In addition to the Citi ThankYou Point 25% transfer bonus for AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue running through May 20, there are a couple of new bonuses that popped up on the radar over the weekend. Let’s go over them with a few sweet-spot hints (Editors note: I literally wrote suite-spot on the first draft. I wish I was intentionally that witty, but I’m not so I fixed the wording):
– Award chart anomalies, like JFK-Lisbon in business class for 35,000 miles or JFK-Zurich in coach for 16,500 miles (you can find these in other major North American cities too) – Flying to or from Europe in business class and taking a coach leg onto the end to lower the price – Economy flights to or from the Caribbean for 12,500 miles each way – Short haul domestic US economy for 7,500 miles each way
– ANA First Class to or from Japan for 55,000 to 60,000 miles each way – ANA Business Class to or from Japan for 45,000 to 47,500 miles each way – Delta One (Business Class) to or from Europe for 47,500 – 50,000 miles each way
Before transferring preemptively you should probably make sure that the awards you’re after have availability; getting award space is tough right now unless you’re willing to book in September or beyond, or if you’re willing to make Lubbock, TX your final destination.
The Virgin Atlantic Flying Club transfer bonus appears on radar.
“United/Delta/Southwest/Alaska/Breeze/Whatever Air cancelled my flight from RNO–LBB, what does the airline owe me?” This question pops up on Flyertalk, reddit, Quora, and other random internet forums all the time, and the responses are often mostly wrong. If a carrier cancels your US domestic flight, you’re entitled to exactly one thing only by US DOT rules:
A full refund to your original form of payment
What about a hotel if I’m not rebooked until the next day? What about meals? What about booking me a new ticket on another airline? What if they rebook me on another flight number with the same departure time and the same arrival time as my canceled flight, on the same airline? What if I lost a multi-million dollar deal because I wasn’t there? What if I got divorced because I missed my flight?
Every single one of these questions has the same answer, and it was above: You’re entitled to a full refund to your original form of payment, and absolutely nothing else (this can be advantageous if you’re trying to turn a flight credit into a refund). Of course you may be able to sweet talk an airline customer service representative into plenty of other options but there’s no obligation for them to do anything but refund to your original form of payment.
If you’re ever stuck dealing with this you’ll probably find that quite a few customer service agents either don’t know the DOT rules, or they’ve been trained to never offer a refund and only give one when a customer pushes and knows their rights, so prepare for frustration if a refund is what you’re after.
Of course, cancelled flights on an international itinerary can give you more rights than you’ve got the in US, especially if your itinerary includes a stop in the European Union, so double-check the rules for any countries included in your itinerary too.
Of course plenty of credit cards offer trip interruption insurance provided you paid for the flight with that card (Chase Sapphire cards, American Express Platinum cards, Citi Prestige, etc.). Don’t grab one of these cards just for the insurance though, consider it an ancillary benefit if you already hold one.
Update: Justmeha reminded me that the Citi Prestige card no longer has trip interruption insurance.
Making the most of being stuck in a hotel gym, waiting for a new flight.
PayPal Key continued to work through the day yesterday and hopefully it will let you run another $25,000 through this morning. Fortunately, it’s been a slower week outside of PayPal Key to help keep eyes on the prize, though there are still opportunities:
Simon Mall has 50% off of all Visa gift card purchase fees through April 23 using promo code APR22EARTH50. (Thanks to Sharky for the tip)
Now is the time to book into a Southwest schedule change for fall break. Why would you want to do that? Because schedule changes allow you free changes ± two weeks on Southwest. The latest round of schedule changes ran through September 4.
Happy Thursday friends.
An idea for your fall break trip: Lubbock, Texas, the home of this, uhh, “scenic” drive from nowhere to another nowhere.
Remember that Avios can be transferred between different partners, including the newly added Qatar Airways which has sweet spots for premium cabin travel to the middle east and south pacific.
There’s an American Express offer for $100 back on $300 (or $350) of spend at Delta Airlines. Don’t forget that you can turn this into a travel credit by booking a non-basic economy fare, waiting until after midnight the day after booking, and then canceling.
The Target RedCard debit and credit card offer for $40 off of $40 online and another $40 off of $40 in store is back through April 16. These are churnable as long as you wait at least a week between closing an old account and opening a new one. Even though a $80 sign-up bonus for a credit card is relatively small, there’s a lot of value to be had with that card.
Multiple reports of being approved for a sixth credit card with American Express have been trickling in since Christmas, and as recently as Friday public data-points have surfaced too. It seems that the old five credit card limit is being phased out, or at least the number of people stuck at five is shrinking.
My own data-point: I opened a sixth credit card in December, then closed a different credit card a couple of weeks ago. Two days later, I applied for a new sixth credit card and was approved (Thanks to C F Frost for giving me guidance on timing with those card changes).
Happy Monday!
With a 25% transfer bonus, you too can cash-out your Membership Rewards at 0.45 cents per point for a hotel room and free breakfast (Platinum elites and higher only) at the Marriott Courtyard in Lubbock, TX. Yum?
Let’s wander through a few loyalty programs today:
ITA Airways has a status match promotion running through April 15. The status is good through mid-April 2023 and recognized by the SkyTeam alliance. The major benefits of SkyTeam Elite status are free checked bags and preferred seating access on SkyTeam carriers like Delta, and SkyTeam Elite Plus members also get lounge access (including a guest) when flying internationally too.
Conventional wisdom says that buying points rarely makes sense (and I have plenty of thoughts on that for another day) — but IHG is often an exception to that rule. You’ll often find that buying points using the cash+points trick if needed and redeeming them will save you 25-50% off of cash rates at nicer properties; just don’t expect a huge discount at the HolidayInnExpress in Lubbock, Texas.
Qatar Airways joined the Avios program, and to celebrate they’re currently offering 2,000 2,500 (thanks to just meer for the correction) Avios for signing up for Privilege Club with code FLYQR3. You can transfer these to British Airways Avios (or Iberia Avios) where there’s a nice economy award chart for short-haul flights (redemptions start at 4,500 miles outside of the US and 7,500 miles inside the US on AA or Alaska.) That means this bonus is:
– 55.5% of an economy short haul ticket redemption outside the US – 33.3% of an economy short haul ticket redemption inside the US
Point.app has a new streak for a 1,000 bonus points after making a purchase five days in a row before March 31, provided the sum of the purchases is at least $50. Debbit is a good way to knock these out with automation, and combine this with other Point store boosts when possible.
If you don’t have the Point debit card yet and want to get one, ask around for someone that can refer you for a sign-up bonus of $150 after spending $200. The public sign-up bonus is either $10 or non-existent depending on how their IT is behaving, so do seek a referral.
MEAB Note: Normally 1,000 points (worth $10) would be below the threshold for showing up on the site, but in this instance the referral bump to $150 pushed it above the line. Was that the right call? Ehh, I’m not so sure but here we are. At least it’s at the bottom.
I can say with certainty that taking a picture of a shark without protective gear in open waters isn’t the right call.
I book a bunch of trips every month (fun fact: I cancel about 40-50% of them), and as a result I’ve developed a playbook for how to handle flights as departure nears. And by using the playbook I’m able to get around most delays as long as there’s more than a single option for flights. I’m also usually able to do that without waiting in any lines at the airport or gate, and without sitting in the airport watching rolling delays.
To wit: Yesterday my original flight was delayed by a little over two hours because the aircraft was passing through SLC earlier in the day, and SLC had a big winter-storm at the same time. The delay for my flight didn’t post until about 15 minutes before boarding. But, I knew it was going to happen hours prior and I already had a backup plan. I wanted to write up my game-day playbook to give you ideas for doing the same in the future so let’s dive in eh?
About 12 hours before departure:
Check the FAA Delay Map for a quick view on any airports that aren’t operating at, err, peak-efficiency
Click “track inbound flight” repeatedly until I see all the aircraft’s prior flights to its inbound flight, and I also note the time on the ground between flights for each airport the aircraft will stop at (anything less than 45 minutes is almost certainly an airline pipe dream, and you can assume that those legs will be delayed)
Set alerts in the airline’s app or in flightaware for the flight and for the inbound flight
Once I know where the bad airports are and I know all the routes my inbound aircraft is flying before getting to me, I’ll have a good sense for whether or not my flight will be delayed due to weather, congestion, airport closures, or other external factors (of course mechanical issues, dented aircraft, San Francisco fog, or any other number of things could delay the flight too — but those things are harder to predict).
If my flight is going to pass through an airport on the delay map or if it has a bunch of overly optimistic 20 minute turns (I’m looking at you, United Express), I’ll proactively call the airline and ask nicely to switch to an alternative flight with a better chance of going out (side note: I use ITA Matrix with forced carriers to find alternatives that may not appear on the airline’s own site.) At 12 hours out, getting another routing is easier than you probably think it is — often just saying “the plane is flying through Newark in a few hours and Newark has major delays, could I switch?” is enough to get the alternative routing you want.
Check the airline’s status page for my flight and the inbound
Again, I’m at a decision point: if anything looks sketchy, I may want to jump to my own backup booking or rebook on an alternative flight on the same airline. The two hour mark here is key because alternative flights probably haven’t filled up, none of them are likely to be under gate-control, and other non-avgeek passengers on your flight haven’t done anything proactively yet. This is also the point where if you call the airline it’s very easy to switch to another flight by mentioning issues with the inbound aircraft, even if they haven’t posted in the airline’s system. (Side note: New ticketing while a flight is under gate-control is something I don’t wish on my worst enemy, it’s like another layer of hell.)
Boarding time
The first thing to check when boarding time hits is whether or not the aircraft is at the gate. If it’s not, you’re probably going to be delayed and it may be again time to jump to flightaware to see where the aircraft is. (Hopefully it’s not diverted to Lubbock, TX, which has happened to me twice. Thanks United Airlines.)
Most US airlines board 5-10 minutes later than the boarding time printed on the boarding pass or at the podium, but it’s very rare for the airline to start boarding any later than those 10 minutes unless something is going on. If 15 minutes have passed from the posted boarding time and no one is getting on, it’s time to investigate: Is the aircraft door open? Is the gate door open? Is anyone walking around the aircraft? Is luggage being loaded? Is there someone with a maintenance vest wandering around?
If anything looks fishy, it’s time to explore alternatives on the current airline and other airlines, so if/when a delay posts I already know what I want to do and what’s available. If I think the airline is going to have a long hold-time or wait at the lounge/customer service desk, I may dial-in or line-up to get myself in the queue at this point too.
Once on-board
The last thing I do once I’m on-board is cancel any backup flights that I may have booked. Trying to do anything else with your itinerary is basically out of your hands at that point, so, the only thing left to do is to get annoyed when you’re approaching your destination and the flight attendant announces “ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been cleared to land so please […]”. Why should you be annoyed by that? Well, I absolutely, positively guarantee that you haven’t been cleared to land — that happens within 3-5 miles of the airport, or the last two minutes or so of the flight. The more you know.
Happy weekend travel hackers!
This is what came up in image search for “layers of hell”. I can’t say I understand why that happened, but it’s demonstrably correct.
1. I’m seeing a 30% transfer bonus for both Marriott and Hilton on my American Express Membership Rewards travel partner page. There’s a report on reddit of a 20% transfer bonus for Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles too, though I don’t have that one. It’s likely worth taking a look at your own profile’s page to see what might be there for you.
2. It’s still raining gift cards, this time from Simon. Use promo code OCT21SAVE45 for 45% off of fees on bulk Visa gift card purchases. You can buy $1,000 Visa gift cards at Simon with low fees, and it’s a decent way to get some spend on Citi cards. As always, remember that American Express doesn’t give you points for spend at Simon.
These continue to work at mid-tier grocery stores and at several online processors. If you don’t have a way to liquidate, keep looking — they do exist.
3.Multipleindependent sources are confirming that Hyatt’s peak/off-peak pricing will be implemented on October 26. That gives you six days to book award stays for March 2022 and later at the current prices. Don’t slack too long!
The new redemption chart is here, and unlike most loyalty award changes this one has some good with the bad — if you’re staying in Lubbock Texas on a Wednesday night in July (also known as “as off-peak as it possibly gets”), you might be able to get a night at the Hyatt Place for 3,500 points instead of 5,000 points.
Pictured: Your window view during your off-peak award stay in Lubbock, TX.
Starting tomorrow, a bunch of Marriott hotels are going up in point cost because reasons. Speculatively book any potential upcoming hotel stays today to avoid further Marriott suckitude.
While we’re chatting about Marriott, let me just add that if you’re big in the Bonvoy program, maybe take stock and see if another less punitive hotel loyalty program would work for you. The program is awful, but I do get why some stick with it: Inertia is hard to overcome, Marriott has a (usually low end) property everywhere, and you like what you know, but trust me — the Lubbock, TX Courtyard is not the peak of travel. And it certainly shouldn’t be in the same league as a 5,000 point Hyatt Place.
You can do better, and you can change your loyalty right now. No snark, just an honest plea to make sure you’re where you want to be and that you’re sure that what you’re doing makes sense for you.
