These aren’t all the pluses and minuses of each, but they’re the major drivers of value for a traveler who shares similar perspectives with me — an elite member who wants to use their points at the best and best value properties when vacationing on my own account. I’ve ordered them from best to worst according to my own subjective scale. Small but important items like 4pm late checkout likely feed into that scale, but don’t warrant bullets on their own. Hyatt Gold Passport The Good: Confirmed suite upgrades. This to me is the killer app, the feature that makes the Gold Passport program tops of any major hotel chain. Four times a year, Diamond members can reserve suites (for up to 7 nights at a time) from the lowest rate, confirmed at booking. No…
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Using Credit Card Offers to Construct a Free Dream Trip Quickly
Important Links:Chase Sapphire Preferred card Chase Ink Bold Charge CardAmerican Airlines Citibank cardsUsing American Express gift cards to meet credit card minimum spending requirements A Few Credit Card Signups Can Fund Your Next Vacation: Planning ahead and paying attention to miles is great, accumulating large balances strategically and having a big stash when it comes time to redeem, in multiple programs even, that means you have a choice of airlines to redeem tickets with and you increase your chances of getting the award you want when you want it exponentially. But not everyone plays the game this way. Not everyone spends time in frequent flyer communities (I spend much time on Milepoint these days). Now, most people don’t take advantage of the deals that loyalty programs offer. They just assume those programs can’t provide much…
The Other Shoe Drops from Aeroplan: Adding Fuel Surcharges to Most Partner Airline Redemptions
Last week — without notice — Aeroplan began adding fuel surcharges onto award redemptions with several partner airlines. The next day they adjusted to only adding fuel surcharges onto Lufthansa reward flights. And now they’ve changed their mind again, and are going to be imposing fuel surcharges on most Star Alliance partner airline awards. With the increasing cost of fuel, many airlines have started charging fuel surcharges on redemption tickets. All fuel surcharge amounts are applied by Aeroplan on behalf of the ticketing carrier and are passed through directly to the ticketing carrier. Fuel surcharge amounts are determined by each airline and may change from time to time. Aeroplan has applied fuel surcharges for flight rewards on Air Canada since 2004. The fuel surcharge amounts to be applied by Aeroplan for flights on Star Alliance…
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card as King of the Credit Cards?
This morning on Milepoint someone posted a question prompted by my blog post yesterday on whether Aeroplan fuel surcharges reduce the value of American Express Membership Rewards points and whether that changes my overall advice on best credit card. The question was about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s been all the rage with ‘in the know’ frequent flyers for months now, I only broke down and got the card myself over the summer, as Chase has improved the program substantially. I’ve referenced it several times as part of larger posts, such as my advice on the best mix of rewards credit cards but I haven’t given it real standalone treatment. As recent posts will tell you, I still love American Express Membership Rewards. I’ve even been defending Membership Rewards against naysayers who argue that…
How the Department of Transportation Regulates Twitter..
.. or at least airline tweets. Via Frequently Flying, the DOT’s enforcement unit is monitoring airline twitter activity for regulatory compliance. Sounds to me like an excuse for DOT staffers to spend all day at their desks on Twitter, but here’s what they’re after: if an airfare is mentioned and if any taxes and fees are not included, there must be a hyperlink “adjacent to the stated fare” that “takes the viewer directly to a place on a separate screen where the nature and amount of taxes and fees are prominently and immediately displayed. Likewise, if a roundtrip purchase condition applies to an advertised each-way fare, this must also be disclosed in the tweet.” However, HTML layout on this separate disclosure link matters — links taking the user to “a page or a place on…
Aeroplan Adjusts Fuel Surcharges Again
Yesterday Aeroplan began adding fuel surcharges on several airline partner awards. Previously they had been adding those charges only to awards on Air Canada flights. Now they’ve dialed it back a bit, and are adding fuel surcharges only on Air Canada and Lufthansa flights. Awards on All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai are pricing out without fuel surcharges. Aeroplan has not made any statements about their intentions beyond that they are adding the charges to awards booked on Air Canada and Lufthansa — nothing about whether other airlines will be added in the future, or when. But they seem to suggest that fuel surcharges on other carriers may be coming down the pike. Effective November 9th 2011 at 7pm, Aeroplan began applying, at Air Canada’s request, fuel surcharges to flight rewards on Lufthansa. Members making voluntary…
Why the Introduction of Fuel Surcharges for Aeroplan Awards DOESN’T Change My Credit Card Advice
[Offers in this post are no longer current] Aeroplan has started adding fuel surcharges to many partner awards, including on Lufthansa, All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai. One of the common internet memes is that this is a real blow to American Express Membership Rewards. Because Amex points transfers was one of the key ways that folks in the U.S. were generating Aeroplan points. Certainly the change to Aeroplan with no notice whatsoever makes their program less valuable. And it means that points that might have been transferred into Aeroplan have a bit less value, since the transfer option is worth less. An equally big kick in the teeth to Aeroplan came in July with their massive award chart devaluation (and that wasn’t even the only recent cutback). Of course, American Express also lost Continental as…
Aeroplan Begins Adding Fuel Surcharges to Star Alliance Partner Awards
Aeroplan is a strange program, at least it has been, in that it has long been advantageous to book award travel on airlines other than Air Canada. Aeroplan has added fuel surcharges to Air Canada flights but not to flights on partner airlines. That practice has apparently changed, effective today. Aeroplan awards on Lufthansa, All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai are all now showing up with fuel surcharges. Fuel surcharges vary by airline and by route. A domestic coach award from New York to Frankfurt has a fuel surcharge over $400, so with tax and during low season it can be the same price to book an award ticket as to buy a paid, mileage-earning ticket. So far it appears as though awards on United, Swiss, and Singapore are not. Of course there are no guarantees…
How to Make Delta’s SkyPesos Work for You
After my talk on award booking at the Chicago frequent flyer seminar last month, I committed to putting together much of the advice that I shared in the form of blog posts. That takes a good long time, the reason I haven’t shared my talks here on the blog in the past is because I’ve never written them down, I tend to sketch out an outline and just talk. In order to keep things sufficiently interesting (for me, in the writing!), I won’t be writing up the different sections in order. But I’ll piece it all together in the end. Delta Skymiles are often referred to as “SkyPesos” because they are less valuable and more difficult to use than miles in major competitor programs. I’ve found this to be true for several reasons. Their pricing…
What Does a Pending Sale of bmi Mean for the Diamond Club frequent flyer program?
I’ve been watching the moves across the pond that Lufthansa has been making with british midland with some interest, bmi has been a money losing operation and Lufthansa wants to unload it. There’s movement along that front, what interests me most is what becomes of the Diamond Club frequent flyer program, all the commentary that I’ve seen to date says something along the lines of “we don’t know and I won’t speculate.” I’ll offer a slightly different formulation: we don’t know, but I will speculate. First came reports that Lufthansa was offloading bmi’s regional operation. My thought at that time would be sell off the pieces, and shut down what remains, transferring bmi’s Diamond Club members into the Miles & More frequent flyer program. There’s good and bad to that outcome, the good is that…
