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Last week American Express added Qantas Frequent Flyer as a Membership Rewards transfer partner.
Normally points transfer 1:1 from American Express to Qantas in 500 point increments. However through June 30 they’re offering a 20% bonus on transfers from American Express to Qantas.
Up until June 2014 you could transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to whomever you wish. At that time they instituted new restrictions without warning: they would only allow transfers of your points to people who have an authorized user card on your account.
That was always the rule but the website never enforced it up until that time. You could link anyone’s frequent flyer account to your Membership Rewards account and transfer points to it. Now there’s a new rule or rather a waiting period to transfer points to someone else’s account.
The last major airline to add a hub was Delta — at Seattle — in 2014. Now Delta, which has been building its presence in Boston and taking on JetBlue there, has declared that city to be a hub. Although with 150 peak day departures I see Boston more as a ‘hublet’.
Capital One® Venture® Rewards Credit Card and Capital One® Spark® Miles for Business cardholders gained the ability to transfer to airline frequent flyer miles late last year.
At the time Capital One shared they’d be adding airline points transfer partners. And when they ran an Emirates miles transfer bonus in March they shared that there would be more transfer bonuses to come. They added JetBlue as a transfer partner, and highlighted it with a transfer bonus in May.
American Express Membership Rewards points now transfer to Qantas. Points transfer 1:1 in 500 point increments instead of the usual 1000. Qantas is also a transfer partner of Capital One and Citibank, so there are plenty of ways to get and pool points into Qantas Frequent Flyer for US customers.
Thai Airways is planning to sell frozen Thai food to consumers mostly under the Royal Orchid Gourmet brand, “new ready-made sauces, basil stir fries and pad Thai via the Eurng Luang brand to the market.”
One of the biggest things I gave up moving from the Washington DC area to Austin is good Thai food like Elephant Jumps in Merrifield and Kao Sarn in the Eden Center. I’m not sure I’d resort to Thai Airways Royal Orchid Gourmet frozen meals, at least unless they offered Thai’s duck rick soup.
Here’s a search of available first class award space for two passengers in November. I searched Los Angeles – Sydney, but it brings up Los Angeles – Melbourne space where there’s connecting availability to/from Sydney, and Dallas Fort-Worth – Sydney where there’s connecting availability on American between LA and Dallas.
Some space appears to exist October through February, in other words when Americans want to travel to Australia.
There are amazing fares between Los Angeles and Shanghai in business class the last third of the year on Hainan Airlines, which reportedly offers the best inflight product of any mainland Chinese carrier.
These fares are available from New York as well to Shanghai and with slightly higher pricing to Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Fuzhou
Bank of America has several lesser-known but still excellent rewards credit cards. They will approve at most 2 cards every 2 months, 3 cards every 12 months, and 4 cards every 24 months. That limit applies to Bank of America cards only, rather than being like Chase which looks at the cards you’ve opened from all sources.
A reader writes in that he’s staying “at a no-name, forgettable Sheraton in a medium-sized city” where there are “3 full-service Marriott properties nearby.” A housekeeper “left her manifest.. out on her cart” and there are “3 ambassador elites on a single floor.” He thinks that says there’s something wrong.
There are rumors that some Ambassadors working for Marriott may be assigned as many as 300 top tier elite members, and there are reports of some Ambassador elites not hearing anything at all from their personal agent for months at a time.
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 »
