point fu

One of the toughest parts of the points game is actually finding the flights you want once you've gathered enough points. Most people end up with a mix of points across several carriers and maybe a pile or two of transferable points like American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards. AwardHacker is great for knowing all of the possible rewards and how many points they would cost, but the holy grail of doing a search for actual, available reward seats has remained elusive – in part because the airlines put up IT and legal roadblocks to 3rd party services to prevent their software from crawling through the airline websites and mining the resulting data. Awardex.io (based in the Baltics) tried this, but unfortunately their site has been completely hobbled recently and you're now greeted with a login message about "something new and exciting coming soon". One of the other strategies for this problem is to let users download a software program to...

I've been hopeful yet extremely suspicious about JetBlue's long-rumored expansion to Europe, and it appears I'm not the only one. Lucky and the Wandering Aramean are both calling out JetBlue for their continuing indecision about converting their A321neo orders to the long-range LR version of the aircraft. JetBlue has been teasing this decision since mid-2016 and even if they decided tomorrow to go with the LRs, it still means that any potential European flights wouldn't happen until at least 2021 or later. On a personal note, we'd been sorta stockpiling the JetBlue points hoping that there'd be some great introductory offers on transatlantic service, but we gave up on them early in 2018 and spent 100,000-ish of our TrueBlue family pool balance. JetBlue has been slowly, quietly devaluing their points and it doesn't make sense to hold them for something that might never come . Instead of enabling transatlantic service, the LRs could also potentially e...

I mentioned last June that I'd elected to get money instead of miles as part of the British Airways class action lawsuit. I'd gotten so nervous it wasn't going to come that I talked to Ben Schlappig of One Mile At A Time to see if he'd gotten his yet, and he hadn't. I'm happy to report that we've both received our checks now. As I understand it, the suit hinged on the idea they called their surcharges "fuel surcharges", when in fact they had nothing to do with fuel prices. People who booked reward tickets during the time frame where they were using the misleading name were offered the choice between money and miles as compensation. In my case, $278 is worth a lot more to me than 12,500 BA points. Sadly, BA still has their criminally-high surcharges, but since they have a less deceptive name now, they seem to think it's ok. I don't. I ditched my BA card years ago because of them. About the only time using their points is wo...

Considering how often domestic flights are on a single-aisle plane boarded from the forward door, you're usually "turning right" no matter which class you're in. Even on long haul international flights, First Class cabins are shrinking (or vanishing altogether), and a big chunk of the Business Class seats are often to the right of the boarding door. Honestly, I've gotten so used to having 150+ people tromp/crop-dust their way through the plane that I thought nothing of it. Then, a few days ago, I boarded my overpriced flight home from Portland and was pleasantly surprised when I had to "turn left" on this 757 to get to my Delta One seat. A few minutes after sitting down it hit me – why was I so calm and peaced out? Why was I actually smiling despite this insanely stressful month? It's because we turned left . We could take as long as we wanted to "get settled". We could get up whenever we wanted to get things out of the overhead bin. ...

The chaotic holiday season is finally behind us, and I'm sitting here really enjoying this second cup of coffee and the very quiet house. Looking back on 2018 from a points perspective, I had another good year of earning – 493,000 points ( I'm not including my husband's earning since his employer pays for a bunch of his travel ). Breaking that down a bit: 51,000 miles with 4 airlines from paid flights and airline shopping portals 247,000 Amex points from spending and bonuses (of that: 30k from refer-a-friend, 60k from upgrading to the Platinum card, 42,000 from Amex Offers, the rest from spending ) 95,000 Chase points from credit card spending ( 85k of those were in travel and dining ) 100,000 Chase points for doing an in-branch offer for a new Ink Business card Looking back on last year's roundup , it looks like I hit most of my predictions for 2018 – we're booked on an exciting Cathay Pacific A350 flight , I churned a couple of new cards, I'm sti...

Thus far, I've avoided ever having a single American Airlines mile. Despite what you might think, I don't have a strong desire to know the ins- and outs of every system out there. Plus, they're legendary for having terrible award availability . The trip itself, not the way I get there, is still where the bulk of my energy is spent. Thus far, Alaska and British Airways partner redemptions have been "good enough" for my OneWorld/American Airlines needs and I've been able to avoid dealing directly with them. Neither Chase UR nor Amex MR points can be transferred to them, so the only option is to start accruing them, or do a SPG/Marriott transfer which can take multiple days (or weeks if their newly-combined IT department is having another flareup of digital heartburn). Yesterday in trying to help my husband find a flight home from a family emergency in Montana, my Alaska/British strategy finally hit a wall. I knew exactly which flight he wanted to be on, yet ne...

Amazon brought back their promotion where you get 20% off if you use Amex points during checkout. Since pay-with-points is a bad deal, most people are simply using one single Amex point to pay 1¢ of their order and then reaping 20% off their whole order. Details from the July promotion are here , but the short story is that for this November offer, Amazon and iTunes gift cards are now excluded, so I need a different strategy. First off, I needed to follow the steps to see if I was targeted for this offer – and luckily I was. Basically what I'm looking for is a brain-dead way to quickly dump $500 worth of items into my Amazon cart that will end up only costing me $400 with the 20% off promo. But in choosing what to get, here's some food for thought: don't buy anything overpriced only buy things I actually need and would buy otherwise don't buy things that spoil or expire don't buy things that are time-consuming or difficult to use If you're a fre...

The MTA is doing a targeted Amex offer for $10 off when you use Apple Pay to spend $10 or more on their MTA e-tix app . You can use the offer 3 times for up to $30 back. The app lets you purchase, store, and activate digital tickets for Metro North and Long Island Railroad trains. Most importantly, the app lets you skip the lines at Grand Central, which can be incredibly long on holiday weekends and at rush hour. Log in to your Amex account and make sure you click "View All" to see if you're targeted. Also, make sure you use the targeted Amex card for Apple Pay when buy your tickets. To set the targeted card as the default in Apple Pay, open the Wallet app on your iPhone, press and hold on the desired card, and then drag the card to the bottom of the stack. ( Sidenote to Apple: this interface makes no sense whatsoever ). full details

(updated: feb ‘24) she especially pretty at sunset The food and mezcal in Oaxaca are as amazing as we'd heard. We've been four times now, and I'm sure we'll go again. We're not experts by any means, but here's a few bits we learned. Checklist It cools off a lot at night, so your hotel/AirBnB might not need AC Book mezcal tours and nice restaurants EARLY, Oaxaca is a popular destination Book a private airport transport if you don't like SuperShuttle-like communal taxis Install DiDi app (no Uber in Oaxaca) Bring sunscreen and a hat (high UV index even in winter) Go slow! High altitude means you'll get winded easily Eat everything! Enjoy their blossoming cocktail and microbrew culture, too Consider day trips to Hierve al Agua, Arbol del Tule, Tlacolula market, and Monte Alban Gabe's and my  Google map    🗺️ Before you go There are few fancy western chain hotels . There's a Holiday Inn and a couple of Marriott boutique hotels (Escondido and Otr...

This week everyone was surprised when Capital One announced that they were going to allow their points to be transferred directly into airline points programs. It's been interesting to see all of the various blogs doing their analyses without ever really bringing up the fact that no one knows if this is going to be an instant points transfer (like with Chase and Amex) or a multi-day process (like with SPG/Marriott points) . What's a bit irksome for me about the mainstream blogs' coverage is that they seem to have forgotten how normal people use their points. Given how few airlines let you put tickets on hold (Korean and Virgin Atlantic both come to mind), a slow transfer like SPG's means that you risk marooning your points if you transfer them and the award vanishes by the time your points show up. This has actually happened to me and it's stressful and irritating. UPDATE (Dec 2018): The first real-world tests of transfer times are coming in, looks like...