Apparently Aer Lingus had a 5 euro business class fare to the U.S. This one never made it to Flyertalk, which I suppose is one reason I didn’t know it had happened.

One source reported it as a fare to Boston, I’ve also heard it was valid to Los Angeles. The airline says just over 100 tickets were purchased, though I’ve also heard 300. In any case, the airline currently says they won’t honor the tickets, though it doesn’t sound like all of this is final yet.

It’s highly unusual for a flight deal ultimately not to be honored. Hotel error rates are more hit or miss, but airfares are mostly good once ticketed. Occasionally an airline will back out, but even then I’ve frequently seen some sort of compensation given in return. So this will be an interesting one to watch.

(Thanks to reader Larry for the tip.)

Starwood has – without notice – changed the transfer ratio of Starpoints into Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles. Instead of a 1:1 ratio the ratio is now 2:1. This change apparently went into effect yesterday.

Starwood will say it’s a function of the particular airline contractual arrangement. And it’s possible that Singapore insisted on this, they haven’t been particularly friendly or generous partners with anybody really. And they’re profitable, perhaps they don’t need to be.

On the other hand, none of Starwood’s transfer arrangements have been improving for members over the past few years. United and Continental also moved to 2:1 ratios, though it also made sense in those cases that the changes were more or less dictated by those airlines’ credit card partner (Chase) who didn’t like the Starwood American Express offering a better deal for earning their partners’ miles. Still, those haven’t been the only changes.

Gone are the days of Qantas 1:2 (which prior to the Qantas award chart devaluation was an amazing deal). Strangely LanChile’s LanPass 1:2 still remains and is an interesting value for thos einteresting in familiarizing themselves with that oneworld airline (partners of American, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, etc).

Some time ago when Starwood was in the process of considering its own hotel point devaluation prospects, I predicted that airline transfer devaluations would have to happen as well. Hotel redemptions, during times when a hotel’s occupancy is below 90%, are less expensive for Starwood than airline mileage redemptions. Devalue the hotel awards and you would expect more airline redemptions. Thus the perverse consequence of a hotel award devaluation being higher rather than lower costs. The only logical extension is a concommitant devaluation in airline mileage transfers.

I’d like to believe that the Singapore change is not part of a larger pattern, but in order to be convinced of this I’d think there would either need to be a clear commitment on the part of Starwood to maintain the underlying 1:1 transfer ratio that represents real value for the program or at least a couple of improvements in the transfer value proposition.

Make no mistake, Starwood still offers 1:1 transfers with most programs. It’s still my favorite currency. And I don’t have any inside knowledge in this case with which to sound any sort of alarm. But the no-notice change with Singapore underscores the tenuousness with which even the best currencies offer a store of value. When you want an award it’s best to redeem it, because tomorrow’s value is unlikely to be better than today’s.

Many readers will think of a change in transfer ratios with Singapore as a non-issue. For me, it’s a significant issue. Singapore is somewhat stingy with redemption opportunities for their partners, in particular almost never offering their partners more than one first class award seat on any route on a single aircraft at a single time. (They almost never offer their partners any first class award seats on their newest generation of aircraft in First — no refitted 777s and certainly no Airbus 380s.)

On the other hand, it is possible to redeem more than one first class award seat on a 747 using Singapore miles. So my strategy for my next award trip to Asia is to find flights with 2 first class award seats, redeem one with miles from another Star Alliance program and redeem one with miles transferred into a Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer account. I’ll no longer want to transfer Starpoints in order to accomplish this.

Fortunately — for now, and I have no idea whether there’s risk of change here — American Express Membership Rewards remains a transfer partner at 1:1 with Singapore.

USAirways’ “elite” seats in coach are at the front of the plane, but unlike United those seats carry no extra benefits (such as additional legroom), you just get off the plane first. Elites get them at no extra cost, but starting May 7 USAirways will be offering them to all other customers during web checkin for an extra charge.

Now, I wouldn’t pay extra for these seats. Non-elites will be boarding later and have a harder time finding overhead space which will presumably be taken by nearby early boarding elites.

But this is a devaluation for elites, who on the rare flight that isn’t full will fface more crowded surroundings. The concept isn’t new, though, Northwest has done it for some time.

Baltimore to London-Heathrow
Flight BA 228
Depart: 9:10pm Arrive: 9:25am
Class: Club World

I really despise BA’s refusal to assign seats to business class passengers in advance. My wife and I were on separate record locators. I’m a British Airways silver and entitled to an advance seat assignment. She’s not. Despite a successful TCP (“to complete party”) request linking the reservations, I was unsuccessful in getting a seat assignment for her.. so I didn’t assign one myself, waiting instead so that we could secure seats together at checkin.

24 hours out I checked us in online. There was no problem checking her in all the way to Barcelona. My reservation wouldn’t allow it, I could only check myself in to Heathrow, and the website wanted me to wait until 24 hours before the Barcelona flight’s scheduled departure to check in for it. And despite my silver status showing, I was never able to assign myself seating online, the website always told me I was entitled to but the feature was unavailable. And naturally BA in the US was already closed for the evening.

Sorted out, but an annoying way to start our British Airways trip. No worries, I had emphasized several times to my wife that on this trip (unlike the one we completed less than two weeks prior) the flights weren’t really part of the vacation. They were just transportation. How true that turned out to be.

I took the backwards-facing seat so that my wife could face forwards. It’s only strange at takeoff where you’re being pulled off your seat instead of being pushed back into it. Otherwise it was fine. I just wished that the privacy screen retracted more than it does, with the screen down so I could talk to my wife I couldn’t also make use of the reading light as it was blocked.

British Airways doesn’t offer sleeper service on this flight. No taking your meal in the lounge and going to sleep once onboard the after-9pm departure. They don’t have the facilities at BWI with the contract lounge. One would expect them, then, to make meal service a quick affair since the hop across the pond is scheduled at just 7 hours and with a decent tail wind can be not that much more than 6 (although we had no such wind on this occasion). Alas things didn’t work out that way.

Flight Attendants didn’t pass out menus until inflight, entertainment system didn’t start until at least 30 minutes in, and meal wasn’t served until an hour and a half into the flight. For a 9pm departure without a meal option in the lounge this is unacceptable – my tray wasn’t cleared until more than 2 hours in. I went to sleep for 4 hours, and woke up during breakfast service.

The first meal wasn’t especially good. I ordered the beef, which they advertise as a filet but was rather tough to actually be one. Substantially overcooked, and drowned in a sauce such that the liquid was almost spilling out over the sides of the dish. My wife had the pasta. I skipped the cheese offering (stilton and cheddar) in favor of heading off to sleep.

Breakfast was modest, fruit or cereal and bread (muffin / croissant … the croissant was served cold) and a “bacon roll” that was also severely overcooked, the roll was hard and the bacon tasted burnt.

But I can’t complaint too much. Despite not much room when laying the seat flat, and a bit of a narrow seat, I managed to get some good rest. The guy in row 4 kept kicking me during the night, though, and I blame seat design more than I blame him. (My return flight would be on a 747 equipped with BA’s newest new Club World seats, which I hadn’t yet flown, so I was looking forward to the comparison with the older generation onboard the 767.)

Landing was on-time, taxi time wasn’t too bad, and we were the third and fourth passengers off the plane.

Things were pretty deserted when we disembarked at Terminal 4. While I regretted not having the chance to see Terminal 5 first hand, given the teething problems I was rather relieved. We headed over to the bus for Terminal 1 & 2 transfers, didn’t have to wait long before it departed, and took the long drive over. Out the bus, up the escalator, down the escalator, through security (for which there was no wait) and through the shopping arcade to the BA Terraces lounge. All-in, we were off the plane and in the Terminal 1 lounge in 30 minutes. Not bad for Heathrow.

Took a shower, the facilities were fine, not great by any stretch but no real complaints – above-average even. Refreshed, I wanted to sit down to some coffee. But just like on the flight, the lounge had no cream for coffee, only milk. I’m really persnickety about this. I drink half and half in my coffee at home, and I’ll settle for a modest amount of cream. But I don’t like milk in my coffee, and I won’t touch soy or non-fat. How hard is it really to offer cream? It has a longer shelf life than milk, buy a small carton if demand is light, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that it be carried. (I’ve had some difficult-to-follow conversations all over the world when I’ve wanted cream with my coffee, but wherever I am folks seem to find it for me.)

Couldn’t get a signal from BT OpenZone on my Lenovo X60 for most of our time in the lounge up until the very end, but my wife managed a signal (and despite the lounge attendants saying it was a pay service, it was in fact complimentary) with her laptop.

To some people it probably seems crazy to fly from Washington, DC to Barcelona for dinner.  Somehow it doesn’t seem so crazy to me.  And for foodies of the world, knowing that the dinner was at El Bulli probably means it doesn’t seem crazy at all.

This will once again be a trip report in parts, so here’s the beginning.

Pre-trip: Dinner Reservations and Flights

In the fall of 2006 on a lark I shot off an email to El Bulli, asking them for a Friday or Saturday night dinner any time April through July. I thought I was being flexible, and that I was getting in at just the right time – about three days after their reservation book opened for the year.

I knew that this was a well-regarded restaurant. All the rankings are subjective, controversial, and hardly dispositive – but Restaurant Magazine had selected El Bull as the best restaurant in the world (in its top 50 list) three times.

I had no idea just how difficult it was to get a reservation. Various sources claim that there are nearly 10,000 requests per table throughout their year, or 400 requests per table on the very first day they take reservations for the year, or….

It’s a hard reservation to get. And needless to say I didn’t get a table for the 2007 season. I was too late. And I wasn’t flexible enough. Their kind email rejecting my request noted that 50% of tables are also reserved for repeat guests. This place isn’t easy to get into, and they’re only open six months of the year with the remaining six reserved for research and development (the chef actually operates a laboratory in Barcelona).

I did resolve to do better the next year, though. I set my Outlook calendar for a few hours before they opened on the first day they’d be taking reservations. I included with the reminder a copy of the prior year’s rejection. And I replied to that email with another – more flexible – request. And I crossed my fingers.

About a month later an email came in from out of the blue – I could have the second Saturday night of their season, in April. Score!

So I needed to fly to Spain. The restaurant isn’t even in Barcelona, but a couple hours outside of it. And there are no non-stop flights to Barcelona from DC. But for what some would call the best restaurant in the world, why not? I tend to think people as a whole  underinvest in peak experiences.

Hence I went about making airline reservations.  I had a bunch of not far from expiring Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles which I had earned off Priceline. A few years ago there was an amazing deal where you could earn 1500 eBay Anything Points off of a single night’s successful four-star Priceline bid. And that made me more than happy to help other folks with their Priceline bidding. Those eBay points transferred at better than 1:1 into AsiaMiles via Points.com.

But AsiaMiles do expire. I had intended to make use of them before the changes to the Cathay Pacific award chart .. used to be that 60,000 AsiaMiles were enough for a business class ticket on British Airways from the US East Coast to most parts of Europe. After October the price went up to 80,000. And of course I didn’t get in under the wire, and it was mid-November when I heard about the El Bulli reservation so redemptions would be on the new chart. I had to transfer a few Starwood points over in order to top off to have enough AsiaMiles for the trip. And those were clearly the miles to use since I had a limited time in which to redeem them.

I’ve generally found British Airways award availability from the US East Coast to Heathrow to be extremely good. But for some reason my specific dates were having a tough time. Nothing out of Washington-Dulles when I wanted to fly, we had to settle for a Baltimore outbound. And on the way back we could either stay in Europe an extra day and fly into Dulles, or leave when we preferred and fly into New York-JFK. I took the JFK option, and though BA partner American Airlines does fly from JFK to DC if you’re going to mix and match partners with the Cathay Pacific award then one of those airlines needs to be Cathay. So the BA/AA combo wouldn’t work. Instead, we bought the cheapest available one-way JFK-Washington National tickets for ~ US$68 apiece.

Cathay Pacific always makes me nervous with their award booking, since they take so long to ticket. I knew to expect 30 days, but it stretched all the way out to 60 days before they issued our tickets. On the one hand that’s good, it means we didn’t have to pay the exorbitant taxes right away. On the other hand it made me nervous. And in this case almost caused a problem – the credit card I had given them for the taxes had some fraudulent activity on it, the bank cancelled the card and issued me a new one. I almost forgot to call Cathay Pacific and give them the new credit card number. Not sure the procedure if, two months after telling them to ticket, they try to charge the card and it’s declined. Speaking of “taxes”, more than US$320 apiece roundtrip really is a bit much.

Day of Departure

The day of our departure arrived, and it was just twelve days after we returned from over 24,000 miles of flying, visiting both North and South Asia by crossing the Atlantic twice.

Since we were flying out of BWI, and back into DCA, it wouldn’t do well to drive to the airport. We decided against a cab, too, because we’d be hitting traffic out of DC and the trip up to BWI can be unpredictable… an hour perhaps, or three. Instead we took the train.

I left my office and metro’d over to Union Station, meeting my wife there who had done the same. Train left on time, we arrived at BWI station around 6:40pm, and we waited for the free shuttle bus to the airport. I had only done this once before, probably 6 years ago, and I remembered the bus being right there. It wasn’t this time. We waited. Of all the websites which talk about the free shuttle bus to the airport from the train station, I never came across a single one which mentioned how often this bus came. It took about 15 minutes, but it felt like 45 (and I was ready to take a cab over).

Ten minute bus ride and we were at BWI, the bus was standing room only but it cleared out a bit more over each stop until the last one when we reached non-US carriers and the obscure and vacation charter operations at the end of the terminal.

Walked inside, we had already checked in but did have one bag to check. It was a bag of stuff that really didn’t matter, we’d survive if it didn’t make it (we were transiting Heathrow after all, but this does beg the quite reasonable question of why we were taking it..) and so we got in the ClubWorld line. The ‘fast bag drop’ line was 20 people deep and moving slowly, while we had to wait about 5 minutes for the one person ahead of us to be checked in by the one person working ClubWorld.

Security for BWI’s E pier featured no premium line, and quite a backup while a TSArse barked nonsense at the crowd (“If you have an electronic device larger than 5.4 inches it must be placed face up in a bin on its own”) Width? Height? 5.4 square inchecs? He even cited a specific portion of the US code for this supposed rule, which was obviously bunk because an important rule like this would be sensitive security information™.

Once through we made the series of left turns to wind up over in the shared Chesapeake lounge which was … ‘ok’ – new but not especially nice. Free wifi with code from front desk, a startling“1234”. Heh. Limited food offerings, some small finger sandwiches (cucumber + red pepper… turkey) and packaged snacks and cheeses.

To be continued…

American is offering double elite qualifying miles for travel on American between April 16, 2008 and June 15, 2008. Partner flights are not eligible, and bonuses don’t add to account balances — just elite qualification. Registration required.

The New Jersey Star Ledger quotes me on the affect of a hypothetical United-Continental merger on frequent flyer.

Frequent-flier customers of both airlines would not lose their miles because they would be combined into one program. However, Continental’s OnePass customers would benefit if United’s Mileage Plus is the surviving program, said Gary Leff, a loyalty rewards expert with Boardingarea.com, a travel website.
“United’s rewards chart requires fewer miles than Continental does,” he said. “So, each Continental mile will go farther.”

However, the combined airline might adopt Continental’s policy of charging for upgrades to business class on international flights, he said.

I leave aside route effects and service levels on domestic flights. I’m just talking about loyalty programs here. Unquestionably, Continental OnePass members would be better off after a merger with United.

• The combined entity would be a member of Star Alliance. That opens up huge opportunities for Continental members to redeem their awards. Huge new partnerships in Asia. New European partners as well, and most importantly airline partners who offer better award availability than Skyteam airlines do.

• United offers awards in most cases for fewer miles. Any changes to a combined award chart wouldn’t come immediately, for sure. United just made a major change to its chart about 18 months ago. Post-merger there would be a honeymoon period and a desire not to rock the boat with members.

I also guess that United would adopt Continental’s domestic upgrade policy, eliminating 500-mile upgrade certificates, instead of trying to educate Continental’s frequent flyers about a more complex upgrade scheme. The Continental program’s unique selling proposition has always been its unlimited complimentary domestic upgrades, and it’s hard to imagine a new combined airline taking that away from members.

The reality is a bit more complicated, of course. Unlimited complimentary upgrades mean that top-tier elites are listed for upgrades on most every flight, so a larger proportion of upgrades go to those members. Under United’s program of limited upgrade certificates, United’s top elites will occasionally choose to sit in back, which gives a better upgrade shot to mid- and lower-tier elites. So the 50,000 mile a year flyers actually lose out under Continental’s scheme. And current United Premiers and Premier Executives shouldn’t be excited about this change.

I do worry that the combined program would be affected by Continental’s stinginess with international upgrades. The article referenced my guess about an upgrade surcharge on all but full fare tickets. United has no such charge currently, but they do require the purchase of higher-fare tickets in order to qualify to upgrade with miles (although 100,000 mile flyers receive Systemwide upgrade certificates valid on many lower fares). The Continental scheme, also prevalent at American, will likely be tempting to United. Continental is also known for the difficulty of award redemption under its program. Culturally such changes coming to United make me nervous. Although United has become increasingly fascinated by the ability of their computer software to block out otherwise-available awards offered by their partner airlines — so it’s not entirely a foreign concept for MIleage Plus to begin with.

Continental offers a two-class product, United currently offers a three-class product. It’s hard to know where they’d go with this, but I’m thinking with the slow pace of United’s aircraft re-fit they could easily take their new business class seat and make it the standard across the airline’s international fleet. In which case it wouldn’t be crazy to go all two-class (though this would make me sad personally). United doesn’t fly narrow-bodies across large oceans like Continental does, though, and I’m unsure how the new seat would have to be modified to squeeze enough folks into the cabin in a 757. I suspect many of these questions haven’t been answered, really, and if the airline is smart they’d move slowly towards integration — operating two separate carriers under a single holding company, extending a partnership between the two.

I’m personally hoping against the match-up, but I think I can live with it if it happens (what choice do I have? American’s MD-80s?). Just as I won’t lose much sleep over Northwest-Delta should that deal ultimately close. Those programs are fairly alike already, I prefer Northwest personally but neither is at the top of my list. At least my paltry Worldperks and Skymiles balances will combine well so I’ll have enough miles there for a RuleBusterSkyChoice award to Detroit.

Fortunately I’m outside the U.S. and have been spared this week’s American Airlines MD80 grounding fiasco (and somehow even managed to dodge last week’s United 777 bullet).  It appears that while American really blew the communications on this one, the issue here is really FAA incompetence and c-y-a.

But I couldn’t miss passing along Wendy Perrin’s Top Ten Things to Do When You’re Stranded at an Airport (Family Edition)

10. Go on a family scavenger hunt through the terminal in search of: emergency diapers, juice boxes for sale, a newsstand that has not run out of The New York Times, and an empty electrical outlet.

9. Use the cot and blanket supposedly provided by AA to make a fort. (You can build a wall out of leftover McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes.)

8. Buy ten packs of Starburst Fruit Chews and use all the colorful little blocks to build towers, castles, and parking garages.

7. Ride anything that moves: the train between terminals, the escalators, the shuttle bus to the long-term parking lot. As for the baggage carousel

6. Count the number of red bags you see circling, then the number of blue bags, then the number of green bags . . .

5. Didn’t bring a stroller this trip? While you’re down in Arrivals, rent a Smarte Carte and have the kids push each other around in it. This should kill 15 minutes before it gets too dangerous to continue.

4. Return to your gate via the endlessly fascinating security X-ray checkpoint, where your kids get to watch more bags ride the “flat escalator” through the “tunnel” and practice tying and untying their shoes. This should kill another 30 minutes.

3. Use the $500 travel voucher supposedly provided by AA as a paper airplane.

2. Vow that the next time you fly you will give in and buy the kids Game Boys.

1. If all else fails, ask the Hare Krishnas if they need an extra tambourine man for the next 12 hours.

Now, Wendy does say

If I were one of those stranded passengers, I’d be buying a one-day pass to the Admirals Club for $50 and waiting out the delay in the club lounge.

My own tip? Buy a refundable internatioal first class ticket with the carrier offering the best lounge at your home airport (this really only works at international gateways with airlines offering 3 classes of service). Visit the first class lounge, raid the buffet, take a shower, in a limited number of places you might even get a massage… Oh, then when you get your travel sorted out refund the international ticket. Heh.

Via One Mile at a Time, Virgin America eleVAte members (in addition to first class customers) now can purchase access to the San Francisco Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse.

If you have quite a bit of time to kill, and are sure you’re arriving during the lounge’s mealtimes, it’s probably worth the $40 price of admission.

It’s not clear at the moment whether the policy will extend to other Virgin Clubhouse locations.

We’ll see how long this lasts, but View from the Wing has cracked the Wikio top 100 business blogs.

Cheers from the British Airways Terraces Lounge at Heathrow’s Terminal 1.  I don’t expect to be online much if at the all the next few days, but it’s a quick trip and I’ll be back to normal speed early in the week … with what should be some pretty interesting stories and experiences to boot.

Randy Petersen has some big news from the co-branded credit card world.

Delta is introducing a credit card which offers the ability to earn an unlimited number of status miles (with enough spending on the card, of course) and gift those status miles to yourself or others.

Continental has something similar with their expensive premium card, up to 28,000 elite qualifying miles per year and the ability to drop those miles into your account whenever you wish, but the earning ratio is rather poor — just 2,000 qualifying miles for each $25,000 in spend.

Delta’s offering appears to be actual unlimited qualifying miles, and a much better earning ratio: 15,000 qualifying miles for each $30,000 in spend. This is huge. I could earn Delta Platinum on that alone and gift someone platinum as well!

It really does seem that Delta is getting more creative than anyone else in alternative ways to earn qualifying miles. Already they offer both a personal and small business credit card with elite qualifying miles earned based on spending. And there’s currently an offer for double qualifying miles for flights flown, and qualifying miles for Hilton stays.

At some point they’re going to have to return to a top tier elite level which requires more than 75,000 qualifying miles in a year, I’d think. The alternative qualifying miles strategy seems very tempting to Delta here, and on the upswing, there’ll have to be some elite level qualifying inflation.

I really don’t like what Ddelta has done in terms of the value of its miles. Their moves may wind up helping a large number of members get some value for their miles but Delta has made the Skymiles program far less attractive for folks like me looking to get the absolute most for those miles.

But I could easily pick up Delta Platinum as a just in case this way…!

I look forward to this card’s addition to the pantheon sometime over the next month or so.

Here’s a guide to all of the posts from my recent trip to Bali and Beijing in Lufthansa First Class and Thai Airways First Class. Hope it’s been a useful and enjoyable read.

• Lufthansa First Class: Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt

• A Complimentary Day Room at Frankfurt: Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch Frankfurt

• Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt

• Lufthansa First Class, Frankfurt to Singapore

• Singapore Airlines Short-haul Business Class: Singapore – Denpasar (Bali)

• Intercontinental Bali Resort & Spa – Jimbaran Bay

• Bali – Central Mountain Tour

• Bali – Dinner at Mozaic

• Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay Balinese Cooking Class

• Thai Airways Business Class: Denpasar, Bali to Bangkok

• Bangkok Overnight at the Airport Novotel

• Thai Airways First Class, Bangkok to Beijing

• Westin Beijing Financial Street

• One Day to Tour Beijing

• Beijing’s New Teminal 3

• Lufthansa First Class – Beijing to Frankfurt

• Sheraton Frankfurt Hotel & Towers

• A Second Trip Through Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt

• Final Flight: Frankfurt Back to Dulles

Some final thoughts:

According to Great Circle Mapper, we traveled 24,329 miles in the course of our 7 flight segments. I certainly feel we got our miles’ worth of flying.

There’s nothing like a full Thai massage, in a proper spa environment, prior to a flight to relax in advance of travel. Thai’s First Class departure services ex-BKK actually are “Smooth as Silk”

I’d rate Lufthansa First Class above BA for sure and better than North American First Class products (United/American), at least until the new First Class (both hard and soft product) is widely available on United. But Lufthansa First pales in comparison to the First products offered by major Asian and Middle Eastern carriers. The food is good, though somewhat inconsistent. The seats really need an update – which supposedly is coming. And service is heavily crew-dependent.

The First Class Terminal in Frankfurt is awesome, especially the drama of the Mercedes or Porsche to the plane. But I actually rate the Thai Airways First Class Bangkok departure experience above the Lufthansa First Clas Frankfurt departure experience.

And Lufthansa service – while good compared to what I’m used to on United – is not in any way at the level of Star Alliance partners Singapore, ANA, or Asiana. (Or this trip, compared to Thai, but that’s been the exception in my limited experience).

JetBlue is offering $25 off and 50 TrueBlue points for tickets purchased with an American Express Card by May 13, 2008 for travel between May 1 and June 18, 2008.

On top of the discount, this amounts to “fly two, fly free” which is a pretty good deal.

Via PointsWizard, Gadling offers simple instructions on using your mobile phone abroad. Or you can read my more advanced approach of an Icelandic sim card and callback service.

Through May 31, Hilton family stays of two or more nights earn 1,000 Delta Medallion Qualifying Miles and 1000 bonus Skymiles. Registration required.

Between the personal and small business co-branded American Express cards which offer alite qualifying miles along with Hilton stays, it’s possible to become a Platinum elite without ever setting foot on a Delta plane (but that’s probably overkill).  Such folks don’t even need the double elite qualifying miles for flights offer…

Via TravelTech Talk, 1 Sale a Day has a prepaid AT&T sim card with $10 call credit shipped for $3.99.

Strikes me that it can’t hurt to have another number. And swapping cheap prepaid sim cards isn’t crazy if you pair the strategy with a free Grand Central number where you can change the number it forwards to at will.

Maybe it’s just the tech geek in me, and there’s no useful purpose to this, but $3.99 and $10 credit sure isn’t much lost.

Update: Flyertalk’s ScottC offers more details

It’s on the GoPhone plan, so there are 2 options:

No daily charge, minutes are $0.25

$1 daily charge, but minutes drop to $0.10 (daily charge only applies when you actually make a call) + FREE AT&T mobile to Mobile

Lifted straight from Joe Sharkey:

The Gods Must Cut It Out Now: British Airways and BAA, the operator of Heathrow, have plenty of blame to share for the recent mess following the opening of Terminal 5. But today, B.A. had to cancel 114 flights at Heathrow because of snow. In London. In April.

It must make Willie Walsh feel like Dante Hicks at the end of Clerks. (Where he asks Randall what’s his encore…)

Here’s a hint. In case this wasn’t obvious, avoid the Tropicana.

The owners of the embattled Tropicana hotel have placed a bounty on bedbugs, offering housekeepers $25 a pop for each one brought in alive.

The offer was posted in the hotel’s housekeeping offices, raising eyebrows among workers wondering whether they should pull out magnifying glasses while changing sheets.

“Don’t forget to check for bedbugs!” one flier exclaims in English and Spanish. “Check every room — every day.” The posting features enlarged images of the minuscule bloodsucking menaces.

I haven’t had a chance to post this earlier, but several days ago an online game started making the rounds. You play British Airways CEO, and your task is to round up all the stranded bags at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and get them on their way…