TagAA

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

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 →

How I Hacked My Trip to Europe

It occurred to me as I was writing some blog posts that as much as I talk about various individual hacks, I’ve never actually detailed a real set of redemptions I made, how I constructed a trip, and the final costs. I think it’s because they aren’t the most fun to write (because usually they’re not all that novel), but they can actually be pretty fun to read because they demonstrate what’s really possible with travel hacking. Continue reading →

AA 767-300 Business Class JFK-MXP

The second leg of my outbound to Europe was in Business class on American Airlines’s newly retrofitted 767-300s. It’s a two-class plane (i.e. no First class), with eight rows of seats in a 1-2-1, staggered configuration. Basically, this results in all the seats being forward-facing, with cut outs for your seat in the ottoman of the seat in front of you. My seat looked something like this:

Well, it looked exactly like that. I was seated in 4A, which is a window seat on the left aisle. This gave a really private feeling, as there was a table between me and the aisle which minimized disruption as the flight attendants walked up and down the aisle. Continue reading →

AA A321T First Class SFO-JFK

Hello from Milan!!! I’m here (well, in Europe) for a week visiting my sister, and for the first time, I booked all of my travel into premium cabins! I’m not usually one for trip reports (here was my first admittedly pathetic attempt at one), but I want to say that’s mostly because no one wants to hear me talk about how comfortable my economy class seat was or how the person next to me had bad body odor (hey, I call it as I smell it). Anyway, here goes: Continue reading →

A Flight Booking Tip I Never Thought I’d Give

It’s pretty common knowledge that (at least among major airlines, excluding budget airlines and the likes of Southwest, Jet Blue, and Virgin America, which tend to charge by segment) that one-way flight bookings are usually more than half the cost of a round-trip. This is basic microeconomics: the one-ways are targeted at people who have some weird or unexpected plan that requires they be somewhere by a certain date or time but not necessarily back (or with a return from a different location). Continue reading →

CitiBusiness AA Platinum Select 50k Offer Still Available!

Hey folks!

I was doing my own app-o-rama today, and I had intended to apply for the 50,000 point offer on the CitiBusiness AA Platinum Select card. Unfortunately, I found that most existing links are dead (as mentioned by most of the blogosphere a few weeks ago).

After some searching, however, I found a working link to the offer, which should be valid through April 30, 2016. Enjoy!

CitiBusiness AA Platinum 50,000 point offer Continue reading →

Great Customer Service from AA, and My First, First-class Flight!

This ones going to be a short one, and fairly atypical of me for many reasons (primary of which is that it’s short 😛 ).

For starters, I booked my first, first-class ticket!! Although I wear my never-flown-a-premium-cabin badge with pride, Bangkok and Southeast Asia have been on my bucket list, and for just 60,750 AA miles (after the 10% rebate from my Citi AAdvantage Platinum card), it was worth the splurge (for what it’s worth, I will be flying Qantas and AA business class between now and this booking, but it will still have the honor of being my first flight in the front of the plane). Continue reading →

Love, AActually.

Note: this post may contain unsolicited advertisements opinions. You don’t have to click on the links read them, but we appreciate when you do. Oh yeah, and lest we forget, the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus is up to 50k.

Last Wednesday, 2pm EST marked the moment we had all feared. As if the Marriott acquisition of Starwood weren’t bad enough (although I actually haven’t decided how I feel about it yet), American Airlines (AA) delivered a huge blow to the last of the highly lucrative, ‘big 3’ airline award charts. Continue reading →

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