Category: flights

The Case Against Mileage Running

February 18, 2016 / / 4 Comments

Now that I’m 24 hours removed from my mileage run to Dallas and have no further runs on the books, I figured it would be a reasonable time to reflect on my decision to do the runs in the first place, add some context where I omitted it, and decide if it makes sense to do again in the future.

For some context, see my post on The Case for Mileage Running, in which I outlined my initial rationale for spending three nights on a plane for no purpose other than to get on a plane in the opposite direction two hours later. For those new to travel hacking, also see here for a description of the difference between redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles. Continue reading ā†’

The Case for Mileage Running

February 16, 2016 / / 5 Comments

Hello from the Centurion Lounge at San Francisco International Airport, which has been my temporary home for three of the past four Tuesday nights before a series of mileage runs to Dallas!

Yep, you read that correctly (although despite the fancy shoes, mileage running has nothing to do with actual running).

I write a lot about how I approach travel hacking, which is largely based on evaluating the (opportunity) costs of taking advantage of a particular hack and comparing it to the rewards I reap from it. So it may come as a surprise to hear that I have (not once, not twice, but thrice) opted to pay money to take an overnight flight to Dallas only to turn right around once I get there and arrive in San Francisco before it’s time to head into work. Continue reading ā†’

Some Tips for Saving Money on Airfare

February 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Recently, a co-worker of mine asked for help booking his family’s summer travel to London. Searching for himself, his wife, and three kids, the price he had found (despite building in flexibility on both ends of the trip) was $14,000 for 5 people.

….for economy.

Summer travel to Europe is expensive. London travel is even worse, because it always has a steady flow of business travelers.

Given that my co-worker had a fairly tight set of constraints on his trip, the traditional sources of flexibility we look for — changing dates, changing locations — weren’t going to be sufficient in this situation. Add to that the fact that he needs five tickets, and we had a challenge on our hands. Continue reading ā†’

Lessons learned from flying Southwest

January 27, 2016 / / 0 Comments

I havenā€™t paid for a Southwest flight, yet Iā€™ve flown tens of thousands of miles with them.

All my travel has been free. Or at least very close to it. The points took me maybe an hour to earn (via a credit card) and cost $99 for the initial annual fee. The voluntary deboard (VDB) vouchers Iā€™ve earned ($392 and $456) were earned on flights that I paid for with points and another voucher.

Free has its costs Continue reading ā†’

JetBlue reimburses me for departure airport change

January 17, 2016 / / 3 Comments

TL;DR: Persistence pays off. Pursue every avenue you can think of, until you’re clearly out of options. Of course, calculate whether the pursuit is worth the effort. And book every flight with a card that has a trip delay benefit…

On 1/6, my husband and I took JetBlue to Las Vegas for the world’s most attended tradeshow, the Consumer Electronics Show. Ā I won’t go into too much detail (maybe do a trip report later), but if you’ve never heard of it or haven’t been and you like gadgets, cars, drones, virtual reality, home appliances, cameras, and basically any other consumer electronic, you should go. It never fails to be one of the most memorable trips of the year, every year, and is the only trip that my husband will not protest going on. (Plus, if you like free stuff, it’s also good for that :P) Continue reading ā†’

Orbitz Makes My Head Spin

January 9, 2016 / / 8 Comments

I’m about as close to an Orbitz fanboy as you can find on the internet. I even signed up for the Orbitz rewards credit card, and I continue to book with them even after they eviscerated their best price guarantee program. That’s why I was supremely annoyed to find this in my inbox as I was sitting down to enjoy a burger at my friend Grant’s ‘meat’-up this afternoon:

For context, AA has been running some $100.60 round trip fares to Dallas from San Francisco. After all the rewards I can get, it ends up costing me about $93 for each round trip, so I decided to book two back-to-back for next week to start padding my Alaska mileage account and re-qualify for elite status for 2017. Continue reading ā†’

Elite Status Roundup: What Iā€™ve earned, and what Iā€™ve learned

January 5, 2016 / / 1 Comment

As 2015 was my first full year of travel/travel hacking, it was also the first year in which I achieved status with airline and hotel loyalty programs. In the spirit of being analytical in my decision-making, I figured it would be worth doing an accounting of the statuses I attained and the benefits that they ended up offering me in practice (I only have about three months of data since I qualified for most of these in October or November). So, without further ado: Continue reading ā†’

AwardFinder – a better flight awards search engine

December 7, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Apparently some of my travel hacker friends were not aware of this tool, so here’s a little introduction post for this very useful app. I’ve been using it for the last couple months and it has helped me find and book multiple awards. It’s mostly useful for Star Alliance, Oneworld, Etihad and partners, as well as certain specific partners for supported search engines.

AwardFinder is a App for the Chrome browserĀ that brings the power of many airline award search engines to one convenient place. ItĀ also adds additional features on top of the official airline search engines, such as the ability to search multiple cabins, multiple origins / destinations, save your searches, and more! Continue reading ā†’

Is Gogo onto the free wifi trick?

December 4, 2015 / / 1 Comment

After learning about theĀ trick to get free wifi with GogoĀ on board a few months ago, I’ve been using WiFi happily on most of my flights, both on my iPhone as well as on my laptopĀ  (that is pretending to be an iPhone/iPad)

On my last flight on American recently, after doing the trick 2 times, I was hit with this screen when I tried to download the Gogo app again!

I tried disconnecting and connecting again, as well as clearing my cookies and that didn’t do anything. Only by waiting forĀ aĀ day to pass did I seem to be able to download the app again. There doesn’t seem to be a way around this on mobile, but I did see the CAPTCHAĀ screen flash before I saw this screen, so it may be possible to get around this screen on a laptop.Ā I will investigate further on my next flight, but possible courses of action are: Continue reading ā†’

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