I just posted an article on Airline Miles and Income taxes. One of my readers, Tom, shared in a comment the fact that he had received a 1099 for the Miles he had received from Citibank for opening a bank account! This is surprising and disturbing. He also led me to an article on LA Times which the reporter, David Lazarus, wrote after hearing of this from Tom. He confirms that Citibank has sent out 1099s. They are valuing the miles at 2.5¢ per mile! I would like to point …

It’s that time of the year again. The 1099′s, W2′s and other tax forms have started showing up in the mail or email. This is also about that time I start getting questions form my readers and friends about the tax implications of all the miles they have earned or redeemed. I posted this article on taxes last year and to the best of my knowledge, there have been no changes to the tax law that would impact your taxes in any way, by way of miles. Read on…
From April …

Starbucks, has a great program in conjunction with Apple called ‘Pick of the Week’. The program started with Starbucks offerring a free song for download from iTunes, every week. The program has since added Apps, Videos and Books. The ‘Pick’ for the current week is ‘Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2012‘ iBook. The book retails on the iBookstore for $10.49. You can get this book for free by going to a Starbucks and finding the ‘Pick of the Week’ card. The card for the book has a code in the …

Airlines are going thru tough times and interesting times. (Boy, did I resist starting this post with – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times). The global economic slowdown has hurt airlines; they have an ageing fleet (at least all the older carriers do); they have an ageing staff looking to retire, that too with benefits; and they have liabilities that are beginning to exceed their revenues and the margins required to fulfill them afloat. On the other hand, we have become a truly global …

Here at UnRoadWarrior we are always looking for ways to better serve our readers. Our mission is to provide the best information and expertise on Airline Miles and Hotel Points to the un-roadwarriors. Travellers, who are not experts, don’t have the knowledge and certainly don’t have the time to search thru hundreds of forum threads, blog posts and news articles to get the latest and greatest information. We do that for you, while also providing you with the expert advise from our writers.
To further focus our efforts in 2012 (we …

Don’t know if I succeeded in making this post’s title sound like something out of the tabloids. But, the whole off-again, on-again relationship between Star Alliance and Air India is truly one for the tabloids. (Sorry no paparazzi photos of Air India in a compromising position. They are having trouble paying their fuel bills though…). The net-net is that Air India does not have its act anywhere near to being together but Star Alliance sees India as too lucrative a market to let some bureaucratic failures trip up the potential …

In honor of the soon to come 2012, here is my list of Top 12 Articles of 2011. (See list of Top 11 Article of 2010). This list is based on traffic to their pages. I have excluded article that were posted in 2010 (The post – Air India switches to all non-stop routes to North America was the 3rd most read article and Boeing 747 Piano Bar article was the 6th most read article in 2011, despite both being written in 2010!). I also excluded all articles related to …

In Part I of this post I went over the process I use and recommend for planning out an year of earning and maximizing Airline Miles. (The very same process can be applied for Hotel Points too). In that post I showed how I came upon my ‘gap’ – miles that I had to work for; those that were not in my planned travel or covered by my usual travel run rate. This is where the work is and requires creative efforts to get to your goals.
As I maintained before, …

With this post we are starting a brand new feature on UnRoadWarrior – News from around the web. This will be a weekly post with news from around the web. We will basically find interesting stories from around the internet are collect them in one post. We intend to keep these to five to ten stories. Let us know what you think of this new feature by leaving a comment below.
So, here goes:
Flying Through the Airport – From Wall Street Journal
This article talks about Qantas Airlines implementing paper free check-in …

If you have earned status miles (EQM) in 2011 in both your United and Continental accounts, you need to act fast and link the two accounts. United is working on combining the programs in the first quarter of 2012. In the meanwhile, if you have earned miles in both accounts, linking them will allow you to:

Transfer miles from one to the other. If you don’t do this, United will transfer all your miles to the final combined account (but they still need to know that you have two accounts – …