FTD is offering 30 United miles per dollar plus 250 points per order. I love buying flowers online, it often works out to being about the cost of buying miles directly from an airline and the flowers are free! (One way to look at it, another is if you need reimbursable/expense-able business gifts…)

Pizza In Motion has plenty of details and video from the inaugural Japan Airlines 787 Boston – Tokyo flights. He finds that the aircraft really does make a difference in long-haul flying, suggesting that he felt far less beat up at the end of the journey and less dehydrated. I’m skeptical, but only based on my own priors, and I can’t wait to fly in it myself!

The Starwood summer promotion I wrote about in detail a couple of weeks back is now open for registration. Unless you know you’ll have enough nights, double points is better than triple points. That’s what I’d suggest for most folks, also, unless you need the bonus elite qualifying nights.

Nicholas Kralev writes about American offering status matches to United 100,000 mile flyers. In the past American has predominantly offered status challenges (fly X miles within Y days to earn status) rather than outright matches, has mostly offered challenges only up to mid-tier Platinum, and in recent years has charged a fee for those challenges. I earned my own Executive Platinum through a status challenge as part of the January MegaDO but had to fly 20,000 miles to get it. Kralev suspects it’s an opportune time to capitalize on disgruntled United elites frustrated by the Continental merger.