites…
Reminder of All The Ways to Keep Up with View from the Wing
I want to make sure you get all of the best deals and opportunities I write about in 2012, obviously I think it’s worthwhile or else I wouldn’t be writing it. And hopefully you think it’s worthwhile, since you’re reading it! At least the vast majority of emails I get suggest that folks find my posts useful, and if you’re one of ten thousand or so a day checking in here then you may want to pick the easiest method for your own particular taste. You can follow me on Twitter Or friend me on Facebook You can of course bookmark the blog, or just type www.viewfromthewing.com into your web browser. There’s also an RSS feed for this blog, so you can subscribe via your favorite blog reader. I used to love Google Reader but…
News and Offers from Other Blogs
Delta Points describes how to get instant Delta Diamond status by prepaying $50,000 for travel which you’ll have three years in which to spend. Incidentally, in my experience with United and their “Pass Plus” program you can pre-pay $50,000 and get Global Services up front. It’s not mentioned online, but you can contact United and they’ll negotiate benefits with you in exchange for your payment. Mommy Points flags a United Mileage Plus promo, 500 bonus miles when you make a single purchase of $75 or more with any retailer at the Mileage Plus shopping portal. (No registration required.) Live from a Lounge says that Air India — whose invitation to join Star Alliance was suspending because it’s such a basket case — is apparently in talks again to join Star. Kingfisher joins oneworld next month,…
Award Booking Tip: Placing Award Reservations on Hold
Though I have an upcoming trip to the Maldives, I don’t have a ton of exciting travel to look forward to beyond that, at least exciting by the standard of flying international first class on a premium airline to an exotic destination, hopefully one I haven’t been to before. So this weekend I decided to start playing around with future trips. First I put an award on hold to the United Arab Emirates — American miles to fly Etihad first class (suites with doors!) to Abu Dhabi, then a business class hop over to Delhi and back, the though was to stay either at the Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi and/or Park Hyatt Dubai while in the U.A.E. I wasn’t sure if that especially appealed, but the ability to hold the award without committing was nice.…
Travel Technology Re-think
I’m working through my technology solutions for the year ahead and would love reader input. There are some travel items that I’m thoroughly happy with. I love my Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer laptop bag, it’s a great bag with plenty of room and the right pockets for me and it unclips to sail through the TSA without taking out my laptop. Sadly foreign countries that require laptops to come out don’t recognize “TSA Approved” laptop bags, even when they enforce “TSA Silly” liquid bans. I wish they’d follow the US lead in those few customer-friendly initiatives that exist, not just in the stupid ones. A laptop bag may not be electronic, but a good one fits my definition of travel technology. I’m happy with my five year old D-Link wireless pocket router, which has been…
