In late March, Icelandic low cost carrier WOW Air ceased operations. While I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs as a result of this, the company was badly mismanaged. Like all too many companies nowadays, the focus was on market share rather…
Amazingly this fare has been around for a couple of days, and is still available. Iberia has sub-1,000EUR business class fares for travel from various points in Spain to various points in Mexico. This fare is pretty readily available, though you'll find…
This February we learned that production of the Airbus A380 will end in 2021. As of February, Airbus only planned on building another 17 A380s, including three that are going to ANA, and 14 that are going to Emirates. With the huge global increase in…
Things just got serious... As I noted at the beginning of the year, this is going to be a tough year for contract negotiations between American management and their employees. American's flight attendant contracts become amendable as of December 2019,…
I've gotta be honest -- while I love airline and hotel loyalty programs, I don't really get into car rental loyalty programs. I probably should, because there's value to be had, but I just have a hard time getting excited about them. I also don't rent…
Every month Air France-KLM Flying Blue publishes Promo Awards, offering discounted redemptions in select markets. These are typically released at the beginning of each month, and I write about them when they go live. Lately Flying Blue has occasionally…
LifeMiles is one of the most useful frequent flyer programs out there, in my opinion, given that they frequently sell miles at a discount, and have great award redemption rates. So they're often my go-to program for booking premium cabin Star Alliance…
Choice Privileges has just launched their latest promotion on purchased points. Through May 27, 2019, Choice Privileges is offering up to a 30% discount on the purchase of points. That discount applies as long as you purchase at least 5,000 points in…
Last week American and Hyatt launched an exciting new partnership. With this new cooperation: -- Hyatt elite members can earn bonus points for American flights, and American elite members can earn bonus miles for Hyatt stays -- American Concierge Key…
A few days ago I wrote about how Air Italy rebranded their loyalty program. They changed the name of their program from Air Italy Club to @MyAirItalyClub. Not much changed in terms of the program benefits, though they did add customer support via a dedicated…
Occasionally we see airlines offer award sales, where they discount the number of miles required for a redemption. However, in my experience these types of sales almost always apply to saver level award availability, which are the highly capacity controlled…
For the past couple of weeks, the LifeMiles program has been offering a bonus on purchased miles. Their publicly available promotion offers up to a 125% bonus when you buy miles.There's some good news that can get you an even better deal on purchased…
American Airlines has gotten a lot of flak for the way in which they've been configuring their narrow body aircraft. This started with the Boeing 737 MAX, as American configured these with more seats than the 737-800. As a result, American's cabins are…
I'm going to try to keep this short: -- Delta recently announced that they'll be launching flights between New York and Mumbai as of December 2019 -- Typically the best value for booking Delta business class awards is to use Virgin Atlantic Flying Club…
Virgin Atlantic's expansion continues! So far this year Virgin Atlantic has announced new routes to Tel Aviv and Sao Paulo, and now they're announcing yet another new route. Virgin Atlantic will be launching daily flights between London Heathrow and…
Resort fees and destination fees are an awful trend that we've seen spreading in the hotel industry over the past several years. Now it looks like at least one major online travel agency will be taking actions against hotels charging these. Resort fees…
Let's start this off with an unpopular opinion that I'm probably going to regret sharing: While Satri House felt like the hotel you'd obviously stay at when disembarking from The Jungle Cruise, that paled in comparison to the Adventureland-without-the-Dole-Whip…
Sorry for the delay on this folks -- not to get too much into the sausage-making, but we had planned to pause this particular narrative while Ben finished sharing details on his trip to Sri Lanka, with the idea being that I'd publish the rest of this…
I had only ever flown SriLankan's A330-300 business class on the very short flight from Colombo to Male, so was looking forward to seeing how their long haul product compared. We boarded through the forward door, and turned right into the business class…
Our boarding gate was close to the lounge, and as we had checked our bags we were in no particular rush. I also suspected we'd be at a remote stand, so we did a bit of shopping on our way in hopes of avoiding lengthy bus queues. We arrived at the gate…
The next stop on our itinerary was to be Luang Prabang, in Laos. Vietnam Airlines operates a direct flight between Hanoi and Luang Prabang, but their mid-day flight only operates 5x per week. Laos Airlines, meanwhile, has a daily flight in the evening…
We only had a quick 30ish hours in Hanoi. That was enough to get a taste of the city, begin to appreciate the culture and mix of architectural styles, and of course enjoy some great local cuisine. We loved strolling in the neighborhoods around Hoàn Kiếm…
The Airbus A220 (formerly known as the Bombardier CSeries) has proven to be incredibly popular with both airlines and passengers. Airlines have already ordered 530 of these planes, and Airbus hopes the order book will increase significantly over time.…
The Capital One® Spark® Miles for Business is a really well rounded business credit card that I picked up late last year, after Capital One made some significant improvements to the card. Now it's getting even better. There's a lot to love about the Spark…
For those of you not familiar with Amex Offers, it’s a program available through most Amex cards, where different cards are eligible for different savings and bonus offers. In many cases the offers can be huge, and more than offset the annual fee on…
I've written in the past about how to maximize value at hotel groups like Aman, Four Seasons, etc. In this post I wanted to talk about the best way to go about booking Rosewood hotels, given that they're an excellent hotel group with several top notch…
Of the "big three" US airlines, American has the worst IT, in my opinion. I find their website to be fairly usable, though too basic. Their app is even worse, and trails the apps offered by both Delta and United. The lack of functionality of both the…
While overall Qatar Airways doesn't offer as many great business class fares as they used to out of North America, we have been seeing a good number of deals so far this year. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about how Qatar Airways has ~2,000USD…
Air New Zealand is a pretty conservative airline when it comes to their fleet and routes. Currently Air New Zealand exclusively uses Airbus planes for their narrow body fleet, and Boeing planes for their wide body fleet. As it stands, Air New Zealand's…
Often buying miles can represent a great value, especially for first and business class award redemptions, where redeeming miles represents a disproportionately good value. It's worth noting that a promotion that was rolled out at the beginning of the…
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Cathay Pacific's rebranding. Cathay Pacific's previous slogan was "Life Well Travelled," but they changed it to "Move Beyond." For a variety of reasons I don't like the rebranding, as they go from one of my favorite…
In May 2017, WestJet placed an order for up to 20 Boeing 787-9s (10 firm orders and 10 options), which was a huge move for the Canadian carrier. Historically WestJet primarily had 737s, along with a few 767s that they used for a few international routes.…
