Posted by Seth on April 9, 2012 under News | 
JetBlue has been experimenting for a bit now with the idea of bulk ticket purchases for a specific route. Back in February they offered up packs of flights between Long Beach and the Bay Area. Now they’re offering a similar deal for flights between Boston and any of the three Washington, DC area airports they serve.
The Boston-DC deal is only available in 10-packs and is priced at $699, plus $7 per departure for taxes. The $7 fee is payable when the individual flight is reserved. Like the California GoPacks the DC ones allow for booking up to 90 minutes prior to departure, last-seat availability and they are transferrable to any passenger. Travel dates on the pack are April 23 to June 27.
Unlike the California pack, the 10-pack deal in DC actually appears to be better than the currently available fares on almost all of the dates/routes I checked. There are a few flights available for less, but not many, even with a $62ish fare published between BOS-BWI. The fare is there but inventory is quite spotty. I was somewhat hesitant to recommend considering the California pack based on the pricing but the DC one looks to be quite competitive, especially with access to all three airports and about 16 daily flights in each direction.
More T&Cs available on the page over at jetblue.com.
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Posted by Seth on April 5, 2012 under Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
The old farecompare.com site used to have a list of lowest fares available from various airports, along with filters and such to help suss out potential deals/mileage runs. It went away and getting a good collection of that data has been somewhat difficult for a while.
It just got a bit easier!
Now available is the Fare Finder from Wandering Aramean Travel Tools. It covers about 100 airports in North America and another 50 in Europe as origins for the queries. There are a bunch more destinations available in the results, too, with more being added as the system scales up. Right now there are over 360,000 fares in the database.
It also has a built-in CPM calculator (based on direct distances, so you can probably do better) but does NOT include the YQ or other taxes, so take that in to consideration when looking at the fares.
The default filters allow for limiting to an individual airport or by destination region. Registered users have the ability to filter the search results by carrier.
And users who have upgraded to the First Class level can also filter by price range or on a radius from the origin airport. First Class users can also store their preferences for carriers to be excluded from the low fare search results.
The fare data currently updates daily, though more frequent updates is part of the product road map.
Oh, and while you’re on that page, check out the options for finding *-UP fares from UA, US, DL and AA as well as SWUable fares from Delta or GPUable fares from United.
Posted by Seth on February 24, 2012 under Hotel |
Well, maybe they’re worth mentioning, though it is hard to know some days. Neither is an incredible offer, but both might have some value.
First up, DoubleTree is running a contest to win a trip to Costa Rica as part of a cross-promotion with The Lorax. Register here (DoubleTree.com/TheLorax) and you can win. Stay at a DoubleTree before April 29, 2012 and get an extra entry. And you can mail in a postcard to get more entries, too. Odd of winning are perilously low, but there’s no real work involved in entering (at least the one freebie) so no harm there either.
Next up is a discount promo from one of my favorite small-chain hotel brands. They recently won some award and are celebrating by offering 15% off at a bunch of their hotels for stays through March 31, 2012.
The deal includes their property in New York City, for those who are averse to such awesome destinations as Barcelona, Madrid, Buenos Aires or Mexico City. More details on that promo here.
Like I said, nothing earth-shattering, but worth mentioning.
Posted by Seth on January 10, 2012 under frequent flyer, points |
JetBlue and interline partner South African Airways have come up with a rather interesting promotion for earning points in the TrueBlue program this month. They’re letting passengers double dip on points earnings for a limited time, netting 10,000 TrueBlue points in addition to the regular points the route would earn on South African. The rules are reasonably simple: Book by 20 January and travel by 31 March. Fill out the web form after the trip and you should score the TrueBlue points.
There is also a contest to win two "free" tickets to South Africa, but I’m not as convinced of the value there. There are blackout dates, which is fine, but the winner is responsible for all fuel surcharges on the winning, which is pretty crappy, especially considering that they are still "subject to seat availability" as well.
I wouldn’t go out of my way to book a trip just for the TrueBlue points, but if you’re buying and flying inside the promo dates anyways there’s definitely nothing wrong with 10,000 free TrueBlue points.
See http://flysaausa.com/jetblue/ for all the fine print.
Posted by Seth on January 2, 2012 under Flying, News |
Not sure how I missed this earlier but apparently Air Canada is matching the 50% off base fare sale that Porter Air launched on Boxing day in markets where Porter operates. The deal on both carriers is good for bookings made through this week and travel through April.
On Air Canada the discount codes to use online are PROMO26DEC11 or USPROMO26DEC11. On Porter Air the code is BOX50.
Happy travels!
Posted by Seth on December 26, 2011 under Flying, News |
It seems that Porter Air has been running some version of this sale for nearly a year now – some percentage off if you book in the next few days for travel in the upcoming quarter. The dates and percentages change but this is the first time I’ve seen the discount rise to 50% off and the first time I’ve seen it stretch out 4 months for travel. Hard to complain at all about either of those things.
Book at FlyPorter.com and use promo code BOX50 to get half off for travel between now and April 30, 2012. Book by January 6, 2012.
Oh, and if you’ve never had the opportunity to experience Porter, give ‘em a try. I’m a big fan, especially when heading to/from Toronto. Flying in or out of Toronto City Airport just off the heart of downtown is a great experience.
Posted by Seth on December 18, 2011 under News |
Star Alliance and the Global Hotel Alliance have teamed up to give away a pretty awesome RTW award to one lucky winner. The prize is a pair of business class RTW tickets and 30 nights worth of hotel accommodations in member hotels. Yeah, I’d enjoy winning that.
The contest is pretty simple. They release one clue per day via Facebook and you pick the correct city the clue refers to for that entry. Get all 11 correct and you get entered into the random draw to win the prize. So, yeah, you need to have a Facebook account and authorize the app to win, but it is worth a try. Entries must be submitted by 9am GMT on 21 December 2011.
If you don’t want to go through the effort of looking up the answers (or guessing) I’ve got my responses listed out below. I put them in white text just in case someone doesn’t want the spoiler so just highlight the list below to see the answers I’m using.
Good luck!
Start here: https://apps.facebook.com/global-pursuit/
Suggested answers:
- Washington DC
- Rome
- Stockholm
- Cairo
- Delhi
- Bangkok
- Singapore
- Hong Kong
- Sydney
- São Paulo
- Los Angeles
Good luck!
Posted by Seth on December 13, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
American Airlines is apparently a tiny bit desperate; they’ve expanded their previously very targeted double EQM promotion to now be system-wide, for all passengers flying on AA metal. The promotion is valid on any normal mileage-earning tickets through January 31, 2012.
Most of the typical restrictions on this sort of promo – only newly purchased tickets, minimum fare class, residency requirements, etc. – are waived for this promotion. It even includes the rarely seen "This offer can be combined with other AAdvantage promotions," in the fine print. If you’re flying on AA anyways you should ABSOLUTELY go register here prior to your flights.
And, of course, the speculation can now begin as to whether other carriers will match the offer.
Posted by Seth on December 8, 2011 under Flying, Internet, News |
Since they first started offering in-flight internet service gogo has been toying with various pricing schemes to try to attract more customers. After starting with just a single flight option they’ve increased to multi-flight deals, day passes and two different monthly passes, one for a single carrier and one of all carriers where the service is available. Now they’ve added another option: a full year of service on Delta for $400.
Yes, this price is a discount from the cost of buying the service on a month-to-month basis. But only $20, or less than 5% savings. Take a month off – like maybe a vacation or something where you leave the country – and you’re actually paying more for the internet under the yearly plan. Ouch.
I get the idea of bundling up products and offering bulk discounts. I think that, when done right, they are a great way to increase sales for a product. But I also see very little value in paying such a high rate in advance, especially when the chances to realize the value of the discount are potentially limited. Too much risk and not enough potential savings.
Then again, my travel patterns are sporadic enough that committing to something on the same carrier for an entire year is never a good idea. Even my status earning comes from many partner flights. I suppose if you really are stuck on the same carrier every trip of every month (and that carrier happens to be Delta) it might not be so horrible. But still some real risk there.
Posted by Seth on November 27, 2011 under News |
If you’ve got $60,000 then that opportunity can be yours. Even better, the deal comes with a round-trip charter flight on any Virgin America route currently operated within the United States.
It is actually a pretty great deal for the charter flight option especially if you go for the transcon routes. The hourly charter rate at that point gets to be pretty close to costs of much smaller aircraft. Plus, they’re throwing in the standard catering kit for free to passengers. Open bar!
I wish I had the spare cash to do this. It would be an incredible party. Alas, I haven’t won the lottery lately.
Thanks to Dan over at Things in the Sky for pointing this out earlier.
