The Intercontinental Hotels Group Friends and Family Rate, open to everyone, has been extended. Through December 31 you can book the Friends and Family Rate at Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and affiliated brand hotels. The rates are prepaid, nonrefundable and technically shouldn’t earn points or stay credit but in practice usually do. You need to print and fill out the friends and family rate voucher, but it doesn’t need any aprovals or verifications. The hotel doesn’t always ask for it, but be sure to have it ready. Here’s an ongoing Flyertalk thread on the subject, now nearly 375 posts long. The offer was set to expire September 30, and I was on the verge of having to book a whole bunch of non-refundable reservations through next year to lock in the savings. Glad to…
American AAdvantage 1000 Mile Signup Bonus
Via Frugal Travel Guy, joining American AAdvantage using promo code LATJA by October 31 will earn 1000 bonus miles.
15% Off JetBlue Tickets
JetBlue is offering 15% off of tickets purchased by September 20 for travel through December 15 when you pay with American Express and use promo code AE15OFF. Travel must originate in New York (JFK), Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Long Beach, Orlando, Washington-Dulles, San Juan, Oakland, or Austin. And roundtrips are required, no one-ways. Travel from November 20 through November 30 are blacked out for the discount.
500 Free Priority Club Points
Priority Club is apparently offering 500 free points for answering four basic easy questions about its program. They’re multiple choice and if you get them wrong you get another chance. But you won’t get them wrong. Hint: it doesn’t take much to get benefits, all good benefits they list of course you get, they’re a big program. The offer was mentioned in this Flyertalk thread and says it was “posted on the PC Visa Chase community forum” — I don’t see any refernece to the offer being targeted, and when I took the ‘quiz’ I was then promised my 500 points. We’ll see if they post, but in my experience with Priority Club they usually do.
1000 Bonus Delta Miles for New Account Signup
Delta is offering 1000 miles for new members signing up for the Skymiles program. A good reason to sign up for an account if you don’t have one. And if you’re a Northwest Worldperks member without a Delta Skymiles account, sign up for one now and then your current Northwest miles will be merged with this new Delta account — and you’re 1000 miles richer.
US Airways’ New International Business Class Seat
Cranky Flier has the details on the new planned US Airways business class seat. It’s not best in class, but is certainly appears to be a huge improvement. It’ll be installed on the A330-200s over the next year (we’ll see if they keep to that schedule). The 767s will never get a retrofit, we’ll see when those get retired. And the A330-300s will get a slightly different seat, at some point, when they figure out what that means they’ll tell us. And the seat on the A330-200 will apparently not even be quite unform Now that picture above doesn’t look completely flat to me, but according to US Airways, the seat will go down into a 6′4″ or 6′8″ 180 degree flat bed depending upon which seat you have in the cabin. The seat width…
US Airways End of Year Fast Track to Elite Status
After United, American, and Continental all got on the double elite qualifying miles bandwagon, US Airways has come up with their own slightly different elite fast track. And it’s a fast track. Instead of doubling the miles you earn for the rest of the year and adding those to the miles you’ve already flown to determine elite status, they are just counting the miles you fly during the promotion period of October 1 through December 25. You can either earn status the ‘normal’ way based on total miles flown for the year, or based on flying a lower number of miles during the last quarter. It’s a fast track or challenge for everyone, and no registration is required. Here’s the reduced requirement: Fly 7,500 miles or 10 segments and earn Silver Preferred status Fly 15,000…
Conde Nast Travel’s 21 Twitterers to Follow
In the new issue of Conde Nast Traveler there’s a list of 21 Twitterers to Follow. Of course, the author @WendyPerrin, doesn’t list herself… Among the best suggestions is to follow RickSeany’s airport-specific tweets, @FlyFrom___ where ___ is your 3-letter airport code — for best fares out of your home airport. And of course it’s definitely worth following @globetrav, whom Flyertalkers know as Kiwi Flyer. Naturally I’m falttered to be included myself, @garyleff. The article describes me thusly Frequent-flier mileage and points advice, “mistake fares,” and assistance with creative ways of redeeming miles for free trips Hope you’ll follow me on Twitter!
50% Off Mileage Upgrades on ANA
Here I just have to turn the microphone over to Lucky, and just quote verbatim, because this offer is just too good for anyone with a few Amex points who miay be flying to Japan. Through the end of the year, ANA is reducing the number of miles required to upgrade from coach to business class. From New York to Tokyo one-way, for example, an upgrade will only be 14,000 miles instead of the usual 28,000 miles. Furthermore, the upgradeable fare classes are quite reasonable. I see $1,300 “S” class fares that can be upgraded under this promotion. Amex Membership Rewards points transfer to ANA, so $1300 and 28,000 Amex points should be enough for a roundtrip business class ticket from the US to Tokyo on ANA. Not bad!
Earn United e-Certificate Discounts Based on Your Number of Trips By the End of the Year
Busy day yesterday and Lucky beat me to the punch on this one — United has a new promotion, stackable with double elite qualifying miles (not to mention threshold bonuses), that will give you a progressively larger discount on a future flight based on the number of flights you take through the end of year. (Ticketing and travel must be between September 14 and December 31.) Qualifying trips E-certificate discount 1 5% 2 10% 3 20% 4 30% 5 40% 6+ 50% Registration requited.
