The current expiration date for the Alaska Airlines 20,000 mile bonus for new Visa signup is April 30. It may be extended — it’s been extended twice already — but if you’re interested, grab it now.20,000 miles is enough to upgrade a transcon roundtrip, plus they throw in a couple of club passes and a $50 companion certificate. Not bad for $75.
A couple of weeks ago I visited Cyprus for the first time, taking advantage of the Alitalia mistake fare from a year or so back (CAD $39 + tax, Toronto to Cyprus via Milan and/or Rome with stopovers permitted in both directions). This was perhaps the best mistake fare ever. Oh, sure, British Airways once published North American to pretty much anywhere in Europe in World Traveller Plus for $20 + tax. But this was a business class fare, earning business class miles, and turned out to be changeable without a refare (once-only, via a special Alitalia representative in New York). However, it was an Alitalia fare and they’re not the easiest carrier in the world to deal with. I suffered several delays (3.5 hours on my return flight due to an aircraft change and…
Upgrade Travel blog profiles PointMaven, the sister website of MileMaven.PointMaven is a search tool for hotel bonus offers, just like MileMaven helps find airline bonus offers. If you’re not tied to a specific program for loyalty (e.g. elite status – upgrades) reasons, you may want to choose your travel provider based on the points you can earn. Of course, price doesn’t come into the equation with this tool, just miles and points. But it’s a great way to find bonuses you’d have never known existed. And for that matter, if you’re clearly stuck in a specific property or flying a specific airline, it’s a good idea to check this site anyway for possible bonuses to register for and rack up more points for the travel you’re going to take anyway.
Through April 16, friends and family promo code RL2007SP offers 30% off (and free shipping on orders over $175) at Polo.com. Used is successfully yesterday on some new shirts.
Sign up for a no commitment T-Mobile WiFi account and get 30 days of free service. Offer expires January 31, 2008.
Flyertalk member KVS produced a short video tribute to the Alitalia $39+tax business class fare error from Toronto to Cyprus. It was a year ago today that the fare was on offer, and the tickets were valid a year from date of issue, so we now say thanks and rest in peace to perhaps the greatest of all mistake fares.I’ll share details of my own Toronto-Milan-Cyprus-Milan-Rome-Milan-Toronto trip shortly.
Delta is offering up to 25,000 bonus miles for activity with their partners. Registration is required. The offer is 5000 miles for each 5 unique partners with activity during the qualifying period of April 1 – May 31 (too tight a timeline for my tastes). Airline partners don’t count. Each partner counts only once, so only one Hilton stay would count as a partner (but a Hilton stay and a Marriott stay would be two partners). Transferring points into Delta should count, and each source should be a different partner, so I may transfer points in from Starwood, American Express Membership Rewards, and Radisson Goldpoints.Read the terms and conditions on the promo, but it should be pretty easy to rack up 5000 bonus miles — much harder to hit a full 25,000.
It’s available in either direction and it’s refundable. Search for first class tickets at delta.com or expedia. There’s no minimum or maximum stay, these are actually one-way fares ($368 is just the all-in roundtrip price, although may vary slightly depending on the connections you make). It’s a refundable YUP fare, fare basis YUPBV. Discussed on Flyertalk here.
Free Frequent Flyer Miles points out that you can get 500 miles for an auto insurance quote from Ameriprise, and that it works every six months. So even if you’ve done it before it might be time to do it again.
Turns out that the 5000 point award nights aren’t even a mistake. I speculated that someone miscoded the hotel as participating in PointBreaks, since the number of points matched that offer but the hotel wasn’t in the list of participating properties (and would have been the most expensive hotel in the list, by far). But it is a planned special offer:Exclusive for Priority Club® members, stay at the new InterContinental Los Angeles Century City, March 15, 2007 through September 4, 2007, to receive triple points, triple miles or triple credit with any 2 night consecutive stay during this introductory period. Plus, Priority Club members can take advantage of our very special Reward Night PointBreaks offer of only 5,000 points a night for stays from March 15 to May 15, 2007.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
