Scott McCartney writes up the Star Alliance MegaDO. More than 200 vagabond business travelers, peripatetic frequent-flier-mile addicts and aviation enthusiasts did just that last week. Over four days, they traveled from the U.S. to Germany, Norway and France to meet with executives, pilots and mechanics at four airlines—plus representatives of aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The event, organized by members of FlyerTalk.com, a Web site that caters to frequent fliers, even included chartering a Boeing 757-300 to zip from airline hangar to airline hangar. Couldn’t make it work myself, but from everyone I’ve talked to it was a ton of fun.
15% Discount on Expert Flyer
I offered an explanation of Expert Flyer back in June when they were offering a 20% discount on their services. There are basically two pay services that advanced flyers use. Expert Flyer is one, and is of especially good use for American Airlines flyers looking to upgrade internationally, and for Delta upgrades, for instance and because the site will keep searching for inventory to open up on routes you designate and ping you when it does. Personally I use the KVS Tool. It lacks award availability for Swiss (which is a drawback for me, but I workaround the problem via the Lufthansa JetFriends program) and it lacks the ExpertFlyer feature of automatically checking for specific inventory on your behalf and emailing you when it becomes available. But it has a broader variety of tools and…
Former Chase British Airways Cardholders Are Eligible for 100,000 Mile Signup Offer
Plenty of folks have had the British Airways co-branded Visa from Chase in the past. I did myself, the signup bonus was great when I was looking to top off for an award. But it didn’t used to be a good card for spending, and I cancelled it years ago. Now that they’re offering an extremely compelling value proposition — 50,000 miles with first purchase 50,000 miles after spending $2000 on the card within 3 months 1.25 miles per dollar spent A free companion when you redeem a British Airways award, after spending $30,000 on the card in a year All well worth the $75 annual fee for the card in my view, even recognizing the expensive British Airways award chart (especially for premium class travel) and the fuel surcharges British Airways imposes on their…
US Airways Increases Award Redemption Pricing January 6
Yesterday US Airways announced big changes to their award chart going into effect January 6. They say they’re moving from two award levels to four, in fact that’s wrong they’re moving from three to four. Currently awards on US Airways flights come at the off-peak, regular, and last seat availability pricing. The new system will retain off-peak and regular pricing and split last seat availability into “medium” and “high” pricing. Whether last seat availability comes at the medium or high price is a function of dates rather than flight loads, so they aren’t exactly following the Delta model. They say there “will be approximately 14 days a year when it’s not possible to book award travel at any level” for each region. (Blackout dates are here. Elite members will no longer be exempt from blackout…
Hilton HHonors Coming January Devaluation Gets Media Attention
Last month I detailed the significant award chart devaluation that’s coming to Hilton HHonors in January. I noted how strange a time for it this is, since room rates are at historic lows and hotels have been on the whole empty. Prices are lower than a year ago, not higher. And hotel chains have been doing all they can to woo customers, not gut their loyalty drivers. Nicholas Kralev details the changes as well in his “On the Fly” column for the Washington Times (Kralev is one of the very best travel columnists in the country, by which I mean his stories are generally accurate and in-the-know rather than made up fluff). The upshot? Beginning in January, you will need about 25 percent more points on average to book a free night at a Hilton…
Possible Amazing Opportunity with Continental Miles to Redeem for Singapore Airlines First Class
According to this Flyertalk thread, Continental isn’t fully linked up with Singapore Airlines yet. In order to book award tickets they have to do a ‘long sell’ where they manually request award availability. And it seems like more often than not, that availability is coming back confirmed. Long-time readers of this blog know that Star Alliance members can look up award availability by signing up for an All Nippon Airways account and using their award search page. That gets you all except Air China, Shanghai Airlines, and Swiss. It seems that Continental is somehow managing to confirm awards that the ANA website suggests are not otherwise being made available to Star Alliance members for redemption. I haven’t tested this myself, but one hypothesis might be that Singapore — which offers expanded award availability to its…
Hotel Price Glitch: Four Star Hotel Pineta, Rome for $9/night
This Flyertalk thread points out that HotelClub and Orbitz both should be offering 5th night free (pay 4, get 1) but instead of pricing the Hotel Pineta Palace at pay 1, get 4 free. The promo is valid through March 31. For the first set of nights I checked that made the rate $17/night. What’s more, promo code afforb40 may knock an additional $40 off the stay, bringing average room night cost down to about $9 (depending on the rate for the first night). Just choose expand your search options when first arriving at Orbitz, enter hotel name contains ‘Pineta’ to go straight to the property and enter code in the promo box. The discount should appear in the ‘total cost’ summary once you select the hotel! Here are the TripAdvisor reviews. The place looks…
Avis Prepares to Implement No Show Fees
Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Avis is readying the IT infrastructure to implement rental car no show fees at some point in the future. Avis has asked that computer reservation systems be ready by December. They want all systems able to take credit card information on rental car reservations so that they can charge no show fees. If only their own website was imposing a no show penalty, they’d lose bookings to other channels which increases costs. If the refused to allow other booking channels to reserve their cars because those channels didn’t impose fees, they’d lose bookings and thus revenue. So they need all channels ready prior to launch of this initiative. In all likelihood the policy they’ll try to roll out is a 24-hour cancellation policy, with specified charge for failing to cancel by…
Free Continental and Hawaiian Miles
Via Frugal Travel Guy, Continental is offering 100 miles if you enter promo code 57071 into their offer registration page by December 31 — the miles are for learning about their Twice the Miles holiday promotion. Personally these Continental 100 mile bits never seem to post, but your mileage may vary. Meanwhile, Rick also points to an offer for 80 free HawaiianMiles in celebration of the airline’s 80th anniversary. Woo hoo!
Chris Guillebeau’s New Frequent Flyer Miles Guide is Out
Chris Guillebeau has just completed his frequent flyer guide. It’s $49, and not going to be useful to everyone, but I’ve given it a read and for the right audience it’s really quite good. If you’ve been a Flyertalk member for years, or have over 2000 posts there, this product isn’t for you. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you understand and follow the tips and take advantage of the offers I post, this product isn’t for you. But if you’ve just stumbled upon this blog for the first time, or bookmarked it with the intention to “figure all this stuff out” at some point, this document/guide may be the ticket. I rarely write comprehensive, ground-up, basics posts. Chris, on the other hand, has done a pretty good job at starting with…
