Sections
Ever since US Airways and American Airlines announced their merger, I’ve been excited about the prospect of having many more options of using British Airways Avios for award flights within the US. This thought became reality on March 31, 2014 when US Airways offically joined the Oneworld Alliance and thus, overnight, travelers in the US had many more options to maximize Avios redemptions.
This opens up lots of opportunities for maximizing short, non-stop flights out of or to American Airlines’ and US Airways’ hub cities:
US Airways hubs: Charlotte-CLT, Philadelphia-PHL, Washington-Reagan-DCA and Phoenix-PHX. American Airlines hubs: New York-JFK, [...]Back in June 2013, Hyatt and MGM announced a partnership that extends reciprocal benefits to the members of each other’s loyalty programs. In practice, this means that Hyatt Gold Passport Members will earn Hyatt points in addition to M life points aka “tier credits” when staying at any of the 12 MGM properties in Las Vegas. Similarly, MGM M life members will be able to earn M “tier credits” when staying at any Hyatt property worldwide.
The new partnership also rolled out the following status matching scheme, where members can receive reciprocal benefits:
Hyatt Reciprocity Chart:
Hyatt Member <–> M life Sapphire Hyatt Platinum <–> M life [...]We booked our trip to Chile and Argentina using Delta SkyMiles which worked out fine for the flights to/from the US but making the best use of our miles intra-Argentina required some research.
We’ll start with a quick recap from our post on booking the itinerary (Delta SkyMiles to Argentina: How to book Aerolineas Argentinas Award Space). If you want to get from the U.S. to Argentina (and you’re using Delta SkyMiles, KLM/Air France Flying Blue points or other SkyTeam currency), you’ll have the following choices for the long-haul flights:
Aerolineas Argentinas: 1x daily from New York-JFK to Buenos Aires-EZE Aerolineas Argentinas: 2x daily from Miami-MIA [...]The iPhone 6 mania is amongst us. That special time of the year where the overlords at Apple tell us what we’ll be spending our money on immediately. So, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the iPhone 6 is out and that you want need to have it ASAP.
I was about to pledge my allegiance to Verizon for the next 2 years and renew my contract but wanted to have the flexibility to use my new smartphone abroad, possibly using a foreign carrier’s SIM card. So, my nagging question that I needed answered before getting my hands on the newest iGadget:
What’s the best iPhone 6 to get for international travel?
Is it possible [...]
Here’s a pretty cool travel “trick”: Turkish Airlines will either put you up in a hotel for the night or give you a free tour of the city if you have a long enough layover in Istanbul-IST. We covered the details on the free hotel room here (Secret Travel Trick: Free Hotel Layover in Istanbul with Turkish Airlines), now for the free city tour:
The Deal
You can participate in Turkish Airlines’ “TourIstanbul” for free by meeting the following requirements (can be a paid or award ticket):
You’re flying Turkish Airlines into and out of Istanbul You’re just passing through Turkey, your origin and destination is [...]United updated its award chart effective February 3, 2014 with a number of bad changes. It essentially gutted the redemption amounts for business and first class partner awards (i.e. the cost of a First Class flight from the U.S. to Europe in Lufthansa First increased by 85,000 miles, from 135,000 to 220,000 miles). From that point of view, the economy award chart looked relatively unscathed albeit almost all of the changes were negative. Here’s a quick recap of the ECONOMY CLASS updates:
U.S. –> Hawaii: A 5,000 mile increase from 40k miles to 45k miles U.S. –> Middle East (Egypt, Israel, UAE etc…): A 5,000 mile increase from 80k miles to 85k [...]As I wrote about here (How-to: Book US Airways Flights With British Airways Avios), US Airways officially joined the Oneworld Alliance a few months ago. Joining the ranks of American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, LAN, etc., US Airways is now eligible for bookings with Avios. This opens up lots of opportunities for maximizing short, non-stop flights out of US Airways’ hub cities: Charlotte-CLT, Philadelphia-PHL, Washington-Reagan-DCA and Phoenix-PHX.
First in this series was Charlotte, North Carolina-CLT, then Philadelphia-PHL and Washington-DCA. Now, we’ll look at Phoenix, Arizona. It turns out that just short of the Washington-Reagan hub, [...]
I stumbled across a cool website the other day: Rome2Rio.com.
Rome2Rio is basically a multimodal transport search engine. It answers that nagging question: “what is the best way to get from point A to B?” But the “best way” is still left for you to decide, taking into account travel time vs cost.
The great thing about the site is that it gives you door-to-door approximations including estimated fuel cost for driving and fares for buses, planes, taxi, trains, ferries, etc…
Use it to explore all travel options with total times and prices
So, here’s an example of how it’s useful: I’ll do a search for a [...]
In this post, we’ll show you how to save money by using the “Hidden City” trick when purchasing an airline ticket. But first:
What is a “Hidden City”?
First thing to understand: Non-stop tickets to an airline’s hub are often disproportionately expensive. The airline understands that there is a premium to be had for offering more convenience and they try to capture this premium when they can.
Next is that a lot of factors go into pricing airline tickets, the most important 2 to understand for hidden city ticketing is that airlines generally price tickets based upon the market (not the distance flown) and that airlines are [...]
