point fu

UPDATE : I got my fish! It was a big piece, too! == Headed to the Pacific Northwest for my dad's memorial (he passed back in April) and I get this unexpected email from Delta asking me to "select my meal": Yes, I'm traveling up front, but this is something I'd suspect from Singapore airlines or ANA. When I clicked through to the choices, I was surprised to see that there were 5 choices rather than the usual "Chicken, Beef, or Veg" that you find onboard. Who knows if I'll actually get my choice (gotta be honest, this seems well outside their core competency...), but if I do, I'll get to figure out what "beecher’s clothbound cheddar dashi" is. I just checked and this flight appears to be a 757 with DeltaOne (aka lie-flat seats), maybe that explains the nicer food.

We're repeating last year's holiday routine this year – from New York to Phoenix, then to Portland, then back to New York. We fly Economy domestically most of the time, but during the holidays it's so crazy that we usually spring for First just to avoid some of the mayhem that comes with winter holidays and airports. New York to LA and SF have their glamorous Mint and P.S. planes, but most other west coast cities generally have normal domestic recliners in First. Then there's the added annoyance that nearly all of the eastbound flights are redeyes, and since I'm a very light sleeper, I despise redeyes unless I can lay down. But in all of this poking around for holiday flights I found two interesting ones I didn't know existed: A United 757 with lie-flat seats to Phoenix (flight 230 leaving JFK at 19:30)  A Delta 757 with lie-flats on a direct flight from PDX to JFK (flight 1756 at 12:49). Near as I can tell, this flight is seasonal . I logged on...

JetBlue has a fixed-value rewards program called TrueBlue, where points are earned based on the cost of the flight and redeemed at a fairly fixed rate based on the current price for the flight. While these types of programs don't let you take amazing 10-cents-per-point aspirational reward flights like our ANA First flight, they do mean that you can easily redeem your points for any seat on any flight without hours of planning and searching for the ever-elusive award seat. Most of the bloggers value JetBlue points at 1.3¢ each . In my own observations, there's been a little bit of variability over the years: I've seen the occasional redemption at 1.4¢ or even as high as 1.7¢. Well, yesterday I was pricing out a one way Mint flight from SFO to JFK and noticed that my Mint flight has reached an all-new low: 1.0¢ .  While it's easy to think, "it's only 7/10th of a cent", that actually represents a 40% devaluation from the rates we were routine...

When I first started nerding out on points years ago, I noticed that FlyerTalk.com  forums were full of posts from novices pleading for advice for getting to Hawaii. The subject line was always, "HELP!!!!" and then continued with: "It's my honeymoon so you HAVE to help me!   …And the honeymoon is in 10 days!   …And I want to fly direct to Maui from Omaha!   …And I want to be in First Class!  …And I have 8,000 points total spread across six frequent flier accounts!"   Needless to say there weren't many happy endings on those posts 😜 Well, now it's my turn to start sifting through all of that advice I skipped over all those years – I'm taking my first trip to Hawaii . My in-laws are there on a work assignment outside of Hilo, so we're going to try to get out to see them at the tail end of New York winter, when you're 110% sick of the snow and slush. UPDATE: Trip report ! Here's a few things I learned: Flights  to  Hawa...

Alaska Airlines and Virgin America have been slowly merging. Since I moved away from the west coast I've not had much opportunity to fly either airline, but I have 20,000-ish miles with both carriers that I'll probably put to use at some point. I've used both Virgin and Alaska's shopping portals to earn a few miles here and there and keep my points from expiring. Virgin's First Class recliners – a midpoint between two domestic First Class extremes Now that the merger is nearing completion they've announced that each Virgin point will become 1.3 Alaska points. Details about the transfer process are still TBD. (Let's not forget the other awesome use of Virgin points – getting a 30,000-point match from JetBlue earlier this year!) At this point the most exciting thing about Alaska miles is all of the great partner redemptions you can do with them (like Japan Airlines or Iceland Air ). Since they're spending a lot of money on this merger in hope...

UPDATE ( Nov 2016 ): Delta announced that they'll also be adding lie-flat seats to their NYC – San Diego, and Boston – San Francisco routes! Hooray for competition!  As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of JetBlue's "Mint" First Class product (trip reports here , here , and here ) It's hands-down the best domestic seat, food, and service in First Class. I'd even go so far to say that Mint, except for its lack of lounge access, is actually superior to the Big 3's (United, Delta, American) international Business Class offerings. After the big excitement last week where JetBlue and Alaska were bidding for Virgin America, I wasn't sure what to expect from them once it became clear Alaska was willing to pay any price (and did) to win. Well, they  announced some big news today  – Mint is expanding to a bunch of new markets! I've mentioned before that they expanded beyond the traditional premium domestic market of LAX/SFO/JRK and added Bo...

I'm a big fan of JetBlue's new "Mint" Business Class service. I wrote about it right after launch , and again six months into service. I've flown it several times since then and thought I'd share a few more observations from my flight this week (one year after my last post on the subject). I'm happy to report it's mostly unchanged :) first and foremost the seat is still the best in the business the staff are all incredibly helpful and professional the food is fantastic and modern fares are still super reasonable and much cheaper than the competition (from $600 each way) fares on the "big 3" are still $1000 cheaper than they were before Mint launched they still need a lounge in LAX, but i think the lack of one is reflected in the price (the gate situation at JFK and SFO is so much nicer than LAX you don't really miss the lounge there, I can't speak for BOS) it's still pretty easy to make Mosaic status. Mosaic + a J...

I flew JetBlue's new Mint product last month (and last summer ) and I found their Birchbox amenity kit to be more of a product sampler for Birchbox than it was a true collection of things you might need during the flight. That said, on my latest trip they did add something that I think everyone else should copy: device screen wipes. We all know that our iPhone screens have more bacteria than most toilet seats yet I'm personally a bit afraid to clean them with anything other than a dry microfiber towel for fear that I'll mess up the screen coating with alcohol or acetone or Windex... I really liked having something I knew was safe to use to give my phone a cleaning at the same time I used the hot towel to clean my own hands...

Per this link , it looks like JetBlue is going to be expanding the network for their new Mint First Class product. It's unquestionably the best First Class product for USA domestic flights and now they're expanding it to the Caribbean. UPDATE 4/2016: They've announced yet another expansion! UPDATE 7/2018: They're adding mint to St Maarten, St Lucia, and Libera My trip reports for Mint are here  and here . Closing-door individual suites

Great news! It looks like Air Canada is going to start offering a lie-flat product on domestic transcontinental flights. Other than the JFK-YVR flight on Cathay Pacific , there aren't a whole lot of options for an internationally-configured plane on a domestic North American run. The official announcement is here . A breakdown of all the flights is here .

Delta announced that they're re-branding all of their cabins . I've complained talked about about this in the past and today's changes are even more obfuscated than before. As I've said in the past, use SeatGuru when you're shopping so you know what you're paying for! Basic Economy - even shittier than Economy, you won't earn miles, can't pick your seat, and no changes are permitted Main Cabin - Virgin America has used this phrasing for their Economy Class for a long time now, I wonder if that had any influence on Delta's choice here. Delta Comfort+ - I think Premium Economy has a different name on every single airline. Again, they're copying Virgin in that they're including free drinks, better food, and free movies along with the extra 4" of legroom. Let's hope they don't copy Virgin's ridiculous pricing to buy these seats. First Class - The standard USA domestic first you've seen for years. 38" reclin...

If you look at item 1 at the bottom of this page , you'll see the power of a single footnote. Premier members who request a MileagePlus Upgrade Award on or after February 1, 2015, for a p.s. route between New York JFK and Los Angeles or San Francisco will no longer be exempt from the co-pay. For several years now, my husband's work has paid for his JFK< >SFO flights in Economy and he upgrades those flights to United P.S. BusinessFirst with miles out of his personal account. One of the things he's really liked about post-merger United is that doing this is a piece of cake — no need to call customer service, just tap a few buttons on the website and it all happens automatically.  But now, his upgrade to BusinessFirst is going to cost him 40,000 of his own miles plus $500 of his own dollars on top of whatever his company paid. While United miles are probably the most valuable of the US carriers, he essentially runs a deficit — he spends way more miles upgrading ...

For people like me who fly entirely for vacations on their own dime, I'm convinced that chasing airline elite status is a lot like going to Vegas: "the house always wins". Yes, you get a couple of thrilling payouts along the way but ultimately you lose because you'll spend heaps more money to make sure you stay in the high rollers club. This last trip we took ( JFK > SFO > JFK > YUL > JFK > SJU > JFK ) was one of those times when "the house" got to rub my nose in my decision :) My husband has to fly ≈8 transcons a year for work (work pays), so he's usually United Platinum and I'm still a lowly Silver (though with their new Delta-style rules, he'll drop to Gold and I'll drop to nothing next year). We both bought economy tickets on United's PS service and then immediately submitted a request to upgrade our flights with miles to their Fancy Domestic First class (called BusinessFirst) for 20,000 miles per person, per segme...

I've talked about how generally lame US Domestic First is, and I've mentioned the " Fancy USA Domestic First " options that exist almost exclusively on the JFK — LAX/SFO routes. Today, there's a great article over on  The Points Guy  about other domestic USA routes outside the LAX/SFO/JFK market with Fancy First. Check it out !

"First Class" flights within North America sorta deserve the quotes I just put around them. While there are a few exceptions 1 , the majority of these flights feature recliner-style seats with 38" of pitch (remember, economy has 32"), 20-ish inches wide, no lounge access, limited alcoholic beverage selections, and if there's food at all it's likely to remind you of a high school cafeteria - overboiled mystery meat (or gluey pasta) served with a side of surliness. Let's just call this "Crappy First Class™" Meanwhile many of these same airlines have upgraded the seats in their long-haul international planes to be fully lie-flat beds with 60+ inches of pitch while simultaneously re-branding them as Business Class seats! Delta had the sense to name their crappy First Class product "Business Class", whereas United stuck with the First Class moniker (except when the planes fly to Mexico — all of a sudden that same cabin is now called Busi...

My friend George shared this report about his recent flight in American Airlines' new transcontinental Flagship First from New York to San Francisco.  My husband and I were able to use our miles to book American's new transcontinental First Class product from JFK - SFO over Labor Day weekend. I was very excited to get to experience this as I had read about the service from a few other sources. We arrived at JFK and proceeded through security. One does have the option of using Flagship check-in , but as we didn't have any checked baggage and use our phones as boarding passes, we wanted to just spend more time relaxing in the Admirals Club . Speaking of which, as a Transcon First Class traveler, one is escorted into the Flagship lounge part of the Admirals Club. This separate section has an open self-serve bar and decent nibbles. Two Negronis later we boarded the flight, which actually left on time and took off about 20 minutes after leaving the gate (that *ne...

I've been a big fan of United PS and its competitors for nearly a decade. Considering the flight from New York to London is only about an hour longer than the flight from New York to San Francisco/LA, it makes sense that someone would offer international-style amenities to people flying this route. Originally, United PS had a traditional 3-class configuration and ONLY the people flying in First were entitled to use the United lounge at JFK (Business Class customers were out of luck...) Well, when they reconfigured their cabins a couple of years ago to only have Economy and lie-flat BusinessFirst classes, they also granted lounge access to everyone in the BusinessFirst cabin! Somehow we missed that fact and we've been sitting in the often-very crowded JFK Terminal when we were entitled to be in the lounge (ahem... drinking for free). We'd just assumed since First Class was gone so was all lounge access. Given the airlines' tendency these days to always choose t...

(Last updated Oct 2018)   When JetBlue announced their new lie-flet First Class " Mint " service, I was lucky enough to snag a seat at the special introductory fare of $499 ( one way ). I've updated this page over the ensuing months to keep the review current .  PROS:  Best transcon seat hands-down Half the price of any competitor Free, fast WiFi and live TV Delicious, innovative food CONS:  Entire plane boards through forward doors so pre-departure time is chaotic No lounge (unless you have Priority Pass) JetBlue's rewards program has limited redemption options Conclusion   if you're paying for your own ticket, this is unquestionably the best way between NYC and LAX or SFO (or their new cities ) in style and comfort.     Background First, a quick primer: for years Delta, American, and United have flown special planes on the NYC-Los Angeles and the NYC-San Francisco routes. They're configured like international plane...