penguinbar

I was going to use my miles with United to go to Florida a few weeks ago. They had no direct flights from LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale. You had to stop in Dallas first. Talk about out of the way!

g1ant

Finding availability is the hardest part of the game at the moment.

tonrob

Exactly. It took me a while, but once I'd built up a reasonable balance across a few programs it got easier.

Chase Ultimate Rewards are good in particular as they transfer to United (for Star Alliance), BA (for One World) and Southwest.

penguinbar

They had no direct flights even without using my miles. Jet Blue and Delta had direct flights at reasonable prices. I was going to use my miles on Delta but since I got a flight for $208 round trip(including taxes) I decided to save them. I do pay a fee for the Platinum Sky miles card but It does include a "free" companion ticket so my husband's ticket only cost $21 and we got priority boarding and free checked luggage.

tonrob

Now it's 50K. Spend is still $5K and no statement credit given.

tonrob

Points Guy covers here.

Crappy fuel surcharges (like BA) and not many routes to choose from, but may be of use to someone. This is the best offer I've seen for this card - usually tops out at 50-55K.

tonrob

IHG's Priority Club recently renamed themselves IHG Rewards and, at roughly the same time (but likely not directly connected), Chase started rolling out a Mastercard version of the IHG card ti replace the old Visa one.

Mine arrived yesterday, and while I normally throw all the paper bumpf that comes in the envelope away, this time I happened to notice that there was an offer of 1,000 points for making the first purchase with the new card.

As I've said before, this is a card I keep purely for the 'free annual' night (well, I say free but the card's annual fee effectively makes it $65 - but well worth it as I used my last one for a stay at Intercontinental Times Square). I don't put any spend on this card at all - just simply not worth it - but I will make an exception this time and spend a few cents at a gas pump to get my 1,000 point bonus (however little they're worth).

tonrob

Well, headline should say 20% off the lowest rate you could find after discounts etc. although note that this won't work with prepaid rates.

AMEX has a Sync offer until the end of the month whereby you get $20 back when spending $100 at Courtyards. I can confirm that a purchase of a $100 gift card at one of my local Courtyards triggered the statement credit.

Notes:

1. Gift cards cannot be used to pay for prepaid/advance purchase stays
2. The Gift Card I bought has Courtyard branding, but it can be used at any hotel in the Marriott family of brands (they are all interchangeable for that purpose)
3. Note previous posts on how to scale up these opportunities. You can make one purchase per AMEX-issued AMEX cards (so includes authorized users) and one purchase per non-AMEX issued card account (so AU's don't count separately there).

g1ant

Just back from my latest jaunt to England to see my folks and for a friend's 60th birthday party.

I was originally booked AUS-DFW-CLT-MAN on US Airways in Business for 50k AA miles and $5, but didn't fancy going transatlantic on a 757 so when PHL-LHR on BA in F popped up the day before, I bit the bullet and fronted up an extra 12.5k miles and $520 in YQ. Well worth it though. Excellent flight on BA all round.

Had a night on the piss with my mate in Sheffield, stayed at the new Hampton by Hilton for a bargain 10,000 Hilton points, followed by a night in the Doubletree in Leeds for the birthday party for 30,000 Hiltons.

A few days in Yorkshire then down to Heathrow. Stayed at the Sheraton Skyline for 10,000 SPG as I had a LHR-PRG at 7:30am (4,000 Avios and $27). Dumped my bag at the Sheraton and headed for a few days on the beer in Prague.

Four nights in a suite at the Radisson Blu Alcron in Prague set me back a whopping 198,000 Carlson points, but they gave me a 1000 Czech crown ($50) bar credit for each of the four nights..... Sweet, a few Bushmills 16 year single malts as a nightcap for free.

Returned PRG=LHR for another 10,000 SPG night in the Sheraton Skyline, picked my bag up and the next day flew LHR-IAH in F on BA again for a bargain 62.5k AA miles and $352 YQ.

Spoiled the run of freebies by having to buy a ticket on United back from Houston to Austin for $69 AND had to sit in economy... oh the indignity of it......

All in all, a pretty cheap two weeks. Now I have to start hitting my Arrival card pretty hard to pay for the YQ, the train tickets in the UK and the taxis in Prague.

Happy Days.

coastieexpat

Brilliant ! That's the way to do it........

dunroving

Pretty off-topic but just wanted to say I flew Aer Lingus Dublin to Chicago yesterday, second time I have flown this flight after being rescheduled when my USAir connection was buggered up last month.

From these two experiences I think Aer Lingus are absolutely shite. Other than having to go back by the same route on Sunday, I will never fly Aer Lingus again if I can help it.

tonrob

What was bad about them? I've never flown them, but they're touted as a way to get to Europe using BA or AA miles without paying fuel surcharges (to get things slightly back on topic!).

coastieexpat

I'm curious also. I was considering taking that flight ia few months ago....... were you in Biz class Dunroving. ?

dunroving

Sorry, I should have included some detail. When I posted, I was still knackered from the journey and just venting.

Let's see:

No free drink with the meal (OK, not a big deal, but with all the faffing with credit cards, it made the service really, really slow). I'm not a huge fan of unlimited free alcohol on Transatlantic flights (jeez, how do people manage to drink so frickin' much on a daytime flight?), but at least a free glass of wine with lunch/dinner isn't asking much, and would prevent all the arsing around with people pulling their bags out of the overheads to get their wallets.

Piss-poor service from the flight attendants in general.

Meal service was about three hours after take-off. We took off at 11:30 so that meant "lunch" was served mid-afternoon.

After lunch I swear they didn't come and clear up for over an hour.

Female flight attendant stood flirting/gabbing for an hour at least with three male passengers right next to the galley/toilet in the middle of the plane. FFS, whatever happened to not congregating in the aisles and next to the toilets?

Lastly, I was involved in a "Knee Defender" type fracas with the eejit sitting behind me. Details for another post, maybe, but the flight attendants did absolutely nothing. It just was the final straw on a crap flight with a crap airline.

tonrob

That does sound shitty.

Business class might be worth a punt though if using miles. Managed to find a review from 2 years ago:

Lucky Charms Ireland: Aer Lingus Business Class Boston to Dublin - One Mile at a Time

Also found a post about improved business seats from next year:

Aer Lingus New Business Class A330 Unveiled - One Mile at a Time

It does sound like some of your problems were crew-related, and I'm sure a determined crew could screw-up the business class service just as much as the economy one without having to try too hard.