Last week I outlined Virgin America’s award redemption offerings and noted that a co-branded credit card was on the way. Now details of that credit card are here. The card is a Visa Signature co-branded with Barclays bank, the same issuer as the US Airways Mastercard and comes with: 3,500 bonus points with first purchase. Apparently the ‘usual’ offer is intended as 2,500 bonus points, as the 3,500 offer includes 1,000 for ‘pre-registering’ on the credit card’s website. The card comes with a free one-way flight after first purchase, with details described as: [A]pply by November 30, 2008, and use the card to make a purchase by January 31, 2009. Travel must be completed by May 20, 2009. No annual fee. According to a PRNewswire release, additional details include: The card launches October 23rd. One…
American Express Platinum to Eliminate Domestic Companion Airfare Program
High Anxiety notes that American Express is terminating its domestic companion airfare program, about a year and a half after it started. A real bummer. The outsourced program (to API) was annoying to work with, very much non-transparent as to which flights were eligible and a cumbersome booking process (by phone, not the sharpest agents, and then the need to get transferred to reconfirm everything once the booking was over). But it was also a value that is being taken away from Platinum cardholders, and I will miss it. Fortunately there are still several companion airfare offers that are worthwhile, such as the Alaska Airlines $50 companion ticket that comes with the Bank of America co-branded credit card and the US Airways $99 companion ticket that comes with both the Bank of America co-branded Visa…
Free Hilton Gold Status is Back
Frugal Travel Guy reports that the old Citi Chairmans Hilton Gold offer is again (still?) available. In fact, the code is even still CTCH, just enter it at this link and open up a new account. That will open a new Hilton gold account for you, and if you already have a Hilton account you can combine the old one into this new gold one as well. At times in the past Hilton has removed the complimentary gold status from ineligible accounts, other times they haven’t, and even when they have they have not done so across the board to all accounts. So whether this sticks is ‘your mileage may vary.’ Still worth a try for those of you without Hilton Gold status already, it generally means free breakfast at least.
Tips for Successful Award Booking
Frugal Travel Guy offers his basic tips on award redemption, which start with being friendly to the agent on the other end of the phone (make them a friend willing to spend the time and do the work necessary to find you your award), be flexible in cities and dates, and be willing to overnight if necessary — plus know your possible partners and routes and suggest them to the agent you’re working with. All good tips, to be sure. But especially since I’ve been getting several requests for award booking assistance since the October 2008 issue of Conde Nast Traveler reprinted a comment I made on Wendy Perrin’s blog offering award booking help, let me outline my own award booking tips… Whose miles do you need, and how many? First, what miles are you…
A (Modest) Defense of AIG’s Post-Bailout $443,000 St. Regis Monarch Beach Retreat
The media is making hay over AIG executives participating in a retreat at the St. Regis Monarch Beach after being taken over/bailed out by the federal government. And it doesn’t look good, I suppose appearances do matter. But most of the criticism misses the mark. The conference was booked long before the bailout. Sure, the hotel bill (including payments by the hotel on behalf of the event to other vendors) was $443,000. But AIG had already provided a $403,000 deposit. They couldn’t just cancel, they’d have no doubt owed most of cost of the event if not the full expected cost, anyway. And in fact, it sure looks like executives stayed away — $58,000 (30%) of the hotel room charges were for attrition, meaning that they had committed to many more participants than ultimately actually…
Credit Cards I Don’t Use In Spite of 50% and 100% Everyday Bonuses On All Spending
I got an email over the weekend about the Virgin American co-branded American Express products from Bank of America. They’re tempting, to a certain degree. I blogged the cards when they were introduced in June. 1.5 miles per dollar on all spend is intriguing, but not all that desirable for me. (There are also some nice perks towards elite status as well, so this card may be indispensable for the regular Virgin flyer.) Their award charts are expensive, for awards beyond Heathrow in particular, and their fuel surcharges are noxious. Personally I prefer redeeming ANA miles for Virgin flights (transferred into ANA from American Express Membership Rewards): Washington-Dulles-Heathrow in Upper Class is 90,000 Virgin miles or 68,000 ANA miles, and ANA charges about half the taxes that Virgin does on the same ticket (so a…
United’s Interisland Hawaii Awards Doubling in Price
The old days of 5000 mile awards for interisland roundtrips are going away October 15th. Redemptions on IslandAir go up to 5000 miles each way. The same holds for new partner Hawaiian Airlines. It’s not surprising, really, as that’s a fairly standard price across other carriers for such awards and also because the price of interisland travel has risen somewhat since Aloha’s bankruptcy and closure. But sad nonetheless.
New Best Offer for Hilton American Express
The previous best offer that I was aware of for a Hilton American Express was ‘up to 52,500 points’ as a signup bonus: 10,000 bonus points at first purchase, 2,500 bonus points for each of your first four Hilton stays charged to the card, 30,000 bonus points for spending $1,500 on the card within 3 months of approval, and 2,500 bonus points for adding a free additional cardholder to the account. Now they’ve upped the ante a bit more with basically the same offer but an extra 10,000 Hilton points with first purchase, for a total of 20,000, bringing the total signup offer to ‘up to 62,500 points’.
Fly transatlantic without fuel surcharges, eg New York to Rome for $296
Basically this is just a trick that avoids fuel surcharges of about $230. Start at Kayak.com, enter JFK as your starting city and FCO as your destination. Price will come up at about $526 for multiple airlines/1-stop in each direction. What you’re looking for, and in most cases this will come right up, is a combination of United (JFK-IAD) and a United flight sold as an Air One (Lufthansa partner) codeshare (IAD-FCO). When it comes up this way and you click through it takes you to Cheaptickets which gives you a message, “Great news! We found an even lower fare for this itinerary. Act fast to take advantage of this fare before it expires. (Message 102b)” The price falls $230 — down to $296. This trick also seems to work for San Francisco-Milan (price comes…
Virgin America Finally Offers Redemption
Virgin America’s eleVAte program has been rather vexxing, you earn points but since the airline’s inception you couldn’t do anything with them. In fact, you didn’t even know what you would eventually be able to do with them (ok, flights were a good guess!) or at what price. My understanding is that the delay here was related to IT problems. I guess they’ve finally started getting those worked out, as they’ve just added redemption to their website. It looks like you need to be logged into an account to see the details, but helpfully there is a Flyertalk thread laying them out. (Helpfully for me because I have yet to fly Virgin America and have no eleVAte account.) What I’m seeing so far doesn’t really excite me. There are no confirmed upgrades to first class…
