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Award Alerts that get straight to the points!

August 21, 2018 By Trevor Leave a Comment





Have you accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of miles, but you just can’t figure out how to use them? Would you like award alerts that get you straight to the points? Then I have something for you!!

Do you want to fly First Class? 

I fly (and write) a ton about First and Business Class travel. It can be hard to find Lufthansa, Emirates, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines, or even International American Airlines awards seats.

I mean, who wouldn’t want this kind of seat?

The Go Around Principle, Award Alerts

Lufthansa First Class on the 747-8i

Or, even better, a bed like this?

Award Alerts, Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines Suites Class on the A380

Well, I think its only a matter of time before you’ll be getting award alerts for these products in your e-mail! Just think, we’ve already seen business class to Australia posted!

So, how can you get award alerts that get you straight to the points?

You may have picked up on the “Straight to the Points“ component of the title. My friend Spencer Howard recently launched an Award Alerts feature. Its pretty easy to sign up, you can navigate here.

Once there, just enter your e-mail:

award alerts, straight to the points

Once you hit subscribe, you’ll get an e-mail asking you to confirm your e-mail address.

Once you’ve done that, just wait for the e-mails to come in, and have your points balances ready!

Wrapping Up

There aren’t a lot of award alert options out there. You can set your own via ExpertFlyer, you could rely on the occasional posts from bloggers, but, I feel like Spencer’s Award Alert e-mail is going to be an interesting option. He typically looks for premium travel, but, because he often helps folks find award flights, he doesn’t have the kind of blinders I have one–that is, he actually looks at economy awards!

Bottom Line – this will take you less than 120 seconds to sign up, and even if you only find one or two awards a month that are interesting to you, it still seems well worth it to receive these alerts!

Filed Under: Awards Tagged With: Award Alerts, Award Travel, Business Class, First Class

How long does it take to transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest?

August 8, 2017 By Trevor 7 Comments

One of the things that I am always surprised with is how long it takes to transfer points between programs. I totally get it that IT is hard, but, seriously, this isn’t rocket science. So when I submitted a request to transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest a few weeks ago, I was being overly optimistic to hope to book a trip a few days later.

You see, I’m spoiled. I’m used to transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to Hyatt or United, where it is instantaneous. 

How Long Does it Take to Transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest?

Of course, before making the transfer to Etihad Guest, I did some research. On Twitter, I learned that it could take 5-6 days, however, @Roar-Singh stated that he thought it was every Monday or Tuesday. Was there a lead time to be “queued” for Monday or Tuesday. 

Transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest

Both Lucky and The Points Guy further confirmed that it could take as many as 6 days. I was hoping for quicker, but, it was good to have a baseline for how long I should expect it to take. I already had it in my mind that there was a chance they might not make it in time to book my desired award on Royal Air Maroc.

I initially put in the transfer on 22 July, it was a Saturday evening. I saw the points were in fact taken out of my Thank You Points account on the same day. I then started religiously checking my account every single day for the next 2 weeks. Every day, hoping to see the points show up.

It was not until I received an e-mail on 7 August that the points showed up in my Etihad Guest account. 16 days later! 

Finally, I had 88,000 Etihad Guest miles in my account.

Transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest

Wrapping Up

I think the bottom line here, is that not all points transfers can be quick. Upon further research, I found that there was also a known issue with transferring Citi Thank You Points to Flying Blue nearly the same time. Overall though, treat this as a cautionary tale – transfer your points early if you know what you want. 

Have you tried to transfer Citi Thank You Points to Etihad Guest? Share your experience in the comments.

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Awards Tagged With: Citi Thank You Points, Etihad Guest, Transferrable Miles and Points

Are Skytrax Awards Perception over Reality?

July 3, 2017 By Trevor Leave a Comment

The latest Skytrax Airline awards were announced at the Paris Air Show, and I have to say, I’m left wondering whether Skytrax Awards are perception over reality. Don’t get me wrong, I agreed with most of Skytrax perceptions with regard to airports. 

Skytrax Awards Background

Skytrax Awards are largely revered within the industry. Traveling around Asia this past weekend, I heard it mentioned a couple of times on Bangkok Airways, which received an award for the best Regional Airline, and Thai had advertisements for the best Worlds Best Economy Class.

Skytrax Awards

It is admittedly kind of a big deal when 19.87M votes are cast, but I am still left wondering whether this is a perception thing over reality. 

Qatar Airways Wins Skytrax Award for Best Business Class

For me, this is where the rubber meets the road. I have flown Qatar on the 787 and the 777-300ER. Flying from Washington’s Dulles International Airport, we are serviced by the 777-300ER, so that’s the experience I most commonly associate with Qatar.

Lucky believes Qatar Airways to be deserving of the Skytrax awards and to have the best business class. I’ve shared my opinion of the best business class product in the past.

I totally get that Lucky is basing Qatar’s best Business Class based on the 787, A350 and A380 hard products, however, according to Wikipedia 57 aircraft across those three aircraft types (in fact, most of them, 30 are 787s!). The fact remains though that the seats flown on their 26 A330s, 4 A340’s, 9 777-200LR, and 34 777-300ER’s are a far inferior, 2-2-2 business class configuration. So more than half of Qatar’s fleet has an industry trailing hard product. 

Final Thoughts on Skytrax Awards

Specific to Qatar, I truly question whether this is really a perception over reality. Realize that the ballots were all cast well before the first 777 flew with the new QSuites. I totally get that Qatar provides a very good soft product, but how can an airline that has less than half of their fleet with a solid hard product, be the number one business class product? 

 

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Awards Tagged With: Business Class, Qatar Airways, Skytrax

Save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir!

June 14, 2017 By Trevor Leave a Comment

I’ve found SilkAir and Singapore Airlines to be very helpful when finding regional flights in Southeast Asia. It’s allowed me to hop around Asia and include a stop in Singapore for many trips. . Right now, you can save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir, which makes it even more of a bargain.

Singapore KrisFlyer SilkAir 50% Discount

Save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir

It is important to note that this only applies to flights that are operated by SilkAir, Singapore’s regional carrier. SilkAir primarily operates narrow bodies, but they are comfortable for a sub 4-5 hour flight. I flew a SilkAir 737 from Phuket a few years ago and much enjoyed it.
SilkAir Seat, Save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir

You can save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir!

 
The terms of the promotion are pretty simple: Book between 12 June and 11 July, for flights 1 July through 31 October and choose from 53 destinations. 
 
This is for economy and business class awards. But, to be clear, they must be operated by SilkAir. 
 
To give you an idea of some of your options, here’s a snip from Singapore’s website:
 
Singapore KrisFlyer SilkAir 50% Discount

SilkAir Flights eligible for 50% Discount on Award

Singapore KrisFlyer SilkAir 50% Discount

SilkAir Flights eligible for 50% Discount on Award

 
As you can see, you can fly SilkAir to Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos. You can also fly to a number of cities in China, India, Sri Lanka, and even the Maldives! There are even more options for Economy class upgrades. 

Wrapping Up

This is an excellent opportunity if you will be flying to Southeast Asia. Its a great opportunity to nest these 50% award flights with a tough to find over-water flight. It also is an excellent opportunity to leverage if you want to hop around Southeast Asia or even fly up to parts of China or out to the Maldives. 

Will you be leveraging this amazing deal to save 50% on Regional Southeast Asia Awards with SilkAir?

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Awards Tagged With: KrisFlyer, SilkAir, Singapore Airlines, Southeast Asia

3 times when it makes sense to buy miles

May 9, 2017 By Trevor 2 Comments

Frequent Flyer Programs are big revenue machines for airlines, and those 40% off promotions generally aren’t a good deal, but believe it or not, there are a few cases where it makes sense to buy miles. That said, I would offer that there are fairly limited times when you should and should not buy miles.

#1 Reason to buy miles

Here’s the situation: You’ve either applied to credit cards, flown, or otherwise accrued miles for that amazing trip, like Emirates First Class, but your short miles.

when to buy miles

The Emirates Shower is just calling your name!

If this is the trip you’ve dreamed up, well, buying miles to top up your account is not a bad idea, especially because you already have a purpose, and hopefully, you’ve already identified the availability.

#2 Reason to buy miles

You have that twinkle in your eye of a trip you plan to make. You’ve started to look for award availability, and you see something that might work. You might have some of the miles, but not enough. Your trip is far enough out, that you have some flexibility, that is key. That’s when you start looking for opportunities to buy miles at a discount, since you already have a purpose. 

Examples like Alaska Air’s fairly regular up to 40% bonus:

buy miles

Also American Airlines has hopped on the bandwagon:

Note: this only makes sense when you have a trip in mind! Never buy miles speculatively!

#3 Reason to buy miles

Lets say you don’t fly often. Lets say you only fly internationally once or twice a year, and you don’t churn credit cards or manufacture spend. Maybe you’re a reseller leveraging cashback cards. So, how much would that cost? Well, if you buy AviancaTaca LifeMiles on a 1×2 promotion like this:

Lets say you do this, and effectively buy miles at a 125% bonus, you’d be paying ~1.47 cents per miles (based on One Mile at a Time’s calculations). 

When we take into account the Life Miles Star Alliance Award Chart, we can start putting some cost to the fare:

For example, if you consider a trip to North Asia from North America, at 75,000 each way in business class, your cost is: ~$2,205 plus an booking fees. 

Weekend in Taipei

You could fly in this layflat seat to Asia!

While you might say – Wow! That’s expensive! consider for a moment, the occasional flyer that may have the funds for a big annual trip, but doesn’t want to pay the alternative, lets say, what Cathay Pacific (a different alliance than Life Miles) of:

cathay pacific

To further press home the point, here is a collection of business class fares from Washington, DC to Hong Kong:

hong kong

My point here is that you can effectively buy miles and thus get business class travel–assuming award space–for just over half the price of booking an actual ticket.

You could do it for even less from the US to Japan by purchasing Virgin Atlantic miles, if you have ~10-20k miles already; you could purchase 100,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for only 1,515 GBP or ~$1966 at current rates. 

There are considerations though – for example, you won’t earn miles, and you may have award booking fees. If you need to change your trip, there are likely fees as well–but most revenue fares also have fees.

Wrapping Up

Often times I would not recommend folks buying miles, but there are at least 3 situations when that makes sense. For infrequent international travelers, I think the value proposition is a much bigger difference. When you consider the kind’ve experience that you’ll enjoy in a layflat seat vs. an economy seat, its a big difference! Of course I’m much more focused on the journey than the destination, but when you can arrive rested and refreshed to the destination, then I’d imagine it helps you more fully enjoy your entire trip. 

Have you bought miles to facilitate a trip? 

 

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Awards Tagged With: Business Class Travel, Buy Miles, editorial, Unconventional Ideas

Weekend in Taipei: Introduction

December 12, 2016 By Trevor 2 Comments

  • Weekend in Taipei: Introduction
  • Review: Eva Air 777-300ER Houston to Taipei
  • Review: Grand Hyatt Taipei
  • Weekend in Taipei: Touring Taipei
  • Weekend in Taipei: Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport
  • Review: Cathay Pacific Taipei to Hong Kong
  • Review: Cathay Pacific Hong Kong to Chicago
  • Weekend in Taipei: Conclusion

To set the stage, I was yearning to get on a plane. It was the end of October, and I hadn’t been on a true long haul flight since the end of July. The end of July! I was getting stircrazy. Searching the British Airways Search tool, Searching United.com, Searching ExpertFlyer, searching for flights someplace that we could do a reasonable visit of in no more than 2 days off of work.

I was originally looking to go to Cambodia, but the flights just didn’t want to line up. I also really, really wanted to fly EVA Air. So, rather than make things complicated—as I am known to do—I decided to go the simple path. EVA Air is one of Taiwan’s more widely known airlines, they are a Star Alliance member, which meant I could redeem some Ultimate Rewards points via United, or Membership Rewards points via Aeroplan, or nearly any transferrable currency via Singapore KrisFlyer.

My next concern was where to stay. Despite the World of Hyatt news, this frequent leisure traveler is determined to requalify Diamond and become a Globalist—I think I’m going to put that on my business card. So, my next concern was that the Grand Hyatt Taipei was rumored to be haunted. How appropriate that we were staying there over Halloween weekend!

A quick turn to the Oracle of Twitter allayed my concerns.

Weekend in Taipei

Next, I needed to get home. A week earlier, my wife had jumped at the chance to fly Cathay Pacific First Class, we had done that last year and very much enjoyed it. Alas, that space was phantom, but, I ended up finding space in the 4 days between when we booked Business Class, and left. I only found 1 seat though, and ExpertFlyer was showing F2 (and went down to F1, meaning Cathay Pacific was only selling 1 seat in First Class). I put my wife up in First and accepted my likely fate in Business Class.

Alas, the day before we were due to leave, I took to twitter on my T-Mobile Apple iPhone 6, and low and behold, the American Air team was awesome, just proving that if you don’t ask, you don’t know.

Overall, the trip was a great weekend, if only 50 hours on the ground in Taipei, it was well worth the miles, and proved to be a very memorable trip. 

Filed Under: Awards, Travel Tagged With: Cathay Pacific, EVA Air, Taipei

The Basics of Searching for Award Space

December 7, 2016 By Trevor 2 Comments

It is very easy to get into intermediate and expert territory when it comes to finding award space and booking awards. That can sometimes be intimidating. This is my attempt at boiling down the very basics of searching for award space

I’ll start with a couple of assumptions:

  • You know where you want to go, at least roughly.
  • You have sufficient miles.
  • I’ll use Chicago, O’Hare to Bali, Indonesia (a nice aspirational destination) as the example.

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 1 – Know what airlines fly to your destination

Identify the airlines that fly to your desired destination. You’d be amazed at how many times I decide to go to a particular place, only to find out that while I wanted to fly on a particular airline (or miles), they prove to be difficult because either (a) the partner airline that flies charges fuel surcharges, or (b) no partner airlines release space, or (c) no partner airlines fly to that particular airport / city (like Star Alliance abandoning Cambodia)

To identify what airlines fly to your desired destination, I recommend using OpenFlights, which I’ve written about before, but be aware that it may not make the distinction between seasonal and regular flights (or what specific days an airline flies).

Below, you can see, for example, all of the routes that you can take to get to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Routes to/from Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia, courtesy of OpenFlights.org

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 2 – Know what airlines fly from home (or close by)

You’re probably noticing the trend here. I always recommend that you break your award search into each leg. The key to any award travel search is to break a trip up into its component pieces, assuming you cannot fly non-stop. Then I usually search for the over water portion first. Now this logic may not necessarily work when booking on some airline sites, like United’s new routing rules and engine. But for the most part, you’ll notice that overwater flights are the hardest to find.

So for getting from Chicago to Indonesia, you will for the most part be looking for TransPacific (TPAC) flights. 

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Trans Pacific (TPAC) options via gcmap.com

 

The exception, of course is United, which might come up with an option via Europe.

Basics of searching for award travel

United via Europe Option

Your chosen airline or alliance will limit your options—unless you have plenty of miles in various transferrable currencies). 

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 3 – Connecting the Dots

So now you know how you can get from Chicago to Asia, and you know what options you can connect onward to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia.

The most logical option, if you have the flexibility, would be to focus on those one-stop itineraries, which would be:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Chicago to Denpasar with different alliances: Blue: OneWorld, Red: Star Alliance, Gold: SkyTeam

Now, logically that’s easiest to work with. If you have to work with connections, well, now you start to run up against the risk of agents telling you that what you want is a multiple award trip. That would be leaning more toward an intermediate level. So, we’ll go ahead and leave things here.

Please, share your questions – how can I improve this first level basics of searching for awards?

Filed Under: #Avgeek, Airline Programs, Ask TaggingMiles, Awards, Frequent Flyer 101 Tagged With: Awards, Beginners, Finding Award Space

The Secret to United’s New Award Search Tool

December 3, 2016 By Trevor 3 Comments

If you’ve attempted to work with United’s New Award Search Tool, you know how much of a pain it is.

Perhaps the most prevalent screen is this:

United's New Award Search Tool

United’s New Award Search Tool

Now, some in the software industry would call this a feature. I would call this one of my most vexing customer experiences.

What causes the issue with United’s New Award Search Tool?

The easy answer is, if you do a search, then you chance anything but the date, you get the above error.

So how do you fix it? 

You can’t.

But, in the software development industry–at least the one I work in–we like to offer mitigation techniques, or even better, workarounds.

So, your workaround for this particular issue is going back to the united.com site and starting again. The good news is, that United.com should retain the itinerary you were trying to find. So when you go back to the home screen, it should have pre-populated like this:

United's New Award Search Tool

The positive news is that if you go back to this “home” screen, you should be able to click “search” and get what you were looking to search before the error message.

united-hell-4

Overall, there are significant challenges to consistent, easy searches on United’s New Award Search Tool. While this post doesn’t lay out a solution to avoid the errors all together, hopefully the mitigation strategy offered is at least something that reduces your frustration.

Filed Under: Airline Programs, Awards Tagged With: Award Search, Mileage Plus, United

Are Southwest Points worthwhile, with a Chase Sapphire Reserve?

August 21, 2016 By Trevor 6 Comments

A friend of mine MilesWhip pointed out to me a rather significant development with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. He pointed out that Southwest Points are no longer valuable if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve. While I don’t fly Southwest often, I do fly Southwest a few times a year.

Chase Sapphire Reserve

Chase Sapphire Reserve, courtesy of ThePointsGuy.

Why do I say this? Because, if you go based on the argument that Southwest Points are worth roughly 1.5 cents per point, and you can book travel via the Ultimate Rewards Travel (over the phone), with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you get 1.5 cents per dollar. In other words, you get the same value, however, going through Ultimate Rewards, you can still earn Southwest Points on your flight.

So lets break this down to the options once you have Chase Ultimate Rewards points:

  • You could transfer points to Southwest and then book awards at roughly 1.5 cents of value, and earn nothing for your travel.
  • You could use Ultimate Rewards Travel and book flights on Southwest for 1.5 cents per point, and earn Southwest Points for your travel.
  • You could transfer your ultimate rewards points to United and fly Lufthansa First Class. Ok… maybe not that.

And if you have a Southwest Companion Pass, fear not, booking through Ultimate Rewards Travel is no problem. Book your ticket, then call up Southwest and add in the companion pass. Simple as that.

Conclusion

With the Chase Sapphire Reserve, transferring Ultimate Rewards to Southwest doesn’t make sense. You can actually earn more by booking through Ultimate Rewards.

Filed Under: Awards, Credit Cards Tagged With: Chase Sapphire Reserve, Southwest

Thai Airways 787-8 Business Class in 8 Photos

February 29, 2016 By Trevor 2 Comments

I haven’t seen anyone else review the Thai Airways 787-8, so I thought sharing a brief review of Thai Airways 787-8 Business Class in 8 Photos would be well received. I’ll share a more extensive review when I get through the rest of my trip.

The Business Class cabin wasn’t terribly large, it’s only 5 rows, starting at row 10, finishing at row 15, with 6 seats per row (so 30 seats total).

image

The seat itself is a B/E Aerospace seat. It’s not my favorite, but for a 4 hour flight, it is more than sufficient.

image

Even though it was a four hour flight we got blankets to use and an amenity kit to keep.

More then sufficient amenity kit for a four hour flight

The food service was good but not spectacular.

My wife had to test out the cappuccino machine

Shrimp and Scallop Thermidor (not quite to Singapore Airlines’ caliber)

The In Flight Entertainment (IFE) had a great selection and a nice bright screen.

image

I don’t think Thai has gotten the new darker windows, because as we were flying during the day, the windows were pretty bright (compared to the lights being out in the cabin).

Oh, by the way this is a view of economy (note I kept my distance).

image

Bonus Picture:

Because I really appreciated the comments on my beautifully shined shoes here’s another shot of them!

image

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Awards, Travel Tagged With: 787-8, Thai Airways

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