Tag Archives for award travel.
Alaska stopped letting members use their points for awards on most of their airline partners for close-in travel. They simply did not show award space that was being made available for anything within 3 days of booking.
Most people think that when you ticket an award, you have an award ticket. But that isn’t quite the case. And unticketed award reservations do sometimes get cancelled by the operating carrier!
Virgin Atlantic was the first airline to offer elite status credit when redeeming miles. Delta, which owns 49% of Virgin, copied them. And then United followed. Now American Airlines appears to be testing something similar.
American Airlines domestic awards for a single passenger can now be changed online.
Despite several reports in frequent flyer forums and on blogs to the contrary, it is still possible to make changes to partner awards. No policy change went into effect May 4 that would alter this. And American Airlines confirms this to me.
Roame.travel is a new, free award search tool so I figured it was worth bringing to your attention.
So far they’re just searching (9) award programs for availability
Everything works well when routes don’t get cancelled and schedules don’t change in ways that make connections impossible. But when you are working through one airline to travel on another, things can go wrong. Here’s what to do about it.
A recent award travel horror story shared to Reddit seems like a great opportunity for flagging some of the risks and complexities in travel and how to handle them.
Delta Air Lines announced two changes to the SkyMiles program this morning. SkyMiles award tickets for travel on Delta, which first began counting towards elite status in 2021, will become a permanent feature of the program. And, in an effort to incentivize customers who buy the most expensive tickets, there will no longer be a cap on the miles earn for travel.
In a move that may be ‘the most Bonvoy thing ever,’ the J.W. Marriott Los Cabos Resort says they charge guests using points a $30 redemption fee. This fee, or loyalty tax, applies only to free night awards and is not billed to guests paying cash. It’s not even disclosed in the rate details when booking a points stay.
Bringing a child under two with you in your lap when you travel on international award tickets just got a whole lot cheaper in some cases.
United recently made a change to their award ticket policies that’s a real improvement and ahead of other U.S. frequent flyer programs – and oddly they haven’t even announced it.
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 »
