As someone who loves both travel and food, I found this episode of Heston’s Mission Impossible for British Airways interesting. He takes on the task of improving airplane food, which is often universally panned. I’m actually a fan of airplane food, just because I think it’s already magical that a giant metal tube can get off…
One of my favorite credit cards is the Barclays US Airways credit card (Flyertalk link), which is one reason why I’m considering adding (another) one to my next round of credit card applications. The sign-up bonus is decent (most recently at 35k miles), but it’s great because it’s a bonus after first use, so there’s no…
As has already been plastered all over the travel blogosphere, US Airways is running their share miles promo, which is effectively one of the best ways to buy airlines miles out there. While US Airways normally runs buy miles promos where you can buy US Airways miles for roughly 1.8 cents per mile, with the…
Breaking Down Two Mileage Runs for 30,000 EQMs to get AA Executive Platinum Getting a Chinese Visa Planning a Mileage Run to Shanghai Vegetarian Economy Meals on American Airlines Hotel Review: Crowne Plaza Shanghai Eating in Shanghai Getting a Chinese Massage aka Tui Na First Class Lounge (No. 69) Shanghai Pudong PVG Concluding Thoughts on…
One of my friends is headed to Budapest, and he asked me for some advice about navigating Budapest, given that I lived there for a time during college. And my biggest recommendation is to learn these three magical phrases: 1) Jó napot kívánok 2) Beszél angolul 3) Köszönöm szépen These mean “hello”, “do you speak English”, and…
In a previous post, I talked about why travel is a good use of money, which is largely because people tend to underinvest in experiences and overinvest in material goods even though experiential purchases tend to make people happier than material purchases. Taking this another step, I’ve realized that it doesn’t really make sense for me…
When calling airlines to make or change award bookings, you usually need to tell a phone agent a confirmation number. And it’s often necessary to use some sort of spelling alphabet (e.g. “A” as in “alpha”) to communicate the letters of the confirmation number to the phone agent as it’s very easy to confuse letters…
(I realize that this post is mostly just preaching to the choir, but I have a future point in mind) Most of us are lucky enough to have at least some discretionary income to spend on whatever we choose. One question this leads to is what’s the best use of this discretionary spending. Should we…
If you happen to be flying on your birthday or are otherwise flying on a special occasion (e.g. honeymoon, anniversary) on some airlines, you or someone else can call the airline to request special services like a birthday cake. This list isn’t meant to be at all exhaustive, but just a sampling of what certain airlines…
While I know that this article is supposed to be humorous, I found the NYTimes article “How Many Miles Do I Need to Murder the Head of the Airline?” by Joyce Wadler to be more misguided than anything else. So many people feel like their miles are worthless–or worse, don’t even collect their miles–because they’re misinformed….
