The US American Express Membership Rewards program has added Emirates Skywards as a points transfer partner. Points transfer 1:1. Here’s the upshot on the Emirates award chart: Awards are fairly expensive, although there are a handful of values. First class awards are exceptionally expensive. Upgrades can be a decent value. New York JFK – Dubai roundtrip in business class runs 145,000 Skywards Miles (or 100,000 miles one-way). New York JFK – Milan roundtrip in business class runs 90,000 Skywards Miles (62,500 one-way) That’s a non-crazy price if you just want to go to Dubai (West Coast departures are more, and flights beyond Dubai are more). New York – Milan, though, represents a pretty good value. Here’s the price of JFK-Dubai roundtrip in first class, though: Choke. Upgrades on the other hand? Compared to the pricing…
basic economy
Search Results for "basic economy".
JetBlue’s Transcon Business Seats and Suites Revealed
Via Frequently Flying, JetBlue has released a video of their new Airbus A321’s which will operate on premium cross-country flights from their New York JFK hub. The video first takes you through the coach cabin showing both regular economy and the Even More Space section. It then heads up front to reveal what appears to be a 16-seat cabin with a 2-2 configuration in rows 1, 3 and 5, and solo mini-suites (complete with privacy doors) on both sides of the aisle in rows 2 and 4. Here’s the video rendering of what the cabin will look like. I took a few screen shots from within the video to offer a glimpse into JetBlue’s premium products. Here’s a straight forward shot of the new business class seats, two-by-two, outside of the first row I would…
Why International Mileage Upgrades are So Expensive and Hard to Get — And What a Better Strategy Would Be
A couple of reader questions about upgrades. JC said, Hi there! Love the insights you share. I know award ticketing requires of me a lot of foresight and planning, but what would really make a difference on my end is how to most efficiently book award tickets/upgrades on the web. And Joy asked, For Star Alliance or Oneworld, what’s the cheapest way to upgrade an Economy flight booked into a cheap fare class (like K or L)? It seems quite expensive on United, for instance, because you have to pay some $300 in addition to the miles you use. Can you do it with a partner airline’s miles for cheaper? Conventional wisdom has always said that the best way to use miles was confirmed international upgrades to business class (buying a coach ticket, using miles…
Bits ‘n Pieces for March 11, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Wells Fargo Prepaid Visa cards have been a useful way to generate spending for points and bonuses. Million Mile Secrets reports that starting May 1 you’ll only be able to use Wells Fargo credit and debit cards to fund them which undermines their usefulness. Aeroplan earn up to 25,000 miles for partner activity. Deceptive pricing: Delta begins offering international fares with no changes, no retained value for cancellation, and no advance seat assignments — without the same disclosure they offer for those fares on domestic routes. Club Carlson Gold status just for signing up
Another Bucket List Sale: New York to the Galapagos in Business Class for $1338
The Points Guy blogged about a current business class deal from Dallas to Buenos Aires and from New York JFK to Guayaquil for a hair under $1000. Both excellent buys compared to usual pricing, both available on a combination of American Airlines and LAN. While I should probably have a greater appreciation for the largest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil as such doesn’t hold much interest for me. But I started playing around and found that you can include an add-on to Baltra Island (the Galapagos) as part of the ticket. Those segments are all-economy, and it’s basically just buying the Guayaquil special fare plus a regular ticket to and from Baltra, but much more convenient for connecting straight through than separate tickets. And that makes this deal really attractive, to me at least. So after…
New Years in Paris: Air France Business, British Airways First, and the Park Hyatt Vendome: Washington Dulles-Paris Onboard the A380
A trip report in five parts Air France A380 Business Class, Washington Dulles – Paris Park Hyatt Vendome Mostly Eating in Paris British Airways Paris Orly – London and the Concorde Room British Airways “New” First Class, London – Washington Dulles Looking for something to do for New Years I settled on Paris, there was non-stop business class availability on the Washington Dulles – Paris non-stop. And it’s their Airbus A380. I’m not one to chase aircraft. I’m much more interested in the inflight product than the model of the plane itself. And believe it or not (it’s sort of something I hadn’t even realized until I stopped to think about it), I hadn’t actually ever been on an A380 other than crawling around one of Qantas’ during the oneworld MegaDO back at the end…
US Airways Finally Tells the Truth — Lufthansa First Class is Not Offered by the Dividend Miles Program
I was emailing yesterday with Ben and after discussing something on a completely different topic, and mentioned I needed to write about the addition of a new footnote in the US Airways award chart. He replied, “was *just* writing it as you emailed. Hah!” Of course Ben is a professional blogger and got his thoughts up right away. I, on the other hand, had my first day in a new office. I have been overseeing the construction and permitting (egads, it involved getting a County re-zoning), which all completed last week — just in time for move-in. So things were a little bit chaotic. And I’m about 16 hours behind. US Airways Updates Their Award Chart to Say Lufthansa First Class is Not Offered The US Airways partner award chart (.pdf) has been updated to…
Bits ‘n Pieces for December 16, 2012
News and notes from around the interweb: Head for Points goes over the basics of upgrading with British Airways Avios points. I often say that international upgrades with miles are no longer the value that they used to be; British Airways is an exception where there’s no cash co-pay. Upgrades from premium economy to business class tend to be a very good use of points. You can buy Paypal reload cards with a credit card (and earn miles, meet minimum spend for signup bonuses) and add the money to your Paypal account. Giddy for Points talks about ways to get the money out of Paypal since you probably don’t want to just load your account and then transfer funds out to your bank account; Paypal can be quite persnickety and freeze accounts. In 2008, United…
No, Really, You SHOULDN’T Collect Miles and Points
A couple of days ago I offered an old-school Fisking of a Christopher Elliott piece where he suggested that frequent flyer miles are worthless, you should walk away from the programs, and even that “[a]irline loyalty programs as they currently exist should be banned and the accomplices who pushed points on an unsuspecting public should be arrested and put on trial.” It was a silly, over-the-top piece and frankly almost too easy to mock. But Elliott, writing for a mass audience highly unlikely to be paying close enough attention to frequent flyer programs to benefit properly from them, could have taken his basic arguments and written a much better and more useful piece. And I think I probably owe him the courtesy of responding not just to the piece he wrote, which was easily mocked,…
American Relaunching Itself as a Premium Airline… and the Challenges of Frontline Service Delivery
While the trend among US airlines has been to cut costs, American has done as much to make investments in their premium products as any US carrier — and has done so throughout their bankruptcy. Now, many of the investments will take several years to come to fruition. But there’s little question that they are working to position themselves as a top end premium carrier worthy of the corporate contracts (where they already have an advantage) and paid high yield traffic (where there’s less competition among US airlines). It’s even tough to keep up with all of the product improvements that have been announced over the past year or so. They’re putting brand new international seats into their aircraft: a new first class seat (which will ultimately be offered only on their 777-300s) and a…
