point fu

We've been planning a big 3 month visit to Japan for a while now and even though it's 9 months away, it's time to start shopping for flights. If you want to fly on points you tend to have the best luck if you plan really far in advance or if you're super flexible and travel last-minute. UPDATE! 6/2016 Trip Reports: ANA First to Narita JAL Business to JFK We like to fly together on the same ticket so we're processed together if something goes wrong (e.g., mechanical or weather delay), but looking at our various mileage accounts, we're in the same boat as last time we went to Japan – we don't have enough points in one single account to book two round-trips. This means we'll likely end up doing two one-ways to Japan on one airline and two one-ways back on another . Furthermore, given that buying a one-way ticket to/from Asia with money usually costs as much or more than a round-trip does, we have to successfully book both legs of the trip with m

United recently announced that it was moving all of its PS (Premium Service) lie-flat First Class service to Newark. Seemingly in response to that news, today JetBlue announced that they would add several additional flights between JFK and LAX/SFO. I'm a big fan of Mint ( my reviews here , and here ) and I'm happy that expanded service means more flight times and more chances to snag the $599 seats.  The other big news is that they've announced Mint service between Boston and SFO/LAX! Delta used to have their premium service planes on this and the JFK-SEA runs but both services have been discontinued. Hopefully they'll do $499 promo flights for the launch like they did with LA. Boston is a much smaller market than NYC but hopefully they can make it successful and spread it to other destinations (I'd love Mint on the JFK-SEA run!). Hooray for lie-flat seats and closing door suites! More information here .

Good friends are getting married in Boracay December of 2016 and a bunch of us will be heading there from both coasts of the US. I use my blog as a notebook to keep track of the stuff I've learned while I'm looking for a good fare. This is what I've learned so far . Please email me or leave a comment if you have anything to add or have any questions. I'll keep adding and revising stuff as I find it.   (updated 29 Sept 2016) Intro Here's the  Wikipedia  entry for Boracay for openers. Wikitravel guide is here. Looking at their airport situation, there are two:  KLO  airport (90 minutes by car from Boracay ferries, several international flight options) and  MPH  (right next to the ferry, but only has flights to Manila and Cebu). Several of my frequent flier friends who've done this say that unless you want to spend some time sightseeing in Manila, arriving to KLO from another country is the way to go.  Here are all the direct flights into KLO (keep in mi

I don't travel as much as some people, but often enough that I've definitely got my packing down to a planned routine. I keep a master packing checklist on my iPhone so I can run through it to make sure I don't forget anything. At the top of the list are things I need to do more than one day out ("do laundry!"), and as I reach the bottom, it's things like "wallet, keys, phone" that I'll grab right as I'm leaving. My list isn't just about what to put in my bag, it's also life reminders for being gone (e.g., who's picking up the mail?, water the plants, take out the trash, clean out the fridge, put a good movie onto your phone, etc). Keep a master packing list on your phone There are tons of great resources for packing out on the net, but here's a few of my own packing tips: First off: Netflix now lets you download shows for offline viewing , so queue up some plane watching while you pack! Maybe also install Duolin

According to this link , United is leaving JFK in a slot-swap with Delta. While most of their operations are already at Newark, they've kept their signature Premium Service between SFO/LAX and JFK. I'm somewhat surprised because I figured they must be getting a good deal of people taking the West Coast – JFK flights solely for connecting to the huge number of international destinations available at JFK. Apparently not. I'm not a huge fan of Newark Airport (more on why here ), so this will make it even less likely that I'll fly United PS again. On the bright side, it's probably way more convenient for making domestic connections, but Virgin has SFO/LAX flights to both EWR and JFK and supposedly both routes are profitable. Hm. Luckily JetBlue Mint , American Airlines Flagship , and Delta BusinessElite One all still offer lie-flat service between the two coasts, and Virgin America offers a 60" recliner that puts the rest of the transcon 38" seats to sh

As I said in the post yesterday , status is best earned when someone else is paying. Well, my hubby's most-recent work flight on JetBlue Mint posted this morning and he crossed the threshold into JetBlue " Mosaic " elite status. While he's United gold until Feb 2016, he left them for JetBlue at the start of 2015 (more information on why he left United here ). The other big development driving his move is that his company changed their rules and started paying for Business Class for transcontinental red-eye flights. Since policy also requires him to pick a flight within $100 of the lowest fare offered, Mint is almost always going to be his only choice. JetBlue's loyalty program is entirely revenue-based, so you earn status based mostly on how much you spend. Likewise you redeem points for a fixed amount of money (≈1.4¢ each). The Mosaic benefits are covered here , but I think the most exciting one is that  you immediately get 15,000 bonus points (a $210 value

Our schedules have been crazy lately and we've been trying to save up vacation days for an epic 3-month Japan trip next year so we've not been doing much on the leisure travel front. Right on schedule (i.e., May), the summer Business Class fares to Europe happened and sadly we just couldn't make it happen this year. We weren't going to have an entire summer with no vacation, though, so when we found out that the Monday after July 4th is a work holiday, we decided to do a 5 day weekend trip . It's been a while since we'd been to Seattle so we decided to head over there to see old friends and family and to be someplace with relatively mild weather. I hopped on to Google flights  to start pricing out the trip ( sidenote: I usually use Kayak.com for this but I'm really liking how quickly you can look at different fares on Google flights... There's a great tutorial about it over on Lucky's site ). Loving the new Google Flights! I was alread

Obviously this isn't an expansive list, but I'm trying to keep a record for myself of which flights have personal air vents. While there are lots of cool new tools to track the various in-flight amenities, none of them that I've found track this. I have many friends who work in the industry and I realize that these vents ( nicknamed gaspers ) actually impede well-engineered cabin airflow, none of the marvels of my friends' airflow engineering will help me when the cabin crew sets the thermostat to 28C. Some more background info on gaspers  here . In general, narrow-body us domestic planes all seem to have them. I only just started keeping track, but here's my list so far. Feel free to add your own! Cathay 777-300ER  no AA     777       yep AC     777       yep B6        A321*     yep (mint) KL        A380*        no ANA    777*       no UNITED 777-200   yep SK     A330       no SK     A340       no DL     A330      yep DL     A350      window