I love checking Travelzoo weekly to see if there are any great deals at InterContinental hotels, since they’re the chain I’m most loyal to. I was thrilled to see there’s not only one or two nice hotels with special rates, but rather dozens of them! Unfortunately the rates are non-refundable (as far as I can tell), but there are some real bargains there, like Tampa from $69, San Francisco from $119, Toronto from $87, etc. Full details can be found here.

It’s time for a reader photo. Thanks to Lewis for sending in this one.

Correct Answer: Sedona, Arizona
Winner: JLSocks

If you’d like your photo featured, please email it to me at onemileatatime@hotmail.com, along with the correct answer.

In July Captain Flanagan will be joining FlyerTalkers for not one, but TWO dinners! One will be in Los Angeles on July 11, and the other will be in Denver on July 24. As anyone that has met Captain Flanagan will tell you, he’s one heck of an inspirational guy, and a lot of fun to have dinner with. If you’re not a FlyerTalk member and would like to attend, just shoot me an email and I’ll add you to the list.

Once again, this video is totally NSFW and potentially offensive, but it’s quite funny, mainly because so many of the points are accurate. Check it out.

Via flyclear.com:

Clear Lanes Are No Longer Available.

At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.

This is hardly surprising. Clear seemed like a good concept, but it never did spread to enough airports. If they had a presence at every major US airport even I might have considered a membership, but with a presence in a limited number of airports, I’m not surprised they didn’t make it, especially since they tended to be the airports that also had elite security lines.

So to those that spent $300 on a membership: ouch! To those that got a free membership through any of the thousand outlets they used to give them away: you got what you paid for.

Last week I posted about Ted’s final act of revenge on me, whereby I was booked in first class on a 757 from Tampa to Chicago as part of my Aeroplan first class award to Europe/Asia, and the flight got downgraded to Ted in the meantime. Ya’ll provided great feedback, and I went with the majority in this case.

Anyway, I called Aeroplan about an hour ago with the goal of switching to the Ted flight two hours later. I wasn’t going to connect, and I figured that if I was going to fly Ted, I might as well sleep in a bit. Unfortunately the later Ted flight didn’t have award availability anymore (although it did when I booked), so I was going to request that they call up United and ask them to open up a seat (which I’m confident they would have done). 

Anyway, before making that specific request I wanted to first see what they’d come back with. The agent simply said that there were no other first class seats available nonstop that day, and that if any of the flights switched to two cabin flights I could call back and get reseated in first class for free. I was about to cut in and suggest they put me on the later flight, at least allowing me to sleep in, when the agent said something I liked: “If nothing opens up, though, give us a call after your flight and we’ll refund a portion of the miles based on the distance you were downgraded.” Now, I’m guessing it’ll only end up being 2,000-3,000 Aeroplan miles, but that’s worth $50 or so. Sounds like a deal to me! I’ll gladly sit in the International First Lounge at ORD browsing the web and snacking on hot nuts and sushi for two hours, knowing that I’m earning Aeroplan miles.

Check out this FlyerTalk post by my friend Pat. It’s long but most definitely worth reading. I won’t even try to summarize it, other than saying that United decided to report a top tier flyer to a collection agency, only to find out it was a big mistake. In typical United fashion, it took weeks to resolve and for the most part United accepted no responsibility for the mistake.

Another thing this shows is how out of line United’s compensation system is. If you have a broken reading light on a daytime seven hour transatlantic flight, you get a $250 voucher as a 1K. If United reports you to a collection agency and a two week battle ensues, you get a $250 voucher. Don’t get me wrong, at other airlines like Continental, a $250 voucher would be huge, but at United it’s not because they compensate passengers so well to begin with.

I’m not quite sure why I haven’t blogged about this yet, but better late than never. If you make a booking through this link with Hilton by August 17, you’ll get a second night free for stays between June 26 and August 31. If you stay more than two nights they just reduce your rate by 50%. Not all hotels are participating and the rates are non-refundable. For the searches I’ve done it doesn’t actually come out to 50% off, but it’s pretty close.

(Tip of the hat to Kent)

The Observer is reporting that British Airways is considering ditching OpenSkies, their subsidiary that operated in a “premium” configuration between New York and Paris Orly as well as New York and Amsterdam. This would come at a pretty big loss, given that they bought L’Avion just last year for 54 million pounds.

There’s no doubt that this is a tough environment to operate a premium airline in. I was impressed by their product when I had the opportunity to be on the inaugural New York to Paris flight last June, but unfortunately a great value isn’t necessarily enough to survive nowadays.

Their business plan was infinitely better than Silverjet, Maxjet, and EOS, thanks to their tie-in with British Airways, but I’m afraid they may very well have the same fate. By the way, it’s interesting to note that they haven’t had a post on their blog in nearly three months, while it used to be updated weekly. As subtle as it is, that must be a sign of something.

Here’s a unique way to earn some miles on a Carnival cruise thanks to FlyerTalk. Basically you can load up your casino “card” with up to $1,000/day (per guest), and you can charge it to your credit card. Then you can cash out whenever you want to. The only thing to keep in mind is that you could end up with a LOT of cash, and also that you have to declare over $10,000 in cash at customs.

I would definitely do this if taking a Carnival cruise. It’s much easier than the dollar coins sceme, in my opinion.