Tim Winship offers his advice on how to choose which frequent flyer programs to belong to. On the whole it boils down to: choose the program of the airline with the most service at your home airport. Not terrible, but there are much better answers. Winship thinks you should pick a program and stick with it: Since it doesn’t cost anything to enroll in a frequent flyer program, the temptation is to sign up for them all, in the interest of being ever-ready to earn miles for any and all flights. The problem with that approach is that you will find yourself spread too thin. The most-requested frequent flyer award is the free round-trip ticket within the continental U.S., offered in most programs for 25,000 miles. That’s 25,000 miles in one program. Banking hundreds of…
Sports Book Pays Off
I thought this was just free publicity at no cost to Silverjet. But the Giants won! Of course, standard practice for sports promotions is to buy insurance against the outcome which forces a payout. I don’t know whether Silverjet did this (should have asked their PR-flak). But it may not cost them anything, and whoever purchased Silverjet tickets within the promo period may have a free trip to look forward to!
The Fastest Way to Become a Millionaire…
… is still to ‘start off with a billion dollars and invest in an airline.’ From the annals of really stupid startup airline ideas, PlaneBuzz shakes its head at the application to the Department of Transportation for the launch of Family Airlines (website down as I write this). A Las Vegas-based carrier a la defunct-National Airlines, operating 747s domestically. And they’re touting a theoretically-impossible 539 coach seats on the main deck while maintaining 31-inch pitch. Oh, and 42 business class seats on the upper deck (United’s 747s have 26 business class seats on the upper deck, admittedly this is meant for long-haul international flights, but 42 seats won’t be comfy; the ancient Thai Airways 747s used to have 40 seats up there in business). The CEO of the airline tried to start it up about…
1000 Free Alitalia Miles
Feb
03
2008
Alitalia is offering 1000 free miles for taking a quiz. The questions aren’t hard, but they’re all in Italian. Flyertalk discussion is here.
International Cell Phones
I’m not the most technologically savvy guy in the world. Sure, I figured out how to tether my blackberry to my laptop for free wireless internet wherever I go. But that’s only because Google is my friend and I have the patience for trial and error until I get things right. But it takes me awhile to catch onto the simplest of things, sometimes. But I have figured out that reasonably-priced cell phone service requires pretty much three things: An unlocked phone. I’m with AT&T and since I’ve been with them for awhile (I’ve heard they require six months, but I’ve had their service for 18) I just sent them a customer service email and asked them for a ‘subsidy unlock code’ which they were happy to provide. An international sim card. There are several…
Add View from the Wing to Your Blogreader
Don’t miss out on any of the offers that I find and post here. Some of them don’t last very long, and it would be a shame to miss out. Best way to make sure to see and take advantage of everything here is to subscribe to this site’s RSS feed….
Under $300 for Transatlantic Roundtrips
Flyertalkers are discussing an apparent glitch which allows you to book inexpensive transatlantic fares and avoid the usual fuel surcharges. For February and March is should be possible to fly from most cities in the U.S. to several parts of Europe for less than $300 all-in. Using Priceline (their regular airfare search, not their ‘name your own price’ bidding service), you need to pair a USAirways domestic segment with United transatlantic. For example, Charlotte to Washington-Dulles on USAirways, connecting to United to Frankfurt. This should also work with the domestic segment on a USAirways-coded United flight. Saturday stay required. The fare will seem initially higher, but when you click onto the final summary page the fare should drop.
Silverjet Buy One Get One Free… If the sports book works out in your favor
Silverjet is running a promotion offering a free roundtrip ticket if the Giants win the Superbowl and if you purchase a roundtrip between Newark and London-Luton (including tickets which involve Silverjet’s connection to Dubai) between 6am Friday EST (1st February) and 12pm Sunday (3rd February). I don’t see anything on the Silverjet website about it, but they sent me a press release and there’s no mention of signups or promo codes. It appears that all bookings are eligible. There are some restrictions on the possible free ticket: the paid ticket must be flown before the free one…if you cancel the paid ticket the free one will go away also… and that free travel will have to be booked by the end of February for travel between March 1 and August 31 and once booked is…
Amazon Discount Finder
I don’t know that this is new, but I hadn’t seen it before: a way to troll for discounts on Amazon, the Amazon Discount Finder. You select the category of items and optionally specify keywords, and then select the range of percentage discounts off regular price you want. Amazon then returns search results of items that are within that range.
Access to Full Length Television Shows Online
Jan
30
2008
TravelTechTalk has free Hulu beta memberships to give away. If you missed what Hulu is all about, it’s an online video site with programming from 40 different studios. You’ll find full length programs like The Office, Family Guy, Prison Break and 30 Rock. And all the content is in great quality, none of that postage stamp sized stuff. They even have a collection of great HD clips.
