One of my readers Jack asked a question after I posted my post on Earning United Miles on Jet Airways flights. In the article I talked about how I did not pay attention to the booking class I was being booked into on Jet Airways and I earned no United miles, as a result. His question was how does one pick a booking class when using online search engines. The answer is that it depends on the search engine. If you are using a generic search engine like Expedia or …

I never realized this but American Express actually offers three different cards for Delta. I was asked by a reader to help him pick the right card and I did the following comparison for him.
Check out the AmEx page for the three Delta cards here: Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card from American Express

The three cards are:

Gold Delta SkymilesCredit Card
Platinum Delta Skymiles Credit Card
Delta Reserve Card

The three cards offer, as the names suggest, different levels of rewards.

Gold Delta Skymiles Credit Card:

This is the base card of the three. No annual …

By no way does this mean that a merger is sure to happen, but the unions of bankrupt American Airlines have decided to support a potential merger with US Airways. US Airways’ CEO has been hinting on a possible merger for some time now. The unions are backing this because AA is in trouble. As it went into bankruptcy, they announced 13,000 job cuts! A merger with US Airways could be a path to safety for AA.
US Airways itself came to be in its current form thru a merger. The …

I have had my fair share of bad airline food; think tough chicken on a dried piece of ciabatta on a US Airways domestic flight in First; and a few good ones; think a three course meal on Emirates, in Economy that too! (I hate US Airways, so I may be biased…). In todays world of nonexistent airline meals, any meal one gets is usually appreciated. But on the other hand, when one is flying on a flight which due to its length or class of service includes a meal, …

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.