News and notes from around the interweb:
- “A photograph taken by another passenger showed a man restrained in a seat with his legs bound and also appeared to have his arms tied.” (HT: Claire M.)
- PFdigest says that it may still be possible to get the old American Express Blue Cash card offering unlimited 5% rebates on gas, groceries, and drugstores after your first $6,500 in annual spend.
- 35,000 miles for the Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard is back, the card now issued by Barclays. This interests me not at all, their partner awards are generally expensive and you can’t combine partners on a single award, and transfers to Hilton are no longer as interesting post-devaluation. It could be useful for getting to Hawaii from a city Hawaiian flies to, of course.
- This past summer’s Aeroplan devaluation, which came on the heels of another devaluation (and another devaluation), included the introduction of one-way awards on partner airlines at half the cost of roundtrip instead of 67%. That functionality is now live. Aeroplan is an instant transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, and some awards remain reasonably priced — flying between the US and nearer Europe on Brussels, SAS, Swiss, United, or US Airways costs 45,000 one-way in business class without fuel surcharges.
- United appears to have started making additional international business class award seats available to Platinum elite members and higher on certain routes.
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wasn’t Hawaiian card a Visa when it was issued by BoA?
that sounds right
FYI, the one-way at 50% price only seems to apply to awards starting or ending in Canada/US. Trying to book anything else (e.g. Australia – Asia 1) returns an error saying it’s not eligible for a one-way booking. You’ll notice all non-Canada/US travel is also listed under the “Round-trip ClassicFlights Rewards” table for 2014. Looks like AC got us again!
Thanks for the link on the Hawaiian card. Barclays doesn’t issue that many products and 70k Hhonors points is enough for a few nights at a lot of nice European Hilton properties. Waste not, want not, I’m going for it.
Hi Gary;
Happy New Year!
For aeroplan, is the one way F from US to nearer Europe on UA cheaper than using Mileage Plus miles?
There is at least one new benefit for the Hawaiian card – they now give you a complimentary checked bag. The old BoA Visa did not. If you are planning a multi-island itinerary in Hawaii with non-HA miles, this card is an easy way to cover inter-island flights. The signup bonus is worth 4 inter-island award tickets on Hawaiian with the award discount (not that inter-island fares are all that expensive, but paying the $89 annual fee and spending $1K for the bonus vs. ~$500 for 4 tickets plus baggage fees might be worth it to some people).
The guy caught smoking on the plane sounds like a real jerk. The good thing is it looks like someone got a few extra licks in on him while they were restraining him.