Windbag Miles

I’m excited that the Points Pals service has only been operational for a little over a week, and I’m already helping folks make their travel dreams come true. This past week while I was away for work and also sick, I got an email from a reader asking how to get to Hawaii using Alaska milesContinue reading “POINTS PALS Reader Success Story!”

A while back I wrote about something I called the “Delta Head Start,” which is when you can take advantage of Delta’s 11-month booking window to grab award space on SkyTeam partners. Specifically, since Flying Blue only opens up award booking 10 months in advance, there’s a one month head start where KLM and AirContinue reading “Revisiting the Delta Head Start and making sense of Flying Blue’s award calendar”

I was on the road this past week, which was really fucking convenient, given that this blog blew up like never before, and I was too busy all day to do anything about it. I was even getting mentioned on Twitter, which was exciting (I’ve been on Twitter for almost a decade and I don’tContinue reading “A good ol’ fashioned travel diary”

Raise your hand if you saw “AF” in the title and thought I meant “annual fee.” Anyway, I was poking around and found really great availability on SAS to Europe right now. The below screenshots for February and March are for four passengers in non-stop business class to Copenhagen. I think this is a biggerContinue reading “Ready for more screenshots? SAS business class is available AF to Europe right now.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Merrill+ Visa card (issued by Bank of America), due partially to the perk they offer whereby you get a free Delta Skyclub membership after spending $50,000 on the card. (The membership is one of the perks of what they call “Plus” status, although I’m not sure what elseContinue reading “Crunching the numbers on the Merrill+ Visa Delta Skyclub Membership benefit”

When I started getting into premium credit cards, the one perk I was always least excited about was the concierge service. I had had Visa Signature cards for a couple years and never used their concierge, so I didn’t really think much of it when I got a Citi Prestige card and then an AmexContinue reading “Raise your hand if you give a crap about concierge services.”

Today was like Christmas part two for me… or even Christmas part one, because I don’t really celebrate Christmas normally. What was I so excited about? Well, Doctor of Credit (one of my 5 favorite blogs of 2016, you might remember) had a post at the beginning of 2016 asking people with fledgling blogs toContinue reading “The way the wind is blowing”

I kept seeing people on Facebook post that “Me at the beginning of 2016/Me at the end of 2016” meme thing, and I thought of this. Happy new year!

Prologue: from the title, you could probably guess that this is a long, rambling post about some award availability quirks that I found while researching award availability back to the US from Europe. Before we get started, though, I have to point out that availability from Copenhagen to the USA is outstanding right now. If youContinue reading “Great Business Class availability from CPH to USA. Oh, and is United’s website overclaiming Star Alliance availability? Also, is Swiss blocking space on direct flights?”

Part of this blog is me documenting the process of learning the ins and outs of the points and miles world, which means that I have to admit that I don’t know things that are probably already common knowledge to the experts out there. Some of my old posts seem pretty embarrassing in retrospect, likeContinue reading “Today I Learned: AAdvantage is AAnoying”