One couple did, getting ticketed to Dhaka (Bangladesh) instead of Dakar (Senegal).

It turns out the mishap all came down to the three-letter airport code airlines routinely use when making bookings or entering information on baggage tags. Instead of entering DKR (for Dakar) in the computer system, the airline representative entered DAC (for Dhaka), sparking the intercontinental travel nightmare.
The couple, flying on Turkish Airlines, transited in Istanbul before joining their connecting flight to what they thought would be Dakar. They told the LA Times they didn’t notice anything was wrong, because they went by the flight number on their tickets. And the similarity in city names didn’t help matters. “When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced ‘Dakar’ with a Turkish accent,” Valdivieso said.

It was only after seeing a route map several hours into the flight showing their plane hovering over the Middle East that the pair realized something was wrong.

Usually when this happens, travelers find themselves on a flight to Sydney, Nova Scotia.. realizing something must be wrong when they board a Dash-8 aircraft from Halifax and start to wonder how it could possibly make it all the way across the Pacific?

(HT: uggboy on Milepoint)

Conde’ Nast Traveler has just posted three videos featuring my advice on a variety of subjects.

In this week’s edition of tips from our Top Travel Specialists Collection, we hear from Gary Leff, our specialist when it comes to award tickets and cashing in all manner of frequent flier (and frequent guest) points.

In these clips, Leff talks about the very best time to cash in your frequent flier miles for free seats—and it’s not necessarily on the 331-day timeline that’s so commonly thought of as the gold standard for award bookings. Leff also shares good tips about getting into business- and first-class cabins, where service is naturally that much better. As aircraft shift and global airline alliances change, Leff shares his tricks for making sure you’re in the best seat available.

In another clip, Leff has tips on hotel award programs, which offer freebies far beyond just free room nights, including free upgrades, free internet access, and oftentimes free late check outs.

The subjects of the videos are:

• When is the best time to book award travel?
  
• What are the best hotel perks for business travelers?
  
• What are the best first class rewards?

Each one is 3-5 minutes. So it won’t take long for you to watch them all.

Via Reader Alan H., TripAdvisor is finally going big in hotel metasearch as a way to drive bookings.

Hotel chains’ have long tried to push guests towards booking through their own channels, such as by denying elite stay credit (and in some cases elite benefits) to bookings made through online travel agents and by offering their ‘best price guarantees’ meant to suggest that customers will get the best deals there (not always true, it just means that on some rare occasions the chains will reward customers who discover they haven’t).

That’s because the payouts to online agents for hotel bookings are huge, although seem to have been coming down somewhat recently. I used to see major chains paying out commissions in the high 20% ranges, while more recently such high payouts seem to apply more to independent hotels. The savvier big chains like Marriott, depending on the online channel, may be down into the high teens.

Whereas flight sales isn’t especially lucrative, hotels bookings are, and TripAdvisor is naturally positioned to get a strong piece of that action — they (in theory, with problems) guide you towards the hotel that’s right for you. They should be better at monetizing that decision. That’s seen as a threat to Kayak.

Interesting, while the leading threat there ought to be coming from Google, which is certainly trying to provide customized answers and advice in the travel space, the conventional wisdom offered in he article on Kayak vs. Tripadvisor is that Google hasn’t made much of an impact. So much for the anti-trust concerned voiced by Google’s rivals in trying to get the US government to shut down Google as a competitor (mostly, to date, in flight search – and fortunately unsuccessful).

I’ve often found TripAdvisor useful (1) for real guest photos, and (2) to scan common themes in reviews. But never for the rankings, and never for the content of any single review.

There are several problems with TripAdvisor. One is fake reviews — hotels with fake personas trashing their competitors, hotels giving themselves high marks. Another is the inherent unreliability of complainers who also may represent outliers among guests. And still another is the rankings aren’t valid interpersonal comparisons. The guest doing a ranking may simply not think about hotels the same way that you do. And rankings are often simply not reasonable reflections of what a hotel is trying to accomplish (knocking down the Ritz-Carlton Central Park because its room service breakfast is expensive, for instance.. of course it is).

Into the space there are several new review sites, few of which have gained much traction. Hotels have tried to compete as well (remember, they really want you to book direct) with their own reviews. And they can even verify that a guest writing a review has really stayed at a hotel!

The competition here is far from over. But Kayak certainly will face pressure because while they can find you lots of different hotels (compared to chain sites which generally offer their brand only), it doesn’t do a good job at guiding you to book the room that’s most right for you.

That’s the big thing that was lost when mass travel became substantially an online booking phenomena — the loss of human agents who could understand your preferences, combine those with personal experience, and make recommendations that were in theory tied to the individual customer.

That’s also the future once again, even in the online booking space as sites race to get better at doing more than just returning results in a city and letting you sort by price or distance or ‘number of stars.’

No one is very good at it yet. Orbitz fumbled when they started returning higher priced hotels to Mac users.. when all they were doing was responding to their data which suggested that Mac users tended to book higher priced hotels than PC users, and so wanted to give those customers tailored results that were more likely to lead to a sale. They weren’t trying to ‘charge those customers more.’ They just didn’t want the customers not to find what they were after and go somewhere else to book instead.

There’s still a lot of room for work to be done, and contra conventional wisdom the future year is yet to be written. Let alone the future in mobile where last minute bookings are increasingly common, and customized advice won’t just be based on other guests’ experiences (social) but on real-time geolocation data.

Just yesterday I was musing that United.com no longer showed ‘phantom availability’ for Lufthansa, and I needed to write a blog post about that.

But Lucky beat me to the punch.

United and also at one time Aeroplan would show Lufthansa first class award space more than two weeks out, when Lufthansa seems not to release those seats to their partners more than two weeks out. While the seats would show up when doing a search online, you couldn’t actually book the seats and would get an error instead if you tried to do so.

My working theory had been that the seats were available to Lufthansa’s own Miles & More members and that there was something wrong with the ‘point of sale’ settings when searching for these awards — United was displaying availability as though it was being searched by Lufthansa itself. But when it went to actually make a reservation, the correct point of sale was used and it would discover no seats available after all.

I never tested the theory, in large part because Miles & More requires you to have some miles in your account to do that search unless you are a member of their kid’s club. Which I am (!). But I had lost the PIN for my account. And by the time I found it again, I had lost interest in the question and never followed up. Shame on me.

And as Lucky observes, it’s now a moot issue because United.com no longer seems to show Lufthansa first class award seats more than two weeks out.

Except he stumbles upon an anomaly — Lufthansa first class award seats available hours beyond 14 days out which are actually available and show up on the ANA Mileage Club website… but not the United website.

As he points out, this is potentially a big deal because there’s a several hour delay in United seeing the seats, during which time someone else could grab them. And since subscription service Expertflyer, which can send you email alerts when availability opens up, is scraping the United website it will send you those alerts hours after the seats become available as well.

When I tried to replicate Lucky’s finding about June 2nd that Detroit-Frankfurt was available on the ANA website but not the United website, I found the seats via ANA. But United wouldn’t even show the existence of the Detroit-Frankfurt (or Frankfurt-Detroit) non-stop at all. Or the Toronto flight, which had space available. Both flights showed up correctly on the Aeroplan website.

My working theory, to be verified in the coming days, is that United’s fix involves a ‘hack’ they way that much of United’s SHARES implementation involves workarounds rather than actual fixes of problems. I’m not sure they’ve actualy fixed things, they may just suppress results. In other words, their system might still ‘see’ availability incorrectly, but they won’t show it until a certain amount of time to departure. And Lufthansa may actually be releasing it to them earlier than that.

Two years ago I stumbled onto a Continental issue where an international business class award where a domestic U.S. segment was booked in coach on a United three-class plane would price as a first class award. I reported it and learned that they had built a workaround to handle pricing for United three-class domestic flights and they did it wrong. In short order the programming glitch was fixed (ah, the good old days).

There have been other hacks and problems with United’s passenger service system, such as the way it processes upgrades (triggered by check-ins of other passengers rather than real-time). And they can’t always get their system to pass ticket numbers properly to partners so award ticket reservations sometimes just cancel. This is especially a problem with Asiana but has also been a problem with award flights on Singapore.

Even when United improves its IT systems, they still seem to get it backwards.

One of my favorite posts last year was Why Taxis Suck and What You Can Do About It.

With protection from competition and fixed pricing, cabs have little incentive to go beyond bare minimum regulatory standards for maintenance. Drivers may not know where they’re going, and in my city usually don’t take electronic forms of payment. Competition solves these things but local taxi regulators are the archetypical example of regulatory capture, protecting incumbents from competition rather than protecting the public.

New York, like many other cities, tried to crack down on Uber as a competitive threat to incumbent interests. But like in so many other cities, customers who love the on-demand car service and taxi app spoke out loudly enough that it was too much of a threat to politicians and so the regulators more or less relented. It seemed like consumers scored a win in Washington DC as well. But once the spotlight dissipated, things changed again.

DC’s Taxi Commission has long been in the pocket of incumbent taxi interests. Top politicos were sentenced last year after an FBI undercover operation.

There’s big money in protecting big cab operators from competition, and it seems that DC hasn’t given up in its fight against Uber.

With regulations passed last week, UberTaxi will disappear on June 1. Additionally, the next set of regulations, just 3 weeks from passage, will ban fuel efficient vehicles from UberBlack, require Uber to hand over massive amounts of data on your rides, and require Uber to jump over regulatory hurdles every year just to exist. These regulations are unprecedented and far more restrictive than Uber has seen in any of the 30 cities that we operate in.

Apparently the DC Taxi Commission is forbidding digital payments to taxis. They propose requiring annual approval of the Uber’s iPhone app (yes, the taxi commission intends to channel Steve Jobs). And perhaps most bizarrely, they are banning Uber from providing access to fuel efficient vehicles.

That’s right — they aren’t mandating the use of fuel efficient vehicles, as some governments are wont to do. They’re actually banning them.

Hopefully public attention hasn’t moved on too much from this issue.

News and Notes from Around the Interweb:

• And your reward for 10 bus trips is… another bus trip: Southwest extends double points for another month
  
• Those friendly Canadians offer up a small bonus: Aeroplan is offering 1000 bonus miles for activity with many of their partners through August 31
  
• It’s no Grand Slam, but.. US Airways is offering a 50% bonus on hotel stays and car rentals credited to the Dividend Miles program (points transfers into Dividend Miles don’t count). Registration required.
  
• I Still Like Southwest’s Original Secretary’s Program Better: United’s new small business program lets you accrue miles in a separate account for the business for a variety of activities and should even offer the ability to transfer those miles to a personal account. Most airlines offer small business programs, usually those earn ‘credits’ rather than miles that can be redeemed for flights, upgrades, drinks, etc. United’s post-merger rollout has been a long time in coming.

Lucky notes that JetBlue has increased their ticket change fees — but will waive those fees for elites (cough, Mosaic is their Animal Farm elite program).

And those fees will vary based on how far in advance you book your tickets and on the price of those tickets.

Change/Cancel Fee Amounts – Effective May 17, 2013
Changes and cancellations made 60 days or more prior to departure date:

$75 per person fee
Changes and cancellations made within 60 days of departure date:

$75 per person fee for fares under $100
$100 per person fee for fares between $100 – $149
$150 per person fee for fares $150 or more
*Note: Customers who booked their reservation prior to May 17, 2013 will be allowed one change or cancellation at the previous fee structure – $100/per person or $50/per person for fares under $100.

The structure actually does make some sense, but I bristle at how Lucky thinks about change fees.

As a consumer this has been extremely aggravating to watch, because change fees in no way reflect the cost of providing that service. We might not like paying for checked bags, but at the end of the day we can rationalize the fact that checking bags costs the airline money.

I actually think the exact opposite.

We pay for checked bags in large measure because of the 7.5% federal excise tax on airline tickets. Anything you can get out from under the ‘ticket price’ isn’t subject to that tax.

There are many ancillary fees that are about pricing a limited resource that used to be given away for free. There are only so many exit row seats on a plane, so charging for those since people like them better makes sense.

But offering checked luggage comes with substantial fixed costs but very low marginal costs (some incremental fuel due to weight, but the number of baggage handlers don’t change much based on how many bags you check).

Checked bags ‘cost the airline money’ but don’t really at the margin which is why I’d expect (absent the tax distortion) checked bags to be more likely bundled into ticket price than most other things in the future. And of course American bundles them with their Choice fares now, and many airlines bundle them with co-branded credit card signups.

Meanwhile change fees do reflect ‘a cost of providing that service’ at least as travel dates approach — which is why JetBlue’s fee structure makes so much sense.

If I book a ticket 11 months out, and change it, the airline loses more or less nothing but I have a hefty change fee. They still have every opportunity to re-sell the seat.

But if I cancel my reservation the day of travel that’s a seat which may go empty, that the airline could otherwise have sold sometime between when I made the purchase 11 months earlier and the date of travel. A high change fee certainly seems appropriate (the ‘cost of providing the service’ is the real possibility of ‘revenue foregone’).

Now I remember when change fees were $25, $50, and then $75. With that frame, $150 seemed ridiculous and $200 ludicrous.

On the other hand I’ve often wondered why restricted, non-refundable airline tickets are changeable at all? I’ve certainly seen international fares published that allow no changes, and that cancelling offers no residual value. We buy plenty of things that we cannot return, that are use it or lose it.

Those often are at least transferable, and for which there’s at least a grey market in resale, while ‘security’ rules only allow us to travel under our own names and so tickets become non-transferable.

Ironically, when JetBlue first launched their travel credits were 100% transferrable. The change fee was $25, so if you cancelled a ticket you lost only $25 in value and anyone could use that remaining value. (A dozen years ago as well, SAS tickets were transferrable for a $25 fee — you could change the name on a ticket to someone else’s — provided that you signed a form that the tickets were for personal rather than business use.)

At a US major airline standard of $200 change fees on domestic tickets, that might as well make many tickets totally non-changeable and thus just throwaways if unused for me, at least when I’m buying one-way tickets.

If there was an economic reason for airlines to offer non-refundable tickets with residual value, the $200 change fee does away with a good bit of that. There might be some point at which the change fee is so high that it hurts the airline.

Of course the existence of residual value could itself have been a relic, and we’re entering a future where restricted tickets have no residual value at all.

On Wednesday I wrote about improvements to hotel booking site PointsHound — that by this coming week there would be about 1000 major chain hotels that you could book on the site and still earn elite status credit and in-hotel benefits, while earning a rebate in the form of a fairly substantial number of frequent flyer miles.

I offered up my referral link for the site. Everyone being referred by an existing member gets 250 bonus miles with their first booking, and the referrer gets 250 miles as well.

But I didn’t even mention the bonus miles that folks would get by using the link, that’s not why I suggested it. It’s that they gave me a link that would allow new members to earn more miles during their first 60 days (and with 6 nights booked during that time keep the higher level of earning). In other words, because using my link offered better mileage earning that signing up directly.

And 250 miles is fairly de minimus in the context of miles earned for bookings through the site which are often in the thousands.

Normally I’m a fairly good judge of the reaction that my blog posts will engender. It’s usually clear when a post will make people excited, or angry, and whether comments will ensue or not. If I want to get a good controversy going I can always just write about babies on planes….

Well this one took me by surprise. A number of folks were frustrated or angry that I’d offer up my referral link for the site, as though I was hoping that folks would use the link so I’d “get paid” in the form of 250 miles.

Frankly, I have millions of frequent flyer miles and the 250 miles from each first use wasn’t much of a motivator for me.

Ironically, in fact, I even asked PointsHound if there was a way that readers using the link could just get all of the miles for using the link? I didn’t wait to hear back in posting because I was excited by the new features and assumed that the referral bonuses were hard coded and not easily changed. I didn’t expect to be able to get this done.

Well, as one commenter notes, the change was done before I even knew it — they received the following email,

“Also, as a thank you for signing up, you’ll receive an ADDTIONAL 500 miles with your first booking, so start shopping.”

“We will also be upgrading your account to Level 2 status, which will happen with in the next 24 hours. You’ll receive an email from us once completed!”

Hopefully the incremental miles will be useful. I am trying my best, each and every day, to bring you the best mileage and other offers I possibly can. In the coming days and weeks I have a couple of giveaways coming as well, because when merchants I like offer things I try to get them for blog readers instead of taking them on. So a few high-value items in the works. Stay tuned!

Airlines have tried all manner of boarding processes for years in an attempt to load the plane more quickly. Turnaround time for an aircraft matters — to remain on schedule (delays are costly in terms of labor and misconnects), for customer satisfaction, to avoid losing air traffic control slots (delays can cascade and increasing costs can themselves increase costs).

And what seems to work for awhile no longer works — due to customer complacency, due to changing behaviors, and also varies with how full an aircraft is.

Checked bag fees mean more bags are brought onboard where possible. Although whereas airlines used to allow two carryon bags US government regulations now only allow one (and a ‘personal item’) as a way of speeding up a still-slow security process. The net effect of more bags is driven largely by full aircraft. And full aircraft means lots of time stowing bags, not enough room for all the bags, time spent searching out overhead space, and time spent gate checking luggage.

There are things that can be done to speed up boarding and deplaning. Using more than one jetbridge (or using forward and rear stairs) is one.

American thinks they’ve found another in allowing people without carryons to board in “zone 2.” That way more people are on the aircraft and other passengers working out where to put their rollaboards doesn’t delay those passengers without from getting situated.

I saw a variant on the theme about six weeks back in San Diego when gate agents announced that anyone choosing to gate check a bag (free) would be rewarded with early boarding. I was vexed at the time — after all, if you don’t have bags to stow why on earth would you need to board early?

The benefit, to me, of early boarding is having space for your carryon and having it near your seat even. But with no carryon the last thing I would want to do is be on the aircraft longer.

Although I suppose since it’s something people “get to do” they will want to do it. And somehow here’s a desire to “get situated” as though it takes a long time sans carry on to put a small bag underneath the seat and buckle up. (I get that families with small children may be another matter, but with most carriers they are already given the opportunity to board early… and what some families try to pass off as ‘small children’ for the privilege is often extreme to say the least — as well as the number of family members that try to board with one 13 year old.)

Do I think this new privilege will be revolutionary? Absolutely not. Will it make some difference to boarding time at the margin? Perhaps. Until it doesn’t any longer. And only in those instances where boarding order is clearly communicated and enforced. I suspect boarding might also be sped up by an airline that decided to keep the boarding gate clear of those not yet “on deck” to have their rows called….

With some of the very best offers for the most lucrative credit cards being business cards (see The 5 Best Small Business Credit Card Offers and 5 Most Lucrative Credit Card Offers Right Now, and 5 Most Rewarding Credit Cards for Your Spending Every Day), it’s worth looking at what the cards are good for, what they aren’t good for, and who can get them.

The Best Current Business Credit Card Offers

The very best current offers for small business cards are:

• Ink Bold® Business Card 50,000 points after $5000 spend within 3 months
  
• Ink Plus® Business Card 50,000 points after $5000 spend within 3 months
  
• The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN 75,000 points after $10,000 spend within 4 months.

The American Express Business Gold Rewards card has a great signup bonus, Membership Rewards points transfer to airline frequent flyer programs in all three alliances.

The Ink cards, though, aren’t just great bonuses (Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to United, British Airways, Korean, Southwest, and hotel programs like Hyatt, Marriott, and Priority Club) but are also great cards for spending — no foreign currency transaction fees, double points on hotels, and quintuple points on telecommunications (phone, internet, television) and office supply store purchases.

Why Small Business Credit Cards are Great for Spending

Business cards don’t show up on your credit report. Banks do pull your personal credit when they are deciding whether or not to approve you for the card, but after that the card doesn’t get listed.

That’s useful because one of the major components of your credit score is your credit utilization . That’s not about whether you pay off your cards each month, that’s about how much of your available credit you are using at a given time.

Your cards report your balances each month — not your unpaid balances, not overdue balances, but how much you’re carrying on the card on a given day (and paying off the card before the end of the billing cycle may not help, since they may report mid-cycle).

About 30% of your score stems from how much of your credit you use. If you’re using $2000 out of $4000 available credit, you’re using 50%. You may pay off your bill each month but you still look risky, you’re not being afforded lots of credit that you’re responsible with in the eyes of your credit score. If you’re using $2000 out of $20,000 available credit, that’s only 10% and looks much better — even though you are spending the same amount on your cards each month. Which is why applying for more cards can actually improve your score, despite that conventional wisdom that it’s bad for your credit.

In addition to boosting available credit (increasing the denominator), you can improve your score by reducing the amount of that credit you are using at any point in time (reducing the numerator). By putting your spending on a small business card, the balance of which doesn’t get reported, you reduce the amount of credit that it appears you’re using. Which is good for your score.

How You Can Get a Small Business Credit Card

I find it very useful to have a business credit card, and have for a long time – I got my first one about a decade ago, giving my social security number as a business tax ID (for sole proprietorships American Express lets you leave the business tax ID box blank).

Before I had my award booking business I would use my social security number. Most of the time back then (much more so than now) I would be approved instantly, or at least automatically.

Even having $0 in business income was often fine, it’s good to separate out business and personal expenses from the very beginning when starting to look out for business opportunities.

I’ve been a huge proponent of diversifying income — sure, I have a job, but I also blog and book awards and my writing earns income not just here but on websites like Conde’ Nast Traveler‘s. In the past I’ve also done fundraising consulting. And I own a rental property, as well.

It’s much easier to deduct the expenses for a business when the financial transactions for that business are kept separate from personal finances. So just as it’s useful to have a business bank account, it’s useful to have a business credit card. And that’s true even — and especially — before you have any revenue for the business. Keeping things separate from the start is a great reason to have a business credit card. Answer questions on the application truthfully. If you don’t have any business income, then list zero. That’s fine, you can get approved on the basis of your personal (non-business) income. And if you’re not approved automatically, you can still explain that you haven’t earned income from the business yet, you’re just now setting it up.

Different Perks and More Spending Bonuses

While I love my Chase Sapphire Preferred card — most of my expenses fall into the travel and dining categories which that card bonuses — I want to earn the greatest rewards for my spending. Earning 5 points per dollar with the Ink cards on telecommunications and office supplies are huge, especially with the wide variety of items you can buy at office supply stores (fortunately there’s a Staples just a couple of blocks from my home.

Are Business Cards for Business Expenses Only?

Business cards often carry the admonition that you agree when you apply you will only put business-related expenses on the card. Business cards do not carry the same consumer protections as personal credit cards, and it’s important for banks to draw the distinction and be able to say they’ve advised consumers and that consumers even agreed. That’s for their legal protection. While no bank has ever questioned the charges I’ve made on my cards, they’ve taken steps on their end that are necessary to distinguish business cards from personal cards for regulatory purposes.

An Opportunity to Get More and Different Cards

I have a wallet full of cards. The banks expect that. Speaking recently with one credit card executive, he intimated that he does as well — and that they give you more than one of his bank’s cards because they know you want more than one card and would rather that you have multiples of theirs than one of theirs and other banks’ cards as well.

The cards you’re able to get are dependent on both your overall credit and your income, some banks have limits on the number of cards they will issue to you. There are some reports of American Express giving up to four personal cards, for instance. But business cards are often not a part of that limit.

(Note that some though not all of the cards above include my referral link, I do receive credit if you’re approved for the card using it, I offer it because it’s the best current offer. The opinions, analyses, and evaluations here are mine. The content is not provided or commissioned by the American Express or any other company. They have not reviewed, approved or endorsed it.)

Back in October I covered the launch of hotel booking site PointsHound. They were giving out free miles for joining, which was cool. But at the time I said that I probably wouldn’t use the site. That’s all changing.

PointsHound is a site that gives you miles – often quite a lot of miles – for your hotel bookings. Here’s what I explained at the time:

[W]hile many websites like TopCashBack and eBates will offer cash back for the hotel bookings you make through the hotel’s own website, PointsHound rebates you in the form of miles and has you book through their own system.

The downside to making bookings through third party websites is that some chains do not allow accrual of elite stays and nights for those reservations, some do not allow points-earning, and still some do not even offer elite status recognition. That’s why I’ll almost never make hotel bookings through Expedia or Orbitz, for instance. Still, the rebate value here (paid out in miles) looks reasonable overall.

I do like going through a website that gives you a rebate for your bookings. But I do not like giving up elite benefits, or credit towards renewing my status. So I had been passing on PointsHound, even though they’ve been giving out a ton of miles.

Recently that’s changed — for a few months they’ve offered a handful of hotels in a dozen markets that earn a rebate and still qualify for elite status and benefits.

They called the program ‘double dip’ but clearly that idea is pretty Hilton HHonors-specific in the hotel space (Hilton for years has let you earn both miles and points on your hotel stays rather than making you choose one or the other).

So on Monday when they launch the program with about 1000 hotels across the Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, Starwood, and Priority Club chains it will be branded “Double Up” instead.

So for those ~ 1000 hotels, you can earn a generous rebate in the form of miles without giving up status credits and benefits.

Now, it still pays to check websites like TopCashBack and decide whether the cash rebate they’ll give you is worth more than the miles you’ll get from PointsHound. (TopCashBack and similar sites — unlike Expedia and Orbitz — send you to the hotel’s own website to make your booking so those reservations are eligible for elite status credits and recognition.)

But for chains other than Priority Club, the mileage offers from PointsHound are frequently better.

Their mileage-earning partners currently are:

They have three mileage-earning levels based on how many times you book with them. They’ve given me a referral link, though, that will start you off at level 2 which seems to earn about 50% more miles on average. If you sign up through the link it will take, I’m told, about 24-48 hours for your ‘level 2 status’ to be reflected.

Here are their levels and the earn ranges for each:

It pays to compare rates — there seeem to be outliers where the site winds up more expensive than booking directly, but that hasn’t been frequent in the searches I’ve done. Always check prices against other sources.

For someone like me, this program really hits the spot. I care about re-upping my elite status. I care about the benefits of that status. And I’ve hated forgoing a rebate, for instance, when booking rooms with Hyatt. 1000 hotels is a good start but not ubiquitous enough, but getting perhaps the equivalent of a 12% rebate in the form of miles is pretty good compared to what I was getting before (no rebate) on those bookings where PointsHound has a hotel. Good news all around.

Do note, though that not all of their deals earn status and elite benefits — their prepaid rates do not. So look for their Double Up rates only if your preferences are like mine. For hotels I’m booking at chains where I care about status and the hotel isn’t listed with this marker I will continue to book elsewhere. (But for one-off stays, the rebated points may be worth more than what I’d earn through the chain anyway.)

Additional disclosure: Not only do you get level 2 status but I understand that I may get some miles for referring you if you use my link when signing up for the site and make bookings. So it’s win-win. Furthermore, when I was perusing their list of key players I noted that I do know one of the site’s investors. He has never mentioned this investment to me.

News and Notes from Around the Interweb:

• Delta’s Lawyers Move to South America? AviancaTaca LifeMiles makes some mostly minor tweaks to their award chart. I don’t like unannounced changes. Some programs are more trustworthy than others, and the ability to make changes at will is why I don’t like keeping huge balances (sometimes unavoidable) and why I don’t generally buy miles that aren’t for immediate use.

• Let’s Spend All The Loot Before The Cops Catch Us: The FAA awarded bonuses to a substantial portion of its workforce right before making sequester-imposed cuts, despite a directive from the Department of Transportation not to do so. (HT: Alan H.)

• 90% of Expensive is Still Expensive: Reader S.B reminds that the British Airways Visa still offers 10% off on paid BA tickets. At one point the benefit was set to expire in December 2012, but it was extended.

• On a scale of 1… to 5000! Last weekend I stayed at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs. The views were spectacular, the staff friendly, the food not very good. My only real complaint though was that the ceilings didn’t dampen noise at all, and I could hear every footstep taken by my upstairs neighbors. Every. Foot. Step. Meanwhile, Do it for the Points was staying at the nearby Doubletree and gives it five stars. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Key Link: The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN

75,000 Membership Rewards Point Signup Bonus after $10,000 Spend Within Four Months

Last week the internet went wild with a 75,000 point offer for the American Express Business Gold Rewards card. I posted it, and 19 hours later the offer was gone. A few times in the past I’ve seen 75,000 point offers, but never with just $5000 minimum spending required.

I try to track the popularity of links that I post, so sometimes I use a shortened link and can see how any times it gets clicked on. And I’ve never seen a link clicked on as many times as that deal. Because it was one of the two best deals in the frequent flyer space so far this year, I think, and the best in three months.

Turns out though that I’m not sure American Express meant to offer it. They quickly pulled it. This is a card after all that for most the of the past year hasn’t had any signup bonus. And that when I grabbed the card for myself had a 50,000 point signup bonus after$10,000 in spend, and I considered it a really good deal.

This morning I got a tweet from @sannitaliu that for three days only they’re doing 75,000 points again after $10,000 in minimum spending. It’s apparently valid until May 17 only. (Note: this is not my referral link, but it is the best current offer for the card.)

There’s a hefty minimum spend requirement of $10,000 although you have four months to meet it and there are plenty of ways these days to generate spend that it’s entirely doable for many, much more so than it used to be.

Here’s what American Express says about the card.

• Earn 75,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $10,000 in purchases on the Card in the first 3 months of Card membership†.
• Earn points even faster to get more rewards for your business.
• 3X points on airfare purchased from airlines. 2X points at US gas stations.
• Up to $100,000 in each category per year, then 1 point.
• Terms and limitations apply.
• Reduce travel costs, show appreciation for employees and clients, and offset everyday expenses by using points to get something back and grow your business.
• $0 introductory annual fee for the first year, then $175.
• †Apply online to qualify for this offer. See offer terms for details.”

This is a really strong offer, Membership Rewards points are my third favorite currency behind Chase Ultimate Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest. This is a good card for the first year with the $0 annual fee, but whether it makes sense to keep after that first year likely depends on how much advertising, gas, and shipping spend you do since those are fairly unique bonused categories.

In March I explained how to make the most out of American Express Membership Rewards points. Bottom line is that 75,000 points is a really great haul.

Note that if you don’t keep the card past the first year you will want to either transfer your points out before closing the card, or have another Membership Rewards-earning card in order to keep those points active.

The card offer is specifically not available for anyone who has had an American Express business card earning Membership Rewards points within the past year. Personal cards are fine, a similar card more than a year ago appears to be fine, but if you had this or a similar card in the past 12 months the offer is not for you.

If you don’t want to try to meet $10,000 in minimum spend, consider the Ink Bold® Business Card and Ink Plus® Business Card which each offer 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after $5000 in minimum spend. That’s certainly a stronger return per dollar of spend, and for a currency that I like even more than Membership Rewards points.

(Note that the Chase applications above use my referral links, while the American Express card is not a referral link. In both cases the links are to the best current offers. The opinions, analyses, and evaluations here are mine. The content is not provided or commissioned by the American Express or any other company. They have not reviewed, approved or endorsed it.)

Sunday night I flew home from Colorado Springs. That’s the most important sentence of this post. I actually managed to fly home — despite delays, two mechanicals, a change of flights, re-routing to a different airport, and a change of aircraft. Oh, and did I mention my upgrades cleared all the way through?

• Inbound aircraft was delayed. American’s website was showing only 15 minutes, which would have given me 35 minutes in Dallas. That didn’t look realistic.
  
• Aircraft made up time enroute to Colorado Springs. We boarded and would have been on our way 25 minutes late. A 25 minute connection would be fine, my onward flight was only supposed to be 6 gates away.
  
• But the flight went mechanical. We had a flat tire. Fortunately there was a spare on hand. We deplaned, and posted a new departure time — an hour’s delay.
  
• My connecting flight was delayed, too. So I might still make it. I rang up American’s Executive Platinum desk and they protected me on a later connecting flight. Several options were sold out, but I grabbed a late flight into another airport ‘just in case’ and could always stand by for something better.
  
• Since there was a chance I could still make my connection, American didn’t re-issue my ticket. At that point I had reservations on two different flights home.
  
• When they got the wheel off they saw the brakes fused together. This was going to be more than an hour’s delay. They predicted two. It turned out to be six.
  
• The gate agent announced that there were still seats left on the next flight out of Colorado Springs – but not nearly enough for everyone. They recommended everyone call the 800 number.
  
• I called the Executive Platinum line, no wait on hold of course, and grabbed a seat on the next flight out of Colorado Springs, connecting to my ‘backup’ flight in Dallas.
  
• Upgrades cleared for both flights.
  
• Once in Dallas my flight home – the last flight – went mechanical. They determined there was too much condensation in a window pain, it would have to be changed. They swapped out aircraft and sent an entire gate’s worth of passengers to the other side of the terminal. They had to move all of the luggage and also transfer catering.

I got home, to a different airport, nearly six hours later. But I got on the flight, all in upgraded first class. And I was aided all along the way by my status — a willingness to double book me, no hold times let me jump the queue for that next flight out of Colorado Springs.

It’s good to have airline elite status.

Now, if I didn’t have top tier status I wouldn’t have flown those two flights in front. But any status in a storm is helpful — you get the telephone hold queues, you have priority on the standby lists. During irregular operations it can be the difference between getting home or to a meeting, and getting stranded for a couple of days.

I believe there’s huge value in top tier elite status, and there’s huge value in having some status. And many non-frequent flyers can approximate having some status, more or less, since most airlines give out perks for signing up for their co-branded credit cards. Frequently these cards come with free checked bags and priority boarding, the latter meaning that you don’t have to gate check your luggage. That’s the only real benefit, to me, of priority boarding but it’s huge.

I’m not sure I see the benefit of mid-tier status, although you earn more bonus miles and are higher up in the queue. And there are incremental benefits like that sometimes include lower change fees, such as confirming extra legroom seats in advance and not just at check-in. But there’s a huge difference between “being a nobody” with the airline and having some status, and there’s a huge difference having top tier status.

I don’t think having status makes sense for a very infrequent flyer, though someone who travels 15,000 to 20,000 miles a year should probably get their airline’s co-brand card.

And I don’t think it makes sense to be a ‘mileage runner’ — except that an incremental flight to get to top tier status is hugely worth it. If you fly 85,000 miles or more a year, and your airline gives you top tier at 100,000, finding a way to eke out 15,000 more miles is probably a good idea.

After getting rebooked coming home from Colorado Springs, I overheard a woman saying she wouldn’t get to Cleveland until 5pm. The next day. I was grateful not to be her (well, largely because her destination was Cleveland, but also because she didn’t have status).

In the end I didn’t mind the delay so much, I wound up getting switched over on the same flight as Live From a Lounge, and onto the flight that AAdvantageGeek was already on. (In fact, I stole his upgrade.) And we wound up chatting in the gate area with Frequent Miler, who was flying out on United. There have been worse delays. Thanks to status, and good conversations with friends.

The lawsuit between Starwood and the Parker Meridien Hotels is fascinating not just because it’s a window into agreements between loyalty programs and hotels that we don’t often get to see the details of but also because it reveals a ton about how the programs work.

In this case it’s alleged that because Starwood pays its hotels a ton more cash for award nights when hotels are nearly fully booked, the Parker Meridien hotels in Palm Springs and New York fudged their books to appear to be fully booked much more often — extracting more than an extra million dollars in reimbursements from SPG.

Reader Seth Theriault shared how to access all of the court documents related to the case online.

Now he emails with an update on the case.

The highlights are as follows:

- Starwood opposed the motion to dismiss (see Docket 13, 14, 15)

- The hotels introduced new arguments in their reply to the Starwood MTD opposition (See Docket 16 for the reply, Docket 19). Starwood’s application for a sur-reply was granted (filed under Docket 23).

- A protective order is in effect (Docket 21 and 22) for the sur-reply and for discovery (28 and 29). I guess we won’t be seeing any more juicy inside information.

- Starwood has a new whistleblower at the Palm Springs hotel (See Docket 30 and 31). It appears that a declaration from that person was filed under seal at Docket 32.

- Starwood and the hotels went back and forth on the motion to dismiss. In the end, the hotels got the fraud and unjust enrichment claims thrown out, but the declaratory judgement claim and breach of contract are going to JURY trial on 2/10/2014 (see Docket 35 and 36).

Very inside stuff, no new bombshells, and it sounds like we’ll have to wait awhile for much more movement here unless the case settles.

Thanks for the update, Seth!

We can have plenty of debates in the comments, and often do, about the effectiveness of what’s often referred to as security theatre.

My own view is that the “tradeoff between liberty and security” is, in this context, a canard — because the TSA contributes little that’s meaningful to security. They focus on silly things which distract resources from real threats. And real security comes not from that agency but from reinforced cockpit doors, and from passengers unwilling to stand by anymore in the face of an inflight threat. And because hijacking a plane is actually hard and there aren’t that many people who actually want to go on suicide missions.

In that context, the liberties given up aren’t weighed against “making us safer” they’re weighed against almost nothing.

For those who would argue, though, that the intrusions are minimal I’d counter with what’s truly an agency run amok in the case of the Oregon man who stripped naked at the checkpoint.

Maybe it was juvenile, maybe it was silly, and I doubt it did much to bring attention to the abuses of the TSA as much as it brought attention to the guy who stripped naked.

But he was arrested and charged, and sent to trial. And John E. Brennan actions were found to be a form of protest, an exercise of his first amendment rights.

Though the courts threw out the charges, the TSA has decided to fine him themselves.

Agency fines and charges place citizens into a system that is heavily weighted in favor of the agency and denies basic due process protections found in courts. After the judge threw out the charge against Brennan, 50, the TSA got one of its administrative judges to fine him $1,000 for violating a federal rule stating passengers may not “interfere with, assault, threaten, or intimidate” TSA screeners. You may ask how stripping is an act of interference or assault or threat or intimidation. It does not matter. Once in the administrative process, the agency gets a huge degree of deference in determining violations with judges who are dependent on the agency for the very jurisdiction of their “court.”

A court already found there was no criminal activity. But that court has no jurisdiction over the TSA’s decision after the court ruled.

News and Notes from Around the Interweb:

• You are what you eat: How to Game the US Airways System to Get the Cheese Plate instead of the strange Turkey and Hummus Sandwich

• Nigerian 419 Scammers Want Your Miles: If you get a fax or email telling you that “you’ve won” and you just need to reply with your frequent flyer number and password it might just be a scam. (HT: Alan H.)

• Don't Shanghai my PJs! Reader Joan passes along a rumor that Cathay Pacific will be going with a new brand for their pajamas and ending their relationship with Shanghai Tang.

• But Have to Sleep at a Radisson for Two Nights: Club Carlson is offering 10,000 bonus points for stays that are 2 nights or longer between May 13 and July 21. Registration required. (HT: Loyalty Lobby)

Most airlines have some form of expiring miles. Most programs promote that their miles never expire… but there’s a catch. The miles may not expire, but the account itself can become dormant with all miles forfeit if there’s no activity for a prolonged period of time.

Only Delta, among major frequent flyer programs, offers no mileage expiration – period. Ironically in the middle of the last decade they were one of the early adopters of shortened expiration times. Most US frequent flyer programs expired miles after three years, and they led the charge to reduce that initially to 24 months and they even limited the types of activity that would extend the life of an account. Once they had expired a bunch of miles off of their balance sheet, they announced their miles would no longer expire. Though they promoted it as ‘the right thing to do’ they didn’t go back and restore miles they had taken away.

Nonetheless, I don’t mind expiring miles as long as the policies are clear and the rules aren’t draconian like Spirit Air’s program which expires miles if you do not earn miles in your account every three months.

You need to keep your account active, be an engaged member at some level, and your miles will be fine. Use a tracking tool that helps you manage your frequent flyer programs and track expirations. I use Award Wallet.

Once you have your balances, and many of your account expiration dates in front of you, it’s easy to keep miles alive in most frequent flyer progams.

Here’s a list of the mileage expiration rules for several popular airline frequent flyer programs.

• Aegean Airlines: 36 months of inactivity
  
• Aeroplan: 12 months of inactivity, miles earned expire after 7 years if unused
  
• Air France/KLM: Non-elites lose their miles after 20 months without a flight on a Flying Blue or Skyteam airline
  
• Alaska Airlines: 24 months of inactivity (although some experiences may differ)
  
• American Airlines: 18 months of inactivity
  
• All Nippon: Miles expire at the end of 36 months from when they were earned
  
• AviancaTaca: 24 months of inactivity
  
• British Airways: 36 months of inactivity
  
• Delta: Miles don’t expire
  
• Korean Air: Miles expire after 10 years
  
• Singapore Airlines: Miles expire the month following three years after they were earned, but can be extended for at a cost for six months (12 months for elites)
  
• Southwest: 24 months of inactivity
  
• United: 18 months of inactivity
  
• US Airways: 18 months of inactivity
  
• Virgin Atlantic: 36 months of inactivity

You’ll see that some non-US frequent flyer programs will expire your miles no matter what you do. You have to use miles earned right away, or least within three years, or else you will lose them. Then there are hybrids, like the Air Canada Aeroplan program, where you have to keep your account active with some sort of earning or burning every 12 months or else you’ll lose your miles. But all miles earned, regardless activity, will lapse after 7 years.

So what are the simplest ways to keep an account active? The particulars vary by airline, since their specific partners aren’t all the same, but in general the tools to keep at your disposal (in addition to flying the airline, or using their co-branded credit card) are:

• Points.com Many programs will let you trnasfer points in very low increments through the Points.com portal, perhaps 4 Alaska miles can be moved into a single American mile for instance while extending the life of both accounts, and for no fee.
  
• Credit a rental car. Most airlines have rental car partners. They usually generate very few miles. Credit an upcoming rental to the frequent flyer program you need to extend points with. I’ve been known to even purposely not credit a rental, and then submit for retro credit later when I need points in a particular program. This is easy online with Avis.
  
• Online purchase through a shopping portal. Most programs have online shopping portals, if you go to the merchant you’re going to make a purchase from through the shopping portal site you’ll earn miles. The trick here is making sure the miles actually post, some portals are more reliable than others and some merchants take a couple of months to post points.
  
• Buy or transfer miles. Not free but you can usually spend $35 or less with many programs to drop a few extra miles in an account and extend its life.
  
• Redeem miles for magazines. Even if you don’t want the magazine subscription you can sacrifice 500 miles and generate quick and easy account activity.
  
• Audience rewards. US Airways miles (and also Starwood points) can be extended by answering a few trivia questions, and people frequently post the answers on MIlepoint. You can also earn a handful of Delta miles this way.
  
• Transfer points in from a hotel program. The best value tends to come from Starwood, which also has the most airline partners. And Starwood Platinum members get a gold star here because they are allowed to transfer any number of miles they wish including generally just transferring one Starpoint. That generates account activity and gives up almost nothing in the process.
  
• Transfer points in from a credit card program. American Express Membership Rewards is especially useful here because when you transfer points on their website you can move points into anyone’s frequent flyer account that you wish — you just need to link it first using the website. When you call Amex they will tell you that there are much greater limits, so transferring points to others must be done by phone. Chase Ultimate Rewards is another place to go for transferrable points.
  
• Dining for Miles. I remember back when Rewards Network was Transmedia and then became iDine. You register a credit card with an airline-branded version of the miles for dining program, then charge a meal (or a soda) to that credit card to earn some miles. You can join each airline’s program, just be sure to use a different credit card each time.
  
• Transfer points in from a survey program like e-Rewards or e-miles.

Tim Winship used to sign off, “May your miles never expire!” Use these Hunger Games tricks and the expiration odds will be forever in your favor!

I want to make sure you get all of the best deals and opportunities I write about.

For the past 11 years I’ve been writing this blog — covering how to earn the most points quickly, easily, and at low cost and how to use those points in the most leveraged way. Many readers have traveled the world as I do, with a frequency and in the sort of style that we all never dreamed possible before discovering how to make the most of loyalty programs.

And I’ve covered short term outsized opportunities as well, the kind of things that you have to act on right away (whether mistake fares or other glitches that might last mere hours).

Making the most of this hobby requires staying diligent, and there are several ways for you to join the tens of thousands who keep up with View from the Wing every day.

• You can follow me on Twitter 

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Never miss out on a deal or advice on getting the most for your miles!

And however you’re reading the blog, I just appreciate it that you do, many folks have stuck with me now for the full elevent years I’ve been writing about travel, points, and upgrades.. and that’s incredibly humbling.

Details have been announced for Star MegaDO 5!

It’s the ultimate frequent flyer adventure. Join a couple hundred of your newest frequent flyer enthusiast friends, meeting with airline executives, getting behind the scenes tours, bringing home amazing souvenirs and memories, and earning bonus elite qualifying miles in the MileagePlus program along the way.

These events sell out quickly in days or even minutes. So if you’re interested, pay attention.

“North of the border to the desert to the sea”

• When? October 22nd-25th
  
• Partners: Air Canada, Marriott, Rimowa, Star Alliance, United
  
• Routing: Toronto – Tucson – San Francisco
  
• Touring: Rimowa factory, Air Canada, Aircraft Maintenance And Regeneration Center, plus a United Airlines Hanger Party
  
• Miles: 2500 – 15,000 elite qualifying miles with participating airline(s) depending on class of service

Star MegaDO 5 will go on sale May 20th at 12pm Central time (1pm Eastern).

So what’s a MegaDO? November’s Star MegaDO 4 chartered United’s first 787. Frequent flyers got to experience it in a fantastic party atmosphere, and it was covered by the Economist, by the New York Times, by the Wall Street Journal and by… the Wall Street Journal.