Yeah, I know there are websites that will track it for me all in one place – I have accounts with points.com and gomilies.com , but they just don’t seem to be right or enough. … Staying at a hotel (duh, again, but this can become complex if one earns hotel points, airline miles or hotel points AND airline miles) Credit cards eMiles.com eRewards.com MyPoints.com TopGuest Car rentals (for rental rewards or airline miles) Other sundry events, like filling out a survey, earning miles as compensation for a customer service event, etc.

This is why most experts feel, you should never transfer to Delta unless you really need Skymiles. They have been having a perpetual 50% transfer bonus for first time transfers from Membership Rewards (MR) to Skymiles. The last offer just ended on May 31 and the new one is back already for transfers until Sept 30.

 
The only difference is that unlike last time, the threshold for getting 25K MQM (and hence Silver status on Delta) has been raised from 50K to 100K MR points transfer. Still, a good deal in …

Northwest Airlines (NWA) still exists; at least according to Kenya Airways

If you thought Northwest Airlines is now defunct and only lives in the movie North by Northwest, you are in for surprise. It seems that they still have a current cooperative agreement with Kenya Airways. (For those who may have missed, Northwest was acquired by Delta…)

No this is not a belated April Fool joke. Read this for your amusement.

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Part I: The cent value of miles/points

Let us consider a hypothetical situation. Consider the case that you had every cashback/miles/points Credit Card possible. How would you maximize the value of rewards on your spending? This is a complicated question and requires detailed analysis of various credit cards along with the valuation of various miles/points that these cards award. I realize every person might assign different values to miles and points. Nonetheless, to get a reasonably accurate analysis, it is imperative to assign some value (Cent Value – CV) to all …

I had an interesting encounter with Delta SkyMiles customer service as a result of my last award trip on Delta. I went over the booking & redemption process in my last post – Booking complex awards. As I mentioned I redeemed 50,000 miles for that award. I had major problems on the return trip. The Air Jamaica flight from Kingston (KIN) to Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) was delayed by 3 hours! This messed up my connections: FLL-ATL-IAD. I called Delta and explained my situation to them. The agent on the phone …

So, whether I am looking for cheap flights to Alicante (ALC) for an exotic vacation to Spain or to Charlotte, NC (CLT) for a day trip for work, my first preference is to fly on United and if they do not fly there (like to Alicante), pick another Star Alliance carrier (Spanair flies to ALC) or if no Star Alliance carrier goes there, pick another United partner. … Have one Primary airline, which is a part of a Global Airline If I had to pay a nominal fee or tax to consolidate accounts, I would do it (or pray for a merger.

I have discussed the idea of having one primary airline you credit all your miles on in several previous articles. I have also discussed the importance of Airline Alliances and why the airline you choose should be a part of one of the three Global Alliances. As you go about picking your primary Airline and hence, primary alliance, one very important factor that needs to to be taken into consideration is that of hubs. Hubs form, there is no better way to put it, the hub of an Airline and …

As I was updating the spreadsheet I use to track my miles over the weekend, I happened to glance down at the bottom row, where I show a grand total of all my miles. It said 1,001,238. Cool! I wish it was bank balance that read that, but miles balance is a good start. I am no way anywhere near hard core road-warriors who travel over a million miles in a year (I am an UN-road-warrior, remember). Gary from View from the Wing just wrote a blog post about the …

Alaska Airlines and its sister airline Horizon Air have been a standout in a world dominated by Airline Alliances. Alaska Airlines has ‘gone it alone’ (or with its one sibling) and built up a formidable network of airline partners. This network of domestic and international partners has given Alaska the international connections and access to international routes that typical domestic carriers lack. Other airlines with a primarily domestic network or a small international footprint, have to join an Alliance to get this kind of presence. US Airways is a prime …

The CEO of Continental called US Airways an Ugly Girl! As he was describing why his company jumped up to negotiate a merger with United Airlines, he said that they did so to ensure that United did not get married to the ‘Ugly Girl’ – US Airways, who United was in merger talks with. You can read more details of his statements and apology to US Airways in this article on The Wall Street Journal. (Note: I have no affiliation to WSJ).
So what happened to the Ugly Girl, left jilted …