American Express Campus Edition – the prepaid product marketed to college students in conjunction with Barnes & Noble campus bookstores — allowed you to load at the bookstore cash register with a credit card or gift card. The card allowed a maximum balance of $1000, and charged $3.95 to reload at register. You could then […]
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Over the weekend I had the chance to be on Etihad's inaugural A380 flight from Abu Dhabi to London, where I flew in one of their First Apartments. I was absolutely blown away by the product.
In theory the most exciting thing about Etihad's new A380 was The Residence, which is the three room suite with butler service that Etihad will sell you for the low price of $20,000+ on a one-way flight.
The first passenger to book The Residence was Gino Bertuccio, who's a really cool guy that I know from some past inaugural flights.
The post First Review Of Etihad’s A380 The Residence appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
IHG Rewards Club has made a big change in their terms and conditions with no advance notice, or even any notice, to members: they will no longer award points even for incidentals on stays booked through third party website. Hotel loyalty programs have spent years trying to gain control over the distribution of rooms. Years […]
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Alaska Airlines' Mileage Plan is offering a winter award sale for bookings made through January 8, 2015.
The promotion is valid for economy award redemptions on Alaska Airlines flights between January 6 and March 5, 2015. You can find the full listing of eligible markets on the Alaska winter award sale webpage, where the sale is organized by city.
For example, out of Seattle you can book awards for just 5,000 miles one-way to Bend, Boise, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose.
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As of April of this year, Hilton HHonors has shifted how they make award category changes. Rather than having massive award chart changes every so often, they’re doing quarterly hotel category adjustments. That’s to say that they’re not changing the number of points required for each category every quarter, but rather are shifting which hotels belong in which categories.
Ultimately I favor anything which isn’t an award chart massacre like what we saw with HHonors early last year, though I don’t really buy that this is being done to increase transparency.
Basically, rather than emailing members when there’s a big award chart change, they now have a website where Hilton lists the category changes. That sounds great in theory, except I’m not sure how a vast majority of members are expected to know when these changes happen.
The post Q1 2015 Hilton HHonors Hotel Category Changes appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly two years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year. And Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past […]
The post Hilton HHonors Announces Hotel Award Category Changes — Find Out Which Hotels Will Cost You More (or Fewer) Points to Redeem appeared first on View from the Wing.
The past few years Starwood has published a "Year In Review," whereby they share some fun statistics with member highlights.
There are the facts that seem believable. For example, the Sheraton New York Times Square was the most popular hotel that members redeemed Starpoints at in 2014.
And 86 is the most number of SPG properties visited by one member this year.
The post Scary Thought: Someone Spent $230,000+ On Delta Last Year appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Here's a brilliant promotion on the part of Alaska Airlines. Alaska is offering Mileage Plan members traveling during the month of January one free checked bag. That's a savings of $25 compared to the normal cost of a checked bag.
Let me start by saying that Alaska Airlines is the one airline I consistently check bags on. As much as I give Alaska a hard time in some ways, they do an amazing job with checked bags. They have a baggage service guarantee, whereby if your bag doesn't arrive at the baggage carousel within 20 minutes of when the aircraft door opens, you receive either a $25 discount for a future flight or 2,500 Mileage Plan miles.
Alaska literally puts every other US airline to shame in that regard, and it shows a real respect for their customers. It's absolutely infuriating when you pay to check a bag on another airline, only to have it take 45 minutes for the bag to arrive at baggage claim.
The post Alaska Offering Mileage Plan Members Free Checked Bags In January appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Regular readers may be familiar with the indispensable guide to saving money on airfare using hidden city and throwaway tickets. In the guide I explain how to find extra flights for your ticket that allow you to save money, I outline the risks and how to make best use of the techniques. A year ago […]
The post David vs. Goliath, United and Orbitz Try Cracking Down on Cheap Airfare Practices appeared first on View from the Wing.
As most of you probably have heard by now, a Virgin Atlantic flight between London Gatwick and Las Vegas made an emergency landing yesterday. The plane had issues with the gear after takeoff, and after circling for nearly four hours it made an emergency landing back at London Gatwick. Fortunately the plane landed safely with no serious injuries.
What's really cool is the footage of the plane making an emergency landing (as you can see, the right-most gear isn't out):
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Hyatt has been exceptionally generous in being willing to give elite members of other hotel chains temporary top tier status in the Gold Passport program, while offering an expedited way to keep that status. And they even gave these temporary Diamond full confirmed suite upgrades as though they had earned the status for a year. […]
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One of the best uses of Air France/KLM FlyingBlue miles is booking their Promo Awards. FlyingBlue publishes these every month, and they offer 25-50% off select award tickets on Air France and KLM metal. Back in the day Promo Awards would consistently be for 50% off and would have a good number of options in business class, though unfortunately they’ve devalued the program somewhat since then, and the discounts now vary.
However, there are still some great values to be had. FlyingBlue just published their latest Promo Awards. These are valid for bookings made between January 1 and January 31, 2015, and for travel between March 1 and April 30, 2015. Not surprisingly, this set of Promo Awards isn't as impressive as the ones for travel in January/February, given that March/April is a busy spring travel period.
The post Air France FlyingBlue March/April Promo Awards — Up To 50% Off appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Must-read Earlier Installments: Singapore, Cathay, and Qantas First Class.. Some of the Best Meals of My Life, and a Tour of Hyatts in Bangkok, Singapore, and Sydney Inside the New Oneworld Lounge at LAX’s Tom Bradley International TerminalCathay Pacific First Class, Los Angeles – Hong Kong Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge, Hong Kong […]
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News and notes from around the interweb: Earn miles for doctor visits. This could either tax the health care system, or really incentivize cost-saving preventive care.. Grocery stores that sell $500 gift cards Skift takes an interesting approach to valuing miles: averaging the values assigned by me, Lucky, and The Points Guy. I think that’s […]
The post Earn Miles for Doctor Visits, Don’t Trust United With Your Pet, and Where to Find Very Important $500 Gift Cards… appeared first on View from the Wing.
