Reader Mike asked, I’ve booked myself a flight to Hawaii but having trouble finding a good one home in F. I’m looking at AS,AA & UA since I have points for all & UA seems to have the most options in general, just not to MSP. My idea is to do separate award searches to one of the hubs, then from the hub to MSP and see what I can find. If I do find something, can I call United to feed the agent segment by segment, even if the website does not list my proposed itinerary as an option when searching HNL to MSP? . Simple answer: Yes Mike is asking about a very important principle in award search. Airline computers are pretty limited in what they’ll search for you. They will come up…
delta
Search Results for "delta".
You Can Still Book Free One-Way Awards When You Redeem Miles. These Mileage Programs Let You.
Reader fauxblogger asked, Which foreign airline mileage programs permit tag flight to/from [North American] gateway city to [North American] home city on a single award when redeeming its own program’s miles? I think I understand what fauxblogger is asking. This reader wants to know what mileage programs allow stopovers on award tickets. The reason they asked the question the way they did is that American Airlines — up until April 8 last year — permitting stopovers on international award tickets, but only in the North American gateway city. In other words, the city you arrived or departed North America in/from. You could fly back to the gateway city, say you lived in Dallas and landed in Dallas from abroad. And ‘stopover’ there. Instead of ending your itinerary you would add another domestic flight, say to…
American Airlines Ends Inflight Duty Free
Apparently American Airlines has ceased selling onboard duty free. Delta dropped duty free last summer. It was characterized in media as a dispute over contract details with their outsource provider, the same company I believe which American worked with (DFASS Group). Duty free is said to be a $3 billion industry, although that strikes me as surprisingly high. Duty free purchases of high tax items like alcohol and cigarettes are popular as are jewelry and cosmetics, especially in Asia and the Middle East as well as Scandinavia flights. You’ll just have to buy your duty free here instead. US airlines don’t have the same volume of duty free purchases as Asian and Middle Eastern carriers. I’ve read that Korean has a standalone duty free display for shopping throughout the flight on the A380 (I’ve only…
American Updating Their Award Charts — Don’t Panic!
An American spokesperson emails, I just wanted to give you a heads up that around 11 a.m. CT this morning, we’re refreshing the look and feel of our award charts to make them easier to read and navigate. There are NO changes to the content or pricing, etc. I don’t think the new award charts are easier, I actually think they’re more cumbersome, since you now get a different separate chart for each region of the world instead of a single grid. Here’s the new partner award chart for travel between the US 48 states and the rest of the world. (Click to enlarge) Why are they doing this? We are in the process of updating all of our aa.com pages to match our new look and feel, so award charts were next on the…
Is This What Our Hobby Has Come To?
Yesterday the Hyatt Gold Passport system was showing award redemption prices in error for some hotels. Take the Park Hyatt Chicago, which normally runs 25,000 points per night as a category 6 hotel. It was showing up at 35,000 points: Now, 35,000 points isn’t even a thing in Gold Passport. The top price for a standard room is category 7, which is 30,000 points per night. The same thing was showing up for the New York hotels, by the way. When I clicked through to the property, the number of points required for the hotel didn’t even appear.
For the Best Airfare Deals (Including Mistakes), Follow The Flight Deal
Several readers asked how they could have found out about the American Airlines mistake business class airfares to China from earlier this week. That one was on FlyerTalk first, I believe, but it was also posted at TheFlightDeal.com. They had the $1700 3-cabin first class deal to Seoul and the $178+ fares to Abu Dhabi, India, and Africa. They also had this month’s $500+ Air France premium economy deal to Istanbul (a $2500 – $3000 ticket normally). Scanning their site just this morning I see: Chicago – Jakarta for $795 roundtrip Los Angeles – Copenhagen for $651 roundtrip New York – Bangkok for $756 roundtrip San Francisco – Stockholm for $654 roundtrip Seattle – Hong Kong for $536 roundtrip They have a daily email list and they tweet out deals as well as listing deals…
Chef Announced for American Express Centurion Lounge Miami!
American Express has begun operating their own network of “Centurion lounges,” which are a step above what travelers have become accustomed to from US airline-operated lounges. I consider the American Express Centurion lounge in Dallas my favorite lounge in the U.S.. It’s one of the two lounges I visit most often. There’s a Centurion lounge already in Las Vegas and at New York LaGuardia as well and also San Francisco. There’s an additional known lounge in the pipeline for Miami, and a more modest lounge coming to Seattle. The Miami lounge will be most easily accessible to American Airlines passengers. The Miami lounge should be getting close to open especially because its celebrity chef pairing is now known:
This is the Real Threat US Airlines Need to Worry About
US airlines have been making a fuss that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar receive subsidies and it’s unfair they should have to compete against those carriers. (Subsidies for US airlines are, of course, ok.) The airlines largely don’t compete with each other now, with a couple of flights to Dubai between them the US carriers and a couple of flights to India. The big worry is an expansion of service like Emirates’ New York – Milan flight. Although ironically, of the 3 the weakest case they have is against Emirates. While their eye is on the 3 big Gulf carriers (and not on Kuwaiti which flies New York – London, or Delta partner Saudi), the real competitive risk that they face comes from low cost carriers who will outcompete US airlines on price and where that…
Are Credit Cards About to Be Killed Off in Europe?
Doctor of Credit writes that EU lawmakers agreed to impose limits on EU debit and credit card interchange fees of 0.2% and 0.3% respectively. The Effect of Debit Card Fee Limits in the U.S. Debit interchange is already limited in the US by the Durbin Amendment to Dodd Frank (which led, more or less, to the end of rewards debit cards though I’m grateful that my Suntrust Delta debit card is grandfathered – for now). Of course it wasn’t just the end of rewards debit cards that happened as a result of the Durbin Amendment. Banks no longer earn much off of debit cards, which means that the average checking account customer is no longer profitable, there has to be another non-checking relationship there. So it becomes more difficult to get free or fee-waived checking…
Here’s Why American is Excited About Their New Boarding Music. (And It’s Really Pretty Good.)
In the fall American changed their boarding and arrival music. And since the new tunes are getting positive reaction they’re sharing the current and upcoming playlists. No doubt some of the excitement stems from seeing tweets from LA-based celebs who dig the new music.. the little things that help them in that fiercely competitive market where United, Delta, Southwest and even Alaska have a strong presence and no one can get more gate space to expand. Interestingly, they’re candid that they made the change because of customer complaints about the old music.
