This is highly valuable to me personally. It makes the Bilt Mastercard the most lucrative card for Amazon spend (more valuable than the 5% back Amazon Visa because I value Bilt points at a minimum of 1.7 cents apiece) and the most lucrative for food delivery as well.
But I’m most interested in the strategy because of what these spending categories have in common.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The fastest way down to baggage claim, though, if you’re in a hurry is to go through the ceiling. At least that’s what one man discovered at the Tampa airport. He “fell through the ceiling and landed in [Southwest Airlines] baggage claim” on Monday evening, according to a passenger who reported witnessing the event.
United Airlines has added language to its Contract of Carriage to say that they will not honor mistake fares, but that if you book one and incur non-refundable costs as a result they will reimburse those costs.
The airline also now says that booking flights likely to be delayed, and then complaining about the delays for compensation, is grounds to be banned from the MileagePlus frequent flyer program.
During a meeting with pilots last week, American Airlines Chief Operating Officer David Seymour reviewed the carrier’s recent performance from the holidays and February storms, noting that “[Dallas – Forth Worth airport] does not deal with ice that well.” DFW is known colloquially as ‘Doesn’t Function Wet.’
Kendall Lock, American’s Vice President for Airline Operations Technology, reviewed how the new HEAT system works to choose which flights to delay in order to end up cancelling fewer trips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
This month the number of non-stop commercial flights between the U.S. and China totals 48. That’s not per day, across all airlines. That’s for the entire month, according to schedule data from Cirium Diio Mi.
If you’ve wanted to get value out of SkyMiles you’ve needed to (1) usually fly coach, and (2) luck out with one of their ‘flash sales’ on domestic routes and travel to the Caribbean.
Even coach travel, though, is no longer reasonable even when it’s seats that are likely to go unsold in coach. They’ve started charging over 500,000 miles one way for some economy partner awards to Asia.
When 55 passengers board a single flight using wheelchairs, that’s tough not to notice. But when only 25 need assistance getting off the plane at their destination, it starts to look like 30 people requested assistance just to get priority board, plus maybe assistance through the security line at the airport.
United’s seat map tool seeks out available adjacent seats during the booking process. They’ll use this to make more adjacent seats available, even in more costly coach seats, when children under 12 are part of a booking. A full rollout of the capability will happen by next month.
The airline will also allow free flight change without fare difference when adjacent seats aren’t available prior to travel. Their new policy applies even on basic economy fares.
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 »
