News and notes from around the interweb: Evolve Money (earn miles for paying your mortgage..) begins tightening its policies. The latest on OneVanilla, Bluebird, and Walmart. Today’s “Daily Getaways” deal is 19% off Marriott gift cards. 1000 bonus Asiamiles for two partner transactions, including just “crediting a Cathay or Dragonair flights and then booking something on Ctrip.” Singapore Airlines Krisflyer joins the mileage-earning shopping portal game, but the payouts strike me as ungenerous. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
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WOW Deal $1700 3-Cabin First Class Fare Boston and Other Cities – Seoul Roundtrip
United has a ~$1700 fare valid through the end of schedule between Boston and Seoul that allows travel across the Pacific in their 3-cabin United Global First product. The fare also appears to be available from Hartford, Connecticut and Burlington, Vermont. Perhaps there are other cities, please share if you find them. This deal is no longer available. Read on to see what you missed!
The Ultimate Guide to Constructing an International Award Ticket Using American Miles
Four months ago I wrote a detailed guide to booking awards using American AAdvantage miles. Since that time distance-based oneworld awards have been eliminated, and so have ‘domestic gateway city stopovers’ on international awards. So those need to be removed from the guide. In addition, American has very quirky routing rules. I noted earlier today that those have been changed a bit with the addition of Qatar Airways to oneworld. JonNYC provided the full detail on those changes. What I know about booking awards with American AAdvantage miles comes from more than a decade of personal experience, from more than four years booking awards for others, and some insights gleamed from unpublished rules shared over at TravelingBetter.com. But recent changes required an update to the guide. This will show you the rules, tips, and tricks…
A Glitch to Avoid Fuel Surchages on American Express Transfer Partner Aeroplan
Yesterday I showed how to reduce fuel surcharges on British Airways awards when redeeming American miles. Today, a new opportunity (that is likely a glitch and so will be short-lived) to redeem Aeroplan points without fuel surcharges. There’s a glitch right now that will help you avoid paying fuel surcharges when redeeming awards with Air Canada’s Aeroplan, an especially useful program because it is an instant transfer partner of American Express. Last year I called Aeroplan the most devalued program in North America. First there was the gutting of their award chart on July 15, 2011. For instance, my favorite award — first class to most of Asia — went from 120,000 miles to 175,000 miles (a 46% increase in one shot). Australia awards went from 75,000 to 80,000 in coach; 100,000 to 135,000 in…
What Part of Suite Upgrade Don’t You Understand?
I’m need to buy Lucky who writes the One Mile at a Time blog, this t-shirt. He shared his experience checking into the St. Regis Abu Dhabi, a Starwood hotel. First he was (incorrectly) told that his American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts booking wasn’t entitled to a Platinum upgrade. Then he was told that even though the hotel was selling more than 9 St. Regis suites, that none were available. He tweeted the hotel and Starwood Preferred Guest, and he was given one of those suites. Here’s how to ask for – and get – a hotel upgrade. Burj al Arab
I’m Giving Away $400 to My Blog Readers. Click Here to Enter. All You Have to Do Is Be Positive!
It’s been a tough 18 months in the frequent flyer world. It’s easier than ever to earn points, but the cost of awards has gone up, up, up. Miles and points have been very good to me, and I do my best to give back where I can. I don’t make a public show of my charity, but I do my best to give the best advice I can and to offer giveaways when things are offered to me. And when I have gift cards, I can either turn them into money orders or do various frequent flyer experiments, or I can give them away. So here, I thought I would give away $400. And what better way to give them away than to my readers who comment on this post?
Which Hotel Chain Should You Give Your Business To?
Each hotel chain, and associated loyalty program, has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s important to know which one fits you best. So I’ve provided a rundown of the key elements of each one, pluses and minuses, and The smaller hotel programs tend to be the most rewarding. Not all small programs provide above average value, but the progams that do provide outsized value tend to be small. My working theory is that it’s easy to be loyal to Marriott. Marriotts are everywhere. There are 4000 of them. When I hear people talk about how much they like Marriott the argument is usually that there are Marriotts everywhere “so I can always earn my points” and also that they can have the same consistent hotel experience everywhere they go (some people don’t consider that a positive,…
How Big a Deal Are United’s New Changes to Award Rules?
This morning I wrote about United publishing new, highly restrictive rules for how you can put together awards on flights to several destinations. One of the most generous things about United has been its routing rules, taken from the old Continental system. You could pretty much get between any two cities any way you wished, combining most flights on most airlines and crossing most regions. It’s “whatever the computer would price” and the computer’s pricing algorithms have been very messy. Sometimes it wouldn’t let you do something you thought you should. But those instances were rare. More often you could get a whole lot more than was reasonable. The pricing system always seemed to be hacked together, with workarounds. It used to be that if you booked an international business class award with a domestic…
United May Be Making Another Huge STEALTH Devaluation: What You Need to Know
United already massively increased the number of points required for awards, especially premium cabin awards and especially on partner airlines, back in February. But the usefulness of miles is a function of: The cost of an award (award chart pricing) Availability Routing rules (what available flights can you take advantage of to get where you’re going) And United appears to be in the midst of a major stealth devaluation without any notice in the form of significantly restricting its routing rules.
How Will Thailand’s Military Coup Affect Your Travel?
Thailand has again seen a military coup. What does it mean for travelers? Thaksin Shinawatra served as Thai Prime Minister from 2001 until 2006 when he was ousted by a military coup. The country has seen a period of intense political turmoil over the past decade. Shinawatra is a populist who draws his political power from the North of the country, from the country’s poor. His rule threatened Thailand’s traditional elites based in Bangkok. Those traditional power structures, in control of the military at the time of Shinawatra’s ouster, struck back. Shinawatra was convicted on corruption charges and fled the country. When the military handed control of the government back to civilian hands, Shinawatra’s allies were placed back into office. There was a period of relative stability during military rule, but with Shinawatra’s allies back…
