View from the Wing

Sign up to receive (3) $10 gift certificates almost immediately by email from Ted’s Montana Grill.

So I haven’t been a big fan of Ted Turner since the ’80s when he was a huge Ayn Rand fan, but I do kinda dig the buffalo meatloaf…

As mentioned back in January, the old MBNA–>Bank of America Amtrak Mastercard was discontinued. Now details of the new co-branded relationship have come out…

This fall a new Amtrak Mastercard will be issued by Chase, with no fee and a 2500 point signup bonus.

If you pre-register (you’ll need to log into your Amtrak account) with promo code 42507 you’ll get an email when the card is available and an extra 2500 point signup bonus for a total of 5000 points.

You will receive a total of 5,000 points with this Bonus Offer. 2,500 bonus points will post to your Chase credit card account and appear on your Chase statement and an additional 2,500 bonus points will post directly to your Amtrak Guest Rewards account and appear on your Amtrak Guest Rewards statement. Amtrak is wholly liable for the 2,500 bonus points posted directly to your Amtrak Guest Rewards account. Please allow 6-8 weeks after your first purchase for bonus points to post to both your Chase credit card and Amtrak Guest Rewards accounts.

Upgrade Travel Blog breaks news of British Airways pettiness: they’ve edited Richard Branson (of Virgin Atlantic) out of the movie Casino Royale.

I’m hardly an eBay veteran, though I won by first item there at least 6 years ago. For some reason, every so often I’d find something I wanted and I’d bid on it and… usually lose.

What little I know about auctions suggests to me that people ought to bid their highest amount for an item, since eBay will only make you pay the amount that’s a single increment higher than the next highest bidder. But that isn’t how people bid.

So I finally signed up with a sniping service, AuctionSniper.com, based on some recommendations from Flyertalk. I’m testing it out this evening, but like it quite a bit so far.

If you want to sign up for a free account (with 3 free snipes), you can use my referral link at no cost to you (and I get three free snipes).

Free Frequent Flyer Miles points out that the USAirways Mastercard offer of

• 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase
• No fee for two years
• 50% bonus on all spending the first year
• Complimentary USAirways Club pass each year (admit two people)
• Annual $99 companion certificate (there are some restrictions, but I used mine successfully last month)

is still around. Truly a great deal, but don’t bother with the extra 10,000 miles for balance transfers due to the associated fees.

As always (and though you’ll rarely need this) it’s a good idea to print a copy of the offer as well as the associated terms and conditions.

Tyler Cowen points to the biggest travel risk of all, and it isn’t terrorism, disease, or plane crashes… it’s traffic accidents, “the largest cause of nonnatural death among U.S. citizens overseas.”

Get a car with functioning seat belts and air bags, and make sure the brakes, lights, and windshield wipers work.

And know the local driving customs:

“A stop sign is meaningless, or speed limits are meaningless in some countries,” Ms. Sobel said. “If you assume it is safe for people to cross certain streets in some areas of Egypt and Kenya, you are making a potentially fatal mistake.”



Ms. Sobel and others advise against driving at night. They also note that headlights are often turned off to save batteries — a false economy since the battery would not drain with the engine running properly — in many countries, particularly in rural areas.

Consumerist has the story on an Airtran free flight voucher that can’t be redeemed… because it doesn’t actually promise a free flight?

Clearly something else is going on here, like the voucher not being activated somehow, and it thus becomes one of those frustrating endeavors with customer service agents who aren’t empowered to solve problems, where the customer gets caught in a bureaucratic sink hole.

Still, it makes for an amusing exchange:

When Brett called a customer service representative to redeem the voucher, the story changed. He was told there was no free flight on file for him. Brett writes:



I told him I had a voucher, and he said, “but does it actually say you get a flight on it.” I read it carefully and it didn’t. It was deceptively nice and apologetic, and generous-sounding.

The usual offer for a British Airways Visa is 15,000 miles with first purchase, and the card comes with a $75 annual fee.

Now there’s an offer of 20,000 miles with first purchase, though still with the fee (unlike the United, American, etc. cards there’s no first year fee waiver).

As one Flyertalk member wrote

As you only need 25k round trip to upgrade from WT+ to www.newclubworld.com fully flat beds, and the fares start at $650 rtn incl tax with no co-pay, AND you earn 125% of miles on the WT+ ticket you purchase (making the net cost of a US - Europe rtn upgrade around 15k miles) then yes it’s a great deal.



Absolutely worth the $75.

If you don’t already have a British Airways account, signing up for the Visa will get you one.

Through June 30 Malaysia Airlines is offering 1000 bonus miles for signing up for their frequent flyer program, and 1 in 25 new members are automatically granted Silver elite status.

With Enrich Silver, you will be able to enjoy more benefits and privileges such as:





• Golden Lounge Privilege Programme
  
• Additional 5kg Excess Baggage Allowance
  
• Priority check-in at the Business Class counter
  
• Telephone check-in

British Airways is earning a million pounds a year off its pay-service helplines.

British Airways has been criticised after it emerged that it is making at least a million pounds a year by charging UK customers to telephone its helplines,

..

British customers pay above-national rates to call the 0870 numbers. BA makes about 2p a minute for every call to its bookings, reservations and customer care phone lines - including those dealing with lost luggage.


With 15,000 customers calling every day, this works out at just over £1 million a year in revenues if each call is three minutes long. However, so deluged has the call centre been in recent weeks that many customers have been left on hold for well over 20 minutes.

British Airways actually makes money by losing your luggage and having you call to follow up.

Those of you in the U.K., search for free numbers to call here.

Sign up for Delta Skymiles by June 15 and receive 5000 Delta Skymiles — no other activity required.

This doesn’t appear to be targeted. While there’s the usual boilerplate about taxes and fees on awards and Skymiles redemption seats being limited yadda yadda, the stuff that’s actually specific to this promo in the terms and conditions is quite limited:

Bonus mile offer valid for new SkyMiles members only. Valid e-mail address required for enrollment. Please allow 2-4 weeks to receive confirmation of bonus miles.

“Thanks Again” is a program that offers miles for shopping with small merchants that don’t have their own rewards programs, so far mostly dry cleaners. You register a credit card and when you spend with participating companies you get miles for the transaction, a la iDine (aka Rewards Network).

There aren’t a whole lot of companies working with them, at least so far, so it’s not that attractive. Plenty of folks may be skeptical of giving them credit card numbres, although they do appear quite legitimate. Personally I used a Visa gift card with about $7 left on it, although some might prefer to use one-time use credit card numbers. Why? Signup bonuses.

You can earn your choice of 500 United, Continental, or Delta miles just for signing up.

The program is also available with USAirways (I think) and American but the signup bonuses aren’t as attractive.

The current expiration date for the Alaska Airlines 20,000 mile bonus for new Visa signup is April 30. It may be extended — it’s been extended twice already — but if you’re interested, grab it now.

20,000 miles is enough to upgrade a transcon roundtrip, plus they throw in a couple of club passes and a $50 companion certificate. Not bad for $75.

A couple of weeks ago I visited Cyprus for the first time, taking advantage of the Alitalia mistake fare from a year or so back (CAD $39 + tax, Toronto to Cyprus via Milan and/or Rome with stopovers permitted in both directions).

This was perhaps the best mistake fare ever. Oh, sure, British Airways once published North American to pretty much anywhere in Europe in World Traveller Plus for $20 + tax. But this was a business class fare, earning business class miles, and turned out to be changeable without a refare (once-only, via a special Alitalia representative in New York).

However, it was an Alitalia fare and they’re not the easiest carrier in the world to deal with. I suffered several delays (3.5 hours on my return flight due to an aircraft change and an inability to effectively reissue boarding passes — actual boarding of the plane took a full hour and a half, with no information shared with passengers or apology). The flights to Cyprus were codeshares on Cyprus Airways (a wonderful little short-haul airline), but Alitalia had a hard time keeping up with Cyprus Airways’ schedule changes.

Still, even though Alitalia doesn’t warm their nuts in business class (and on my return, no nuts at all, or even Canadian customs declaration forms)… And even though the Boticelli lounge in Milan in the single worst lounge I’ve ever seen (sure there are showers, but the drain was clogged and no hot water, on my return I used the British Airways lounge which is permitted as a Gold member even when not flying BA)… This was an outstanding trip.

And while I picked up a slight bug in Rome, and of course that city was overrun with tourists, it was a great trip. Lake Como was lovely as ever, and Cyprus was just a gem. I stayed at the Le Meridien in Limassol, and that property is certainly one of the real undiscovered treasures of the Starwood system.

View from the balcony

Platinum recognition was excellent. They pre-blocked me into a suite with a lovely ocean view and offered the usual platinum amenity card. Breakfast was included in our award stay (and everyone’s stays, apparently, there was no system to charge anyone, though I understand this wasn’t the case last summer — either this is a change in policy or how they handle things in the off-season, the latter being my best guess without asking the hotel).

Bed in the suite.

Living room of the suite.

When we walked into our room there was a bottle of wine, some fruit, and a plate of snacks. That’s in addition to the 500 point platinum amenity, just a little checkin gift from the hotel. And there was a giant bowl of individually-wrapped dark chocolates. Dangerous and delicious!

Snacks awaiting us in the room.

More photos after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Upgrade Travel blog profiles PointMaven, the sister website of MileMaven.

PointMaven is a search tool for hotel bonus offers, just like MileMaven helps find airline bonus offers. If you’re not tied to a specific program for loyalty (e.g. elite status - upgrades) reasons, you may want to choose your travel provider based on the points you can earn.

Of course, price doesn’t come into the equation with this tool, just miles and points. But it’s a great way to find bonuses you’d have never known existed. And for that matter, if you’re clearly stuck in a specific property or flying a specific airline, it’s a good idea to check this site anyway for possible bonuses to register for and rack up more points for the travel you’re going to take anyway.

Through April 16, friends and family promo code RL2007SP offers 30% off (and free shipping on orders over $175) at Polo.com. Used is successfully yesterday on some new shirts.

Sign up for a no commitment T-Mobile WiFi account and get 30 days of free service. Offer expires January 31, 2008.

Flyertalk member KVS produced a short video tribute to the Alitalia $39+tax business class fare error from Toronto to Cyprus.

It was a year ago today that the fare was on offer, and the tickets were valid a year from date of issue, so we now say thanks and rest in peace to perhaps the greatest of all mistake fares.

I’ll share details of my own Toronto-Milan-Cyprus-Milan-Rome-Milan-Toronto trip shortly.

Delta is offering up to 25,000 bonus miles for activity with their partners. Registration is required. The offer is 5000 miles for each 5 unique partners with activity during the qualifying period of April 1 - May 31 (too tight a timeline for my tastes).

Airline partners don’t count. Each partner counts only once, so only one Hilton stay would count as a partner (but a Hilton stay and a Marriott stay would be two partners). Transferring points into Delta should count, and each source should be a different partner, so I may transfer points in from Starwood, American Express Membership Rewards, and Radisson Goldpoints.

Read the terms and conditions on the promo, but it should be pretty easy to rack up 5000 bonus miles — much harder to hit a full 25,000.

It’s available in either direction and it’s refundable. Search for first class tickets at delta.com or expedia.

There’s no minimum or maximum stay, these are actually one-way fares ($368
is just the all-in roundtrip price, although may vary slightly depending on the connections you make). It’s a refundable YUP fare, fare basis YUPBV.

Discussed on Flyertalk here.