point fu

Runway Girl Network has an… interesting/alarming/promising story about a new development in airline interiors – soon airlines will be able to charge you for using the at-seat power plugs . It's just the next terrible addition to the nickle-and-diming price structure that airlines seem to be in love with these days. But given the horrible direction airlines are taking their Economy and domestic First cabins ( removing all seatback entertainment , shoving in extra rows, shrinking toilets , etc) I guess the only thing left to say here is, "Welp, I guess I prefer a pay-to-plug seat over one with no power at all…" ( Quick sidebar here: can I just say how much I love that JetBlue has bucked this terrible trend? They're actually installing larger screens in Economy and they have blazing-fast, free Wi-Fi ). Oh but the horrors don't end there: a related invention from KID-Systeme has circuitry in the plug itself to let you charge for free in exchange for watchi...

UPDATE March 2018: I have my answer. ANA's fuel surcharge is tied to the Singapore Kerosene (i.e., jet fuel) price index and that's been quite high lately. ANA Chart showing fuel price effect on surcharges I've been doing a bunch of test bookings for a friend and it seems like ANA has recently raised the price of the co-pays on their award tickets . Low and Regular season Economy tickets now have co-pays around the US$250 mark. When I search for itineraries similar to those in receipts I have from previous bookings, the prices are $100 higher than a year+ ago.  Low vs. Regular season are both now $250 Partner redemptions (e.g., United) are also in the $250 range, and also show a $100 increase JFK to Haneda and Narita are both $250 Booking onward to another city (e.g., booking JFK to Okayama via Tokyo) is $250 In other words, there's no trick I can find to get around these new fees. I've been scouring the various forms and haven't found any infor...

We had a family emergency last week and had to find a flight to Seattle from New York City in a big hurry. We all know that as the flights fill up, the prices go up. But I'd forgotten that if you're buying TWO (or more) seats, they're both billed at the price of the most expensive seat .  ( FYI the flights were so full because the airlines had already issued a weather-related travel waiver for Saturday - meaning that lots of people were trying to leave a day early )   TIP 1: Sometimes it's cheaper to book two separate tickets! In my specific example: if I searched for two seats, they were $1800 each. But when I changed the search to just one seat (on the very same flight), the price dropped to $718. Once we purchased that seat, the other seat (the last one one the plane) jumped up to $1800. Now at $1800 all kinds of terrible domestic point rewards start to make financial sense. What I ended up with was a 3¢ per point redemption (60,000 points) – not great but ...