We know all miles are not created equal and each mileage currency have some unique features. Virgin Atlantic is one such program which shines in certain areas where Delta Airlines might want to give you some hard time.
Delta Airlines publish flash deals for using your miles to book tickets at a discount mileage, but some of these deals go unadvertised or last longer than what Delta Airlines make you believe. Since Delta no longer publishes a award chart you might not know if the price displayed is the actual price or a "flash deal" price. Also most of these flash deals are for round trip and so one-way trip will not necessary be half the miles of round trip ticket. Also Delta Airlines is known to add dynamic mileage pricing component and thus the price might be higher than what you should actually pay.

Here is an example itinerary for Los Angeles (LAX), USA to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND), Japan in Delta One Suite. As you can see the round trip price is 120,000 Delta Skymiles for few dates but if you want to book just one way that price is 78,000 Delta Skymiles instead of half price of 60,000 miles.

Here is where Virgin Atlantic miles would come handy. Virgin Atlantic is a Delta Airline partner and as of recent pass has started displaying award availability for Delta Airlines on its Virgin Atlantic website. The good news is Virgin Atlantic has access to same level of inventory as what Delta Airlines has and it does not add the dynamic pricing what Delta does. So, if you wanted to book just one-way ticket it would cost 60,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for the same award from Los Angeles (LAX) to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND) above.

Let's check another example where Delta applies Dynamic pricing. Here we are looking to fly from Delta non-stop flight from Portland (PDX) to Narita (NRT). Delta Airlines want to charge 125,000 miles for the below itinerary. Interestingly Virgin Atlantic still wants 60,000 miles only!

The other great thing about Virgin Atlantic miles is that they routinely have 30% transfer bonus when you want to transfer your American Express points to Virgin Atlantic miles so you end up getting better value than with Delta Skymiles.

So what is the downside of using Virgin Atlantic miles? Virgin Atlantic charges mileage cost based on segments, so adding segments would add up the price for the mileage redemption. Also if you enter source and destination which does not have direct route then Virgin Atlantic does not show any availability. But with all that quirks you get a great redemption value and yes, do not forget that Virgin Atlantic charges a reasonable change / cancellation fee of only $50!
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Happy New Year to all the folks! It is a start of new year which means if you have credit cards which gives airline incidental credit on calendar year are available again to take advantage of.  American Express Issued credit cards such as American Express Gold Card which provide incidental credits reset based on calendar year and are available for New Year from 01/01/2019. Also specifically for American Express, you do need to select the preferred airline and you get incidental reimbursement for only that airline.

Also not all credit card's give credit based on calendar year. Also some of the airline e-gift cards or award ticket taxes and fees might trigger the incidental credit. So do check this flyertalk thread for latest data points if you are looking to purchase gift cards. Below are the credit cards which provides airline incidental credit based on calendar year (Do note the list might not be complete). 

• American Express Platinum Card including Business Platinum and various version of Platinum card such as Charles Schwab Amex Platinum Card. These cards provide $200 credits per calendar year.
• American Express Gold Card provides $100 credits per calendar year.
• American Express Hilton Honors Aspire Card provides $250 credits per calendar year.
• Crystal Visa Infinite Card provides $250 credits for each of primary credit card holder as well as up to 3 authorized users on the card.
• Bank of America Premium Rewards Card provides $100 credits per calendar year.

There are other cards such as Chase Sapphire Reserve, U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve, Citi Prestige which provides credit for any charge made directly with airlines and other travel categories as defined by their terms and are per "card membership year". Since these are not limited to incidentals you can use them for airfare as well as incidentals.

So, get going and redeem these incidental credits before your annual fees come due.

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Are you looking to fly during Christmas, New Year or during peak summer dates? Most of us would have this dilemma of using the holidays for travel but paying exorbitant prices. This could be due to the limited vacation time or kids school being shut during this times. If you are the one who cannot avoid peak dates travel then below tricks might help at times.

Trick 1: Book two one-way tickets:
At times of low season this might be a completely bad suggestion, but when you are looking to fly in high season, this might be a neat way to reduce your flight cost. The reason being that most 3rd party aggregates and booking sits such as Expedia would want to issue a single ticket for your round trip. The simple reason being booking two separate one-way tickets would require separate cancellation/change fees if any of your plan to fly changes.

Although some times the 3rd party flight booking sites would display tickets as two one-way, the chances of that being efficient in time and cost is low. Below is an example of search with last minute peak season ticket where the round trip flight fare from SFO-DEL for low connection time jumps from ~$2095 to ~$2778.

Below you can see what happens when we instead search above as two one-way tickets. The total fare for the round trip becomes ~$2160 which is much lower than booking a round trip ticket.

Trick 2: Book one-way + round-trip ticket (tagging a free / almost free one-way ticket):
This is another neat trick which can help you get an additional one-way to the same original destination or if you are creative to the destination where you plan to visit in the future. The idea here is that instead of booking a round trip you book a one-way and add a round trip ticket from your destination to your source. For e.g. instead of booking "SFO-DEL-SFO" you can book "SFO-DEL" (one-way) + "DEL-SFO-DEL" (round trip). So for "SFO-DEL" one-way you would pay ~$931 and booking "DEL-SFO-DEL" round trip is just $1246 with Alitalia!!

As you can see from above that although the flight from "DEL-SFO" is 2 stops and little longer you are getting a free one-way for future date ("SFO-DEL" in March) with just additional $15 compared to booking "DEL-SFO" one-way ticket.

So, the next time you plan to travel in peak times and are looking to purchase paid ticket do remember the above two tricks before you make your purchase.

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Lot of folks would have heard about "hidden city ticketing".  In short the idea behind hidden city ticketing is to book a ticket to a final destination which is cheaper then your actual destination by using your actual destination as a stopover. So for example you want to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles but the flight to Las Vegas from Dallas via Los Angeles is cheaper and so you book this ticket with intention of getting down at Los Angeles (The hidden city).

So, how about extending this idea on international trip where your real destination is the "hidden city" but it is much cheaper to fly there as a stopover rather than a destination. This would allow you to not only visit your real destination cheaper but would also allow to visit additional city/country for less than the cost to your real destination.

For example you want to fly non-stop Singapore Airlines flight from San Francisco to Singapore (hidden city) but booking a non-stop flight would be expensive. Instead of that you buy a ticket to a destination which Singapore Airline serves via Singapore and is much cheaper. This way you not only visit your real destination but as a bonus you visit an additional city or country at no additional cost. Let's see a real example here:

San Francisco (SFO) to Toyko (NRT) roundtrip with Toyko as the real destination:
Let's say you want to visit Tokyo from San Francisco in Feb 2019. The cheapest ticket to the destination for few dates in Feb 2018 for 10 to 15 days is shown below. As you can see the cheapest for this trip is $726 and that flight has long layover.

How about changing few things here. Instead of flying to Tokyo as a destination how about flying there as a stopover. Let's look at an example by modifying the destination to be a cheaper place and using Tokyo as a stopover. Below is an example with search date used by few trial and error selections. 

As you can see from above the flight to Hong Kong (HKG) with return via Tokyo (NRT) is cheaper than the original flight. Although in the above case you need to spend 1 night in Hong Kong but you do get a non-stop flight from Tokyo (NRT) to San Francisco (SFO) during return journey from your trip and as a bonus you can visit Hong Kong for 1 night. In fact you can also extend the 1 night stay in Hong Kong to either 2 or 3 days and the cost would not change.

The above idea could be extended to any other destination you want to visit although it may not be available for all the dates. Also you would want to select an airline which has "hub" in your "real destination".

One of the biggest "Con" of this is that you need to be careful of the made up destination as some of them might require a visa to visit but other than that this is perfect travel trick you can use for your next trip.

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One of the task in mileage award redemption is to figure out which airlines serve the source and destination. Sometimes the routing may not be direct and would involve one or more connections. Paid tools like ExpertFlyer can provide you seat availability for given airlines but before you get there you need to know which airlines serves your source and destination which will also allow you to figure out which particular mileage currency might be useful.

FlightConnections:
FlightConnections is a useful website to find out what airlines services your source and destination airport. It has below set of features as of now:

• Enter source and destination airports.
• Select just a source or destination airport and you can view all other airports it gets connection from / to.
• Select option of direct, 1 stop or 2 stop flights.
• Select alliances or airlines.

Below image shows a sample search from San Francisco to Nairobi with 1 stop option. As you can see it lists 9 routes with one stop and list all the connecting cities. This could be useful to determine the award search source and destination and see the one available for your dates of travel. It also lists the potential airlines on the left pane which would be useful (although we are not looking to "check price" for the award).

There are few con's though of using the website.

• It has prominent display of advertisement which might obstruct the search view at times.
• If you change the filter from direct to 1 stop or 2 stop, or select the alliance, you will need to re-enter the source and destination airports.
• Although it is useful to see the connection airports for 1 stop or 2 stop flights it does not tell how long the layover would be.

They do have paid plans which might be useful for the one's who frequently uses miles and points which can be found here. ​

So, next time you are looking to get that mileage redemption award going you might want to check this website.

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It's shopping season again and some of the major airline affiliated shopping portals are offering tiered bonus miles for spending money at various advertised merchants. Below are the current mileage bonus promotions from various airlines shopping portals.

Delta Airlines:
Earn up to 1,000 bonus Delta Skymiles for shopping from 11/05/2018 to 11/18/2018.

• Earn 500 bonus miles when you spend $150.
• Earn 1,000 bonus miles when you spend $300.

American Airlines:
Earn up to 4,000 American Airlines miles for shopping till 11/18/2018.

• Earn 500 bonus miles when you spend $150.
• Earn 2,000 bonus miles when you spend $600.
• Earn 4,000 bonus miles when you spend $1,200.

United Airlines:
Earn up to 5,000 United miles for shopping till 11/18/2018.

• Earn 500 bonus miles when you spend $150.
• Earn 2,500 bonus miles when you spend $750.
• Earn 5,000 bonus miles when you spend $1500.​

Southwest Airlines:
Earn up to 3,000 Southwest Airlines miles for shopping till 11/18/2018.

• ​Earn 500 bonus miles when you spend $150.
• Earn 1,000 bonus miles when you spend $500.
• Earn 3,000 bonus miles when you spend $1,000.

Alaska Airlines:
Earn up to 1,500 Alaska Airlines miles for shopping till 11/18/2018.

• Earn 300 bonus miles when you spend $150.
• Earn 750 bonus miles when you spend $300.
• ​Earn 1,500 bonus miles when you spend $500.

Each one of you would values miles from specific airlines differently. So, based on your preference as well as amount you are looking to spend you might want to lean towards specific airlines shopping portal. Enjoy the bonus miles on items which might be discounted earlier then the Thanksgiving!

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All of mileage programs have various mileage expiration policies with few exception programs where your miles never expire. Some of the programs expire your miles after a certain period of time (usually 3 years) regardless of earning or redeeming miles activity while certain others have expiration from ranging from 1 to 3 years with extension of miles possible with earning or redeeming miles.

What if you have miles in programs which allow for extensions with either earn or redeem option and you have no plans of flying them or redeeming their miles? Few of popular ways of saving your big chunk of miles balance is either by transferring from either American Express membership rewards or Citi ThankYou rewards or Chase Ultimate rewards. You will need a Membership Points earning American Express card or the premium version of Citi and Chase  cards to allow for mileage transfer. Other options include hotel points to miles transfer or for the least cost you can use shopping portals for various airlines to make a small purchase at any popular merchants through them. 

MILESLIFE as a free miles earning option?
MILESLIFE is an Android / Apple Iphone app which is primarily targeted for folks staying in Singapore and Mainland China. It allows for earning miles by spending money on the linked card at dining and other partners. It also has a unique feature for earning "up to 100 miles" for checking in consecutively for 7 days in their app. You can link your airline mileage account number in the app and select the airline with which you want to earn the miles. Below are the listed airline partners at the time of publishing this post:

 As you can see from the list their are few of the mileage programs which have 1 to 3 years of mileage expiration policy and which can be extended to another 1 to 3 years by earning and/or redeeming the miles. I have listed few of them below:

• British Airways Avios - Miles expire after 36 months of inactivity, can be extended by earning / redeeming miles.
• Avianca Lifemiles - Miles expire either after 12 months or 24 months (For credit card holders and platinum members).  The one for which it expires after 12 months the existing miles expiration can only be extended by "earning" miles.
• United MileagePlus - Miles expire after 18 months. Can be extended by earning / redeeming miles.

​As you can see from above you can easily extend the life of your miles by doing check-in on the MILESLIFE app. Since you can specify the airlines you want to earn the miles with you can easily change the airlines after 7 days of check-in to extend the life of your expiring miles. The miles are usually deposited to your mileage account within 2 weeks.

So the next time you have your miles expiring with one of the participating airlines above you can bank on MILESLIFE.

Having multiple mileage currency has its own advantage. You have flexibility of using the one which gives you the best value while keeping the one's which gives you "high" on award redemption. Recently Delta Airlines has been on the roll with weekly flash sales. They have been dolling out award sales on domestic and international routes. Here is look at one such redemption which maximizes the value of award using multiple mileage programs which otherwise might not be possible.

​Delta Flash Sale for USA to Hong Kong round trip in Economy for 30k Delta Skymiles.. Or One Way for 15k Skymiles:
In early September, Delta had flash sale to Hong Kong from most of the U.S. cities with prices from West Coast (SFO, LAX etc) starting at 30,000 Delta Skymiles. The main leg of this trip was SEA-HKG route which Delta is exiting starting October 4th, 2018. The great thing about this sale was that it was available for redemption for September 2018 and you could also book it as one-way from Hong Kong-USA or USA-Hong Kong for just 15,000 Skymiles. The downside though was that the mileage price was limited for Hong Kong only. 

Virgin Atlantic for partner redemption (Getting beyond Hong Kong?):
Virgin Atlantic has various partners and has separate redemption chart for those partners. One such partner is Jet Airways which flies to India and has non-stop service from Hong Kong (HKG) to Mumbai (BOM). Virgin Atlantic allows one-way awards at half the price of round trip and has a distance based chart for Jet Airways. For HKG-BOM which is distance of ~2658 miles Virgin Atlantic charges 41,000 miles round trip or 20,500 miles one-way in Economy class. The taxes for this route is ~$50 USD. You can easily search for Jet Airways award availability using our very own Delta Airlines website as Delta recently forged partnership with Jet Airways and allows redemption on Jet Airways albeit at inflated prices. For the HKG-BOM route Delta likes to charge 40,000 Skymiles for one-way trip in Economy class.

As you can see from above you can travel from USA to India for just 35,500 miles one way in Economy class by using miles from two different programs. In addition you could have stopover in Hong Kong and enjoy the city visit without any additional cost.

So, do keep an eye out for flash sales from Delta Airlines and use it with other mileage program to get best value for your redemption!!

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Delta SkyMiles are known as pesos with very low value in miles world. But there are few things which set them apart:

1. Delta SkyMiles never expire.
2. You can redeem them at 1 cent / per point value for cash ticket if you hold their co-branded American Express cards.
3. Delta flash sales which happen at regular interval these days where you can get great value for redemption (greater than 1 cent value which SkyMiles is famous for).

It's the flash sales which Delta seems to be doing on regular interval making them one of the go-to currency if you are flexible with your travel plans. for e.g. at the time of this writing below is one of the sale going on:

As you can see delta is charging 8000 miles + taxes for each way between ATL-CHS which otherwise is higher than the advertised cost in miles. Although you will need to check for available dates this is a better value than 1 cent/point.
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Another such flash sale going at the moment is for Caribbean and Australia. For e.g. you can fly to Caribbean for 14,000 miles + taxes round trip or to down under for just 50,000 miles + taxes round trip.

So, take advantage of this deals while they keep coming and get good value out of your so called SkyPesos.

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Citi Prestige is the high end travel card from Citi with host of benefits and carry an hefty $450 annual fees. Although some of the benefits are on average side they are few outstanding one's and "Free Roadside Assistance" is one of them. Here is the link to the benefits guide for Citi Prestige credit card.
American Express provides several great features in it's version of "Free Roadside Assistance" on the American Express Gold and Platinum cards, but there are few features where Citi Prestige card outshines American Express cards. Below are these key features:

• Unlimited Service requests per year.
• Roadside assistance available for Rental Cars as well.
• Available even if you are away from your home but still within 50 United States, District of Columbia, US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.

The other benefits of this free coverage are listed below:

• Towing and winching up to 10 miles free of cost (You are responsible for anything beyond 10 miles).
• Jump starts.
• Flat tire changes provided you have spare available.
• Lock out service when key is in the vehicle.
• Delivery of up to 2 gallons of fuel.

As you can see from the key features that this card carries unlimited service requests and covers rental cars as well. Only Chase Sapphire Reserve is another card which provides road side assistance in rental cars but even then it does not provide unlimited service requests and only reimburses for up to $50 in roadside assistance fees.

How it Works:
Call "1-866-506-5222" when you need roadside assistance and a representative with direct help towards you. Be mindful of certain exclusions such as RV, trailers etc which are not covered by this service.

So next time you hit the road do carry your Citi Prestige Card (if you hold that card), and remember to use its roadside assistance service when in need as the coverage provided is hard to beat.

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