Wandering Aramean outlines planned actual improvements to United’s inflight product. I previously reported that United would keep economy plus after its integration with Continental, and that the Continental fleet would be getting economy plus starting in 2012. Seth reports that the timetable is being moved up: The company expects to see the E+seats on 38 Continental aircraft before the end of the year. Based on some information received from other sources it is quite possible that these first Economy Plus aircraft will be 757-300s or 737-800s. …By the end of Q1 2012 the company expects to have 100 Continental aircraft equipped with Economy Plus seats. That number will include 29 Bombardier Q400 commuter turbo-prop aircraft which will be equipped with both a first class and economy plus section. Back in May I noted that United…
Details Begin to Emerge on US Airways Grand Slam Promotion
Mommy Points details the upcoming US Airways ‘Grand Slam’ promotion. You can’t register for it yet, but the offer’s FAQ page is up. The offer will run from September 14 through November 14, and will eventually be detailed (with registration available) at usairways.com/grandslam. This annual promo stretches a baseball analogy where various partner activities are considered ‘hits’ and the more hits you accumulate, the more bonus miles you earn. For instance, 4 ‘hits’ earns 3000 bonus miles while 8 hits earns an additional 7,000 bonus miles (on top of the 3000 that were earned after 4 hits had been completed). So 8 partner activities is 10,000 bonus miles. Lots of folks will start to figure out the cheapest ways to get eligible partner activities, and I’ll certainly report on several of those here. If you…
National Car Rental Status Match Offer
Earlier in the week I detailed National Car Rental’s new “One, Two, Free” promo — rent twice (mid-size or larger, two day minimum) and get a free rental day which is running through January 31. Several other bloggers have subsequently noted that National is also offering to status match you if you have elite status in another car rental program. That’s a unique departure from past practice in the car rental industry — airline and hotel status matching has been a long-standing practice but car rental companies haven’t routinely done it. As I observed in my earlier post, at the base signup level I like National better than the other car rental firms because of their ‘Emerald Aisle’ (choose your own car) concept. But I don’t make National my own rental company of choice because…
My Award Booking Talk at the Chicago Seminar is Now Completely Booked Up
A week and a half ago I shared that my talk on booking frequent flyer awards at the Chicago Seminar was 90% full. Rick (aka Frugal Travel Guy) emails this morning to let me know that my session is completely booked. Anyone who was still planning to sign up for my talk at the October 29-30 event is too late. While the seminar itself appears at about 70% capacity so far, there are multiple concurrent sessions throughout the weekend and no one of those sessions can go over 300. Of the 370 people or so that have signed up so far, 300 chose my award booking talk. The point in sharing this is, if you’ve been considering signing up for the Chicago seminar (details here), it’s best to do so asap so that you’ll still…
Best Solutions for International Phone Calls While Traveling Abroad
International phone calls: I’ve been searching for a new international calling solution. My old throwaway cell phone died. My old favorite SIM card that was useful in several countries seems to be giving me fits. While I’m perfectly happy making calls via Skype (and that’s still the cheapest way to call out, less than 3 cents a minute to the US), my wife is less than happy with the call quality. Plus it’s not a great solution when you’re out and about without internet, or for people who want to call you who aren’t themselves going to be online when doing so. So it’s not enough. Backing up a little bit here, I Skype all the time — for work or to make calls when abroad. I don’t mind it at all, and I always…
Mileage Mall Portals, Who Am I Even Dealing With? More Finger Pointing From EasyCGI, US Airways, and FreeCause
A week ago I posted about the most lucrative mileage offer ever made, the trouble in having the vendor honor the terms of the offer, and what it means about airline ‘mileage mall’ shopping portals. As far as these things go, I’m relatively savvy, there are likely others who understand details better than I do but I’m reasonably well-informed relative to the average consumer. And the more I think about the proposition being offered, the more I realize I knew very little at all about how things worked or whom I was even dealing with. Some may recall the details of the offer: any transaction through the US Airways or Hawaiian Airlines mileage malls with web hosting company EasyCGI earned miles. But it turns out that these weren’t offers from US Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, or…
500 Free Points for Accepting Text Messages From Priority Club
Via Points Addict, if you’re willing to accept Priority Club marketing messages via text there’s 500 free points for doing so. It’s a Visa promotion, you have to register a Visa card with your signup. Me, I don’t actually want their texts and won’t invite them to SMS me for 500 points. But some will find this worthwhile for the points.
Huge National Car Rental Promo: Free Rental Day Every Two (2-Day Minimum) Rentals
National Car Rental is running rent twice get a free rental day between August 22 and January 31. Registration required and there’s no retroactive credit for rentals taken prior to registering (but then if you’re reading this contemporaneously as I write, the promo hasn’t started yet, so you’re not worried about this). Unfortunately the promo applies only two rentals of mid-size cars or larger, for two days or longer. Free rental days will be awarded beginning September 2, and future emails with free rentals will come within a week or two after each free rental day is earned. Free Rental Days are non–transferable and are valid for use through June 25, 2012. No more than three free days can be used on a single rental. The promo apparently doesn’t apply to existing reservations, if you…
A Momentary Lapse into Self-Congratulations
I’ve never paid much attention to my ‘stats’ – I look at site traffic maybe once a month. I’ve been at this for many years, and have always written more for myself and if I can help others along that way that’s great but I don’t really write to get readers I write what I think is interesting and hopefully others will find those things interesting as well. But I was trading emails about traffic with Million Mile Secrets, mostly exposing my ignorance about such things. And that lead me to look up my technocrati ranking. I haven’t much paid attention to the methodology, my sense is it happens to do with what other blogs are linking to you especially those blogs that are themselves considered influential based on links to them. And lo and…
Arthur Frommer Is an Idiot
This just makes me shrill, I want to jump out of my (free upgraded) first class seat and throttle this travel industry icon: I am a non-user of frequent flier miles. I stand firmly on her side — the debater who thought that there was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. It was just too much trouble to add up these points and then get a flight that you need. Of course he’s likely offered enough free travel for being Arthur Frommer that he doesn’t need to invest in paying attention in order to ‘add up these points’ (nevermind that plenty of online services like AwardWallet and MileageManager do it for you). (Via scflier on Milepoint, via @GlobeTrotScott)
