point fu

We're still waiting on Tim's green card (fingers crossed for sometime in Autumn of this year...), but until that happens there's still a lot of back-and-forth happening. Prices to Australia are still sky-high (north of $10,000 for Business) and award seats are still incredibly scarce. I usually search on United.com using Tim's account because he has 1k status, and I noticed this: A bunch of very-discounted fares from SFO and LAX to Sydney and Auckland. Given that the Saver level for Polaris is now 200,000 points each way, this was a steal . I had a few Chase points to transfer in, but I needed to buy points to top off my account.  So, for $2031 and 168,000 miles, I'm going round trip to Sydney in Polaris and spending the depths of winter enjoying Sydney's Vivid festival and Hobart's Dark Mofo . While making notes to myself for this post, I saw that this deal is no longer exclusive to 1k members , so if you're looking to get out of American summer and hi...

Other than the middle eastern carriers, the international First Class of the 90s and 00s has largely vanished in favor of lie-flat Business Class.  Lately we've seen some airlines installing a few extra-special Business Class seats that they can sell for a premium (eg, JetBlue's Mint Studio , Virgin's Retreat Suite , Singapore's A380 couples seats ).  Taiwanese luxury airline startup Starlux decided to do this on their new planes, but branded this one row of seats "First Class" and are asking 3 times the price for them versus their normal Business seats. (For real, $19,000 round trip LAX-Taipei versus $6000). I rolled my eyes. No amount of Krug and caviar could justify that. Furthermore, they aren't comping people into the seats or offering discounted upgrades to them if they're going to go out empty.  But then i saw this nugget:  Now this is a seldom-seen perk that sounds amazing – never having to enter the normal airport terminal at all . Having e...