View from the Wing

United Discounted Awards to London

by Gary Leff on February 5, 2006

Feb 05 2006

In addition to discounted coach awards to Sydney, United is offering coach awards between the U.S. and London for 35,000 miles for travel through March 31.The text of the offer says You must book your award ticket online only. However, the terms and conditions of the offer sayYou may purchase the reduced award through united.com or through United Reservations (call 1-800-UNITED1). The $15 booking fee is waived. Either way, it appears as though awards are still pricing at 50,000 miles even though the promo should have gone into effect February 1.Flyertalk.com discussion of the offer is here.

Using Your Blackberry for Laptop Internet Access

by Gary Leff on February 4, 2006

Via InflightHQ, here are instructions on how to use a Blackberry to get internet access for your laptop. If you don’t have a wireless subscription, don’t have access to free wireless, and don’t want to pay connection charges this is a reasonably decent second-best.

Starwood Bonus for Stays through mid-March

by Gary Leff on February 3, 2006

Starwood is offering 3000 bonus points for every three stays between February 15 and March 15. It is not targeted, and it is combinable with other offers. Registration is required. It’s a ‘special Flyertalk offer’ and was announced on Flyertalk yesterday. Strictly speaking the terms and conditions of the offer require you to be a Flyertalk.com member to receive the bonus. You should be one anyway. It’s not clear to me how they would exclude non-members, though. (In theory they could look at the referral URL you used to click on the promo, but even if you click on the link from this blog it will say blogs.flyertalk.com and even that wouldn’t show whether you were a member or not. Odd terms and conditions, but a much appreciated offer!)

United offers 25% off awards to Australia.. maybe?

by Gary Leff on February 2, 2006

Feb 02 2006

United is apparently offering coach awards between the U.S. and Australia for 45,000 miles. I say ‘apparently’ because though the terms and conditions suggest the promo should be active and redemption possible online, awards still seem to be pricing out at 60,000 miles. (Perhaps the web page meant to say that the award could not be booked online, which is also why the page says that the $15 award booking fee would be waived. That would explain why the website spits out a 60,000 mile price in spite of the promo. I’ve been too busy to call and find out the truth myself.) Flyertalk discussion of this offer is here.

USAirways to Enforce its Mileage Expiration Policy

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Feb 01 2006

The Charlotte Observer reports that USAirways is planning to delete accounts that have had no activity for 36 months or more unless something posts to the account by February 15. According to the piece USAirways has not enforced its 36 month rule for several years, but plans to as part of the database cleanup involved in merging the America West FlightFund and USAirways Dividend Miles programs together. Any activity is enough to keep an account active, but the activity needs to post by February 15. You could always buy miles, book an award and redeposit it, redeem miles for magazines, or transfer points into or out of your account via Points.com (you could even transfer your points to America West and then transfer them back with no cost or devaluation). (Hat tip to Today in…

Freddies Voting has Begun!

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Voting for the Freddie Awards is now open and will last through February 28. I voted for United as program of the year and best elite level. It has a truly industry-leading award chart — fewest miles for the best international premium class awards (think 90,000 miles for business class to Australia) — and its 1K program can’t be beat for international upgrades from reasonable fares without a co-pay. On the other hand, not a single one of my votes went to Northwest, Delta, or Continental. Together they’ve been increasing mileage costs on premium-class awards and (Continental and Northwest especially) offer generally poor award availability. Skyteam really is the leftover alliance, with equally stingy partners Air France and KLM. On the other hand, best redemption has to go to American… (with a nod to all…

250 Free Priority Club Points

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Feb 01 2006

Priority Club has a short survey for 250 points. Deadline is February 28. It’s tied to the Freddie Awards, and February 28th is also the close of voting in the Freddies. They say points will post within 6 weeks of the close of the survey, so by April 11.

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

United Discounted Awards to London

Using Your Blackberry for Laptop Internet Access

Starwood Bonus for Stays through mid-March

United offers 25% off awards to Australia.. maybe?

USAirways to Enforce its Mileage Expiration Policy

Freddies Voting has Begun!

250 Free Priority Club Points

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

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About Gary Leff

	Bilt Mastercard® Earn Points Paying Rent (up to 100,000 each year) plus earn 3x at restaurants; 2x on travel; as long as you make at least 5 purchases per month. No annual fee.
	Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card Earn 75,000 bonus miles when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months (See rates and fees)
	Citi® / AAdvantage Business^TM World Elite Mastercard® For a limited time, earn 75,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after spending $5,000 in purchases within the first 5 months of account opening. AAdvantage miles are the currency I've redeemed most.[See rates and fees]