Helping you and your family save money on your vacations to Disney and beyond
Here we go again. American and US Airways both introduced some changes to their awards last night. While they aren’t major, they are probably just a portent of things to come. I think the most worrying thing about these changes are that they were announced without warning and are effective immediately. That’s bad customer service in my book – United and even Delta gave fair warning. Here is a quick summary of changes and the way to deal with them.
Last month Jess and I left Baby M at home with her grandparents and took a week long trip to Bora Bora to celebrate our five year anniversary. Due to our anxiety about leaving the baby for too long, we ended up postponing our flights by a day (you can change award ticket dates for free on AA). This was great for our family but made for an annoying routing that was compounded by some bad weather – leading to some stress on the domestic legs! I wanted to share some thoughts since it was my first time flying cross country on US Airways in domestic first and also my first taste of the new Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX.
People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.
In this installment, we will take a look at the three main types of airline specific award miles you might have and get a better understanding of which types of miles are best for what situations. While this is by no means meant to be completely comprehensive, it should serve as a base to help you evaluate what type of miles you should use (or need to get) to find your perfect award redemption. I’ll also include some links to award charts to help you figure out which awards will cost what prices.
First Flight with an Infant: Hopes and Fears
First Flight with an Infant: Preparation and Planning
First Flight with an Infant: A Quick and Uneventful Hop from BOS to DCA
First Flight with an Infant: Tyson’s Corner, Dairy Godmother, and Mount Vernon
First Flight with an Infant: AMEX Platinum Makes the Flight Home Easier
I signed my wife up for the AMEX Platinum last year. It has a hefty $450 annual fee that is NOT waived but they were offering her 100,000 Membership Rewards points that I couldn’t pass up. That’s less than 0.5 cents per point if you don’t use any of the benefits of the card at all. The flight home from D.C., however, illustrated why having an AMEX Platinum might just be worth the high annual fee. I’ll first write about our experience, then explain how the card made it all possible.
First Flight with an Infant: Hopes and Fears
First Flight with an Infant: Preparation and Planning
First Flight with an Infant: A Quick and Uneventful Hop from BOS to DCA
First Flight with an Infant: Tyson’s Corner, Dairy Godmother, and Mount Vernon
First Flight with an Infant: AMEX Platinum Makes the Flight Home Easier
Well, that went swimmingly. We had an uneventful and relatively stress-free flight from Boston Logan Airport to Reagan National (DCA). Hooray! I’m sure not every flight will be like this, but none of the things I feared came to fruition. Every flight is different, but I’ll recount how we handled this flight with baby M in case there are any other first time flying parents out there who are interested.