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I joined Seats.aero a year ago and then quickly realized those instantly-confirmable PlusPoints upgrades are also eligible for Mileage Upgrade Awards. With that knowledge, the need to chase 1k status for PlusPoints and upgrade pecking order basically vanished. That is to say, we've mostly been finding confirmable upgrade seats, paying for an Economy ticket, and then using the Mileage Upgrade Award to instantly upgrade to Polaris (usually 30,000 miles + $500).  Giving a quick glance over these 12 months of flying here's a few things that occur to me: Flexibility is key . Given Kel has an American job with its max-4-weeks vacation and 3 mandatory office badge-ins per week, we've had to buy him tickets on several occasions instead of flexing his date to one with a confirmable upgrade seat. Tim and I have a lot more flexibility so we've been able to take better advantage of those Sometimes all the flexibility in the world won't help and you're left with two options

  Checking in for my flight to SFO (and then on to Sydney) and I got the coveted " Touchless ID " opt-in prompt! I noticed this line (or should I say lack of a line) last time I was at Newark and the agent told me to opt-in next time and I could use this facial recognition pilot they're doing to skip straight to front of the queue.  Near as I can tell, it's a competitor to Clear, but sponsored by the TSA itself. Rather than using your eyes, it uses facial recognition to identify you. So now you have regular security, PreCheck, Clear, Clear with PreCheck, and TSA Touchless. This isn't confusing in the least! I'll update this later after I (hopefully) sail thru security today. *crosses fingers* UPDATE: Piece o’ cake. No line. Didn’t even have to show my ID! special lane at Newark terminal C 

I feel like lounges have made a lot of news lately: Delta's big c redit card access cutoff , Chase's posh new Sapphire lounges, Delta being forced into opening a competitor to United's fancy Polaris lounges... If everyone wants to be in one before they fly, won't we eventually end up at a point where the airport is entirely comprised of lounges ? But I digress… Over the years I've only mentioned lounges in passing – if something was particularly good or bad, or if there was a good tip to pass on. They're largely all the same in my head as long as they have the basics in order. But what are the basics? Clearly the Delta zombies who will wait an HOUR to get into a lounge have a very different view of the world than I do.  Before I get to my own list of realistic lounge must-haves, can I just put an "item 0" at the beginning of this list -- i.e., The Dream List :      0. If you fly on ANA's A380 service from Hawaii to Japan in a premium cabin, you

 Just read this article and dang this is terrifying but not unexpected, sadly. The non-programmer summary is: airline employees and pilots can go thru the TSA unscreened if they have a special barcode or an employee number that's checked in real-time to be valid the company that runs the validation service for dozens of airlines didn't implement even the bare minimum, security 101 features like preventing SQL injection anyone with a web browser can access this database and not only view it, but add their own entries and allow themselves to pass thru TSA checkpoints and INTO AIRPLANE COCKPITS with no screening The white hats who found the problem quietly reported it, but it seems like only a very cursory fix was put into place. It really points a finger at a very weak link in the chain of our national airline security theater.

a little primer :)  Ok look, I normally hate these kinds of lists because they're full of things that any halfway intelligent person with a tiny bit of context should be able to figure out (eg, footpath = sidewalk). Or worse, they're full of "Crocodile Dundee" Aussie slang that I've never heard even once in my time there ("crikey", "fair dinkum", etc). Lastly, this is very Sydney-centric and I don't care if anything here doesn't apply in Perth or Coober Pedy. All that said, here's some Australian terms that threw this seppo for a loop (or at least made me laugh). When I'm really sad I'm... Seppo = American. It's rhyming slang: American > Yank > Tank > Septic Tank > add the "o" to it like Australians LOVE to do and you've got Seppo . Most of the "o" slang is pretty obvious, but the first time I encountered the word for 'devastated' it was in a text and i thought my friend was

In late 2023 I subscribed to a new service called Seats.aero that constantly scrapes airline websites looking for real, bookable points and upgrade deals. They have a slick United PlusPoints upgrade finder which I quickly discovered also finds instantly-bookable Mileage Upgrade Awards (MUA). Given how expensive it is to make 1k and get a basket full of PlusPoints, this discovery was a game changer.  Ideally we always want to have our upgrades confirmed at booking time. Given work schedules and holidays we sometimes have book a flight without confirmable upgrade space and hope for the best when flight day comes. Tim and I have both had instances where, despite being 1k and using PlusPoints, we didn't get an upgrade because all the seats were sold or they were given to people with higher status. The big downer of my new strategy is that in these instances, we'll be even further down United's elaborate upgrade pecking order (i.e., a 1k requesting a MUA will lose the upgrad

DoC is saying that Chase is launching a Chase Private Client-exclusive card above the Sapphire Reserve. Given that my husband and I just became Chase Private Client customers (thanks First Republic bankruptcy!), I'm intrigued.  Are they going to try and compete with the Amex Centurion (aka Black) card? Or will they aim for a spot in between the Platinum and the Centurion? I'm trying to imagine what they might offer on this new product given the clientele it's aimed at… Chase's new lounge at Laguardia is quite nice, so maybe they'll give this card line cutting privileges. Or a private seating area with better booze? Oooh, or will they give you free/discounted access to the private suites in the lounge ?  Will it give you Gold status on an airline like the Centurion? Given their partnership with United, this could be Complicated™. I mean, it'd be awesome if it just came with Emerald OneWorld status… Will it offer NO bonus categories like the Centurion? Will it h

LOL sorry but anyone who didn't see that coming is nuts. I've really enjoyed the bloggers the past few weeks gushing about the new extra bougie lounge that Delta is opening to compete with United's Polaris lounges.  The preview pics look cute but we've all seen the insane lines to get into Delta's existing lounges, so I had a sneaking suspicion this wouldn't be the calm, Missoni-designed oasis people were hoping for.  The chatter on FlyerTalk and Reddit is amusing -- lots of "team Delta" and "team United" fanboys throwing all kinds of shade over these lounges and it's just like... why? All the carriers have their strengths and weaknesses and the trick is to take advantage of the former while avoiding the latter. For the record: United's onboard Polaris food has gotten better recently but it's still bad. The mattress pad on ultra long haul flights is nice. I wish the seats had doors and bigger footwells. ( Hint: The long haul tomat

A friend forwarded me this screenshot from a Chase Facebook group and it looks like Chase is going to cut the benefit which allows Priority Pass holders to access certain airport restaurants, cafes, and markets effective July 2024.  I haven't seen this anywhere else but I could have easily missed the news. I googled and couldn't find anything about it online, either. *Shrug* I really hope this isn't true. Often the restaurant/market option is the only choice you have what with all of the recent lounge overcrowding and subsequent restrictions placed on visitors. My original hometown airport was PDX and their Capers Market was such a great place to use this benefit. I usually popped in there on arrival and departure whenever I went back to visit my family.  "As of July 1, 2024 you will no longer have access to restaurants, cafes, and markets participating in the Priority Pass Select network as part of the Priority Pass SelectTM Benefit associated with your Card. Access

A quiet, efficient, reasonably-priced option for getting back to New York from Sydney. It's a bit longer in the air, but a guaranteed lie-flat seat sure beats doing 14 hours in a United Premium Plus recliner to SFO followed by 6 crowded hours in Economy to NYC. pros good lounges Seoul airport has Toto Washlets in the lounges AND in the terminal  very attentive service split boarding and deplaning (aka, separate jetways for Business and Economy) the A350 has decent wifi for $21 (full flight) transiting thru Seoul you can bring sealed duty free items (liquor) through transiting thru Seoul you don’t need a K-ETA visa like you do to enter Korea  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  seat is quite long when in flat mode  espresso! cons no personal air vents   ran out of korean style menu  fairly limited liquor selection. and like who’s ordering Drambuie?  neutral food was good, not great. IFE w