Educational Posts on Loyalty Programs

Delta has devalued its miles for the fourth time in a year offering zero advance notice to flyers. You might want to rethink your loyalty. Just be careful if you go with American next year as it plans to introduce basic economy fares with no frills that are sure to come with all kinds of restrictions.

You’ve heard about them before. Mileage runs–the holy grail of scoring tons of miles by using cheap fares to fly a long distance. Since airlines have largely adjusted the way they award miles (based upon price of the ticket versus distance flown), mileage runs have lost much of their appeal.

Allegiant Air is a Las Vegas-based carrier that primarily focuses on holiday travel and smaller regional airports. With its current fleet of 81 aircraft, the airline serves 117 destinations with both scheduled and charter flights. Tickets are typically cheap, making the carrier a good budget option if you happen to live in an area it serves.

Traveling can be made much easier and less expensive if you know about all the benefits available to you. Some are right in your wallet and you may not even know about them. They are the extra benefits that your everyday credit cards carry. You don’t need to get out the magnifying glass to figure out the benefits. Here are 12 travel benefits to look for from your credit cards.

Wouldn’t it be great to earn the same intro bonus several times with your favorite rewards cards? While it might be possible to do that with some credit card issuers, it’s not the best strategy for boosting your points or miles balance. At worst, the issuer will deny your application and you’ll take an unnecessary hit to your credit score. At best, you’ll probably have to wait years to get a second bonus.

The dust has settled from United Airlines’ new award booking rules which went into effect on October 6. While the news was worse than originally thought, there are some tricks that allow for creative award routings. In United’s zeal to create a mechanical computer-dependent system, it seems they did not program in enough rules to prevent travelers from hopping around the globe with complex itineraries that provide tons of value for MileagePlus members.

This week brings good news in terms of rich promotions, but also sour news in terms of more restrictive airline fees. Read on to see who the winners and losers are in the world of travel this past week.

It happens to all of us. You’re planning a trip and you find the award flight you want, but you’re just a few miles short. What do you do? The easiest solution is to transfer points from a rewards credit card to your frequent flyer account. Or better yet, get a new card with a big sign-up bonus. You’ll probably even have enough miles to upgrade from coach to business. Why not travel in style?

Tickets to Asia are usually north of $1,000 and sometimes close to $2,000. You can use Citi ThankYou points to fly there free by booking your flight with the Citi Travel Center or by transferring the points to one of the Citi’s airline partners. Booking through the travel portal is rarely a good deal though, due to the high cost of the ticket. Transferring points to a frequent flyer program is generally a more prudent choice. We give you the lowdown on which programs are the best transfer options.

There are so many travel rewards credit cards out there, choosing can be a dizzying process. Features including sign-up bonuses and other perks that can often make many cards sound perfect.

Beyond the bonuses and perks, though, lies a minefield of caveats. These 10 tips can help you come out on the other end with the card of your dreams.

Until now, Etihad has kept its Airbus A380 private residence an option for big spenders only. Now, the airline is allowing big mileage spenders to get in on the luxurious experience. Plus, there are plenty of bonus miles and points up for grabs this week.

One of the first things you need to do when you start collecting points and miles is get the right app to keep track of your accounts. You’ll never have to worry about points expiring, forgetting passwords or losing account numbers again, and you’ll always know how many points and miles you have. And while some apps are dedicated to tracking, you might be better off with an all-around good travel app like Tripit, which offers miles tracking in its pro version.

You’ve done the research. You’ve figured out which one of the myriad of rewards credit cards you want. It’s the perfect card to earn a free flight fast to wherever you want to go. You apply and… you get declined! Don’t worry; we know what you should do next.

Anytime an airline announces changes to their award program, the changes are usually worse than the airline tries to make them sound. In August, United announced major changes to award booking rules as well as to their online booking engine. These changes became effective last week on October 6 and now that we have had some time to test out the new booking engine, we can confirm the devaluation is worse than expected and that United’s original announcement was a bit deceptive.

United is arguably the most popular Chase airline transfer partner, and transferring Ultimate Rewards points to United often makes sense when the price in points on the Ultimate Rewards website is too high compare to what you could pay for the flight using alternative currencies — frequent flyer miles. Since the United MileagePlus program is region-based and isn’t linked directly to the price of a revenue ticket, you will come ahead if the Ultimate Rewards cost is more than $300 (for a Sapphire Preferred cardholder) or $375 (for a Sapphire Reserve cardholder).  For better understanding of how this valuation works, read the first installment: Best and Worst Examples of Using Chase Ultimate Rewards Points – The Portal.

Airlines in the SkyTeam alliance are making it easy to request missing miles from past flights. Frequent flyers should always double-check their accounts to make sure they receive credit for flying. It’s easy to forget to look and sometimes miles are missed. Other news this week include new amenities aboard Hawaiian Airlines, new routes between North America and Europe, 3x on Airbnb through United’s app and a new 5x bonus for Amex premium cardholders.

In the travel enthusiast community, it seems we can barely go a few weeks without an announcement of some sort of award chart devaluation or benefit reduction in one of our favorite programs. So any time we can actually announce an improvement to an award program, it comes as a big relief.

Are you someone who tries to earn enough points and miles to travel with your entire family? Do you have friends constantly picking your brain to figure out how you travel around the world for free? It may be time to stop going it alone and get your friends and family involved in your travel hacking hobby. 

Credit card sign up bonuses are the fastest way to accumulate tons of points and miles. With all of the restrictions that the major banks have placed on earning sign up bonuses lately, it is important to be strategic when it comes to signing up for new cards. The best way to do that is to jump on offers when they are elevated above the standard sign up bonus, especially when they are at or near all-time highs like the Delta co-branded airline cards.

New Opportunities from the Marriott/Starwood Merger

Remember when it was first announced that Marriott would be buying Starwood? It struck fear into the hearts of many travel hackers that the industry’s most valuable transferable point program might be ruined or even eliminated by a hotel chain with a low value rewards program. So far, those fears have been unfounded. Marriott and SPG recently announced the first major changes to their awards programs and the news is good!