The current cover story of Inside Flyer discusses how to go about booking award travel, from constructing the itinerary with available seats and the websites you can use to find those seats, as well as preparing for and making a successful call to the airline. It features many of the suggestions and techniques that I offered at the Chicago Seminar back in October, and outlines the pluses and minuses of the KVS Availabiltiy Tool, Expertflyer, and Award Nexus.

My criticism of Nate Silver’s New York Times take on fairness and disparity in airfares leads their roundup of online reaction to his writings. While it’s certainly interesting to do statistical analysis of airfares, I take issue with the conclusions he draws from the data analysis. As one of my commenters observed, how can Fedex be taking up most of the capacity at Memphis, squeezing aut all the potential air service that would come ot the city and bring down prices, when the bulk of their activity is late night?

Meanwhile, Hyatt Gold Passport asked me if I would contribute a story and some thoughts on points redemption to their Facebook page. No requirements other than helping their readers think about how to use points, something they say their surveys suggest plenty of people don’t know where to start with. So I wrote a short bit on aspirational travel, how I like to use my own points, with a focus on hotel points and Hyatt with more broadly applicable thoughts. (Y’know, I probably should have asked them for some points or something, but for the record this wasn’t compensated in any way.)

Update: I guess I was remiss in leaving out this Laura Bly USA Today piece on credit card bonus offers. Oops!