The Weekly News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know!
Travel:
- Seth reports the next cool Fifth Freedom Route for a UAE based airline. Hungary would certainly be an interesting place to do a stop-over.
- Scott shares a balanced review of the new Emirates Business Class seat. Not great, not horrible, but I still side with the opinion – if JAL and others can stuff as many as 7 seats across, without people having to climb over one another, then why can’t Emirates?
- Seth reports – more American Airlines’ expansion from LAX. I’m still sitting here on the East Coast wishing we’d get some Asia connectivity beyond JFK, ORD, and BOS.
- Rapid Travel Chai asks – is AF 775 Air France’s worst flight? Having never flown AF, I can’t speak to it, but, based on the timing, it certainly sounds less than ideal, and like an enforced fasting in advance of most of the flying.
- Airways News Interviews United’s VP of Networks. It’s long read, but worth your time, especially on a Friday.
- Frequent Miler shares an important pronunciation lesson – all the different ways to pronounce Qatar. The Airlines, the Country, the story. I’ve flown Qatar a bunch (and do enjoy flying them), and the airline tends to pronounce in the UK manner, for what its worth.
- Gary shows how you can win the fare rules game with American.
- Becky shares the place where you can get a License to Chill. This is definitely a place I’d love to visit, not just because I’m a huge Jimmy Buffett fan.
Miles and Points:
- Press release courtesy of Personal Finance Digest – The Points Guy and Chase Sapphire Preferred finally tie the knot. I suspect my invitation got lost in the mail.
- Anbang drops out of the bidding for Starwood. The drama is over (or so we think). Kiss your Starwood Preferred Guest points and Westin Heavenly beds good bye! (Ok, maybe the beds will stay!)
Reselling:
- Money Meta Game shares the basics of gift card arbitrage – it’s a good refresher.
- Amazon’s having some issues with their Fulfillment Centers being overly full. A couple of weeks ago they started restricting shipments of specific products, now they are offering free removal of products you want to pull back. This is something to jump on, if there’s anything you’ve been thinking about. Its only $0.50 savings, but, never hurts.
Tagging Miles Posts:
- Price mistakes are a lot like mistake fares
- PSA: Always Inspect Returns Immediately! #Reselling
- Travel Review:
- Thai Airways Orchid Spa and Royal Orchid Lounge
- Thai Airways 787-8 Business Class – Bangkok to Denpasar-Bali
- Alaska demolished their award chart for Emirates, but it doesn’t necessarily make all that much sense when you look at their messaging (at least to me).
- We even got the gang together on short notice to record a Saverocity Observation Deck Podcast on the whole devaluation!
Did you read Lucky’s post from yesterday? http://goo.gl/3r3LeF Your anger towards Alaska is a bit misplaced. Emirates felt the first class redemption requests from Alaska was excessive and requested less redemptions and Alaska complied. Emirates could’ve pulled all first class availability if they wanted to but Alaska worked it out with them by basically halving all future requests. Look at the bright side. There’s still availability!
@Steven – I saw Lucky’s post, and have no doubt that Emirates is pushing a lot of the change, but no-notice is something that really frustrates me. You see, Alaska could’ve agreed to a higher “internal reimbursement rate” with Emirates, and said they’d raise the award chart in 15-30 days, and that would’ve been a reasonable compromise. I find it humorous that Emirates finds redemptions to be “excessive” yet, I think in the dozen or so Emirates First Class flights I’ve had, I think once, the cabin was full. At least 2 times, my wife and I were the only ones, and the rest there were maybe 2 or 3 others in the cabin, in addition to my wife and myself (so still half full at best).
@trevor dude you have flown emirates F a DOZEN times and are complaining? yikes. the game is shifting for the worse, be grateful for the killer experiences/5m showers at 35k feet and find value elsewhere (it still exists!). a no notice deval is not great but no one ever discusses? the average annual percentage deval. sure, 40-60% or more is a pricey bump but it’s not like they deval’d last year amirite? #silverlining
“Alaska Demolishes Award Chart”
Congratulations! A definite early favorite for winning this month’s “Most Hyperbolic Miles Blog Lead” award. (But don’t get too excited just yet. The month’s still young…)
@Chris – Thanks, I think?