I thought I would bring this to everyone’s attention. With my wrist problems, I maxed out this year on my flex / cafeteria plan spending. The cafeteria plan is where you designate an amount (up to $5000 for me) to be used towards medical bills for the year. It’s a use it or lose it proposal and so both parties are risk. You are at risk if you don’t use it all by the end of the year or you get terminated by your employer. It’s a risk for your employer because you could max it out, spend it all, and then quit your job and your employer would be out the money.

In any case, you usually receive a debit card tied to your flex spending balance that you can use at doctor’s offices, to pay medical bills, etc. that just directly debits from your available balance.

However, I choose not to use the debit card and use my American Express card instead to earn miles / meet minimum spending requirements. It does require that I have to turn all my receipts in from reimbursement instead of having it automatically debited from my flex account – but I don’t mind the extra work if it means more miles.

Million Mile Secrets posted about a way to earn miles by paying your rent with a credit card – are there any other creative ways for every day expenses that you’ve thought of?

Here in Utah we claim to have the Greatest Snow on Earth. I can’t vouch for it personally as I’ve never dared to go skiing. But for those of you more adventurous than I – Park City is offering a chance to turn your boarding pass to Salt Lake City airport into a free lift ticket. Here’s how you do it:

Step 1:preregister at visitparkcity.com . You will receive an email with a redemption voucher.
Step 2:take a morning flight to Salt Lake City airport and bring an extra copy of your printed boarding pass
Step 3:Enjoy your same day lift ticket to Canyons Resort,Park City Mountain Resort, or Deer Valley Resort. All of these resorts are only 35 minutes away from the airport.

Some of the terms and conditions (you can read them all here):
Valid from Monday, January 2 through Friday, February 17, 2012.
Blacked-out from Saturday, February 18 through Saturday, March 31, 2012.
Valid from Sunday, April 1 through respective resort closing day 2012.
(Currently, all three resorts are planning to close Sunday, April 15, conditions permitting)

Welcome to Utah!

Thank to Sice for the tip

Sung to Viva La Vida by Coldplay

I used to be able to type
Words would appear when I pushed a key
Then one tragic night
I broke both wrists and it was hard to see

All of a sudden collecting points
Became less important than healing my joints
The other BoardingArea bloggers stepped up right away
And volunteered to post alternating each day

My wife and three kids took care of me
Lots of rest was certainly key
And I discovered as a humbled man
You can get trapped when can’t turn a knob yes you can

The external fixator finally came out
I wanted to run to a hill and shout
Be close to the ones you love
You never know when you may be called up to the one above

I’m ready to start blogging again
Thanks for your patience as I overcame this pain
I ask you to join me on my behest
Let’s restart our MilesQuest!

Ooohh ahhh oooohhh ahhh oooohh ahhh ooohhhh ahhh oohhh ahh!

I’m ready to start blogging again
Thanks for your patience as I overcame this pain
I ask you to join me on my behest
Let’s restart our MilesQuest!

Oooohhh ahhh oooohhh ahh ooohh ahh ooohhh ahh ooohh ahh!

Special thanks goes out to the Boarding Area bloggers who guest posted on my behalf:
Mommy Points
AJ from Live from a Lounge
The Weekly Flyer
AAdvantage Geek
Rapid Travel Chai
Road Warriorette
Plane N Simple
Deals We Like
Gary from View from the Wing
The Wandering Aramean
Frequent Miler
Randy Peterson

This post is brought to you by AJ (Live From A Lounge) while Jason is out with two broken wrists and a microphone. Keep an eye out at MilesQuest for future guest posts by other Boarding Area bloggers.

I am not a fan of someone else taking decisions for me, be it the big ones like which party to vote for, or the small ones like what should I eat or drink. When an airline tries to do that, it could specially be more troublesome, because they are your service providers, and when they start taking decisions, it is seeking trouble.

One of my favourite airlines, Jet Airways, is doing exactly that and getting into trouble repeatedly. I was taken by surprise when a friend who lives in Goa, India’s favourite beach destination, informed about Jet Airways requesting him to bring out a package of delicious crab-meat he was carrying for friends in Mumbai, before they could load his luggage on the belly of the plane. He wasn’t sure if he was the only one so played ball, but seemed like Jet Airways was using this trick with enough residents of Goa to ask for trouble and requesting to abstain from flying Jet. Owned by a vegetarian entrepreneur, this is the first time I heard personal choices being imposed on the airline. The modified policy, which I access via the news media report, stated:

effective June 27th, 2011, there has been a policy revision wherein carriage of fish, crab, sea food, meat and poultry products will be prohibited as check-in baggage

This first got reported in the local media, and of all places, New York Times  picked it up. The airline claimed to have put in place this guideline to ensure such products do not lead to seepage and damage of luggage. However, pray tell dear airline, how did you let go the tin of Indian sweetmeat I carried in my bag in July 2011 in my trip to Delhi.

The hue and cry raised did force them to modify their policy again, and they issued a media statement in November about not wanting to hurt the sentiments of anyone and how the whole thing was a well-thought out move. As you’d read at the end of the NYT piece, 9W refused to speculate how vegetarian pickle would not cause damage but delicious sea-food would.

And while I was getting over this, I came across a case of 2009 where a flight attendant, again with Jet Airways, refused a Canadian female passenger on a Bangkok-Delhi flight a ‘rum drink’ on the grounds that she was a woman. BBC reports that the female passenger took them to court. The FA did pass of her personal policy as the airline policy, but again, another instance of personal beliefs being imposed on passengers took the airline down as one with a regressive line of thought. Guess what, the court has now ordered for compensation of US$ 1000 to the passenger, and this will no doubt turn out to be one very expensive drink for the airline.

(In all fairness to the airline, I did try to look for a copy of the judgement, but not able to find it yet on the website of the court. If someone succeeds in finding this one, please send me a link!)

Readers, do let us know at BoardingArea if you think customer is king or not?

Enjoy these other Guest Posts while Jason recovers, and wish him a speedy recovery:

• Guest post: Delta Air Lines’ voucher policy change is a good move
• $200 Platinum American Express Delta strategy
• Guest post: The last DC-3 still in passenger service in North America
• Guest post: Visas for Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya
• Guest Post: The Spouse and Upgrades debate, take 5
• Guest Post: Air New Zealand reveals its All Black B777-300ER
• Guest Post: The Spouse and Upgrades debate, take 4
• Guest Post: Lessons Learned Booking Mileage Runs on American Airlines
• Guest Post: The Spouse and Upgrades debate, take 3
• Guest Post: The Spouse and Upgrades debate, take 2
• Briggs & Reilly 20″ Expandable Carry-On by Mommy Points
• Lapault 20″ 2-Wheeled Foldable Duffle Carry-On by Points, Miles & Martinis

Dictated to my wife since I cannot type right now-

Last week I was involved in an accident resulting in a head wound, shattered my left wrist and both broke and dislocated my right wrist. This was really disappointing as I was scheduled to attend Blog World in Los Angeles the next day and missed the opportunity to meet several other Boarding Area Bloggers.

This will make going through airport security much more entertaining-setting off the alarms and having to explain all the metal screws and plates inside my wrists!

Right wrist post surgery

The reason I wanted to tell all of you this is that my posts may be a bit more infrequent during the rehabilitation process. I still have the entire Africa trip report to write up along with a few stops in Europe.

I am in great spirits and look forward to an eventual full recovery.

This is a guest post written by my wife and travel partner. She takes many of the photos that I show on MilesQuest and also books all of our reward travel. As the mother of our three small children, she felt it was important to discuss something we’ve all probably overlooked – what to do in case of a plane crash.

According to recent articles, British Airways is planning to offer a course on how to survive a plane crash! The information has been in several newspapers and online magazines, however I have called several U.S. based agents and even the UK based agents and they don’t know anything about this course. I have some calls in at the head office and I will post an update when I learn more.

Meanwhile here are some Tips for Flying and Crash Safety:
1. Clothing and Shoes-Although heels may look nice and be more professional for arrival at your destination they can puncture the inflatable emergency slides. If you do wear heels, take them off before using the inflatable slide otherwise passengers behind you won’t be too happy! Also, if you see footage of crash survivors they are often freezing, long pants and long sleeve shirts, even a jacket stowed close is a good idea. Always get your coat before landing. (First and Business Class-the flight attendants usually bring your stowed coats around to all passengers.)

2. In my opinion the most important decision is at booking. Consider where your seat is in relation to an exit. Often people survive impact but then die from smoke inhalation or burns, so you want to be close to the exit. I see mixed results on whether the back of the plane or the front of the plane is safer.

3. Pay attention to the safety message, those of us who fly frequently get pretty jaded to the inflight instruction, but it would be good to take note of the type of plane and features every so often.

4. Wear your seatbelt all the time, even turbulence can cause injury, and it probably doesn’t need to be said to the frequent long haul traveler but keep your buckle outside of your blanket if you are going to sleep so the flight attendant doesn’t have to wake you up to check your seatbelt. If you hit unexpected turbulence, you really can get a head injury by slamming into the overhead bins.

5. The brace position has proven to be effective in a crash, however most people don’t think to put their hands on the back of their head and neck not the crown, if your hands are on your crown and hit the seat in front of you on impact you will have many broken fingers. Don’t lace your fingers either, more likely to have broken fingers.

6. Lap infants-The old policy was to put your infant on the floor of the seat in front of you—“yeah right who is going to do that?” It has now been changed to hold them with one arm and use the other arm to protect their head. Some airlines have an attachment safety belt, but the United States actually thinks this is more dangerous and does not allow them. Of course, having them in their own seat would be the most safe. I was in an emergency situation with two children and a lap infant flying alone. In my mind I realized that there was no way I could handle all three of my children in an emergency situation.

We even had a flyby from the US Air force to get a visual on the plane while we were airborne, My son saw the fighter jet outside our window. I had to play it cool, all the while making a plan in my head how to protect all three, and hoping for a good Samaritan if we indeed had a crash landing. We did land safely escorted in by two fighter jets and greeted by fire trucks spraying the plane and countless police and security cars.

7. I admit that I have never really checked to see if I have a floatation device under my seat or if my seat could be used as a floatation device. If you watch footage of the Miracle on the Hudson you will note that almost none of the passengers actually brought their life vests or seat cushions with them!

8. Interesting to note- Although red universally means STOP, red lights are used as emergency lights in the aisle of airplanes because red is easier to see in smoke. It has been reported that the biggest delay in evacuation of an aircraft is people trying to get personal belongings. So in the event of an emergency- Really leave your stuff behind, people first.

As reported by Plane Simple – Hilton Honors will soon launch a service via Topguest where you can receive 2500 Hilton Honors points for simply connecting your Facebook account with them.

Photo courtesy of TechCrunch

The website will be www.socialhhonors.com (site not live yet).

You will be able to earn additional points for sending partner content to your contacts via Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare checkins.

Hilton Honors will be the first TopGuest partner to debut the new service while the other partners are expected to follow suit.

This will be a great way to earn more points through social media.

There are those of us who are sad to no longer have rolls of coins being delivered and then there is a worker at the US Mint who has admitted to stealing millions in coins.

William Gray admitted that he took $2.4 million in $1 “error” presidential coins and sold them to a coin dealer in California by mailing them from New Jersey.

Let’s gather the facts here:

1. $1000 in coins weighs 19.20 lbs – so $2.4 million in coins would have weighed 46,080 pounds.
2. Shipping a 150 lb box from New Jersey to California would cost $200. I’m assuming we would want to insure it and want an adult signature but I’m going to choose to not offset the climate impact of this shipment.

3. We would need to send 308 packages to send all the 46,080 pounds of coins, so the shipment cost would total $61,400.

Let’s ask some questions:

1. How much is an error dollar coin worth? $2? $3? $5?
2. How did the coin dealer pay him $5-$10 million for all the coins?
3. Isn’t Mr Pickles from California?

Just got this email in the mail – it’s a sad day but one that was expected given all the recent publicity from NPR, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal previously. Sad, sad, day.

Dear United States Mint Direct Ship Customer:

Thank you for your understanding and your continued support of the $1 Coin Program.
The United States Mint

Both Time magazine and NPR have recently done stories in regards to the nearly $1 billion in dollar coins sitting on the shelves of the Federal Reserve that according to them nobody wants. That number could quickly become $2 billion once the coins honoring the past presidents are done.

All of this is even more interesting considering that if you go to the US Mint’s online store, they currently only have 3 options available for order with two of them on backorder until July 5th?

I’ve been ordering from the US Mint for quite a while and actually try to put them into circulation – just ask my babysitters! The whole program however is decades too late to try and introduce coins into circulation as the majority of people have gone to a cashless society.

With $1 billion in storage, let’s all hope that the programs still runs for years and years to come.