{"id":10836,"date":"2024-12-13T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10836"},"modified":"2024-12-12T22:52:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T05:52:30","slug":"weekend-news-new-hilton-benefit-rethinking-miles-purchases-and-airline-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/13\/weekend-news-new-hilton-benefit-rethinking-miles-purchases-and-airline-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend News: New Hilton Benefit, Rethinking Miles Purchases, and Airline Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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  1. Do this now<\/strong>: Enroll your American Express Business Platinum cards in the new $50 quarterly Hilton credit<\/a>. A quick Q&A:

    – Will this work with     HiltonGiftCards.com<\/a>? Probably
    – Will this work buying gift cards at a hotel? Yes
    – Will this work at Hilton restaurant? Probably, stick to resorts to be sure
    – Will this work for a regular hotel to pay your bill? Yes
    – Is AmEx going to raise the annual fee? Probably not in 2025, but yes
    – Is Dell going away in 2H2025? We can only pray
    – What’s America’s favorite fruit? Banana
    – Did anyone make it this far? Yes

    If you’ve got a bunch of business Platinums, just make sure that you get an email for each card. Sometimes the site enrolls the wrong card, or reenrolls a card that you didn’t select.
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  2. Avianca LifeMiles can be purchased for as little as 1.27 cents each<\/a> with a sale running through the end of December.

    Conventional wisdom in the hobby says “never buy miles except to top-off your account for a redemption.” The wisdom is showing its age when transferable points are cashed out easily into interest bearing accounts, and points costs have dipped below 1.3 cents. For example, yesterday I was looking at an ANA First Class redemption that was 114,000 LifeMiles. I could have paid about $$1,447 to buy those miles directly rather than transferring miles in. Obviously, there’s more to come on this topic in the future.
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  3. Southwest has extended its schedule for fall travel including Labor Day weekend through October 1<\/a>. Booking a cheap flight that’s far out and within two weeks of a more expensive flight that you actually want to take is a great way to hedge booking costs, assuming flight schedule change between then and now.
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  4. AA is retooling its AAdvantage program for 2025<\/a>. The quick summary:

    – New million-miler tiers at four (Platinum Pro) and five (Executive Platinum) million miles
    – Systemwide Upgrades will last through the end of the elite year after March 1, 2025
    – Redeem miles for inflight food, probably at a terrible rate
    – New Loyalty Point awards, all low value

    You still can’t earn million-miler tiers with Loyalty Points, only with flown miles.
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  5. Giant<\/a>, Giant Foods<\/a>, Martins<\/a>, and Stop & Shop<\/a> stores have 8x-10x points on Lululemon and Barnes & Noble gift cards, depending on chain through Thursday, December 19.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
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    \"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

    $50 breakfast at a Hilton Garden Inn in Lubbock (prolly, I can’t be bothered to fact check).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    $50 breakfast at a Hilton Garden Inn in Lubbock (prolly, I can’t be bothered to fact check).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,54,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-credit-cards","category-miles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10840,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10836\/revisions\/10840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}