Qantas will be flying four koalas from Brisbane, Australia to Singapore where they will eventually join the Singapore Zoo. On loan from Australia as a symbol of friendship between the two countries, the 6-month gift could become permanent.
Transporting them requires custom-built shipping capsules that are climate-controlled and with a tree and eucalyptus leaves. Qantas, though, says they'll be flying "koala class." And they have photos...
Continue reading Four Koalas Flying from Australia to the Singapore Zoo in Qantas “Koala Class”...
I've just wrapped up an incredibly relaxing one week vacation in the Maldives. I'm usually not much the relaxing type, but for the first time I can remember I was able to truly unwind, and I'd return in a heartbeat.
The only downside to the trip was that I caught a cold the second day I got there. It must have been my crazy outbound routing, combined with getting virtually no sleep the first night I was in the Maldives.
So I wasn't feeling 100% yesterday when I left due to being in the final stages of a cold, combined with being sunburned and having some bug bites.
After flying from Kooddoo to Male on Maldivian in the last row I was quite looking forward to getting on my Cathay Pacific redeye to Hong Kong, where I'd get a fully flat seat.
The post Babies On A Plane! appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Reader Rick asked, I’d like to know how to hold award flights at the different major airlines and how long you can do so. Haven’t come across an authority post on this… Putting an award on hold is really useful. Award travel can be complicated: With the widespread advent of one-way awards, you may be booking multiple pieces of a trip in sequence, you want to make sure you can put the whole thing together before you’re committed. You may be transferring points from partners like American Express or Starwood and those transfers may not be instantaneous. So you want to secure the award and then transfer points when possible. You may be coordinating with award travel for hotels. Or with awards that other passengers are booking. Fundamentally booking award travel is more complicated than…
Continue reading Putting Award Space on Hold – Rather than Having to Instantly Ticket – With Several Airlines...
Via Don’t Call the Airline, Air Canada’s Aeroplan frequent flyer program — a Star Alliance program and an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner — has a redemption pricing glitch. If you book a roundtrip award with premium economy one way and business class the other, the award will price as premium economy. Aeroplan’s reward chart for North America – Asia roundtrip is this: Premium economy is 125,000 miles roundtrip. Business Class is 150,000 miles roundtrip. Here’s an itinerary between Canada and Japan, business class one-way and premium economy the other. And it prices at 125,000 miles. The outbound is indeed over the water in Air Canada business class. This is how the award will price: So if you’re ever going to find yourself booking a premium economy award through Aeroplan, consider pricing it with…
Continue reading Aeroplan Award Pricing Glitch: Upgrade One-Way to Business Class for No Additional Miles...
The IHG® Rewards Club Select Credit Card is presently offering an increased sign-up bonus of 70,000 points after spending $1,000 within three months of account opening. The card's annual fee is a low $49, and is waived the first year.
The card has three benefits which make it especially compelling, in my opinion:
-- You get an anniversary free night certificate every year, which is valid at any IHG property worldwide, pending availability; given IHG’s global footprint, that should justify the card for just about anyone, given the annual fee is only $49
-- You get IHG Rewards Club Platinum status for as long as you have the card, which gets you bonus points, room upgrades, etc.
-- You get a 10% rebate on points redemptions, for up to 100,000 points back each year
The post Best Hotels For Redeeming IHG Free Night Certificate appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
The Google Flights team is hosting a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Thursday, April 16 at 12:00pm – 3:00pm Pacific. Google’s Most Useful Flight Search Technology The flight search piece of technology behind Google Flights is the ITA matrix, which they acquired four years ago. The nice thing about ITA’s consumer website – where you cannot actually buy tickets – is that it allows you powerful search tools. For instance, You can specify what city or cities to connect in. You can specify what airlines or even specific flights to fly (i.e. it will search all options between New York and Bangkok that include American’s Dallas – Hong Kong flight). You can do one-way, roundtrip, or multi-city search. You can search specific dates, a range of dates, or a month-long calendar search. You can…
Continue reading Google Flights WIll Let You Ask Them Anything...
Now that we've finally said goodbye to the Dividend Miles program (*cries*), there are many of us with an abundance of American AAdvantage miles. The programs are very different, and we've been getting a lot of questions as to how to get the best value for American miles, or even just how to redeem them.
Once you know the rules, it's pretty easy to use American miles, so I thought I'd go through the main points of the program, at least on the redemption side.
The post How To Redeem American AAdvantage Miles appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Each week we publish a number of fantastic deals on the blog and in Quick Deals. Most deals don’t last long, but some hang around for awhile. In an effort to keep you up to date, we have gone back through each of the deals posted over the last couple of months to let you know which ones are still active. Here are the deals still alive as of April 12, 2015. Through April 14…
The post It’s not too late – Deals still alive as of 04/12/2015 appeared first on The Frequent Miler.
Over the past ten years I’ve used millions of Frequent Flyer Miles & Points to go everywhere—literally, everywhere.I write a lot about travel hacking in the archives and also through our paid service, the Travel Hacking Cartel, which has served more than 16,000 members and counting. I'm also co-teaching a brand-new bootcamp called Make Your Dream Trip a Reality, which you can watch for free every weekday morning for six weeks starting on April 26.If that's not enough, we recently published a new page on the blog that includes 100+ links and a general overview of getting started in this world.Star Alliance airline ANA just changed to a new reservation system. That's a big deal because their website has been the most reliable way to search award space on all of the Star Alliance airlines.
Right now the site seems to be hobbled in its features and the flights it is showing. Hopefully just teething pains, but here are your options in the meantime.
Continue reading Woke Up to a Hobbled Star Alliance Award Search Tool? Here’s What You Can Do....
I'm a big fan of fifth freedom routes (where an airline from one country has the right to fly between two different countries), as they're a great way to add some spice to an otherwise boring trip.
My single favorite fifth freedom route within North America is Cathay Pacific's New York to Vancouver route, which provides proper longhaul international first class service when traveling coast-to-coast.
Philippine Airlines also recently started flying between the two cities, though I can't say I'm quite as keen to fly them on the route. ;)
Another airline with a tag flight between the US and Canada is Brazilian airline TAM, which flies between New York's JFK Airport and Toronto.
The post When The Best Business Class Is Cheaper Than Economy… appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
We now know when to expect the opening of American Express' Seattle lounge, and where it will be. The Seattle lounge 'studio' will be coming in August or September, by gate B3, accessible to passengers of all airlines past security.
The lounge represents a departure from those that American Express has opened to date, smaller and with fewer amenities. Here's what that departure means, and what comes next.
Continue reading Location and Opening of Centurion Studio in Seattle Revealed...
A couple of days ago I posted about the amazing first class fare which British Airways filed between Dubai and Austin.
British Airways essentially left off a zero on the cost of their full fare first class ticket price. Rather than charging $8,577+ one-way, they were charging $857+ one-way. The best part were the flexible routing rules, which allowed for quite a bit of backtracking.
As I explained in a follow up post, I even booked one of these fares, routing through Doha, London, Los Angeles, and New York.
The one question I've been asked about 462 times over the past 48 hours is whether or not this fare will be honored, given that a lot of people wanted to book hotels and positioning flights. My response has been "we'll see, I'd give it 48 hours."
The post Will The Dubai First Class Mistake Fare Be Honored Already?! appeared first on One Mile at a Time.