United, Delta, or American Elite? Status Match to Copa and Get Free United Club Access!

by Gary Leff

Sep 09 2015

For a long time the way to get free United Club access has been to match status to Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles. They’ve been inconsistent over the years in how they’ve accepted matches (first via email and then via web form), how long they’ve taken to reply (quickly vs months), and what status they’ve been willing to match (sometimes United status, sometimes only competitor alliances, sometimes only top tier status). But it’s status that lasts two years.

It turns out there’s another Star Alliance program offering status matches, and there are successful reports from United and American elites both of getting matches that allow for United Club access.

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Buy Up to 350,000 Star Alliance Miles at Just 1.4 Cents Apiece

by Gary Leff

Sep 08 2015

Star Alliance frequent flyer program Avianca LifeMiles is offering a tiered purchased miles bonus through September 30 — from 50% to 135%. That gets the cost to buy miles down to 1.4 cents apiece.

This is of course the program that will monetize everything, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d sell you printed copies of your mileage statement. They straight-up sell Star Alliance Gold status.

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Several Reader Questions I Don’t Know the Answer To

by Gary Leff

Sep 07 2015

Several days ago I asked readers for questions and I’ve started writing posts that answer many of them.

However I thought I should also highlight where I don’t know the answer to questions being asked. Maybe readers will. I do have my limits.

I sought to limit the questions to travel or miles and points but readers asked other things as well, again some of those were outside my area of expertise.

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Please Please Please Don’t Regulate Airline Seat Sizes, My Wallet Thanks You!

by Gary Leff

Sep 07 2015

There’s a current call for the federal government to impose ‘minimum seat standards’ on US airlines. However there’s absolutely no evidence that current seat sizes ‘threaten health’ or ‘safety’. But requiring bigger seats and more legroom will have one obvious effect: raise prices.

Right now consumers can choose the level of comfort and price they’d like to buy. Proposed regulations would simply make current inexpensive options illegal and force everyone to buy a product they may not want to pay for, especially shorter people or for shorter flights.

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