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Pleasantly surprised by Cathay Pacific's service for oneworld emerald customers even in economy. Middle seat was automatically blocked off, multiple FAs came by to greet me, was given a bottle of water and a blanket / pillow
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Apparently in Germany, if your DB train arrives at your destination between 1 hour and up to 2 hours late, you get 25% compensation, and if 2 hours or more, 50% compensation.
Had a crazy delay going from Berlin to Munich where our train arrived 2.5 hours late 🥲
Merry Christmas! Hope you are all having a great holiday season. It’s my favorite time of year because I feel like people actively try to be much friendlier, kinder, and more generous.
Speaking of generous…I realized I would be letting two decently valuable coupons go unused on 12/31 if I didn’t quickly give them away, I would love to gift them to two people who could really make good use of them.
At the beginning of the year, I did a reflection on 2015 and made some projections about what statuses I had earned, whether they’d be useful, and if I’d aim to re-qualify for them by the end of the year:
Elite Status Roundup: What I’ve earned, and what I’ve learned
I certainly reaped the benefits of Alaska status, whether they be the extra ~50,000 redeemable miles I earned, the Premium Economy seats on my upcoming AA flight to Madrid or the occasional exit row seat on Delta that isn’t considered part of its Economy Comfort offering. I also got upgraded a few times on Alaska metal itself, which, while nice, was nothing mind blowing. I still consider it an auxiliary benefit more than anything, although it might be more valuable now that Virgin America’s SFO-JFK route will be owned by Alaska. We’ll see when the upgrade policies coallesce.
As you all know, the Alaska Airlines / Virgin America merger was finally approved recently. Alaska is taking more steps to merge the two airlines, and part of that process is a merger of the two frequent flier programs.
Many people got the following email stating that their Virgin America Elevate accounts and Mileage Plan accounts would be merged on January 9.
Dear Michael,
We have some exciting news about Virgin America’s integration with Alaska Airlines. Starting today, Elevate members can now earn points when flying on Alaska Airlines.
I’ve been having a (private) love affair with fixed-value airline miles over the past few months, and I even went so far as to sign up for the JetBlue credit card in wake of the ridiculous promotion they were offering (from which I netted 75,000 JetBlue miles for a round trip flight that cost me $75). Doctor of Credit explains it well, but the appeal for getting the card was the combination of an (unlimited) 10% points rebate as well as the opportunity to earn Mosaic status after spending $50,000 on the card in a single year. Mosaic status offers unlimited free cancellations of both cash (refund to voucher) and award flights, which is amazing for planning domestic travel since I can speculatively book flights without fear of either not being able to take the flight or finding cheaper flights later on.
NOTE: Please read comments about potential eligibility requirements that are not officially listed on the promotion site. As with everything YMMV.
For any of you who follow the major blogs, you’ve heard by now that JetBlue is running a promotion where they will ‘match’ your Virgin America points balances after you send them an email with a screenshot of your Virgin America balance and fly a single round-trip flight with them by August 31.
In the spirit of Travel is Free and my earlier compilation of an award chart for Virgin America, I decided it would be fun to document my findings for Virgin Atlantic (VS) to see if there was any good value to be had.
(For whatever reason, I spend a lot of time combining the Virgin award charts. I think I might be the equivalent of a travel-hacking hipster, playing with programs and credit cards because they’re explicitly not in vogue).
I’ve spent a lot of time combing through the Virgin America partner award calculator, and I’ve found it to be a huge PITA to deal with. So I decided to compile it for you all in spreadsheet form (/ht also to my friend Jacob). You can explore below, or see the original version here.
Happy hacking!
For my flight home for Thanksgiving, I booked an award flight on Virgin America (VX). As I had just completed the Membership Rewards 80,000 point transfer promotion, it would be my first flight as a VX Elevate Gold member. Although the benefits of Gold status aren’t the most amazing (since VX doesn’t offer complimentary F upgrades), I was able to take advantage of the free award cancellations to save $65 in points when three days before my flight the price randomly fell to $173 (the price jumped to $349 after immediately after I made my booking).
On our way back from Travelcon, Esther and I stopped by the Virgin America Loft at LAX for breakfast and refreshments t-shirt before our leg home to San Francisco. I have Virgin America (VX) Gold status from the Membership Rewards promo they are currently offering, so I get lounge access as a benefit of that status, but in any event, both of us have Priority Passes (me from my Amex Plat and she from her Citi Prestige), so we would be able to get free entry through that.
These Silvercar discount codes came as part of a Virgin America promotional email today.
1st time renters: use code ELEVATE75 for $75 off.
Returning customers: use code ELEVATE15 for 15% off.
I have my first-time reservation in FLL coming up in December that I had previously used code FTU50 for 1 day free. When I got this new code, I thought about cancelling the reservation and rebooking it with the new code, but was concerned that there would be IT issues with being considered a 1st-time renter, etc. So I shot off a quick email to support@silvercar.com and within 10 minutes I had received a response from Customer Support:
