Alaska Airlines announced late in 2014 that they would be restructuring their elite qualifying and redeemable mileage bonuses based on fare class.  While the shuffling of earning on Delta fares got the most attention, Alaska made some favorable moves to passengers on its own metal. Starting in 2015, passengers on refundable Y and barely-discounted S fares would see a 50% mileage bump, while M and B fares would see 25% bonuses on top of the base mileage flown. This is an improvement over 2014, where only Y fares received any bonus – 25% – while all other economy tickets received no bonus.   First class bonuses increased from 50% to 75%, for both refundable and discounted fares. I recently took my very first true mileage run – meaning I flew somewhere [...]

Thanks for a tip from TravelStar at FlyerTalk! As of this morning, when I log into my Membership Rewards portal, Aeroplan no longer appears on the partner list.  Whether this is a glitch or a true loss of partnership remains to be seen. As of about Noon EST, the Amex twitter team still sees Aeroplan as a transfer partner.  This might be a glitch, but I’ll wait for confirmation of that. As of 5PM EST, Aeroplan is back on the Membership Rewards site as a transfer partner.  Sorry for the non-story, folks.If the partnership between American Express and Aeroplan has ended, it is a big loss to the value of the Membership Rewards program.  While Amex still has other Star Alliance partners such as ANA and Singapore, Aeroplan offered some unique [...]

It may interest some that the Air France/KLM FlyingBlue loyalty program is now a transfer partner with Citi ThankYou Rewards.  For me, this is a lukewarm development, but still a very encouraging sign that Citi is in the market to compete for your loyalty.  To quickly recap, Citi only recently began an airline transfer program for their ThankYou points program, but in the past few months has added some interesting partners, including Singapore KrisFlyer and now FlyingBlue.  The full list of partners, all of whom transfer at 1:1, is as follows: Cathay Pacific EVA Air Etihad Guest FlyingBlue Garuda Indonesia Frequent Flyer Malaysia Airlines Qatar Airways Singapore Airlines Thai Airways On the positive side, FlyingBlue provides more space on its own AF/KLM metal than you will find with Delta.  They [...]

This past week has left me in a slightly sour mood with regard to travel, offset by some solid handling by the airlines.  I didn’t get to hang out with my college friends this weekend, and I have to tell you, drafting your fantasy football team from your basement while everyone else is partying up the occasion is slightly depressing.  I normally have no problem with the remote draft in most leagues, but I digress… a quick roundup of this weekend’s travel interests, as told to me by The Internet (which they have on computers now) – Speculation is rampant that British Airways may devalue the best short haul award chart on the planet.  Free-quent Flyer and our very own Kenny have both pointed to a strong hint at what [...]