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Showing posts from April, 2018

Mother's Day triple-dip

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I'm trying to stay ahead of schedule on things right now given how busy May is going to be. To that end, I just ordered a nice bouquet of flowers in a silver vase for my mom for Mother's Day. She and my dad live in an RV so ephemeral gifts are essential given their limited living space. I did some checking for Amex Offers and found one: I also looked at evreward.com to see if there were some additional points I could earn from a shopping portal bonus. Lo and behold, United's portal is offering 25 points per dollar . Furthermore, United's spring promotion has point bonuses that will stack on top of this if you meet the cumulative spending thresholds. After going through the checkout process I realized that you have to use a promo code to get the points, and the promo code is mutually exclusive with Shoprunner free shipping. Hmm. Math time. Do I want 1500 points ($60 x 25 per dollar) or do I want to pay $14.99 for shipping? Since I know exactly which rewar

Upgrading to JetBlue Even More Space for ≈$14

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I was looking over our JetBlue statement the other day and was surprised to see that my husband's points upgrade from Economy to Even More Space (EMS) qualified for the JetBlue Mastercard's 10% rebate. ( FYI, his work only pays for Business Class on transcontinental flights when it's a red-eye into a workday ). This means he's upgrading for 990 points or just under $14 at a 1.4¢ valuation. More importantly, when I was discussing this with other Mosaic members online, many of them pointed out that gate agents will often give Mosaic members a complimentary upgrade to Even More Space if there are seats available . I know some folks have complained that free EMS upgrades should be an official benefit of Mosaic, but honestly I prefer it this way. JetBlue's seats already have decent legroom, so few people pay to upgrade. This means I get a much more valuable perk – an empty middle seat next to me.  

Not April Fools: Airbus creating cargo hold sleeping berths

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I'd seen this on a few sites and honestly just assumed it was lingering re-shares of an April Fool's joke. Apparently Airbus is looking at replacing some of the cargo hold modules with sleeping berths. The A330 will be the first to get them, since it already has a staircase going down to the crew rest area. The one big downer here is that the ceiling height in the proposed module is 5'4" (162 cm). Hopefully the ceiling will be padded! . @Airbus and @ZodiacAerospace enter into a partnership for new lower-deck sleeping facilities 🛌 https://t.co/yteDQWiGbM pic.twitter.com/ZViVgB3yFs — Safran (@SAFRAN) April 10, 2018 There's lots more info and pictures over at TPG , but if they can manage to get this past all of the various safety agencies, it might make for some interesting new options. I wouldn't mind an Economy seat on a long flight if, for example, I had a 6 hour nap downstairs in the middle of it. But it does raise a few questions: What's

Heads-up: report of SPG program changes coming April 16th

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( Last update 9 April 2018 ) According to a couple of sources , the coming details of the merged Starwood + Marriot points plan are being announced on April 16th. Lucky is reporting that some phone reps are saying the current Starwood-to-airline mile transfers will end that day. most of my Starwood points came from Amex signup bonuses In recent years, airlines and credit cards have been providing ever less notice for big changes like this, so it wouldn't surprise me if this were true. One way or the other I'm going to make a plan for where to transfer my Starwood points and move 'em quick if I get word that the changes are negative (and I'd guess there's a 99% chance that they will be). I'm not much of a hotel person , so I wouldn't consider keeping the points to use for hotel rooms. They have a long list of transfer partners , but it's a tough call… Here's my current thinking (I'll update this page as I learn more): Yes Initially