In April Amtrak announced that a new Guest Rewards Mastercard would be introduced in the fall, and that the card would come with a standard 2500 bonus points at signup — but that folks who registered using promo code 42507 would get 5000 points instead.

According to a new piece of email marketing from Amtrak Guest Rewards, they’ve upped the ante to 8000 points.

registration for the promo (using promo code 42507, you’ll be required to log into your account first) still appears to work.

The Amtrak Guest Rewards card is a good no fee card, earning free train trips and points are transferrable to Continental (at 1:1, so in some cases a better option than the costlier Chase Mastercard), Midwest Airlines, and Hilton.

A couple weeks ago I took a cooking class in Thailand, and decided to make a couple of the recipes from the class last night.

Tom Yam Goong (Traditional Thai sour and spicy prawn soup)

Ingredients:

• Medium to large prawns
  
• Straw mushrooms
  
• Cilantro
  
• Cherry tomatoes
  
• Small chilis
  
• Lemongrass
  
• Kaffir lime leaves
  
• Galangal
  
• Roasted chili paste
  
• Lemon juice
  
• Fish sauce
  
• Chicken stock
  
• Sugar

Based on my own preferences I replaced lemon juice with a squeezed lime and used brown sugar as my choice of sugar. My local Asian grocer didn’t have any kaffir lime leaves so I left them out.

1. Boil chicken stock
   
2. Add lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, roasted chili paste, sugar, mushrooms, chilis, mushrooms (if they aren’t pre-cooked)
   
3. Add mushrooms (if pre-cooked), shrimp, cherry tomatoes
   
4. Add lime juice and fish sauce
   
5. Garnish with cilantro

My preference is that a cherry tomato is sliced, but that’s a personal preference. Heat of the soup can be increased by slicing the chilis in half so the seats are exposed to the soup. It was delicious!

Gai Phad Med Mamuang (Sauteed Chicken with Cashew Nuts & Dry Chili)

Ingredients:

• Chicken
  
• Veggie oil
  
• Garlic, chopped
  
• Roasted cashew nut
  
• Dry chili thin slice
  
• Onion slice
  
• Spring onion
  
• Soya sauce
  
• Dark soya sauce
  
• Chicken stock
  
• Oyster sauce
  
• Cilantro (garnish)

1. Toast cashews (if untoasted)
   
2. Heat oil, add garlic
   
3. Add chicken
   
4. Add cashews, onion, dry chili, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, chicken stock, oyster sauce
   
5. Garnish with green onion, red chili and cilantro

Once the chicken is fully cook, everything goes rather quickly. After adding all the ingredients and chicken stock I probably let the dish reduce too long on the stove — it was quite wet when I learned it — but it was delciious nonetheless.

Jared Blank reports that 20% of Air Tahiti Nui flight attendants have been suspended for drug trafficking.

Information is limited, but it appears that like most things in French Polynesia narcotics are expensive. So there’s tremendous arbitrage opportunities buying cocaine, ecstacy, etc. in Los Angeles and carrying them to Papeete.

The existing Alitalia frequent flyer program, MilleMiglia, is ending on December 31, 2007. A new program will begin on January 1, 2008 — with all old miles available for redemption only through June 30, 2008, unless you take 2 Alitalia flights between January 1 and June 30, 2008.

Details on the new program are sketchy, although one-way awards will be available and premium class tickets will earn miles at a different rate from coach (whether this means fewer miles for coach tickets is as yet unclear, but is my best guess).

A real disappointment… expiring all miles and ending the existing program, creating a whole new program with mileage only in the accounts of those flying new flights on the carrier. Sad, and underhanded.

I’ve give Starwood a hard time lately, because their points devaluation was a pretty big deal. But they’ve taken a step to give back a lot of value to members with changes to the Cash & Points program.

One of the better features of the program over the years has been the ability to combine points and cash at a pretty favorable rate towards award nights. So instead of spending, for instance, 10,000 points on a category 4 hotel you could spend just 4,000 points + $60. This was a better option because you were basically ‘buying’ the difference in points at just 1 cent apiece.

However, only some hotels would participate each quarter. Starwood would have to solicit them to do so, and most would opt out except for in their slowest seasons. As a result they were only bookable for short windows, at those properties where they were available at all, and even when Starwood began wrapping up a year’s worth of participation at a time the first quarter’s participants weren’t known very far in advance making planning difficult.

Furthermore, Cash & Points only went up to Category 4 and with hotel category inflation this left a whole bunch of properties (even those that had chosen to participate in the past) out of reach.

Now Starwood has implemented a program where nearly all properties participate in Cash & Points and where category 5 and 6 hotels are no longer excluded (though those few category 7 hotels aren’t part of the program). There are still capacity controls on the awards, in other words a hotel doesn’t have to make them available on all nights or for all standard rooms. So a participating hotel may not be offering the award when you want it. But it might be, also.

Now, a couple details.

Category 1 and 2 hotels only participate in the Asia/Pacific region, though again they participate year-round. Those few hotels at category 1 and 2 elsewhere don’t participate in Cash & points. However all hotels through the Starwood system in categories 3-6 participate year-round.

The cash and points prices of Category 1-4 properties remain the same:

• Cat 1, $25 + 1200 points
  
• Cat 2, $30 + 1600 points
  
• Cat 3, $45 + 2800 points
  
• Cat 4, $60 + 4000 points

And the cash and points prices of Category 5-6 properties will be as follows:

• Cat 5, $90 + 4800 points
  
• Cat 6, $150 + 8000 points

As before, guests are still responsible for taxes on the cash portion of the rate (though some hotels have been known not to realize this, and adjust the cash portion such that the total comes out to the amount in the chart). I imagine that resort fees do apply, except when booked online unless those fees are bow being disclosed in advance through spg.com. Resort fees have always applied to telephone bookings, but now to online bookings because of the disclosure issue – and for some reasons the web gurus at Starwood never implemented a fix.

Cash and points doesn’t earn stay credit and doesn’t earn points on the cash portion of the award rate. And unlike traditional category 3 and up awards, the fifth night is not free on cash and points.

If you have any award stays planned with Starwood, you might try rebooking them in the coming weeks if Cash & Points are available for your dates..

The Starwood American Express remains my credit card of choice for most purposes, and there’s now a best-ever offer worthy of my ducking into the Thai Airways lounge in Osaka in order to post it — 10,000 points with first purchase and another 15,000 bonus points for spending $15,000 on the card within 6 months.

That spending bonus is all gravy, since 10,000 points alone is the usual signup bonus. And as always, first year of the card remains free ($30 thereafter).

(Hat tip to boazs)

Goldpointsplus is offering double points starting with your second stay through August 31. Amazingly, no registration is required.

Summer is often a big time for hotel promos, which business travel and occupancy rates down. Nice to see a promo from Goldpoints, so if your stays take you to participating properties (mine usually don’t, actually) this will be a nice bonus.

Stay at participating Radisson Hotels & Resorts®, Park Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Country Inns & Suites By CarlsonSM, or Park Inn® locations in North, Central and South America between June 15 and August 31.



If you’re a goldpoints plusSM member, you don’t even have to register; just make your reservations and your Gold Points will double automatically, starting with your second stay.

For years I’ve been a huge fan of Cathay Pacific’s AsiaMiles program.

AsiaMiles could be used to upgrade flights on their partners, including American and some great upgrade options with British Airways.

And there have been some real gems in the award chart, such as just 60,000 miles for a business class award under 5000 miles each way. So a British Airways award from the US East Coast to most of Europe was just 60,000 miles in business, compared to 100,000 miles in BA’s own program. Last year a colleague came to me, about to redeem 100,000 Delta miles for a ‘SkyChoice’ (no capacity control) award to Europe in coach. Instead I suggested he transfer 50,000 Starwood points to 60,000 AsiaMiles and redeem for the same award on British Airways in Business (where availability was quite open). He got hooked on the Molten Brown Spa at Heathrow (they’ll be changing spa providers to Elemis, but that’s another story – an actual positive in my view) having never been to an airline lounge…

But starting October 15th many of these great values go away — another program devaluation.

As usual, mileage increases really focus on business and first class redemptions, i.e. the ones I care about.

Now only Y, B, and H economy fares are eligible for upgrade on American and British Airways (most expensive fares).

Since 1999, the spectrum of Economy Class fares has also widened enormously. In order to keep the increases in the mileage requirement to a minimum, we have therefore decided to exclude lower fare classes from Business Class Upgrade Awards.

(Emphasis mine. And though it’s not explicitly clear here, it may no longer be possible to upgrade from World Traveller Plus to Business on British Airways, just coach to World Traveller Plus.)

And in addition to other changes, that great 60,000 mile business class award is going to be 80,000 miles — less than BA still, but the standard amount of most carriers. And first goes from 90,000 to 120,000… Bummer. Mental note to be sure I redeem for 2008 by October 15th of this year…

Frontier is adding seats to their planes and reducing legroom (admittedly from a relatively generous 33 inch pitch to a more standard 31 to 32 inches) and adding blackout dates for frequent flyer redemption as well as getting more sophisticated with its capacity controls — they used to offer a fixed number of redemption seats but will now vary those seats, limiting them on popular routes, dates, and times and making them more available when they expect those seats to go unsold. (Their spin is this will increase seats. Whatever. This is not good for customers, at all.)

Southwest used to recognize that people earn credits in their frequent flyer program based on an understanding of what the program offers, and changes with little notice in effect as dishonest — an implicit promise broken. So their Rapid Rewards program rules said that any change to the program required 6 months’ notice. Still short for my tastes, but superior to their competitors who didn’t require any notice of themselves…

Now they’ve announced a change (with six months’ notice…) that in the future changes will only require 30 days’ notice.

Shame, shame.

A defense of the guy who flew back to the US with ultra-drug resistant TB. (Via Marginal Revolution.)

Indeed, I’m not sure what I’d have done in his shoes, either.

Effective October 1, 2007 a new Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus award chart will be in place.

North American awards, for instance, increase by 5,000 in coach and premium economy.. and 15,000 and 20,000 in business and first class, respectively. In general the higher pricing applies mostly to premium class awards, and is explained as being driven by Thai Airways’ improved services (though the increases apply on other carriers as well, aren’t reduced as United cuts its service, and mileage cost ought to track with price rather than service in any case since the mileage program is buying the seats from the transporting airline…).

The American Express Centurion card isn’t completely moribund. While they’ve consistently increased costs (recently adding a $5000 initiation fee on top of the $2500 annual fee), they’ve also been letting benefits lapse — no more Starwood Platinum status, no more Hyatt Diamond (replacing it with almost useless Priority Club Platinum), all the while the Membership Rewards program has been letting its best partners depart.

Finally a bit of good news. Plenty of Black Card holders report that they’ve been upgraded to Platinum status with USAirways (the previous benefit was Gold). Prior to the America West merger, Centurion members had status one level beneath the highest – Gold. After the merger the Dividend Miles program introduced four levels, and Gold was second from bottom. So they’ve finally fixed matters, Platinum being once again second from top.

Dockers is offering a free roundtrip ticket with purchase of $125 in mens clothing. It’s one of those really difficult, restrictive promos which require picking from a list of departure and destination cities and being really flexible with your travel. But several Flyertalkers have some interesting approaches for making the most of the promo.

The Wall Street Journal reports that mortgage payments by credit card may be on the way — for a fee.

Details are still sketchy, and your financial position/amount of your mortgage payment/choice of rewards program will determine whether it’s worthwhile…

I wouldn’t mind picking up 35,000 Starwood points at a cost of a penny a point in the first year, and no incremental cost in future years, should that be how this shakes out. Developing…

Thanks to a co-branded offer with Harley Davidson, Best Western is offering new members a 1000 bonus points with your first stay by June 28.

Hat tip to boazs of MileMaven.

JetBlue is offering $50 off travel between September 5, 2007 and October 31, 2007 after you book a roundtrip by June 1 for travel commencing by June 15. Registration required.

Thanks to reader Sloan for the pointer.

Pair this with $10 off each way when buying your qualifying roundtrip. (Here’s the link via American Express.)

Purchases need to be made with an American Express card by May 31 for travel by June 13, and Friday and Sunday travel are excluded.

While the promo rules say the offer is good on transcontinental flights, that doesn’t appear to be true — the special fare comes up from Dulles to Orlando, for instance, and becomes as low as $39+tax one way.

Would you trust air traffic, or the ground controllers for that matter?

NBC News in Connecticut ran a story on redeeming frequent flyer miles that was notable for how much it got wrong in only 166 words.

Airline industry expert Darryl Jenkins said tough economic times are making airlines stingy with free seats.

I much like Darryl, but this may be the closest to plausible thing he’s quoted as saying in the article. (It’s plausible that every quote was taken out of context and mangled…)

Airlines aren’t being stingy because of ‘tough economic times’. If anything, the reverse is true. Full planes, usually not a sign of tough times, are making the seats harder to come by. Award redemption at the ‘saver’ level (i.e. capacity controlled awards, after all many airlines allow you to redeem double – or more – the miles to get any seat on the plane) are intended to be given out of inventory that otherwise wouldn’t sell. The seats that are ‘free’ to the passenger are, in theory at least, also close to free to the frequent flyer program to give out. But there aren’t very many of those marginal seats.

The closest Jenkins comes to reality is that tough economic times for the airlines have encouraged them to print a whole bunch of miles over the past several years… double and triple mile promotions intended to bolster travel while carriers went through bankruptcy (United’s sextuple miles in 2003 was truly classic). And now you have “too many miles chasing too few seats” — airlines are giving away plenty of seats, you just have more consumers looking for them.

He said requesting an upgrade is the easiest way to use frequent flier miles. He said passengers should buy the cheapest coach seats they can and then turn them into business-class or first-class seats.

For transatlantic or transpacific flights only Continental and American will let you upgrade the cheapest fares.. my spending your miles and offering up an additional co-pay.

He recommends always calling the airline when using frequent flier miles and not using the Web site. He said you can negotiate with the ticket agents.



He also said complaining can get you everywhere. Airlines sometimes give seats to valued passengers who complain.

Agreed that it’s worth calling and not just relying on airline websites, since the search technology isn’t across-the-board great with many carrier websites and very few allow you to search frequent flyer availability for partner airlines without calling.

But the advice to call has nothing to do with the ability to complain to a (in many cases outsourced) agent in order to get what you want. There are very few customers with the juice to convince an airline’s yield management to open up seats for redemption as a result of complaining. Don’t try it at home, kids.

Gee, I don’t know why that piece bothered me so much, but I feel better having gotten it off my chest. Thanks! (And sorry, Darryl.)

Paul Karl Lukacs is blogging about his trip to North Korea. I find his Air Koryo flight from Beijing especially interesting, having heard plenty of stories before but never having flown the airline myself.

The plane to Pyongyang was an Ilyushin 62-M, built by the Soviet Union in 1979 and kitted like a set from The Spy Who Loved Me. No cool corporate off-white here. The surprisingly comfortable economy seats were covered in puke green cloth upholstery with an indistinct pink pattern. The cabin’s interior shell was cast in a shade of beige which belonged in a Southern California ranch house from the era of earth tones. The plastic window shades were not opaque but a dark translucent brown.

Read the whole thing…