Quick Thoughts on 2/26/2014

1) Delta devaluation. Should I feel good about flying American? Or should I be scared for the future because these changes are inevitable? Why do people fly Delta again? Oh wait, good in-flight product and well-run airline. Supposedly this will make Delta miles more valuable in the future since earning rates are going to be cut so much?

Inane aside: I used to fly Delta, but then I had a terrible experience and switched to US Airways (The first airline I ever got status on! And it was unintentional. And I actually got upgraded as a Silver. For these reasons, US holds a special place in my heart). Since I figured I’d never fly Delta again, I tried to spend all of my miles down, even redeeming for a non-low-level award and redeeming miles for magazines. Magazines! But the flight that was supposed to be my last Delta flight ever went mechanical, and I ended up getting a handful of miles as compensation, so I still have a small number of Delta miles that might actually end up being redeemable for a flight now that Delta will introduce one-way awards.

2) Why don’t people talk more about JAL? Given how many travel bloggers are AA fanboys, you’d think that there’d be more miles redeemed on them. Had the chance to visit the JAL First Class Lounge at Narita the other day and was very pleasantly surprised. That lounge had some of the best food I’ve had at an airport (granted, I like Japanese food).

3) I’ve got 90k US Airways miles burning a hole in my pocket. What should I do with them? I’m thinking I want to redeem prior to US Airways leaving Star Alliance. My current fleeting thought is to redeem a trip to Taipei or Hong Kong on EVA J (hopefully getting a segment or two on a Hello Kitty plane), then embedding a trip to Australia using UA miles on the outbound for Thai F and AA miles on the return for Qantas F.