Monkey Miles: "Did you know that you can fly in lie flat business class ( or better premium economy, economy ) seats when flying domestically in the US? These planes are often on the transcontinental ( LA/SFO to New York, DC, Boston, or Miami ) routes, but you’ll regularly see them repositioning for long haul flights between hubs: think Dallas and Chicago for American. You can find them by looking at the Cargo schedules of the airline you’re going to fly since those airlines have sold cargo space on passenger planes as well."
Until just the other day, United required 121,000 miles for one-way first class ticket to Europe on Lufthansa or to Japan on All Nippon Airways (ANA). Well, FlyerTalker ChazzaBazza flagged that the new rates are as follows:
United no longer publishes an award chart so it's easy for them to slide in these changes under the radar. Of course, United's award rates were already unnecessarily high so most people shouldn't have booking either of these options with United miles.
It certainly feels like United is moving closer and closer to Delta SkyMiles - a program notorious for some of the worst award rates in the industry. I don't think we can be surprised given United's actions in the last several years, but it's disappointing nonetheless.
Perhaps, they think people love and stay loyal to discount programs like the ones you find at grocery stores.
Mainly Miles: "Avios is no longer just a cheap way to redeem Qantas flights in Australia - Virgin's new Qatar Airways partnership opens up a new option, and it beats using KrisFlyer miles by up to 54%."
"Now Qatar Avios should be your go-to redemption option for Virgin Australia flights, bookable wholly online at far more competitive rates than before, plus you can port British Airways Avios across for free, to unlock the same great deals with those too."
View From The Wing: "There has been an absolute rash of American Airlines AAdvantage account fraud lately. I must have heard from a dozen readers in the past two weeks who had miles stolen."
"The AAdvantage fraud team isn’t available over the weekend, making it easier to actually travel on fraudulent redemptions. They require you to fill out a police report and give them a copy. Only that’s not the easiest thing with some police departments."
IHG One Rewards has launched a promo in which those who have either of Chase's co-branded personal cards (IHG Premier Card or IHG Traveler Card) can get 15% off award stays.
To take advantage of the promo, you must book April 27, 2024 and complete your stay by June 10, 2024. The 15% discount will be applied and displayed at the time of booking.
This promo can be used on stays of up to 3 nights which means you can't pair this with the 4th night free offered to cardholders.
On April 24, 2024, IHG Platinum and Diamond members will also have access to this promo.
Points Wire Note:
Since late 2022, IHG One Rewards has run promos like this every 3-5 months.
Frequent Miler: "The not-quite-amazing news is that Hilton only expects around 100 properties to go online this year. That’s less than 20% of the SLH portfolio which means that opportunities to book SLH stays via Hilton will be limited initially."
Some highlights from Greg's conversation with Hilton's Chief Marketing Officer:
You can transfer Citi ThankYou Points to Accor Live Limitless with a 50% bonus by 11:59pm ET on May 11, 2024. The standard Citi transfer rate to Accor is 2:1 with a minimum transfer of 1,000 points - 1,000 Citi points = 500 Accor points. With the 50% transfer bonus, 1,000 Citi points will get you 750 Accor points.
Since Accor Live Limitless is a revenue-based program, points have a set value of €0.02 (~$0.213) with a minimum redemption of 2,000 Accor points. You can apply Accor points to a cash booking at an Accor property.
The Mile Lion: "One of the hardest KrisFlyer awards to book is the Star Alliance Round-the-World (RTW) award, but when the stars align just right, it can be magical."
"Unfortunately, Singapore Airlines has announced that it will be eliminating this award type from 1 May 2024, though there’s still time to book one now if you don’t mind doing the (not insignificant) legwork!"
Live And Let's Fly: "In what appears to be a change to longstanding policy, United Airlines is no longer making all of its “saver level” award space available to members of partner frequent flyer programs. If this is indeed a new trend, it will certainly impact the usefulness of partner programs like Air Canada Aeroplan or Avianca LifeMiles for many US-based travelers."
Points Wire Note:
My hope is that this isn't a policy change. I've seen United restrict business class award space to their own MileagePlus members at times in the past, but it's always come back. We'll see how things go this time!
The Points Guy: "Scandinavian Airlines has firmed up the timeline for its departure from the Star Alliance."
"SAS will leave the global airline alliance effective Aug. 31, the Stockholm-based carrier said Monday."
Points Wire Note:
it's rarely been easy to find much business class award space on SAS. I'll be curious to see if that changes once it joins SkyTeam since Air France-KLM now have a stake in the airline. Of course, if there are steep carrier-imposed surcharges when booking with Flying Blue, it won't really matter if there's a lot of award space.
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