News and notes from around the interweb:
- My post yesterday which revealed President Obama’s choice in credit cards drew this reaction on twitter: Pro tip: Don’t pose with your credit card when standing in front of photographers. The replies are worth the read.
- Two months ago I explained that you can have top tier Diamond status from Hyatt with very little effort. And while we know that Diamond trials will not be going away, Running with Miles speculates that they could be changing. Perhaps trial Diamonds members won’t get confirmed suite upgrades in the future until they’ve completed their challenge?
- The Marriott Plus Points program (up to 2000 free points per month), which was just introduced in May, has been gutted already.
- Etihad is launching San Francisco – Abu Dhabi service in November. That flight will initially be serviced by a Jet Airways 777. The UAE airline will serve San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Washington Dulles, New York JFK, and Toronto from North America (Toronto and Chicago flights do not offer a first class cabin). In my experience availability is outstanding.
- My Conde Nast Traveler piece on packing tips picked up by Huffington Post
- With foreign airlines fleeing Venezuela as the government holds their cash, the country picks now as the time to add a new Caracas airport tax. To pay for a new air conditioner.
- You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Is Etihad pulling out of Dulles or am I misreading your sentence?
@CW not pulling out.
Hello Gary,
Thanks for the great article on packing tips! I read that you really like the TravelPro Crew series of bags, but which one in particular is your carry-on? I see that EBags is having a closeout sale on the 9 and 10 series with the 9 having a suiter built in, but I am concerned about it fitting the carry-on restrictions. Can you share your thoughts? Thanks!
Brian
Just tried to match Hilton Gold — told that they’ll only match “top tier” 🙁
@Brian – i haven’t tried once since series 7 so i can’t comment on the newer models
The Marriott program was in “beta mode” — perhaps they discovered that they technology they envisioned to automate the points process just didn’t work (because, in actuality, it didn’t — Facebook likes weren’t getting rewarded at all after the first week or so.)
Nonetheless, disappointing — especially since activity a week ago was promised at 250 points in their emails and posted as 25 after waiting the required week.
Not worth complaining about, and certainly the new points awarded for social media activity aren’t worth the time and bother to complete.
Received a response from hyatt – their offer says you can register through Oct 31, 2014. Also lists the ‘comparable competitors’ you need to provide documentation of are:
Hilton VIP
Hilton Diamond VIP
Marriott Gold or Marriott Platinum
Priority Club Platinum
Starwood Platinum Preferred Guest
Why is boarding area.com suddenly ask for my “current location”all the time — VERY ANNOYING!!!
Hi Gary,
The tax at CCS is not an air conditioner tax but rather a ozone generator tax. Also, while there have been airlines that have stopped flights most have opted to reduce flights first.
Groovy info
If anyone’s interested, here’s a quick and easy way to still automatically maximize Marriott Plus Points. At 2k per month x 4 months, that’s still enough for a category 1 redemption… http://wp.me/p4xIi0-2D
I love the tiled layout of the blog.
How does the Jet flight compare to Etihad?