Delta Airlines Archives - Page 5 of 6

Aug 06 2013

Delta Airbus 330 Business Elite Review – with a baby!

I’m not going to do an in depth trip report of our flight, but I just wanted to give my impressions of Delta’s Business Elite product – the non lie-flat kind. Delta’s fleet of Airbus A330s are leftovers from the Northwest merger, and feature angled recline seating as opposed to the 777s and 767s which have fully lie-flat seating (they’re very nice, btw, flew one from HKG-DTW once). Not the most comfortable seats, but of course it beat flying overseas in coach. We flew the same type of plane both ways so I’ll just hit both flights in the same post and touch a little bit on the infant experience at the end. If you’re interested on how we got on these flights for under $100 each, you can look here and here.

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Jul 14 2013

Italy, Here We Come! (Ready or Not)

Back when I planned the trip a few months ago, going to Italy sounded like a great idea. “Travel before the baby’s mobile!” “She’ll just sleep through the flight!” These are the words that were echoing in my head when I booked the tickets and I thought I felt pretty smart. Well, here we are getting ready to leave this week, and I feel a liiiittle bit nervous about everything.

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Apr 24 2013

Building Up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: Introduction

How do we turn these into miles and points as quickly as possible?

Building Up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: Introduction

Building Up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: United

Building Up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: American Airlines

Building Up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: Delta

Bulding up Mileage and Points Balances Quickly: US Airways

One of the most frequent questions clients ask me is “How do I get a lot of _______ miles quickly?” Not everyone is a points freak like me, so often people are looking to build up a bunch of miles in a particular program so that they can take one trip – honeymoon, anniversary, trip of a lifetime, whatever. The good news is, if you have six months to a year, you can totally build up a large enough balance to go wherever you’d like – sometimes even in business class! In this introduction post, I’ll review the mileage costs for awards for the different programs, what areas of the world work well with which programs, and special award ticketing rules to be aware of.

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Apr 18 2013

Alitalia’s Confusing and Not so Friendly Rules for Infant Travel

Update: As of 6/1/2013, I checked Alitalia’s website (which looks updated), and it looks like you’re allowed to buy a seat for an infant now. That’s great news for those who want to do so. You still HAVE to buy a seat for long-haul business class, so that’s not so good news. I’m still sour on the entire program, but if you need to fly Alitalia, at least their policies more or less reflect 21st century thinking. They still aren’t super infant-friendly but they no longer contradict themselves!

My wife and I are trying to take a trip with our (then) 6 month infant this summer. I detailed our use of Delta Skymiles to book two business class award tickets here. I also paid for and received a paper ticket for our infant, since you need to pay for one for infant travel internationally.I thought everything was all set, until I called Alitalia to select our seats. Turns out they have a new infant policy. I’ll detail it here, then detail the frustrations and headaches it’s caused for us.

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Apr 02 2013

There’s a Burn Notice on my Points: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Adding a free oneway can really extend the use of your miles (gcmap.com)

Burn Notice: Introduction

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 1

Burn Notice: Delta Skymiles Part 2

Burn Notice: Hilton HHonors

Burn Notice: American AAdvantage

I’ve had a burn notice on my points for a few weeks now. Last week I talked about how we will be burning our Delta Skymiles to fly to and from Italy in business class this summer. While it seems like we are getting a great trip for our 200,000 Delta Skymiles (which we are), there is a lot more that we could do with them. Since we’re a young family, we didn’t want to push it – but I wanted to illustrate some ways you could extend a trip using the same amount of miles. Hopefully some of you can use these tips to get even more for your miles!

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