I have an update on the American Express Rewards Premier offer. Apparently this offer was targeted for Columbia University graduates. Their offer was for 50,000 Membership Reward points after $500 spend in 3 months and no annual fee for 2 years.

My wife had applied and was approved through the link and so she called and asked American Express what signup bonus she received. The informed her that they only gave her 10,000 Membership Rewards points and no annual fee for 1 year.

Due to this – and after reading Frugal Travel Guy’s post – we asked them about bonus offer #5985- 75,000 Membership Rewards points after spending $1,000 in the first three months and no fee for the first year.

After some initial “I don’t see this offer” etc, they ended up granting us that offer since we had not received any real sign up bonus.

If you applied for the link above, you may want to try and call them to confirm what offer you were given and try to bargain a little – as always, YMMV.

Via FrequentFlyerBonuses, Delta has a targeted promotion to earn Gold Medallion Status by flying two paid round trip domestic flights or one paid international flight on Delta. You must register first and then book your trips online and travel by December 31st.

Chances are this won’t work for any of us – but I sometimes miss these types of offers in my email with the high volume of spam I receive – it’s worth a shot.

UPDATE: Deltagoldflyer points out a targeted offer for fast track to Platinum Medallion as well.

Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 1
Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 2
Conrad Lounge in Mali and Seaplane to Rangali Island
Beach Villa at the Conrad Maldives
Euro swimsuits and Turtles
The main pool and snorkeling
Our luggage arrives, Vilu, and the Quiet Zone
The employee strike
The strike ends
Ithaa underwater restaurant, Water Villa, and sunset cruise

Back on the airplane into our very comfortable seats, we lifted off from Taipei to Kuala Lumpur with our excellent cabin service for a five hour flight.

The food consisted of:

Fruit Juice, fresh fruits, and yoghurt

For the main course:

I chose the Murgh Lababdar which is a braised chicken with rice and spicy gravy.

My wife chose the Three Egg Asparagus Omelette with a chicken patty, potato wedges, and ratatouille.

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur with an eight hour layover. We cleared customs and went to a baggage holding area to drop off all of our luggage while we went to explore town. Each bag cost about $4 to store. We took the KLIA Express – the bullet airport train into the middle of town. We then switched over to the local subway system and headed out to the Petronas Twin Towers.

We had originally wanted to go to the top of the twin towers – but there are only a certain allotment of tickets given to the public each day at the will call (no advance bookings) and we knew we wouldn’t make it there in time to get tickets.

We went inside the huge, multi stories mall and did some shopping.

There were tons of restaurants and eateries to choose from including some pretty bizarre looking ones – and we decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the food court.

After about four hours at the mall, we decided to head back to the airport as we were pretty jet-lagged even with the nice business class seats and it was incredibly hot outside as well. We entered the airport, picked up our bags from the baggage holding area and headed to the Malaysian Air lounge which was massive. There was plenty of free food including entrees, free showers, a spa, and plenty of spots to stretch out and relax. This was the first time I had actually taken a shower inside a lounge and I must say that it was very refreshing after having to travel a considerable time.

We headed back to the airplane, this time a much smaller business class on a Boeing 737-800 for a four hour flight to Male.

When we arrived in Male, we waited and waited at the baggage carousel. Finally, all the bags showed up and our bags were nowhere to be found. This was a pretty crushing development as we hadn’t packed any additional clothes or toiletries in our carry on bags. We went to the lost baggage department, described our bags, and were issued a tracer number with Malaysia Airlines. We were told that they would contact us when our bags were found. I figured that our tight connection in Los Angeles due to the original flight delay was probably the culprit and that they would appear the next day.

A little discouraged, we went through customs and greeted by both the Conrad Hilton and also Trader’s Hotel.

Originally we had booked a 15,000 Priority Club reward night for the Holiday Inn in Male. However, in November of last year we were notified the the Holiday Inn had been sold to the Shangri-La group and therefore our reward night reservation had been cancelled. We were pretty steamed at this development, and so my wife called up Priority Club to have them remedy the situation. They finally agree to send over a $200 American Express prepaid gift card as part of the Any Hotel, anywhere program. They did deduct the 15,000 points and so we felt satisfied with the resolution.

We went with the representative from Trader’s Hotel and boarded the speedboat for the 5 minute journey to the hotel.

By this time, it was about 11:30 pm and we were ready to go to sleep after a long day’s journey. We informed the front desk of our missing luggage and they quickly put together a toiletry kit for us which meant a lot.

I was very impressed with the room as it was very comfortable, very clean, and very nice. I wouldn’t hesitate to stay at this property again in Male.

We crashed for the night as we had to leave the hotel at 6:30 am the next day in order to go to the seaplane.

I’ve always wanted to apply for the Global Entry program that allows you to shortcut the passport control line. It wasn’t until American Express Platinum card offered to refund the $100 application fee that I actually decided to do it.

You first must apply online and pay the $100 application fee. My $100 statement credit from American Express showed up in 2 days. After you’ve applied online, you then need to submit an interview time. I didn’t realize at the time of my application that you can’t interview at every airport. Luckily, I was able to schedule an interview in Detroit during my five hour layover.

When you arrive in person for your interview, you must provide them with your passport and driver’s license. The interview itself took about 30 minutes. They asked a lot of questions about what company I was working for and where I had traveled to previous. They were also curious as to how I heard about the program. I know that the Global Entry kiosks were completely empty during our landing from Frankfurt.

They then take all of your fingerprints and have you watch a six minute instructional video and then have you use a sample machine as an example of what you will do in the future.

It’s worth noting that the five year approval for the Global Entry program is passport specific. My passport expires next year and therefore I will have to come back into a Global Entry application center and have them certify my new passport (but not go through the whole application again).

Overall it was a pretty painless process. Thanks American Express for the freebie!

I usually book my trips far in advance and try and snag the exit row aisle seat to make the journey as comfortable as possible. For the first time on this trip, I experienced the new Economy Comfort seats on my Salt Lake City – Paris leg. It actually only happened by chance – as the exit row aisle seats were already taken when I booked my trip. I logged in to delta.com each day hoping that something would open up. Slowly but surely I started to make my way up towards the front of the plane on the seating chart with an aisle here and there. The day of my flight, I logged in for one last time and an aisle seat on row 18 had opened up and so I grabbed the seat.

I had seen on the seat map at the top a banner that indicated that economy comfort seats were available on this flight but nowhere did it indicate on the seat map which rows were economy comfort.

On this particular flight from Salt Lake to Paris, these were the economy comfort seats:

Row 17, 18, and 19 – Seat A & B
Row 16, 17, 18, and 19 – Seat F & G
Row 17, 18, and 19 – Seat C, D, & E

This seems to be a positive step for Delta and especially as a free benefit to Platinum and Diamond members.

The people around me seemed to be unaware that they were in the economy comfort seats based on their comments.

On my flight home from Frankfurt to Detroit, the economy comfort seats were available again (though no indication again on the seat map). The seat configuration for this flight is 2-4-2.

I already have an exit row aisle, so I decided to stay put but I just wanted to let everyone know about this positive development.

UPDATE: In my haste to post this before stepping on a plane, the commentators pointed out that I actually hadn’t given a review of the seat. I thought that the Economy comfort seat was very nice and comfortable but no different than an exit row seat. Therefore, if you’re going on a long haul flight and can’t snag an exit row seat, then the Economy Comfort would be worth the purchase. However, if there is an exit row available, then there is no advantage to the Economy Comfort seat.

On a separate note, my flight from Frankfurt to Detroit did not have the economy comfort seats available which once again illustrates the confusion as the same exact banner was shown above the seat map talking about Economy Comfort. However there was no graphical indication on seat map showing Economy Comfort – thank goodness I kept my exit row seat.

I’m in the midst of a quick jaunt to Sweden, Germany, and Cyprus. Some quick thoughts:

1. Overheard a husband and wife arguing about who should get the upgrade at the Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. I wrote about my own debate here.

The guy was digging in his heels and bringing out all the stops. First he talked about how he was 6’2″ and economy seats just weren’t comfortable. When that didn’t sway her – he went to the “ambien won’t work on my body because I’m so big” card. I finally walked away knowing that he just had bought himself months and months of hell.

2. Why is it that people insist on talking on their cell phones in the bathroom stalls? Is that call really that important? It just seems a bit unsavory to me so I made sure and get in an extra couple of flushes so the person on the other end of the call would realize what was going on.

3. In Cyprus, I’ll be making my first stay ever at a Four Seasons hotel. I’ve heard of their world class customer service and am interested to witness it first hand.

Sorry for the delay in the Maldives write up!

I don’t usually post links to credit card offers – but this one is intriguing.

American Express is offering a Premier Rewards card where you pay no annual fee for two years and receive 50,000 Membership Rewards points with a $500 spend in the first three months.

If you don’t see this offer, clear your cookies and go to the link again. According to the terms and conditions, this offer is not available to existing consumer American Express Charge Cardmembers.

You could also combine this with the Delta offer to receive a 50% mileage bonus and 25,000 Delta MQMs before May 31. In order to do this, once you’re approved for the Premier Rewards card, you’ll have to request an advance of the 50,000 bonus. You can request this online. I did this last December and the Membership Rewards points were available immediately. UPDATE:someone posted in the comments that you can only get a 15,000 point Advance with the Gold Card – so don’t apply for this because of the Delta portion.

UPDATE 05/18 link is dead now

I uploaded a picture of the underwater restaurant Ithaa at the Conrad Maldives in the Delta Skymiles American Express Dream and Redeem contest.

If you want, you can vote for my pictures at this link

Thanks!

Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 1
Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 2
Conrad Lounge in Mali and Seaplane to Rangali Island
Beach Villa at the Conrad Maldives
Euro swimsuits and Turtles
The main pool and snorkeling
Our luggage arrives, Vilu, and the Quiet Zone
The employee strike
The strike ends
Ithaa underwater restaurant, Water Villa, and sunset cruise

We booked our Delta Award tickets via Malaysian Airlines for 120,000 Skymiles each. My wife and I both did the recent Suntrust business and personal accounts where you earned 140,000 Skymiles for $330 and therefore had plenty of Skymiles for redemption outside of all of our credit card spending on the American Express Delta Skymiles card.

Our routing was Salt Lake City – Los Angeles – Taipei – Kuala Lumpur – Male all in business class.

Salt Lake City to Los Angeles
We took the opportunity to use our American Express Platinum card to go to the Delta SkyClub in Salt Lake City. I usually don’t like to hang out at airports more than I have to – so this was actually the first time I’ve ever been in the SkyClub.

A pretty non-descript flight to Los Angeles and very short. There were some delays in getting a slot to land and we ended up having to jog a little over to the International terminal.

The gate agent was very friendly and offered to give us our business class lounge vouchers. Er – no thanks as they’re already boarding the aircraft.

Luckily there were still plenty of people trying to board that aircraft and not very long security lines to get to the gate but the short connection time ended up costing us dearly which I’ll explain later.

Los Angeles to Taipei
Boarding the flight, the business class seats were huge and spacious. It’s one of the first times I’ve actually been glad that I was having a long flight. The seating was 2 X 3 X 2 and we had two on the side.

The announcement from the captain was that the flight was 14 hours. Each seat had their own video on demand system that included movies, tv shows, music, and games. I have never been so glad to have that long of a flight.

The first meal was Supper.

The appetizer was Malaysian Satay with charcoal grilled chicken and beef skewers with a spicy peanut sauce and a seared Ahi Tuna (which I didn’t eat since I dislike fish).

The main course I chose was the Oriental Style Braised Beef.

Dessert was Fruit Bavaroise with raspberry coulis and fresh fruits.

The seats nearly reclined all the way flat. In fact it was comfortable enough that I slept for 9 hours straight (with no medication). I have never slept that long on a flight and it was certainly welcome.

After waking up, I navigated the video on demand system and watched two episodes of Glee for the first time. I’m not sure if my life is better off now for seeing my first episode but it did make we want to download the Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross duet “Endless Love”.

I also watched the movie “Inception” for the first time.

The service was always top notch and we were always well taken care of.

For breakfast, we started with a health drink, fruit juice, and fresh fruits.

Then came muesli with low fat milk which was very delicious. My favorite muesli is still Frebaco’s “Musli Frukt” from Sweden but this muesli was very good.

For the main course of breakfast, I chose the Vegetable Frittata that had chicken sausage and hash browns.

It was about the fastest 14 hours I have ever experienced and was very enjoyable. When we landed in Taipei, we all had to get off the plane and so we searched for an airport lounge. We were denied entry in both the Skyteam lounge and the Priority Pass lounge even with our business class tickets and American Express Platinum card. I’m not really that detail oriented – and probably should have read up on all the terms and conditions but since we were only going to be in Taipei for two hours – I didn’t really have the energy to try and dispute. Besides, why waste your time in an airport lounge when you can walk the halls of the Taipei airport with construction everywhere and overvalued goods to buy!

We reboarded the plane and had the exact same plane with our exact same seats again.

Go here, enter your AAdvantage number and click on “already a Citi AAdvantage Cardmember”.

It will take you to another screen where it will say

“Thank you for being a Citi® / AAdvantage® and/or CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® credit cardmember. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the AAdvantage® program, the AAdvantage® program would like to thank you with 1,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles.

Eligible Citi® / AAdvantage® and CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® credit cardmembers who register a valid AAdvantage® number below will receive 1,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles.

The AAdvantage® number you enter must belong to the primary credit cardmember.”

UPDATE 10:48 am – It appears they have removed the “already a Citi AAdvantage Cardmember” button