Weekend Blitz

A few weeks ago, I posted Flying Blue’s summer promo awards for June & July 2014 where Air France/KLM awards are between 25-50% off. It turns out the original list had an error and that Boston is really 50% off, meaning you can booking roundtrip flights from Boston to virtually anywhere in Europe for 25,000 Flying Blue miles (aka 25,000 AMEX points by transferring to Flying Blue). There is still great availability, here are some of the options:

Simply put, fifth freedom routes are cool. They’re unique and unusual. It’s the whole idea of how small and interconnected the world is that I find the coolest.

Real quick, the fifth freedom right of the sky is what enables United and Delta Airlines to fly many routes from Tokyo-NRT to a whole host of Asian cities. It allows Emirates Airlines, a Dubai-based carrier, to fly revenue passengers between New York-JFK and Milan, Italy-MXP, two foreign countries.

There are other examples (many of which will come in a later post), but here are a few:  Delta flies direct from Amsterdam-AMS to Mumbai-BOM and Air China flies [...]

The post you're reading is from our RSS Feed. When we're out there traveling the world, it can be nearly impossible to bring you all of the news from the miles/points/travel industry. To bring you the best content possible, we've linked our personal RSS Feed to the blog so that when a newsworthy article comes out, we'll simply feed it in with the rest of our posts. This way you can be sure you're always getting the best and most current info out there.

There have been a ton of great business class fares posted across the internet the past few days. Here are some of the tops deals, many are still available:

Starting on March 31, 2014, US Airways officially joined the Oneworld Alliance as part of its merger with American Airlines. The biggest news and best part about this change is that you can now use British Airways Avios to book award flights on US Airways.

British Airways/Iberia Avios miles are [glossy term=”distance based awards”]:  on the surface, it seems like you’re getting a bad deal on award redemptions. But, as with anything involving miles, it opens up possibilities to find great values on non-stop short distance flights.

Here’s the British Airways Avios award chart:

So, this might be the best thing that has happened to U.S.-based International travelers in a while (aside from U.S. banks offering Smart Chip credit cards, of course–click for link):  T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan started offering Unlimited International Roaming in late Fall 2013. This is a complete game changer when it comes to communications while abroad.

The basic plan you’ll need is the “Simple Choice” plan, starting at $50/month for 500 MB of data and up to $70/month for unlimited data. All simple plans offer unlimited talk and text. If you choose the $70 plan, this will get you:

Note: These are bookable starting Tuesday April 1. Don’t miss out on Flying Blue’s summer promo where Air France/KLM awards are between 25-50% off in June & July 2014:

Award bookings on Air France/KLM routes have been reduced by 25-50% for travel between June 1 – July 31.

For those of us sitting in ‘Merica, we’ll be most interested in:

Having recently acquired the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I knew that Hyatt was a 1:1 ratio transfer partner. The bad thing about the nice hotels in Paris is that they’re expensive in Euros, which means they’re outrageously expensive after making the conversion to USD. While shopping for a way to spend at least one night in a luxury hotel, I had totally ruled out paying $1000+. The only other option is to use points, specifically hotel programs that I could transfer AMEX or Chase points to…

These choices will assuredly put a dent in the travel budget

The goal: Find the [...]

Amtrak Acela Express 2168 – First Class Car Review

I needed to get from Washington-WAS to New York-NYP and had already decided I was taking the train. But, instead of a Northeast Regional train (which has appx 1 departure every hour), I wanted to try America’s one and only “high speed” train.

The Acela Express train isn’t cheap, especially when considering that it’s not so much of a “high-speed train” than an “Express Train”. The Acela will typically save you about 35 minutes when compared to the slower Northeast Regional train, but tickets can cost as much as 80% more (cheapest rates on the [...]

(A preview of) the Priority Club PointBreaks list has been updated through May 31, 2014! Below is a list of all of the hotels that IGH/PriorityClub Rewards is offering for just 5,000 pts a night. Don’t forget that you can buy 5,000 points for just $35, which basically allows you to book any of the rooms below for just $35/night:

Check our tutorial on how to book rooms for $35 / night

When you’re ready to book (note, booking starts Monday March 24): Click here to go to the PointsBreaks site (the new IHG site)

Again, this is just a preview list with 150 properties, more hotels will be released on March 24 (according to IHG). Sample prices below [...]

We’ve just got great travel tips and tools flying at you guys these days (Great Travel Tool: Get a Credit Card with a Chip, Credit Score Crash Course etc…). Next up is the litmus test for that question of: “should I book with points or pay with cash?” or “should I transfer AMEX points or use AMEX travel for my booking?” I created this for my own personal use as I was tired of pulling out the calculator every time I needed to run the calculation.

Here is the calculation going on behind the scenes: