Tips, Tricks, and Travel with Lucky
Have a quick trip to San Francisco in a couple of weeks and would love to meet up with anyone that may be around for dinner. If you’re interested, feel free to post in the FlyerTalk thread, comment here, or shoot me an email.
Posted on March 18th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Misc. | 2 Comments »
For a limited time United is offering their Door-to-Door baggage service for $25. That’s the same price as actually checking the first bag, and cheaper than checking the second bag (for those of you that are stuck paying bag fees).
(Tip of the hat to Pat)
Posted on March 17th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Great Deals, United | 1 Comment »
Right now American is offering 15,000 bonus miles if you purchase 40,000 miles. At the normal purchase rate of 2.5 cents per mile, along with the $30 transaction fee, that means you can get 55,000 miles for $1,030. Certainly not a bad deal at under 1.9 cents per mile, though I’m betting hardly any of you took advantage of this offer. As a matter of fact, I’m betting that with very few exceptions, only people that were looking to “top off” an account for an award took advantage of this offer.
That brings me to this very interesting FlyerTalk post. The basic argument is that we’re basically “paying” more than that per mile every time we use a credit card, yet we don’t think twice about it. As I’ve mentioned many times before, Charles Schwab offers a 2% cash back credit card without an annual fee. So that means that in theory, all of us using our American AAdvantage Citi credit cards should instead use the Charles Schwab 2% cash back credit card and outright buy the miles. But to many of us, miles from credit cards seem a bit like Monopoly money. When I buy something for $10 and use a cash back credit card, I get 20 cents. What’s 20 cents, really? A fifth of the way to a 500 calorie donut? When I use a mileage earning credit card, I get 10 miles. What’s ten miles? Well, probably nothing, but it could be those last ten miles towards a Cathay Pacific first class award. Hell, sometimes I don’t feel guilty when I buy something just because I know I’m earning miles. At the same time, if I got 2% cash back, I doubt I’d feel as “ok” about it, since I’m only earning back a tiny bit of what I spent.
Of course those of using a Starwood American Express card can do slightly better than the two cents per mile above, most likely, though there are still better options. Unless we have an unlimited amount of money, we’d probably be best off just using the Charles Schwab 2% cash back card and saving that money for great mileage offers, like the recent US Airways holiday promotion where you could essentially buy miles for 0.7 cents each. At that rate I could earn nearly three miles for every dollar spent, something you can’t get with any other credit card.
Unfortunately I doubt I’ll be changing my behavior, as much as I should.
Posted on March 17th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Advice | 7 Comments »
This is beyond insane. I’ve had a pretty good grasp on air fares for the past five years, especially the domestic market. And I can truly say that I have never, ever, ever seen fares as high as they are now. Yes, I realize many people have spring break so there are plenty of lesuire travelers, but that was also the case in past years when fares were still reasonable. Instead, I’m seeing transcons pricing out at $500+, and even west coast hops pricing out around the same price.
What’s even crazier is that flights are packed! The airlines aren’t just price skimming, but they seem to actually be filling seats. Hell, I’m seeing many flights two weeks from now sold out already, both in coach and first class. As much as it ticks me off as a mileage runner and consumer, good for the airlines. Maybe the capacity cuts were good for something, and hopefully this will be reflected in their results.
That being said, lower the friggin’ fares already! 
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Mileage Runs | 22 Comments »
It has been a while since I’ve changed the poll question over on the right side of the blog, so I figured it’s about time. The question is:
Do you think one of the US legacies will offer a double elite qualifying miles promotion in the first half of 2010?
Please cast your vote over on the right side of the blog!
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Misc. | 5 Comments »
A full trip report of my Asia trip is on the way, but I figured I’d just make a quick post about my experience on American. Of my six flights:
So all around not a fantastic experience. 
All that being said, the crews were all very friendly. And my hot nuts were topped off on more than one occasion.
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: American | 11 Comments »
Starting this fall, Continental will eliminate free meals in coach on domestic flights shorter than six hours. This move should provide an annual benefit of $35 million to them, between cost savings and additional revenue.
Frankly I think this is a smart move. While Southwest gets plenty of customers because they check two bags for free (along with many people assuming they have the lowest fares without even looking at other airlines), it didn’t seem like Continental was getting many additional customers or extra revenue as a result of their free meals in coach. Besides, free meals in coach tend to be nasty — I’d rather buy a fresh sandwich or salad aboard for $10.
So for once I’ll give a cost cutting measure a thumbs up. Besides, it is one step closer to a United merger.
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Continental | 6 Comments »
It’s time for a reader photo. Thanks to Fred for sending in this one.
Correct Answer:
Winner:
If you’d like your photo featured, please email it to me at onemileatatime@hotmail.com, along with the correct answer.
Posted on March 16th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Photo Contest | 10 Comments »
I’m sure I’m not the only one that gets slightly annoyed by these. You fly a world class airline in a premium cabin, the service is top notch, and after the main meal service you’re handed an in-flight survey the size of a Harry Potter book. Of course it’s entirely voluntary, but it’s so hard to say no when the service is so good (which, coincidentally, is when these surveys are handed out most often).
I guess my first issue with these is that I’m not convinced they accomplish anything. I got these surveys on three of my four Cathay Pacific flights. C’mon, you’re friggin’ Cathay Pacific, you know you’re good! I don’t know if they’re looking for ego boosting or what.
During our flight from Bali to Hong Kong, however, the survey was approached in a somewhat tacky way. The flight attendant asked me how the service was. I said it was great, and he responded with “I’m happy to hear that. Would you be willing to fill out a survey then?” At that point it’s tough to say no, so I agreed, at which point he reminded me of the names of both of the flight attendants working first class. Hah!
There is one bright spot — they always provide pens with the surveys, which have the airline’s logo on them. I gladly keep ‘em given how much work I put into the surveys. Actually, there are five Cathay Pacific pens sitting in my laptop bag right now.
But c’mon airlines, don’t hand these out on every flight. And if you are going to hand them out, don’t just make it questions that can only be answered on a scale. I’d much rather be able to write out some feedback with valuable suggestions, as opposed to just contributing to a statistic.
Posted on March 15th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: Travel | 5 Comments »
Ah, the joys of travel when the weather gets bad and air traffic control delays kick in. After a perfectly relaxing Cathay Pacific flight, we go to the American Airlines counter to re-check our bag. While I realized there were some weather issues in New York, I didn’t realize so many flights were canceled. While the lines weren’t that long, there were some rather pissed off passengers. There always seems to be that one passenger leading the pack, who, as luck would have it, has no clue what the hell s/he’s talking about.
Today it was an older lady that I would guess to be a librarian or “educator.” Apparently she had been stranded at SFO overnight and had to pay for her own hotel. She gathered her “soldiers” (other pissed off passengers) and prepared for battle. Now of course these cancelations and delays by American were legitimate — due to weather and air traffic control delays. They’re totally outside of American’s control, but of course this lady seemed to disagree. First she argued that there was no weather issue, making it seem as if American was delaying flights for fun. Then she requested a refund, and the agent said she couldn’t do it because the delay was due to air traffic control. She then said she wouldn’t leave until she got a refund, saying that they would have to arrest her if they wanted her to leave (little did she know….).
Then it got really funny, as she harped on and on about how bad the airline industry has been since deregulation. Something tells me she chose her air carrier based on price as opposed to anything else, so the whole “I’m never flying this airline” argument probably fell on deaf ears with the patient agent. It was rather entertaining to observe her for the better part of 30 minutes. Eventually she threatened litigation. For some reason the agent didn’t look scared.
Unfortunately it all went downhill from there. After spending an hour or so in the British Airways lounge at SFO, I checked the flight status, only to see that the redeye my brother and I were on was canceled. We went to visit the very friendly agent we had spoken to earlier (and we were friendly to her, complimenting her on doing a great job and sympathizing with the awful day she must be having), and wanted to see what she could rebook us on. Our cancelation was due to crew, so I’d say we had a legitimate gripe (the cancelation was within American’s control). The best she could do was a flight on Tuesday! Ouch. She spent about an hour looking for routing options, at which point we basically gave up. There was a 3:30PM flight, which was pushed back to 6PM. It was oversold by 27, but about ten minutes before the door was scheduled to close they told us to run the gate as they might have seats for us. We were accommodated in business class, which is no doubt better than first class on a flight two days later. Still a downgrade, but oh well. We unfortunately had to gate check our bags. I can’t believe I gave in, I just wasn’t thinking. I’ve never gate checked a bag in my life, and I’ve always found space aboard even when they say the bins are aboard.
Unfortunately the flight was an adventure as well. The purser started her announcements by saying “we just flew this plane up from Los Angeles under one condition — there is a problem with the reading lights, so we’ll either need to have them all on or all off. We’ll compromise and turn them all on for the first two hours, and then turn them off.” They ended up never turning them off, which made it kind of tough to sleep. We made it to JFK at around 3:30AM. Lovely, right?
We go down to the baggage claim belt to collect our gate checked bags. After waiting for about 20 minutes, an announcement is made explaining that we won’t have bags for at least an hour to an hour and a half, due to the strange arrival time of the flight. Lovely planning, American!
Now I’m in the Flagship Lounge at JFK waiting to get back home. What a day….
Posted on March 15th, 2010 by lucky
Filed under: American, Travel | 9 Comments »
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