Tag Archives for miles.
Airlines have gone through unprecedented challenges as a result of the global pandemic. Carriers have taken on enormous levels of debt and have only limited ability to invest in their product again. Delta CEO has even said he expects future bailouts if they’re needed. What if the solution to long-term airline solvency were right in front of us? What if it took just a tweak to one law to make happen? And we might never be stuck doling out subsidies again.
My Tuesday flights already posted to my American AAdvantage account when I checked Tuesday evening. I didn’t wait until the morning to look because these flights would put me over 100,000 miles for the year. Other readers have confirmed that they’re also seeing miles posting right after flight.
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.
Plastiq.com is a service that will charge your credit card and mail checks on your behalf. (With some vendors they also make electronic ACH payments.)
Their usual fee for this is 2.5%. It’s worth it to incur that fee if you’re earning a signup bonus with the credit card charges, or you’re meeting a spending threshold for a bonus.
Earlier in the week I wrote that customers were transferring points from Marriott to Lufthansa and they were just getting lost in the ether. There seemed to be a broad issue with Lufthansa transfers, and that this was a sudden decision on Lufthansa’s part that applied pretty broadly.
In this case Marriott is coming under criticism for how they’re handling Lufthansa’s withdrawal from points transfers because their points transfers are actually useful. Who would transfer Hilton points to Lufthansa miles if they had any other option?
Right now there are better Delta credit card bonus offers than we’ve ever seen, and it’s important to put them in context — and work through the best way to use these miles. Reader John challenges me to lay out the positives of SkyMiles as well.
It appears that SkyMiles is now charging 105,000 miles each way for transatlantic business class awards, up from 86,000 miles. That’s a 22% devaluation without notice on top of Delta’s already most-expensive saver awards compared to competitors, and a 50% increase in a year.
When Delta raised transatlantic prices to 86,000 miles just over a year ago they rolled back the increase briefly, before bumping it up again to 82,000 miles in June. So we don’t know if this new highest price will hold in the immediate term.
In December I wrote that Delta has added basic economy restrictions to the lowest award prices for some routes. This was limited to just a few cities.
Now the travesty has spread.
The ETA “Executive Travel App” will give you 15,000 United or American miles for booking your next trip to mark the launch of their Slack integration.
Their target audience is frequent business travelers who book travel for themselves — but anyone who downloads the app and books a trip is eligible for the bonuses.
There’s a great deal of discussion of a rumor that Etihad could sever ties with American Airlines and partner with United or even join Star Alliance instead.
I first covered these discussions over the summer but now it’s getting much broader attention.
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 »
