british midland is offering silver status for a year and 2000 miles to start your account for new members. Now, Silver status doesn’t get you much unless you’re actually going to fly bmi, it takes Gold for partner lounge access, but it’s status so a halfway decent offer. Though they do sometimes offer more miles to start than this, so consider waiting if you’d rather have more miles than status. Update: Good points in the comments, bmi Silver gets you Star Alliance silver, and that means baggage fee waivers with several airlines. Details and links in the comments.
What in the World to Do With Those Delta Skypesos?
After yesterday’s post on award booking lessons, several readers posed questions about Delta Skymiles that amount to, “if Skypesos are so darned useless, what in the world can I do with them?” Now, the only time you should actually accumulate Skymiles is if you are hub-captive to Delta and fly enough to earn elite status. Even if you live in a Delta hub, fly Delta, but aren’t earning status then consider crediting your flight miles to Alaska. And for goodness sakes, don’t credit any other sorts of miles to Delta, unless it’s somehow benefiting your quest for elite status — because you might well value upgrades more than awards. The other time it makes sense to accumulate Skymiles is when the deal is just too crazy good, that even if you have to spend double…
Hilton’s Second Quarter Promo, Similar to the First: A Free Night Every Four Stays or 10 Nights, Or Double Base Points
A month ago I noted the speculation about the very modest Hilton second quarter promotion that would be coming. It’s finally out, and registration is open. Select from either a free night certificate for every four stays or double base points, valid through June 30 (and only stays commencing after registration count). You can only make your choice once, no changes, so choose wisely. Hilton’s first quarter promo was a free stay for every four stays or 10 nights, so rewarding long-staying guests. And even though the headline on this promo suggests it is only incentivizing stays, the terms and conditions suggest that members will again receive a free night after four stays or 10 nights, just like the first quarter promo. Naturally, Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights (ok, “The Big Welcome Back”) blows this out…
250 Free Continental Mles
Continental is offering 250 free miles for ‘learning about adding additional cardholders’ to your Continental credit or debit card accounts. You just need to enter your Continental frequent flyer account number on the page and click register by May 31 to earn the miles. Bonus miles to post 4-6 weeks after May 31. The offer comes to me via Free Frequent Flyer Miles who says, “I see no requirement to actually have one of these cards. Just register to get the miles.” That said, my own bet is that the miles won’t post except for folks who have Continental’s co-branded cards — despite the fact that the terms and conditions of the offer do not specify this. I won’t ultimately find out in practice whether or not this guess is correct, as I do have…
Flight Attendants Aggressively Pitching Airline Credit Cards Onboard
Can a flight attendant really make $400 in commissions hawking credit cards on a flight? Just another reminder that airlines need to keep flying to support the underlying credit card businesses, even in these tight credit times, and that mileage programs continue to be the engines that drive their liquidity.
Hilton’s Point Stretcher Awards, So New They’re Old Again
Loyalty Traveler disses Hilton’s Point Stretcher awards. Loyalty Traveler loves this new Point Stretcher reward feature of HHonors. It is so much like the old Point Stretcher rewards feature of HHonors. Although considering the cost for hotel nights at more than 80% of the 3,500 Hilton brand hotels worldwide increased by 17% to 25% earlier this year, the 40% Point Stretcher award discount seems more like a 25% discount to me. …Hilton HHonors actually posted this Point Stretchers press release on April Fool’s Day. I agree with everything Ric writes. But with Hilton, I suppose I’ll take what I can get..
Answering Your Award Booking Questions
This morning’s post on award bookings generated several questions and interesting comments in just a couple of hours. I thought I’d pull out a few and offer some followup. Jeremy asks several questions: I would like to hear a Singapore riff for sure. Also the deal with NZ on LAX-LHR using Alliance points. [T]he lack of UA one-way awards on partners must be killing more folks than just me… That’s a lot of questions! Singapore Airlines rarely offers more than a single premium cabin seat long-haul as an award at the same time. Sometimes once a seat is booked a second seat will immediately appear, than usually not. Long-haul that’s true for both business and first class. Intra-Asia that’s usually only true for first, it’s certainly possible to find multiple business class award seats at…
Reader Mail: What Mileage Programs to Choose for Last-minute Emergency Travel?
Reader Ian writes: [M]y wife and I live an ocean away from some of our closest relatives. In our case, we’re in Texas (Houston) and our parents are in North-West Europe. ..at some point we’re going to want/need to fly TATL at short notice. There’s a fair chance that we’ll be upset and not thinking straight. We’re not necessarily going to know how long we want to stay for, so will probably want one-way tickets or low change fees. We’re going to want to arrive as fit as possible in the circumstances, so business class seats and non-stop flights will be priorities. Paying a close-in fee isn’t going to be a deal breaker. The question is: if you needed to fly to Europe tonight, tomorrow or the next day, is it realistic to look for…
Lessons from Scores of Recent Premium Class International Mileage Award Bookings
As many folks know, I probably book more award tickets than anyone else in the world. And I develop a really good sense for the value and ease of using different sorts of mileage and what routes offer the best availability. So for those looking to do it themselves, or just thinking about what’s possible and wanting to set expectations accordingly, I thought I’d offer a bit of stream of consciousness on award availability. It occurred to me yesterday that the conventional wisdom changes frequently, at least in terms of available routes. That’s because I noticed first class award seats available on Thai almost every day during the summer from Zurich to Bangkok and back. I assume this will tighten up quickly, but it really struck me because the Zurich route was perhaps the most…
A Nice Endorsement from Frugal Travel Guy, and American Airlines Oneworld Awards
Frugal Travel Guy offers up the following gracious endorsement of my award booking service: I contacted Gary at the View from the Wing blog and he was very helpful with his award booking suggestions. He knows more tricks than I will ever remember. I did this one all myself, and I went a different way than he suggested (my vouchers were expiring), but it was great to have a real pro as a sounding board. He really knows his stuff and I can assure you if you are at all hesitant to try something like this, his award booking service will be worth every penny you spend on it. Gary will save yo money and miles Rick was planning a trip through several cities in Europe, and has a boatload of American Airlines miles. One…
