I find the single most difficult award to get from North America is flying to Australia and New Zealand. It used to be easy, fortunately for me, because I have family there. For the past couple of years it’s been truly the needle in a haystack exercise. Not that many years ago United offered a brief period where every flight had the full first class cabin available on points, but that was a glitch. More often than not there’ll be seats opening on United when the schedule loads, perhaps a single first class award and a couple of business seats, and those go quickly. Randomly across the schedule as time progresses more seats will open, but any given flight may be very tough to get. Expertflyer automatic searches and email alerts are very useful here.…
50,000 Miles (or More!) for a Continental Airlines Mastercard, No Fee the First Year
There’s a new all-time best offer for the Continental Airlines Mastercard, 50,000 miles after first purchase and no fee the first year. (HT: Rick.) Continental and United have merged. Next year the frequent flyer programs will be combined. So there’s no reason to wait for a better offer for the Continental card. You can usually only get the signup bonus for each Chase credit card only once, if you haven’t had a Continental Mastercard before now is certainly the time to get one because the product will cease to exist in less than a year. And of course your Continental and United mileage balances are going to be merged, so even if you’re just a United person you should consider grabbing these 50,000 miles because they’ll be added to your Mileage Plus balance down the…
80% Bonus on First-time Transfers from American Express to Delta
I recently wrote about the 30% bonus on transfers from American Express Membership Rewards to Delta Skymiles and the 50% transfer bonus that folks are eligible for if they’ve never made a transfer before. Both offers require registration. MilesQuest reports that the bonuses are stackable. If you register for both of them, and you’ve never transferred from American Express Membership Rewards to your Delta account before, you’ll earn an 80% bonus (through March 31). Plus if you transfer 50,000 points or more from American Express, you’ll earn 25,000 elite qualifying miles. Now, if it’s me I’m probably not making the transfer for an 80% bonus (which I wouldn’t be eligible for anyway, because I have made some small transfers in the past). But it’s a lot more tempting than the usual offers, for sure.
250 Free American Airlines Miles Just for Joining Best Western Rewards
Best Western is offering 250 American Airlines miles just for signing up for their frequent guest program. You need to set your “earnings preference” to American miles by April 11 to earn the free miles. (Hat tip: MilesQuest.)
Using Delta Upgrade Instruments to Upgrade to Air France Business Class
TM Travel World points out that since Delta upgrades can be used on Air France there’s a real strategic improvement that many people are missing. Folks still need to buy nearly full fare economy tickets in order to upgrade from economy. And in general there’s much displeasure that upgrading from economy on Air France — now that Air France and KLM upgrades are now possible via the Skymiles program — only gets you premium economy. But Troy points out that often buying premium economy is cheaper than buying full fare economy. And buying premium economy lets you upgrade to business class. So that’s sometimes the best strategy to use with Delta upgrades — discounted Air France premium economy fares to get business class on Air France, rather than buying full fare economy on Delta or…
150,000 Free American Airlines Miles Just For Getting Two (No Annual Fee) Credit Cards
I’ve been writing about this occasionally for several months, but credit card signup bonuses have been incredible over the past year. First there was the 100,000 mile signup bonus offer from Chase for a British Airways Visa, then Citibank came out with their 100,000 mile offer for their American Airlines cards. Chase even had a 50,000 mile offer for the United Visa. Just incredible. Sign up for a credit card, maybe grab a second one (a small business card, most people are able to get one e.g. Their Name & Associates) and go anywhere in the world. In a premium cabin. Sometimes for an annual fee, other times even that’s been waived. Those banks, they must really think acquiring a customer is valuable. Well, the current big offer is 75,000 miles for an American Airlines…
How to Dispute the Value of Miles or Prizes Reported as Taxable to the IRS
Carol points me to a Flyertalk discussion from the past few days about Citibank sending 1099 forms to customers who earned miles from their checking accounts. I’m going to explain how to dispute 1099 prize value. Folks are shocked, even though there have been plenty of references in early threads on Citibank banking promotions indicating that they do report the ‘value’ of miles provided to the IRS. It’s definitely not new. Citbank reports as taxable the value of miles earned via bank accounts, but not credit cards (though apparently they once did this too – as a mistake! – since the latter are considered non-taxable rebates). This 2009 Flyertalk thread discusses Citibank reporting miles earning from banking products as taxable. Aside from being annoying, folks think they’re getting a tax-free benefit but learn it will…
50% Bonus and 25,000 Elite Qualifying Miles for Transferring 50,000 Amex Points or More to Delta (first time transfers only)
Lucky and MilesQuest blogged earlier in the week about an offer of 30% bonus on transfers to Delta Skymiles from American Express through March 31 (registration required). I meant to blog it for sake of completeness, in case any of y’all were going to happen to make transfers from American Express to Delta so as not to miss out on the bonus points. But it just wasn’t exciting enough to get around to, and certainly not a reason to proactively transfer from Amex to Skymiles. And since the bonus says it doesn’t post right away, it doesn’t help you transfer fewer points to top off for an award you’re about to redeem, it just gives you back more points later. But Rene passes along a link for another bonus for first time transfers from Amex…
Free Six Month Subscription to the Wall Street Journal
MilesQuest points to and offer for six months’ free subscription to the Wall Street Journal, no credit card required. Pretty cool. It’s easy enough, but on second thought, too much work for me. I already read the articles I want online, this would be more paper piling up, and I’m too lazy to complete the needed surveys.
US Airways Buy Miles Promos Are (Sort of) Back
US Airways has been the leader in monetizing their frequent flyer program, offering more and bigger promotions than pretty much anyone else including to straight up buy miles. They offered something along the lines of a 100% bonus on purchased miles for nearly 10 months in a 12 month period beginning November, 2009. And then they went silent. After a monster holiday shopping promotion at the end of 2009, the 2010 version was a thud. And they haven’t had buy miles promos for the past couple of months. While US Airways had developed a reputation as the ‘consolidator for Star Alliance premium cabin seats’ (they were selling miles cheap, those miles then would be used for premium cabin awards on their partners, effectively selling excess inventory — those seats released as awards — for a…
