DEM Flyers

Why I Passed on the Cathay Pacific Mistake Fares

Unless you are living under a proverbial rock (in which case, I’d love to know how you found this blog), you heard by now of the insane Cathay Pacific business and first class mistake fares that were available departing from Hanoi. Heck, my dad heard about it. The deal was insane — cheaper-than-economy price tickets on one of the best business or first class products in the world.

If you got in on the deal, congrats. To the confusion of my friends and family, I didn’t. It wasn’t that I missed the deal. I was online for it as it was discovered. Instead, I chose not to. Crazy, right? Continue reading →

How I Scored an Upgrade on my Delta One Flight

March 5, 2017 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

I wrote not too long ago about my slate of flights to and from Ireland to visit my partner. Today, I took the third of these trips, which was the “perfect” FlexPerks redemption, coming in at $398 for a mere 20,000 points.

The itinerary was SFO-JFK-DUB in both directions on Delta, with the domestic segments being served by Deltas premium service, complete with white tablecloth meal service and lie flat seats for those fortunate enough to afford it. Continue reading →

Check out my talk at Travel Tech Con’s SF Ignite Meetup

January 31, 2017 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

The challenge (from Dawn): 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds.

Starts at around 2:42:00. Sorry I can’t link directly to that point in time!

Here’s the slide deck, because you can’t actually see it in a lot of the video:

Musings on Premium Economy

January 17, 2017 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

Lately, cash prices to fly economy have gotten so cheap for international flights that points bookings are a terrible value proposition. At the same time, airlines are selling more and more business class seats at reduced cash rates relative to a few years ago, meaning award availability is more difficult on the routes that I want to fly. The options for someone loathe to pay cash for flights (and who mostly has fixed dates and locations in mind), therefore, have gotten fairly slim. Continue reading →

There and Back Again (and again, and again, and again, and again)

January 15, 2017 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

Last year was something of a turning point for me in terms of my travel habits. Whereas two years ago I let my travel be largely dictated by mistake fares and other sales, this past year I had a very explicit list of places I wanted to go, and I used my miles and ‘hacking’ in order to reduce the cost as much as possible (and/or fly in premium cabins).

It’s pretty evident why this would be the case for someone. Once you have built up miles and points balances through credit card signups and manufactured spending, means are less of a bottleneck. Traditional award charts offer fixed miles prices for flights irrespective of the cash price, which means that (assuming you can find availability), a $500 flight to a random U.S. city near a national park costs you the same as a $200 ticket between two major domestic hubs. For premium cabins, the value proposition can be even greater, because the miles prices are typically marked up 50-150% relative to coach, whereas cash prices can differ by up to a factor of ten. Continue reading →

My Experience Booking a Delta Skybonus Award

January 13, 2017 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

2017 has only just begun, but I feel like I’ve said the phrase, “Wow, this game has changed” more times in the last two weeks than all of last year. This, despite all of the ‘deaths’ and devaluations that made 2016 a pretty bad year to be a travel hacker.

One thing that remained relatively unchanged last year was Delta’s Skybonus program. Skybonus is a rewards program for businesses as an incentive for them booking flights for their employees. Like AA’s equivalent, Business Extra (United’s is explicitly limited to corporations/large companies), rewards are earned as multipliers on ticket price, with higher multiples for higher fare classes. Continue reading →

2016 Status Roundup: What I’ve Earned, and What I’ve Learned

December 26, 2016 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

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

Which of my predictions reached fruition?

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. Continue reading →

The Next Level of Manufactured Spending

December 24, 2016 / Daniel Tahara / 7 Comments

I’m back! Well, sort of. Like Michael, I have a little more time around the holidays to write, so I’ll been getting my pen out and cranking out some posts. It’s also a welcome distraction from all the news that routinely induces aneurysms, although I don’t have much choice but to keep on keepin’ on and fighting the good fight.

Over this year, my involvement in travel hacking transitioned from raw churning (credit card sign-ups to receive the bonuses) to generating large stashes of miles and points by manufactured spending (buying cash equivalents like gift cards and selling them or otherwise converting them to cash). This was rooted largely in pragmatism. Going into this year, I had exhausted a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of credit card signups, and moreover, banks weren’t taking too kindly to all my new accounts and credit inquiries (I wouldn’t if I were them, either). Continue reading →

Singapore Airlines First Class HKG-SFO in 14 Photos

November 4, 2016 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

Sorry for the delay! Here’s the last segment of my trip, which I got to share with Jacob. It was a lot of fun 🙂

Cathay Dragon Economy Class PNH-HKG in Six Photos

October 30, 2016 / Daniel Tahara / 0 Comments

Yes, I do fly economy sometimes! Particularly on short-hauls, it makes a lot of sense because the benefits of premium cabins are low and cash or miles prices are usually cheap.

Cathay Dragon is Cathay Pacific’s rebranding of its subsidiary, Dragonair. Dragonair is primarily a regional airline but does serve some mid-hauls with lie flat seats.

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