john said, I have an upcoming trip to MLE on CX using AA award. I’m having a hard time getting excited as the HKG to CMB leg is in old school regional business class and arrives in CMB at 23:00. There is a 9 hour layover in CMB before the morning flight to MLE. What do you do in CMB with a 9 hour layover in CMB? I wish there was a better way to get to MLE. John is using his American Airlines miles to fly Cathay Pacific to Colombo, Sri Lanka. He actually wants to go to the Maldives, but that can be a bit of a challenge. There aren’t that many flights in and out of Male, the capital, on ‘alliance’ carriers — those you can use your miles for most of…
Citibank “Two Browser Trick” Dead (or on Life Support)
Reader Mike points me to the ongoing Flyertalk discussion of Citibank’s American Airlines co-branded credit card offers. While I haven’t tried this myself as it hasn’t been 18 months since signing up for my last American Airlines credit card (conventional wisdom is that’s about how long you need to wait between applications to get the bonus again), discussion starting at post 4,199 in that thread seems to suggest that the ‘two browser trick’ may no longer work. The practice has been that if you applied for two similar Citibank products at the same time, such as two American Airlines personal credit cards (say, a Visa and an American Express) that you could get approved for both. That way, if using a 50,000 mile signup offer, you could net 100,000 miles. Several reports over the past…
Who Gets Access to United’s Economy Plus?
Chad said, If I have Turkish Airlines Gold Status (Star Alliance Gold), do I qualify for Economy Plus seating on United? Uniteds website won’t allow me to change seats without a fee even if I have my Turkish Airlines gold number in my profile. When United first introduced Economy Plus — 3 to 4 extra inches of legroom in the coach cabin — they made it available to their own elite members as well as Star Alliance gold members and passengers traveling on full fare tickets. They found some success in selling the seats at a premium and stopped allowing free access to Star Alliance Golds such as Turkish Elite members. They even stopped allowing free economy plus seats to full fare passengers — which led to some really absurd results. For a time a…
Answering Reader Questions: The Mystery Surrounding “Fuel Dumps”
There were a ton of great questions in yesterday’s open thread, and I will slowly work my way through them. I don’t promise answers to every question, and of course some of the comments weren’t questions at all or even close to on topic for this blog. But that’s ok, I asked what’s on your mind, it’s given me a ton of food for thought. The questions I think will be of broad interest to my readers I’ll try to give some public answers to. And of course I do my best to answer reader e-mail as well. Eric FD said, discuss the ‘fuel dumping’ fare tricks often secretly discussed on FT/MilePoint trick-it forums. i hate the secrecy there – can you shed some light? There’s a great deal of secrecy surrounding the concept of…
Monday Open Thread
What’s on your mind? Share it in the comments.
A Lovely Stay NOT in a Suite at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco
I posted about downgrade experience at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco and about getting compensation at check-in. It turned out to be a pretty get stay, though, with an excellent club lounge. And the points I was given for the hotel not honoring my confirmed suite upgrade were worth more, to me, than the suite would have been. So I don’t hold a grudge at all. I just wish it had been a smoother, more proactive process on the part of the hotel instead of having to argue. Instead of a suite I had a ‘club floor’ room with a balcony. Not bad. I’m not sure the difference between a club floor room and a regular room, club rooms are not on the same floor as the club lounge. But you need your key card…
American Express Running Targeted 50% Transfer Bonus from Membership Rewards to Starwood
American Express Membership Rewards seems to be doing more targeted transfer bonuses recently. Not a trend I much like to see (well, I suppose I shouldn’t mind as long as I’m being targeted!). I received an email this afternoon about a 50% bonus on transfers from Membership Rewards to Starwood Preferred Guest. Still not in my view worth doing. It goes from taking 3 Membership Rewards point to get 1 Starpoint to 2 Membership Rewards points per Starpoint. When I get these offers I’ve started to copy the link into a different browser, one where American Express doesn’t know who I am, to see whether the bonus comes up and is thus available to everyone or not. This time, no dice. It’s available on my account, it may be available on your account, but seems…
Are Airports What’s Wrong With Travel — And A Symbol of What’s Wrong Everywhere?
Seth Godin writes about 10 things organizations can learn from airports. The lessons for organizations may be right, or more right than wrong in many cases, but the underlying understanding of airports seems off the mark to me. Godin seems not to like (1) commodity products, whose production is (2) intertwined with several bureaucracies (FAA, TSA, airports authority) in conjunction with highly a regulated industry (commercial aviation). But I find that airports are surprising diverse, and while many remain soulless places run by bureaucrats and featuring little innovation there is tremendous variation — geographically (there are some amazingly impressive airports in Asia, like Singapore and Seoul-Incheon) and in terms of innovation (Dallas Fort Worth is trying to do a lot to make their experience more pleasant, Miami is making a ton of infrastructure investments without…
Hyatt Confirmed Suite Upgrades: What Do You Do If You’re Downgraded?
Earlier in the month I surveyed the various hotel programs and their ability to get you into suites and upgraded rooms using points, not just status. The two best programs for this are Starwood Preferred Guest and Hyatt Gold Passport. In fact, Hyatt is insanely generous. If you’ll book the ‘Hyatt Daily Rate’ then you can confirm a suite, at time of booking, for up to four nights, for just 6000 points. I asked a bit later, why ever stay in a regular room at Hyatt? Here’s how much more generous Hyatt is with suite upgrades (with points, available even to general non-elite members) than the second best program for suites, Starwood: [W]hile a hotel like the Westin Tokyo will cost an extra 20,000 Starpoints per night for a suite, confirmed only five nights in…
Retailers Can Charge Consumers More to Pay With Credit Cards Starting Tomorrow — And Why It’s Much Ado About Little
There have been tons of stories the past couple of days, across television and all sorts of media, about credit card processing fees starting tomorrow. Except, the scary headlines don’t match the reality. We’ll see very few changes tomorrow. This all stems from a settlement reached between retailers and Visa and Mastercard this past summer which will allow retailers to add a surcharge to Visa and Mastercard transactions. But most won’t because in many cases the surcharges are worth it to the retailer: companies get money right away, deposited straight into their account when processing credit cards, and without the risk that a check bounces; consumers paying by credit card tend to spend more money per transaction; credit card transactions also reduce the likelihood of employee theft significantly compared to cash transactions. And the charges…
