miles

Cheap Business Class to Italy and 2,000 mile bonus offer to Join Alitalia

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Etihad Airways Alitalia logo

Right now you can purchase business class on Alitalia by 2-22-17 and get a great deal on Alitalia between New York and Naples or Palermo from $1,748 roundtrip in business class. This is a really good deal. This is about the cost of premium economuy.  There are a lot of cheap fares to Europe right now but those are mostly all in regular economy. Not really the same experience in my opinion. This is available for bookings from April to October.

This is only for certain days of the week so you’ll have to check. A couple sample dates I found are 5-5-17 to 5-9-17 and 5-19-17 to 5-20-17. Search JFK-NAP or JFK-PMO on Google Flights and then select the price graph for easy searching. It looks like most of the flights connect in either Milan MXP/LIN or in Rome FCO. I would try to avoid the MXP/LIN route if you don’t want to change airports there. You might be able to build in a long layover and see some of Milan however.

Here is the link for this: NYC-Palermo/Naples

EDMS US

Here are the term and conditions:

* Fares are round-trip per person in Business Class for travel on Alitalia flights and include government taxes/fees and carrier-imposed charges. Tickets must be purchased by February 22, 201711:59 PM EST. Travel periods: from New York to Naples from April 12 to October 28, 2017; from New York to Palermo from April 11 to October 27, 2017.Fares is applicable only for specific days of week for outbound and inbound. Additional conditions regarding travel dates, day-of-week restrictions and child/infant conditions may apply. Day of the week surcharges may apply. Changes fees may apply. Tickets may be non-refundable. Stopovers may not be permitted. Transfers may not be permitted. Fares are subject to class of service availability and may be changed or withdrawn without notice. Additional baggage fees may apply.

In addition you can join the Alitalia Millemiglia program however I personally would rather credit these to other Skyteam members that have better expiration policies. If you want to join the Millemiglia Program however you can get a signup bonus right now of 2,000 miles using this link: Alitalia Millemiglia . This trip should earn you about 8,600’ish miles roundtrip.

Business class on Alitalia features access to the Skyteam lounges, priority gate access, free bags, 180 degree lay flat seats on mostly new A330’s. They have been featuring Bulgari amenity kit’s and have highly rated cuisine.

I don’t not get any benefit from any of these links. This is just a good deal I found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simple tip for multiple email sign-ups

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One thing I run into with points and miles is the need to have various email addresses for accounts. Stuff like contests, E-miles accounts, etc. One simple tip I saw today HT to CavemanCircus is:

You can use @gmail.com and @googlemail.com interchangeably. Perfect for signing up to a website twice without setting up two accounts.

 

 

Is Microsoft Rewards the worst earn per $1?

DaninMCI miles, shopping , , , ,

So I gather Microsoft reward points by clicking on news links and doing a little searching on Bing. I prefer Google but I use Bing a little to gather some rewards. This started out a couple years ago as a good way to get a few airline miles or hotel points, I forget. I think at that time you could get like 100 miles for 5,000 points and you could earn those points in a month or so of searching at my pace.

Today I was clicking to see how far away I “still” am from getting a $5 Amazon card. It seems this is the only decent reward left. So I notice this offer to earn 1 points for each $1 spend at the Microsoft store. 1 point per $1, really.  Keep in mind it takes 5,250 to earn a $5 Amazon card. So if I spend $5,250 at that site I’ll “earn” a $5 card. I guess it’s not bad but it just seems like a lot compared to just shopping there through a portal like American Airlines, etc.

AA will give me 3 miles per $ so that would be  15,750 miles or enough for a short haul airline ticket for the same spending. Heck just trying MS Edge will earn me 3,000 points.

Sorry I’m ranting here but it just seems that Microsoft and Bing have ruined this little search engine reward program. I’d also be better off using a search toolbar I guess. Bing is good but it’s not that good.

fireshot-capture-3-trump-clinton-bing_-http___www-bing-com_search

My attempt to get the other 10k SPG points from AMEX

DaninMCI credit cards, miles, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

I recently got the SPG Amex card with the 25,000 bonus points. They are now offering 35,000 SPG points. I used the Amex live chat feature to see if they would pony up the other 10,000 points or would call my bluff on canceling my card. Here is what happened

amex chat 1

Amex chat 2

amex chat 3

Amex chat 5Amex chat 4

Oh well. I’ve never had good luck with American Express. I guess I need to keep my business with Citi, Chase and BofA who treat me way better.

It’s been a fun ride so far, Hang in there.

DaninMCI miles, Travel , , , ,

I think we may be on the downhill side of the golden age of mile hacking or whatever you like to call it. The credit cards are getting tougher on sign up bonuses. The airlines and hotels are devaluing the awards and making them more restrictive. There seem to be less and less free miles out there. You know those “follow us on twitter” and get 500 miles, etc. #repeatandchurn.

My favorite deal in the past was the US Airways Grand Slam events. It’s how I got started in “the game”. I miss it soooooo much. Sure earning the miles was the goal but it was like a worldwide scavenger hunt to figure out how to rent a car for 5 minutes for like $15 to get a hit or how to buy that $2 cat collar on skymall when you don’t own a cat. It was just fun. I really thanks Mommypoints for turning me on to that fun time.

I think the miles and points world is changing. It had to. Technology is catching up to the error fare deals, OTA’s and app-o-rama’s. The bright spot left is maybe just doing old fashion mileage runs. Not because they are a good deal for the miles you earn but because they help you earn status and miles and go places you want to go. We’ve become addicted to the travel in nice seats. Now it’s about how to keep traveling. Sure we’ll get a few drive-by deals and I pity the poorly organized promo’s that we will be sure to exploit. But it’s like a rolling or flying party. We have our own rock stars (Gary, Seth, Summer and many others) and we all seem to want to fly to exotic locations in big front seats.

I’ve earned and burned over 1,000,000 AA miles in the past few years but only 100k or so are EQM’s and sitting on a lowly Gold status. Maybe I’m going about it the wrong way…Stay tuned.

(Flying in First on AA 77W DFW-HKG (for free)).

20150623_123446

Is Copa the new Aegean ? 18 months to earn Star Silver or Gold

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Partnerships ConnectMiles Copa Airlines1Partnerships ConnectMiles Copa Airlines2

I was just updating my new profile on my new Copa Airlines Connectmiles account. You know the one where you can sign up and get 1,000 miles and update your profile and get 2,000 more plus another 1,000 if you sign up for new account now until the end of June 2015.

More info at Mommypoints:

Or on View From The Wing:

I noticed that to earn elite status with this program it’s fairly typical. 20,000 miles to Star Alliance Silver and 45,000 to Star Alliance Gold.What caught my eye though is that since the program is launching in the middle of 2015 they are allowing 18 months to earn these mile levels. Seems like a nice way to obtain elite status or at least Star Gold I’m thinking. Now the signup bonus miles won’t count because they aren’t EQM’s and the opportunities to earn bonus miles via credit cards are really limited to certain countries it could be worth crediting BIS (butt in seat) miles here if your trying to get Star Gold down the road but don’t fly enough to get over the goal each year.

PreferProgram Qualification ConnectMiles Copa Airlines

Why can’t AA put better aircraft on Hawaii routes?

DaninMCI miles, Travel , , , , , , ,

So your a run of the mill road warrior business traveler and maybe have a credit card that earns miles on American Airlines (AA). You work hard traveling to sales meetings in places like Moline Illinois, Cleveland Ohio and Fresno California. You stay at crappy low level Hilton or Marriott motels just so you can dream of the free hotel rooms and award flights to Hawaii that you’ll take your loving spouse to. It will make up for all the nights on the road.  Heck you even fly so much you’ve earned elite status on (insert name here but we’ll use AA as the example). You get a few upgrades to “First” class if you want to call the first 3 rows on an old A319 “First” but heck it beats the cattle car in the back.

Finally after years of saving miles and hotel points you book that dream trip to Hawaii just so you won’t have to go to that Northern Wisconsin widget convention in January. Your so excited as you book that trip online from your hotel room in Tulsa. You can’t wait to tell your wife about the plan to bask on the beach in Hawaii in January. Then it dawns on you. What type of aircraft fly that Phoenix to Honolulu route anyway?  Yes the good old 757-200 first made in 1983.  Sure the seats are a little old looking but hey don’t worry about spilling that mia-tia as they are water resistant now from all the human skin oil that has soaked into them. Gross I know.

So you tough out that long day flight in the 1980’s recliner and get to Hawaii. Your on the beach with a million other pale white victims. You enjoy your short vacation only to board that overnight flight back and find that the old “First Class” seats don’t lay flat, there is sad food choices and not much entertainment on board. WiFi you ask, what’s that?

My points with all this is that American as well as many other carriers needs to up the aircraft choices on the Hawaii routes. They seem to figure that since many of the passengers are croc, yoga pants and ed hardy PJ wearing clods and wouldn’t know “First Class” if it hit them over the head so why not put the new aircraft on these “tourist” routes. Besides they are closer to the boneyard in Arizona when they limp home on that last flight. The problem with this plan is that many folks like you frequent flyers know better. It’s a good 6 hour flight about equal to flying to Europe. Let’s pick it up a notch.

This:

Current-AA-767-200-First-Product

Or this?

777-gallery15

35% of American Airlines AA Miles Through May 11th

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Flash sale on AA miles through May 11th. Not worth it to buy on speculation but better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick OR if you need a top off so you can book an award flight.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/earnMiles/buy-gift-share.jsp

American Airlines

Rebuilding Kansas City International Airport?

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No matter what you call Kansas City International Airport, call sign MCI or as the locals call it “KCI” it has seen better days. As a kid growing up in the 1970’s you could fly all over the world from this airport. Now not so much. They advertise 38 nonstops flights.

kci-nonstopflights-xx

However some of these are very limited schedule. Heck it’s hard to find a flight to Denver at times. United only seems to run turbo prop Q400’s there from KC. Sad.

Southwest just unveiled a new Missouri themed livery plane this week at MCI. Nice tribute but the local media barely noticed. I had to find out about it on a blog post about Southwest.

http://michaelwtravels.boardingarea.com/2015/04/southwest-airlines-plane-has-new-specialty-livery-missouri-one/#sthash.uD5bQctq.dpbs

SWA

Now Southwest CEO made remarks at the airplane event saying KCI needs to make improvements but don’t do too much or we can’t afford it. Nice. The newly elected KC board is in discussions to do something with the airport. Due to it’s pre 9/11 design it’s not easy or fun to fly through/from for sure.

Maybe the folks over on the Kansas side of the border should build a new airport. The Southwest lease commitment ends in 2016. Surely they could get it off the ground by then (Pardon the pun). At least if they did it would be closer to most people that live in the metro area.

http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2015/04/15/southwest-ceo-mci-airport-improvements-needed.html

My quickie airline miles earnings so far today

DaninMCI miles, shopping, Travel , , , , , ,

I typically read Boardingarea blogs everyday for tips on earning airline miles and to learn more about being a smart traveler. Well OK to feed my addiction.

So I’m busy today and had a couple minutes so I clicked over to Boardingarea and saw one of my favorite bloggers Mommypoints who had a post about an American AA shopping portal bonus where you can earn up to 2,250 bonus miles through shopping.

Special Promotion Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

Not typically that great but if you have stuff you need to buy anyway it can be good. So what did I buy today in less than 5 minutes:

How about dog food. I have several dogs that eat Blue Buffalo Senior food (which is very good and better than most of the RX types even). So it cost be about $33 to $35 a bag plus a 12+ mile each way drive to get it. I clicked on Petco as they had the best price:

Search Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

So for 4x per $ I bought about $135 worth or 4 bags. I had to pay sales tax but got free shipping. I figured I saved time and gas money. I’ve ordered dog food online many times so it’s just easy.  So $135 x 4 miles x 1 mile for credit card = 275 AA miles plus 250 mile bonus = 525 miles approx.

I was getting ready to log off when I remembered that I needed to still do my taxes (I’m way behind this year). So I click on H&R block software that I use each year and really like.

All Online Offers Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

So for 12x per $1 I bought the $45 version I use so figure $45 x 12 x 1 for card = 585 AA miles plus I’m on my way to the next promo level of $300 so that will eventually add another 750 miles to the 250 I got already.

5 minutes = 1,110 miles added to my AA account. Next trip……