United has confirmed the introduction of one-way awards starting Monday. Here’s some more detail: With Mileage Plus’ One-Way Awards, you can travel one-way for half the miles of a roundtrip award (starting at 12,500 miles for a domestic Saver award) on United or United Express. … Our work continues. Initially, One-Way Awards and Miles & Money Awards will only be available online. You will be able to call Reservations to book these awards later this year. The ability to mix and match award levels – Saver or Standard Awards – for a roundtrip award ticket will be available in the summer. I realize that you can mix and match awards now (or shall I say starting on Monday) by creating multiple PNRs. That will change and you will be able to do this on one…
Ancestry.com 5000 US Airways Miles Signup Bonus
Yesterday reader Mike brought an ancestry.com offer to my attention. Mike writes, An easy 5k US miles for $24.95. Ancestry.com has a 14-day free trial, and then you select your plan — each of which comes with US Airways bonus miles. The 12-month offer at $24.95 per month earns 5000 US Airways miles. Presumably Mike is thinking, “sign up for this offer, get the 5000 miles, then cancel and pay only one month’s charges.” Good plan and that may work. I’m not 100% sure, though. You can cancel an ancestry.com subscription at any time, so you should be able to cancel as soon as your miles post. And I imagine they’ll post within your first paid month. But it also appears that they bill the full 12 months in one payment up front, rather than…
Will United Introduce One-Way Awards?
There’s currently speculation that one-way awards will be introduced by United starting on Monday. It’s really just rumors at this point, with little confirmation. But it’s also been long-expected, ever since American introduced one-way awards, because well United follows most of American’s announcements and offerings pretty closely. One-way awards are fairly popular, they have some real uses, such as they’re great for positioning flighs for great fares, to start a series of trips in a destination city in order to get Saturday stays on all your round trips, to buy the cheaper of two domestic segments only on a roundtrip, to mix service classes on an award, etc. Personally, though, I don’t like the tradeoff introduced by American when they brought in one-way awards: the elimination of stopovers. International carriers like British Airways and bmi…
El Al Offers Status Match to bmi Elites Who Have Flown To or From Tel Aviv
This Flyertalk thread has the details on an El Al offer to match bmi Diamond Club status provided you’ve had two or more Tel Aviv flights in the past year. The offer (in Hebrew) is valid through February 10 and offers 6 months of status — bmi Blue+ members get El Al Matmid Gold, and bmi Silver and Gold members get El Al Matmid Platinum. There’s no match to Top Platinum. The offer also contains a fast track — earn 800 points in 6 months to earn Gold status for a year, or 2000 points in six months for Platinum for a year. You need to submit your El Al account number and bmi statement showing two Tel Aviv flights (those flights can be on any Star carrier) — by email to yaely@elal,co,il or by…
Priority Club Gets Its Act Together on the Multipartner Bonus? Now I’m 4000 Points Ahead!
I recently posted about my successful followup with Priority Club, getting missing points from their fall partner bonus offer. Like many, I was shorted 4000 points — folks who transferred points into Priority Club (I moved Alaska miles in and got 1 Priority Club point) and also purchased points had both sets of transactions post as “points.com” and the system didn’t recognize these as unique partners. The terms and conditions of the offer though said these were each unique activities. And Priority Club customer service was bad — very bad — often arguing that they were the same partner in spite of their own terms and conditions stating otherwise. Well, I received my 4000 points as a ‘goodwill adjustment’. And I know that several folks used my sample correspondence successfully in getting their own points.…
20% off United Coach Awards to Hawaii
United is offering coach awards between the mainland US and Hawaii for 32,000 miles instead of their usual 40,000. I had to do a double-take for a moment, I had forgotten for about 30 seconds that a coach Hawaii award was 40,000 now rather than the 35,000 I’ve been used to for so long! They raise the price and lower it, and tell you you’re getting a discount.. Well, I have no great desire to fly to Hawaii in non-upgradeable coach. But it’s one of the more desirable awards for the world at large. So the details are that you have to book by February 2 for travel through May 12, and you have to use only United or United Express flights — no Continental or US Airways.
Another Reader Question: Extending the Life of Your Delta Miles
What’s up with all the Delta questions? Wendy has Skymiles that are expiring soon. Delta is a little trickier than some other programs in that not all activity in an account is sufficient to extend the expiration date of that account. Skymiles rules say this: Currently, miles will not expire as long as you participate in one of the following activities at least once every two years; mileage expires midnight Eastern time (-5 GMT), 24 months from the date of the last activity: Earn miles for travel on a qualifying Delta, Delta Shuttle®, SkyTeam, or other SkyMiles airline partner flights. Earn or redeem miles with one of the SkyMiles program partners including hotels, car rentals, Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express, international credit card partners, SkyMiles Dining & Hotels by Rewards NetworkSM, MilePoint.com, mortgage…
El Bulli Reservations Just Got Even Harder
El Bulli will apparently be closing for a few years while they come up with new culinary innovation. (HT: Tyler). Here at Madrid Fusion, an annual international culinary conference, the news is all about chefs, and no news is bigger than that of Ferran Adrià, the chef of elBulli, reputedly the best restaurant — and the toughest reservation — in the world. To the accompaniment of dozens of flashing cameras and a live feed for Spain’s main television channel, one of the masters of the culinary universe declared that he would be closing his restaurant to the public for two years beginning in 2012. It’s not a definitive end to the restaurant that has been voted the best in the world five times (including in 2009) by Restaurant magazine, the recognized arbiter of such things.…
Reader Email: So What ARE Delta Skymiles Still Good For?
With the Singapore Airlines redemption option going away, my favorite feature of the Skymiles program will be no more. Reader Gene wonders what good options are left, and points out that Delta and Jet Airways are partners. My thoughts are as follows: 1. Korean is still a partner. Don’t trust Delta website inventory, I don’t really see business class availability on the Northwest website anymore, either. The same thing happened to Air France inventory. The website is just wrong, business class seats still exist, you just can’t find them by limiting yourself to the online tools that the airline provides. Now, Korean doesn’t often make more than a single business class seat available at a time. But it’s a good option. 2. Air France/KLM do make business class seats available stil… 3. Northwest legacy partnerships…
$10 Off Airtran
If you enter this sweepstakes you’ll receive a $10 off code by e-mail right away that’s good for an Airtran discount. You have to book by January 31 for travel through April.
