Arguably the most exciting new card of 2021 was the Capital One Venture X card. Along with the bank’s other miles cards, their points now transfer to a variety of frequent flyer programs at 1:1, an improvement that came last spring.
At the time Capital One improved to 1:1 transfers with most partners, they also announced Choice Privileges would become a transfer partner in late 2021. They missed that by a few days, but now this is live.
For years my favorite workaround was to dial Singapore reservations, using an internet calling app to avoid high rates. You’d get an English-speaking agent, and the hold times wouldn’t be bad at all most of the time. When U.S. flights were melting down, people call U.S. reservations – not foreign call centers.
Unfortunately you no longer get routed into a separate phone queue by ringing up Singapore. That is no longer a ‘trick’ to avoid the long hold times of the U.S. phone number for Delta.
A disabled woman flew from Atlanta to Phoenix to spend Christmas with her daughter, but when she got in a wheelchair on the jetbridge in Phoenix after arriving, she was just left there. About 20 minutes later the last crewmember off the aircraft pushed her up to the gate finally, and left here there. Where she waited, and waited. And since it was the last flight of the night there, employees – who saw her there – just turned out the lights and left.
When American Airlines ran a holiday promotion in conjunction with Mastercard on their joint venture SimplyMiles website, I went all-in. They offered sextuple miles on all offers, and the most lucrative was unlimited 40 miles per dollar donating to Conservation International – a charity Mastercard was raising money for.
That meant earning 240 miles per dollar, or buying miles at $0.0042 apiece. I did 7 million miles. That’s hardly ‘the most’ anyone went for. I know of several readers who did more than me. One reported earning 12 million miles with this promotion.
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.
SimplyMiles lets you earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles for transactions with a variety of merchants when making the purchase using a Mastercard that’s been linked to the site. They host numerous ‘Mastercard Offers,’ sort of like Amex Offers. But Mastercard doesn’t have the direct consumer relationship that Amex has with its closed loop. So they’re going after American AAdvantage customers.
I earned 7 million miles with their latest promotion. Other readers earned more. And I’ve had several people ask me about the economics of these offers.
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.
A Delta Air Lines passenger was denied boarding in Los Angeles and police say that “he was too drunk” to fly. He didn’t like that idea. And he showed it by “punching an officer in the chest.” The man was reportedly arrested and charged with battery of a police officer.
Cancellations are abundant across airlines at this point, and are already spreading into Sunday and even Monday, despite incentives for employees to show up. Some may come into work sick, others may be calling in sick for the usual New Year’s reasons (with Covid meaning there aren’t the extra crew available to pick up those shifts). And schedule turmoil extends because planes and crew wind up out of position and airlines take time to recover from that. Meanwhile, while it’s possible that Omicron spreads so fast we’ll be peaking soon in parts of the country, the number of people unavailable to work appears to be growing.
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.
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 »
