Capital One set the miles and points world ablaze this week with the announcement of a new flexible points program that will take effect in early December. Rather than the 1:1 transfers that are the industry standard in the U.S., transfers will process…
One of the things that I appreciate about British Airways Executive Club is that they guarantee a certain amount of award availability on each flight. British Airways guarantees a minimum of two business class and four economy class award seats on all…
Every month, the Air France-KLM Flying Blue program publishes Promo Awards, which offer discounts on select routes for a travel period of (typically) around two months. These offers coincide with the calendar month, so a particular Promo Award will be…
As I wrote about last week, Singapore Airlines will be launching flights between Singapore and Seattle as of September 3, 2019. The airline will operate the route 3x weekly initially, though will increase frequencies to 4x weekly as of October 2019.…
Whenever I'm talking with people who are just getting started with miles and points, I'm often surprised by both what miles they're accumulating, and how intimidated they are by actually using those miles. The natural instinct is to look for shortcuts…
In late September, Japan Airlines formally announced that they'll be launching flights to Seattle as of March 31, 2019. The airline will operate the route daily using a Boeing 787-8, with the following schedule: JL68 Tokyo Narita to Seattle departing…
Historically one of the best uses of Air France-KLM Flying Blue miles is booking their Promo Awards. Flying Blue publishes these every month, and they offer 20-50% off select award tickets on Air France and KLM metal. In June some major changes were…
There are lots of things that contribute towards a great frequent flyer program. Obviously award redemption rates and award availability are both important, but there's also something to be said for the ease with which you can search award availability.…
There are so many things to love about the Alaska Mileage Plan program. All things considered, I think the program is more customer-focused than any other airline loyalty program out there. Mileage Plan continues to award miles based on distance flown…
Earlier I wrote about how British Airways massively hiked their carrier imposed surcharges for travel originating in the US. Want to fly first class roundtrip between Boston and London using miles? That'll now cost you over $1,800, in addition to the…
Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club program is one that has incredible niche redemptions, even if the miles aren't that valuable for redemptions on Virgin Atlantic due to the high surcharges. Flying Club is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards, Chase…
Earlier this week, Ben wrote about his recent experiences flying Delta, and the marked difference in quality of service when compared with American Airlines. As expected, the post brought out a flurry of comments, not only because the question of better…
This is just an update to a previous post (the original post is below). It looks like Virgin Atlantic Flying Club has undone this change, and they're no longer imposing surcharges on Delta award tickets, with the exception of awards originating in Europe,…
Historically one of the best uses of Air France-KLM Flying Blue miles is booking their Promo Awards. Flying Blue publishes these every month, and they offer 20-50% off select award tickets on Air France and KLM metal. In June some major changes were…
Okay, maybe "need" is a strong word, because roughly 99% of the time you're not going to need to know this information in order to book award tickets. But there were a lot of questions earlier in the week about how I was able to get a Kenya Airways award…
United MileagePlus is my go-to search engine for Star Alliance award space (just as British Airways Executive Club is my go to engine for oneworld award space). I like how MileagePlus can show a calendar of availability, and has some nice ways of sorting…
One of the questions we frequently get is how to use miles for business class flights to Europe, which is usually closely followed "okay, but what are the best flights with miles?" So I set out to write a post with all the best options, and quickly ran…
Reader Max posted a question on Ask Lucky last Saturday, wondering why he was getting a higher price for fuel surcharges than Ben had paid on his recent trip with his dad. I should probably have had a second cup of coffee, because when I looked at the…
As I wrote about last week, I've just started the longest trip I've ever done. I'm taking plenty of flights on all sorts of carriers and naturally looked to use miles wherever I could. For oneworld flights, I've been crediting to British Airways Executive…
I'm trying to plan what I think would be an epic review trip, but unfortunately I seem to be hitting a stumbling block. At the end of October Kenya Airways will be launching daily flights between Nairobi and New York. I've been wanting to review Kenya…
As a general rule of thumb, Singapore Airlines only makes longhaul first and business class award seats available to members of their own KrisFlyer frequent flyer program. On one hand I interpret this as them trying to "protect" their premium cabins,…
