links from the web: double alaska EQM, $50 hilton gold memberships, 250 free virgin elevate miles, and free mcdonald's coffee

1) from hackmytrip, alaska airlines is offering a double elite (and regular) qualifying mile promotion running from now through may 2014. it is only for seattle flights to and from other west coast cities. registration is required. the eligible airports are: LAX, LAS, OAK, SFO, SJC, STS. double qualifying miles sounds exciting, although if you realize that SEA-SFO is roughly 700 miles, double miles will only be a slight help. still, something is better than nothing.

2) from almost every blog out there, they're pointing to a milepoint membership offer. milepoint is a frequent flyer forum which is similar to flyertalk. for a $49.95 fee, they have a ton of partner offers including:

• hilton hhonors gold elite status for a year
• hyatt hotels 10% discount off all gift card purchases
• pointshound level 2 status plus 1,000 miles/points for your first booking (i.e., 1,000 points)
• united mileage plus 1,000 bonus award miles
• national car rental emerald club status

overall, you can buy hilton hhonors gold elite status, their almost top tier status for just $49.95. this would be perfect for upgrades and bonus amenities if you only stay at hilton hotel brands once in a while. this is almost as cheap as buying intercontinental hotel rewards' top tier status for $120.

3) on flyertalk, someone posts that you can earn a free 250 virgin america elevate points by entering a facebook sweepstakes. the sweepstakes is for a trip for two to dubai on emirates. as a canadian, you're not allowed to win the big prize, but you can certainly grab the free 250 points.

4) mcdonald's is offering free small coffee all day from oct 28 - nov 3. free is free.

united changes its star gold checked luggage limits

my clinics were incredibly busy over the last few weeks, and because of that, my daily trolling of the flyertalk was on the low side. reading through this thread, it appears that united airlines is devaluing arguably one of the most lucrative parts of the star gold experience.

under the rules of the star alliance, star gold members are required to get an extra free checked bag (or 50lbs if based on the weight system). it used to be that on domestic itineraries (canada counts as international in this case), you would have to pay for your first checked bag if you were a non-elite. star alliance silver status would exempt you from having to pay for your first checked bag. star alliance gold gave you three free pieces of checked luggage.

now, under these changes, star alliance gold status will get you only one free piece of checked luggage, weighing no more than 50lbs. this is the bare minimum to be in accordance with star alliance rules. members of united mileage plus who receive star gold status (i.e., premier gold, platinum, and 1k), continue to receive 3 pieces of checked luggage. star alliance silver status no longer gets you any free bags at all, unless you earned your star silver status through mileage plus, which would allow you one free bag.

i consider this to be the most lucrative aspect of the star gold program because this is the only part of the program where you can actually assign a dollar value. people will value lounge access, priority boarding, and priority baggage different dollar amounts, but one cannot deny the cost of having that extra piece of luggage with you. i suspect that other airlines will be following suit soon.

in verifying this, i got to play with united's fast and very helpful baggage calculator, which can be found here.

"oh, i'm transiting through SEA, IAH, and ORD instead. that's so much better." planning for london (january 2014)

when i booked my reward trip to singapore, i realized that i was giving up a chance to earn 19,000 status miles with a regular revenue ticket. i currently need an additional 19,000 status miles by november 30, 2014 in order to maintain my asiana diamond status, which equal star gold status. as we know, star gold status is very, very useful.

looking into the future, given that i write my certifying board exams in the middle of 2014, travel will be looking pretty sparse. so this is where the mandatory trips that i have to take will have to earn me status miles.

case in point: in january, i have to head to london, ontario for a review course. incidentally, it is after this review course that i jet off on my almost-all-business-class ticket to singapore. so i needed to buy tickets that made the most sense for me.

1) timing isn't a concern
for my certifying board exams, i don't want to have to deal with any potential mis-connections when i fly out to write them. so i'm probably going to fly directly from the west coast to ottawa because those exams are very, very important. a review course is less so. but it's nice to not have a snafu like what happened on my way to a different review course last year. in this case, i can fly out on either a saturday or sunday, as long as i arrive in london in time for the 8am start of class on monday.

2) there is a limit to how much you can spend
my friend told me about this amazing sale on westjet whereby he got his roundtrip tickets to london, ontario from the west coast for just $480. i was hunting around for price and the cheapest fare i could get on air canada was $330 all in for a tango fare. this, of course, was a wonderfully timed flight. short flight time, and barely a stopover. ideal if timing was everything.

i know that you can get cheaper, but i figure that going to a smaller centre would be a bit more expensive than the $550 toronto fares that i heard about 5 years ago. so i was willing to settle for $330 one way.

while air canada tango fares now offer 25% status miles, they still offer 0% status miles on asiana. so for $330, you could get zero status miles. if you paid $398, the following screen would tell you that you'd be booked into an L-fare.

according to asiana, all L-fares accrue 50% mileage. while air canada offers 100%, i only care about what i will get for the program that i'm crediting things to.

so for $398, you will get 1000 points for YVR-YYZ, and another 250 points for YYZ-YXU, for a grand total of 1,250 status miles.

3) if you fell short for the year, would you do a mileage run in order to get more?
absolutely i would. and so therefore, i might as well spend a little bit now on trips that i'm already taking rather than book a brand new itinerary for which i'd need to pay additional for airport taxes and surcharges (which can be up to $100 per round trip domestically!)

this is when i decided to look at united. united has great flights out of seattle, which is just a short $50 quick shuttle bus away. alternatively, if i'm daring, i can use the bolt bus with their $7 - $20 fares from vancouver.

4) how much more are the united flights from seattle?
doing a quick search, there are long many different flight combinations from seattle. so when looking at flights, there are a few rules. first, flight prices have to approximate what i would have paid on air canada. second, if you're going to hassle yourself by going to seattle in the first place, go all the way in terms of hassle. take multiple connections (with generous connection times). take the longest routes possible. maximize the number of elite qualifying points.

for example, i found these flights below:

option 1

option 2

taking a look at the two options, they both arrive at the same time. the second flight leaves a few hours earlier than the first. but most importantly, the second options offers 3,152 elite qualifying miles. this is almost 900 more qualifying miles than the first.

5) adding in the extra costs, is it worth it?
yes, my time is probably important. however, if my final destination is london, ontario, then i doubt that i'd be doing anything fun and exciting anyway. arriving earlier would not make my experience any richer.

i would most likely need to buy a bolt bus ticket ($7-$20 one way) and an overnight hotel (red roof inn with a free shuttle to the airport = $60). the total extra cost would run around $80. in this case, my ticket is $338 + $80 (bus + hotel) = $418. this is merely $20 more than the air canada flex fare, but would yield an additional 1,900 elite status miles.

if chasing status and trying to maintain star gold was not a priority, then i would be the first to fly the $330 air canada tango fare. but if i know that i'm going to struggle to make star gold, and if i know that it might involve a mileage run in the future, then the extra cost and time for these convoluted routings are totally worth the investment. i went ahead and booked option 2 above.

i can imagine the conversation now ...
"yes, i'm flying to london (ontario) next week," i'll say to a friend. they'll bemoan the horrors of having to transit through toronto, for which i'll interrupt, "oh, i'm transiting through seattle, houston, and chicago instead. that's so much better."

i love this crazy game i play.

booking an aeroplan reward ticket to asia: process, calculations, and business class seats

there was a recent need to make a booking to singapore in february of next year, and so i went on the hunt for tickets. i was debating between whether i wanted to make this a revenue ticket (i.e., you pay for your flight), or make this a reward ticket (i.e., using your aeroplan points). so i'm just detailing my thought process in how these tickets came to be booked.

note that this is a bit of a complicated itinerary. i was departing from one city on the outbound leg, and on the return leg, i wanted to terminate at a different city. also, my dates were fixed with little flexibility. and of course, this is during the high season of travel to asia -- it is right in the middle of chinese new year.

step 1: do i need a revenue ticket for the status miles?
the first challenge was deciding whether to make this a reward booking or a revenue booking. the absolute cost was not an issue, but it was whether the points that could have been earned on this trip were actually needed in maintaining status. the itineraries that i could pull from united could potentially give me 19,000 points. 19,000 elite qualifying points in asiana airlines' asiana club goes a long way -- that's almost like instant star silver status with them.

i need an additional 19,000 points by november 2014 to maintain my star gold status, but i'm pretty sure that i can make it without these 19,000 points. so in this case, a reward ticket was a good possibility.

step 2: what is the cost of an economy fare -- can i afford it?
my second step was to see whether it was even worth it. i would be starting my journey from YXU (london, ontario) to SIN (singapore). on the return, i wanted to end the journey in YVR (vancouver, bc). a sample itinerary purely on united: good timing, newer aircraft (not their old 747s), $1,316 in economy class.

i looked briefly at singapore airlines, although this turned out to be almost $2,000. i really like air canada's hard product even in economy, but given their new tango and flex fares that will only credit 50% to asiana's program, air canada was out of the running. $1,316 on united was definitely affordable.

step 3: what is the value of booking an economy reward ticket?
under aeroplan's program, a trip to asia would cost 75,000 points in economy plus taxes. availability was great in economy for the inflexible dates that i had. taxes for a similar itinerary priced out at $323. if i had priced a reward ticket flying on air canada with its better hard product, the taxes would be higher as i would have to pay more fuel surcharges.

in this particular case, i would be spending 75,000 for a $993 ticket ($1316 - $323). this means that each point is worth 1.324c. i can typically get a better return on north american domestic tickets than this.

step 4: are business class rewards available?
the next step was to check out business class availability. for this particular trip to singapore, they want 125,000 points round trip. it's a substantial increase, but it's for business class.

plugging through their list of choices, it's frustrating because the search engine throws you these really awful choices. the rule is that the number of points needed is based on the highest class of travel in any segment of the itinerary. so even a single business segment amongst a bunch of other economy segments will push the overall cost up to 125,000 points, as if you were flying the entire itinerary in business. it's fair, of course, as those are the rules. but for them to place those options so prominently at the top of the search results is almost insulting.

this should not be one of the first few search result returns, yet it is ...

luckily for me, a few results below, hidden in the rest, was a business class option for united airlines. united's business class product is not necessarily my first choice, but it maximized the number of business class segments on my departure leg. and it flew from ORD (chicago, illinois) to SIN with a single stop in HKG (hong kong) on the same flight number, which is extremely convenient as there is no worry about a missed connection.

there is no real business class option leaving YXU

on the return, i couldn't find anything quite as sweet. there were no pure business class tickets. so my focus was finding a business class segment across the ocean. the rest was filler. air canada had plenty of availability from PEK (beijing, chin) to YVR, but there was nothing in business class from SIN to PEK. and yes, i could have probably found something if i had multiple, multiple connections, but that wasn't worth my time. so i was given the choice between taking shenzhen airlines up to PEK (one stop in shenzhen) or taking singapore airlines and air china to HKG and then to PEK. i've never tried shenzhen airlines, but it's apparently a 3-star airline compared to singapore airlines. so i went with the singapore airlines' 5-star routing instead.

it's hard to say "no" to the kebaya clad flight attendants ...

they wanted $323 in fees, including $190 in fuel surcharges, which is most likely from the air canada business class leg. and just to make sure that you understand that there is no chance for upgrading the economy segments (despite paying business class points), they include this friendly note:

step 5: calculating the return on the business class reward
i tried to price out the cost of this ticket. it's hard to do exact comparisons because the return leg is filled with stops that wouldn't necessarily happen if i were to book revenue tickets. on the united airlines website, the YXU-ORD-HKG-SIN leg was exactly the same. i chose a return itinerary that was somewhat more reflective of what i got via rewards:

in this particular situation, the transpacific portion is on ANA, which would most likely have a better hard product and definitely a better soft product than united. it would be on par with the air canada business class segment across the pacific (both being four-star airlines).

united's price for this ticket was $6530. whether i would actually pay that much is debatable, but the official asking price is as above. in the reward that i got, i would estimate that 40% of the return leg was in economy. if we were to consider the return leg to be half the price, and if we were to consider the fact that the $1316 economy ticket that i was willing to buy in economy is 5x cheaper, then i would estimate the real value of what i booked to be worth $3265 (departure) + $3265x60% (transpacific return) + $3265 x 40%/5 (economy return segments) = $5482. again, it's debatable if i would actually pay this much to travel.

because i paid $323 in taxes on my reward flight, it means that by using 125,000 aeroplan points, i actually saved $5159. this means that each of my aeroplan points was worth 4.13 cents per point. i considered this a decent haul.

it was an even better haul for me because the majority of these points were accrued using the starwood preferred guest american express. i also transferred the points into my aeroplan account during their transfer bonus. so by having transferred 80,000 points (which represents $80,000 in spending), i received 125,000 aeroplan points. therefore, each dollar spent on that american express card gave me a return of 6.45 cents. even if i truly valued the business class tickets at half their actual cost, each aeroplan point would have been worth 2.07 cents, and each starwood point would have been worth 3.23 points.

step 5: to book or not to book?
it was worth it to me. and it would mean finally clearing out my aeroplan account. and so it was booked.

flight centre's $100 off airfare promotion

i received another promotion in my e-mail yesterday from flight centre. they are offering $100 off of roundtrip airfares but only in store and only on october 19, 2013. there are few rules: new bookings only, one coupon per person. flight must originate in canada. you have to  bring in that e-mail, but i can always forward it to those interested ...

typically, the way that this works is that you pay the regular ticket price to flight centre. in turn they cut you a check for the promotional value. in this case, they would cut you a cheque for $100.

normally, these are only valuable for domestic flights where they do not add any booking surcharges. for international (including american) flights, they charge somewhere around $65 on top of that. the usual offer of $50 off does not make up for the booking fee itself, but for this particular promotion, it would.

where else would you get $100 off on an air canada or westjet flights? sadly, i'm in seattle, doing a mattress run that day ...

starwood's category two hotels: a great redemption deal

making a few more hotel bookings, i was looking for a cheap long weekend getaway to portland while trying to maximize the hotel stays. and for the weekend that i wanted to go, i got this as my search result:

i don't believe in paying $200 a night to stay at a hotel, even if it means staying in downtown. staying in downtown also means having to pay a parking surcharge. the westin portland has a $35 a night parking surcharge. in my own ideal world, the maximum per night that i would be willing to pay for a hotel would be around $150. if i have a car with me, which i fortunately do when i go to seattle or portland, then staying outside the downtown area is okay for me.

the westin portland is a category 4 hotel. as above, it costs 10,000 points to redeem for a single night. the flexible rate for that particular hotel is $219 base, or $250 all in with taxes. the AAA rate is $197 base or $225 all in. i use flexible rates as a comparison as hotel redemptions are also flexible rates with no penalty to cancel. therefore, the highest value you will get from this redemption is 2.5 cents per point. and with this redemption, you will only get a single stay credit. of course, this calculation is only accurate if one was actually willing to pay $250 a night for a downtown portland hotel.

westin portland

but then taking a look at the category 2 hotel, the four points by sheraton portland east, it costs 4,000 points to redeem during weekdays and 3,000 points to redeem during weekends. at $99 base or $111 all in for either the prepaid or flexible rate on the weekends, each starwood point that you redeem has the potential to be worth 3.7 cents. it also gives you a stay credit.

four points by sheraton portland east

there are those who argue that one should redeem for the aspirational properties in order to get the best value. for example, the royal hawaiian in honolulu, hawaii. this is a category 6 hotel with a 20,000 point per night redemption. the hotel for this random weekend in november retails for $350 base or $436 all in. this does not include the $35/night resort fee charge which is not covered with a hotel redemption award. in this particular example, at its best, you can get a 2.18 cent return per point. if you value the hotel at $350 a night. and you will still only get one stay credit.

how easy is it to get the points?
the number of points earned and redeemed are different for each program, as each program awards and redeems using different denominations. for starwood preferred guest, 3,000 points can be had by:

• spending $3,000 on your american express SPG credit card
• staying 5 participating nights during this block's third trimester promo (double points + 2,500 points after 5 nights)
• $1,000 in base spending at starwood hotels assuming you're already a gold member

remember that you can get 500 points simply by declining housekeeping services. you also get 125 to 250 points just by checking in as a gold member and choosing the bonus points as your gold amenity.

and about those stay credits ...
stay credits are very important if trying to maintain or obtain status. at 3,000 points for a weekend stay, it becomes easy to book one or two nights to make up any shortfalls that you have. i was expecting to be short two nights this year, and so i booked two separate reward nights at the four points vancouver airport (richmond, british columbia) solely because it was a category two hotel. in the end, it wasn't necessary, so i cancelled those bookings without penalty. but if it were necessary, i would have thought that at 3,000 points a night, this was the second best deal out there to buy a stay credit. the best deal would, of course, would be to book a category one hotel (3,000 points weekday, 2,000 points weekend), but those aren't easily accessible here in vancouver. at the extreme, living in vancouver, i could buy platinum status by redeeming 75,000 points a year, but that would be on the extreme end.

for now, i'll keep booking my category 2 hotels when they are convenient. they remain, after all, a great deal.

points hound's 1,000 point 1st booking bonus, but is the double dip feature broken?

1,000 point first booking bonus
posted in a thousand places, but also as an offer delivered to my e-mail, points hound is offering a 1,000 point booking bonus. i described points hound extensively here. this bonus can be applied to one of their various airline partners. in my case, my points were all directed towards my american airline account.

to get this bonus, you could either sign up yourself and book your first night before october 11, 2014, and then allocate this bonus to whichever program you want. or, you could sign up here (this link gives me a 1,000 point referral).

i used to be all about points hound because of its double dip feature. this feature is where you could book hotels and get a reduced number of points hound airline miles (typically 2 points per dollar or so versus 5-6 points per dollar with non-double dip hotels). in exchange for the reduced number of airline points, you would get hotel program points and stay credits. for my stays last july and august, it worked like a charm. as an aside, i had accidentally allocated my 500 mile bonus points to SPG a while back despite them not being a partner but have been unable to change that since. they said they'd credit it to SPG when i e-mailed them in july, but they still haven't.

... but then things changed ...
then recently, i ran into difficulties, and now i'm not as confident about points hound. i had an 8 hotel mattress run planned for december in order to obtain my starwood preferred guest platinum status. i was planning on finishing the year with exactly 25 stays in order to reach its minimum qualifying requirement. in august, i had booked 8 different stays through points hound for december.

in the past, when i booked these double dip stays, the reservation would also appear on my SPG account and in my SPG app. i would know that the stays were registered with starwood and that my account was included in the reservation. but 6 weeks after booking, i became suspicious that they weren't showing up. it was time to investigate.

first, i called starwood. because it was a third party booking, they said that it wouldn't qualify for points anyway. that's fair -- i don't expect all their agents to know about points hound and their double dip feature. they couldn't even look into the booking itself, which is fair. they just knew that there was a reservation for that hotel under my name for the dates i mentioned, but no starwood number was associated with it. red flag #1. they couldn't change anything. i understood this; you can't change third party airline bookings with the airline directly for the same reason.

so concerned, i called the points hound customer service. they person who i was connected to needed several tries to understand my concern. i think she was more interested in repeating to me the dates and location of the hotel, which wasn't very helpful. i kept pressing her about my starwood account number and she insisted that i would have to call a different line to verify the details of my booking. red flag #2.

i called the number that she had given me. this person said that they were only in charge of making bookings on behalf of points hound, and that they knew nothing about their double dip feature or anything associated with it. they also didn't see a starwood number but said that they had no ability to add the number. they wanted me to call the main points hound number again. red flag #3. i was irritated at that point and asked whether they would just talk to one another. she refused.

so perhaps irrationally (although i don't think it was), i opted to ensure that i would get the stays necessary to obtain platinum status. i quickly booked all the hotels on the starwood main site using a link from bigcrumbs.com (2.1% back on all bookings). i then cancelled each and every one of my points hound bookings. it took me an hour to go through this entire book/cancel process, which i strongly disliked.

while i lost out on my ~2 american advantage miles per dollar spent, i did get 2.1% cash back via bigcrumbs. in the end, while american advantage points have the potential to be worth much more than 2.1 cents per mile, it felt much more reassuring to know that i'd have my bookings eligible for stay credits and starwood point accumulation. one hotel night did rise in price by $10, which was unfortunate.

i might try the double dip feature again in the future. but for now, for stays that matter, i'll hold off on points hound. for stays that don't (e.g., independent hotels, wyndham hotel properties), then i may still consider it. i'd still definitely consider it if there was a generous first booking bonus available, but there aren't any hotels that i need to book that don't matter right now.

more united mistake fares; cibc aeroplan 30k bonus

another united mistake fare
a few weeks ago, i posted a link to united's mistake fares. in this particular instance, domestic base fares were set to $0, and the traveler was just responsible for the $5 taxes. round trip prices would end up being $5. the following day, united announced that they would honor all of those mistake fares. a few days ago (sept 26), hack my trip reported new $1 base fare mistake fares to europe. you would just be responsible for the taxes and fees. he noted that from seattle to milan, for example, would price out at just $631 a person. that was a great price.

a few hours later on the same day, i tried to do the same thing, booking a trip from seattle to milan, and it came out to roughly $890 for the weekend that i wanted to go. seattle isn't a really big deal for me; it's an easy drive from vancouver. so in the time it took for me to read the post and try a booking myself, the base fares had gone up by roughly $130 each direction. still a great deal if you were going there anyway. initially, i scoffed at the idea of paying $130 base fare to milan, until i realized that $890 all in to go to the other side of the planet is a good deal indeed. i had the perfect time to go in early december, until i realized that winter in italy is probably not the best time to go. booking this trip would have also meant giving up my portland mattress run: eight wonderful stays towards platinum status.

but it raises an interesting question: what price would they have to offer you to go on an overseas economy flight on a whim?

cibc aeroplan 30k bonus
taken from this thread on flyertalk, cibc is offering their visa aventura product with a 30k sign up bonus. there is a $120 annual fee, however. in general, the aventura products are stronger than the aerogold products from cibc as often times, there are transfer bonuses available with aeroplan. sometimes, there are bonuses for transferring your aventura points into aeroplan points, but not with the aerogold card products (because you earn aeroplan points directly). the link is here.