point fu

It's that time of year when people start thinking about next year's frequent flier status . While I tell myself that we're free agents (hey, I flew Qantas this year!), the reality is that we're United gals if for no other reason than they have so many flights to Australia versus their competitors.  I'm going to end up with Gold without really even trying, mostly due to all of the United Mileage Upgrade Awards that Seats.aero found for me this year. Kelly flew some great bargains on AirEuropa and Alaska this year, but he'd like to be Gold if for no other reason than getting Economy Plus at booking time (his work usually books him in Economy domestically). He's not sure he'll make it over the line, though. If you go to United.com, then to My United, then click View Premier Status Tracker, you can see your progress toward the various tiers.  It's all pretty clear and self-explanatory save for one thing. If you click Future Flights , you can see where ...

A bunch of folks jumped onto that Chase Sapphire offer to get a free 5000 mile certificate from Air Canada. I just redeemed mine and here's a couple of tips. I did this entirely on my desktop computer; buying via the app might be a different workflow I could not book a 2-person itinerary and redeem the certificate. It really wanted me to have a certificate for each person. I ended up buying us separate tickets .  Once I was booking for just myself, I had to log in to Air Canada's website, navigate to My Aeroplan and then click Benefits to find my cert. My Aeroplan > Benefits Once I'd clicked through there, I searched for the flight I wanted. When the search results loaded, a small popup appeared at the bottom where had to click to apply the 5000 mile cert. The prices in my search results updated to reflect the discount. Use this popup to apply the cert

I try to stay abreast of anything that makes traveling as a throuple / triad more appealing and dang this new " 3 person suite " from Swiss Airlines sure looks nice! Basically they're selling you the center, 2-person suite along with the single seat across the aisle. Their new Allegris interiors only have one row of First Class suites, so I think the idea is that the aisle space between the two suites is yours. I guess the staff must all be forced to use the aisle between 1K and 1E?  layout of the 3-person suite In all our travels I think the most special moment in the sky was when the BA First purser set up an empty seat so my husband and I could dine together. But like once the meal was done, I was happy to go back to our individual seats and generally not be in each other's way. I mention this because: one, you wouldn't really be able to have a 3 people dining together experience; and two, I don't know that I'd want to be fidgeting on a video game while...

I wasn’t gonna write this report, but Asiana has “been gonna” be absorbed by Korean air for like a decade now but it still hasn't happened yet, so maybe this will be of use to someone. It was flight OZ 224 and I was in seat 10K (upstairs).  How I did it 179,000 Amex points (this is the total after the now-moribund Pay With Points 35% rebate) for SYD-ICN-JFK Pros A380s are amazing. Huge and so quiet inside.  There's a big front lounge and you'll likely have it alllll to yourself. It's better than a private jet in some ways  Huge front bathroom  Perfect side storage bins  Espresso  Friendly and competent service  Good food  Decent airport lounge with Washlets   Split boarding (two jetways is important for such a big plane) Transiting Seoul means no clearing Korean customs  JFK (not Newark) Bathrooms have toothbrushes and lotions and mouthwash so you don’t have to open the amenity kit to get just one thing out of it.  Cons No Wi-fi (a...

I think the E word was the word of the year at some point recently and yes it's cheesy in the same way the word "adulting" is cheesy but dang if  enshittfication  isn't the theme of the late stage capitalism we're living in right now. I'm sitting here very unsuccessfully trying to check in for my Delta flight and ruminating on the fact that mobile apps replaced thousands of airline customer service agents saving airlines billions of dollars and yet their corporate masters just can't resist the urge to outsource and penny pinch the IT millions that make those billions possible. The Points Guy was doing a bunch of retrospectives for his anniversary and this one  really drove home for me how much decay is just baked into our societal expectations now. Amex (and Delta) built some gorgeous new lounges built on the idea of quiet, calm, luxurious travel and yet we're paying a $700 ( and rising !) annual fee to have an hour wait to get in, no seats when f...

I wrote this on the 17 hour, no-wifi flight and boy with what's going on in Los Angeles and Tehran this sure as hell reads like fiddling while Rome burns. Got a coffee in Sydney and the barista hears my accent and says 'my god, are you guys ok?' No, we're not…   This was my first-ever trip on Qantas (!!) and, in short, it felt like United Polaris on a good day – pleasant staff, comfortable bed, decent food. 85,000 Alaska miles (topped up with my BILT card). It's a well-timed flight: take off around 10pm, eat dinner, go to bed, wake up, have breakfast, land at 6am in Sydney. I didn't even have time to watch a movie, just a couple games of Balatro ;) *gay gasp* 👎 As already mentioned, no wifi . I’ll forgive LATAM for not having it, but for a carrier with this pricing and reputation it’s unacceptable. Full stop. That said, it’s an overnight flight completely designed around maximizing your sleep so it just wasn’t that big a deal in practice.  There's a staff...

United announced 3 big crappy changes which are all general devaluations of their miles and their overall program. I never personally used the Excursionist Perk , nor the instant full-fare coach upgrades, but I get why people are sad they're going away. For us, the news that Mileage Upgrade Awards are becoming dynamically priced later this year sorta blows a hole in our current, Australia-heavy strategy .  As I'd already mentioned, the per-leg cost of: a $1000-ish coach fare  + $300-$450  co-pay + 30,000 miles   was already starting to add up, but if I'm suddenly paying, say, 60,000 miles per leg for an upgrade instead of 30,000 then it's time to look at other options.  No good points game lasts very long (check my similar gravy-train farewell from 2014 ), and while I'm grateful for the 2 years of togetherness (and back health!) it's afforded us, it's time to start looking around at other options. For my next Sydney visit in June, I decided to follow a Sea...