I haven’t written much lately, mostly because I have been distracted by my actual employment, but also because I’ve recently experienced a string of frustration regarding travel that has not materialized due to delays and cancellations.  I try to stay away from the negativity in travel since it is easy to get wrapped up in it and take the focus off of actually enjoying myself.  That said, this weekend I had another trip delay to the point that it made no sense to go.  While it is a bummer that I won’t get to join my friends for our annual fantasy football draft – and let me tell you, drafting online by yourself is not even 10% as fun – I am impressed with how US Airways and British Airways [...]

Plans for Vancouver and Seattle over the 4th of July next year are starting to take shape.  We have our outbound flights, and based on availability, have opted to fly into Vancouver.  The plan for this trip is to primarily “spend” miles and points, as our balances are probably a bit higher than we would ordinarily burn over the next 12 months and we don’t have big plans to travel for long stretches any time soon.  In this installment, my research is primarily focused on finding hotels in the area, preferably available using a points currency that I already have, and selecting what I hope will be the best option.  As I’ve not actually been to Seattle, let alone stayed in these hotels, a corresponding trip report will be in order [...]

Let me get this out of the way – I love trip reports.  Reading them, that is.  It’s kind of exciting to see what other people experienced on their vacations, whether it’s somewhere I’ve been (bah, they should have eaten at xyz, that abc is a tourist trap!); somewhere I want to go (we’ll do that one NEXT!); or even somewhere I have no desire to visit (I’m not sleeping in that!).  And I’ll often think, wow, imagine how much trip planning probably went into that nice clean report!  I know, it’s a completely boring thought, but it’s where my mind goes. While I am horrible about writing trip reports – I’ve deleted more drafts than I care to admit – I am at least diligent about writing as I [...]

Filed under jokes for car people:  Your kid can have the Recaro seat that I never had!  For a limited time, Amazon is offering 20% off the Recaro ProRIDE convertible car seat.  The final price works out to $175.99 using coupon code RECARO20.  I do believe the item must be sold and shipped by Amazon and not a third party seller.  As if you didn’t already have enough to carry through the airport.  Amazon isn’t telling us when this deal expires, but it’s a solid price on a category of products that doesn’t go on sale nearly often enough. While I am not generally writing about car seats, I am a satisfied owner of this product – or rather, my daughter is.  I’m not an engineer, but I’ve always subscribed to the [...]

I’ve previously identified US Airways’ off-peak awards to Europe for 35,000 miles round trip as a particularly good value, but it may be time to look harder at availability and booking. I have been interested in Rome for an off-peak award for a while and have been waiting for saver-level space to open up on the PHL-FCO and CLT-FCO routes.  During that six week window, there weren’t many dates offering 3 open seats for 35k round trip, so I waited.  And waited.  Today I decided to check again and was surprised by something a little bit different – it appears that US Airways will be stopping service to Rome for about one month beginning on February 5. To verify, I searched paid fares and came up with the following for [...]

Good morning.  I’m writing this post as I’m sitting at home with a sick toddler.  Well, sick might be the wrong word – she’s getting over something from the weekend, woke up a bit grumpy still, and we decided to keep her home.  If you’re a parent, chances are, you’ve been in the same situation before.  The end result is burning a day of time off from work, and for may of us, that comes out of the same pool of days that we can allocate to fun things.  I certainly consider myself fortunate to have paid time off, especially the amount that I get, but it’s always a bit of a bummer for everyone when it’s one day less that we can spend on vacation. I’ve been giving it [...]

US Airways has been my preferred domestic airline for years, largely out of convenience.  The bulk of my life has been spent between Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, which happen to be hubs for the airline and therefore direct flights from pretty much anywhere else that I have attempted to live.  As a result, I’ve amassed a fair bank of miles on US Airways and have also become somewhat decent at finding low level award space on their metal. The Dividend Miles program has received a great deal of coverage in the past, thanks to an industry best 90,000 mile business class award to North Asia, with a stopover allowed and routing pretty much anywhere that the phone agent would agree to ticket.  That opportunity has dried up, but one lesser-covered [...]

I apologize in advance for the lack of posts recently.  I’ve been traveling, which I need to write about and get those posts up.  I wanted to quickly alert folks to a potential deal if you need to top off a Dividend Miles account.  I received an email with a targeted offer to buy US Airways miles and receive up to a 100% bonus depending on the purchased quantity. Oddly, the deal has been good since July 7 and expires on July 31, but this is the first notice I’ve received.  Based upon that, I recommend logging in to your Dividend Miles account and checking to see if you’re eligible if you’ve otherwise been waiting for a promotion to top off an account. Bonus Structure • Buy 10,000 to 19,000 [...]

The good news is, I’m not sleeping on a rock hard twin mattress tonight, but rather in my own Sleep Number that my wife convinced me we had to have.  The bad news is that my trip back to see my family is pretty severely delayed, enough so that we decided to bag it for this evening and fly out in the morning. Managing Pre-Trip Delays A flight delay prior to departure from our home airport, or especially prior to having even loaded up the car to go to the airport, is a relative luxury in the world of airline irregular operations.  IRROPS.  What a nice way to summarize a massive dent in your plans.  I’ve previously shared my airline contact cheat sheet, and tonight I’m recommending you open that [...]