Tag: Alaska Airlines

How to Donate Your Miles and Points to Support Hurricane Dorian Victims

I know watching the news stories about the devastation in the Bahamas caused by Hurricane Dorian can make you feel helpless. After a while, you just feel numb and you want to do something, do anything, but don’t know how you can help.

Luckily, most of the airline and hotel programs are making it easy to contribute in any way you can. Even if you don’t have the cash to spare, you can donate those random points you have here and there to the recovery effort. Even better, you can donate points if you have more of them than you know what to do with. Face it, it’s better to donate them than redeem them for some magazines that you’ll never read, overpriced luggage or an Amazon InstaPot.  Continue reading “How to Donate Your Miles and Points to Support Hurricane Dorian Victims”

Now That Southwest Is Leaving Newark, What Are Your Options?

One of the bombshell announcements from the Southwest Airlines earning call was that starting November 3, 2019, they would stop flights from Newark Airport and consolidate flights to the New York area to LaGuardia Airport. Now, I don’t know if anyone other than those who have lived in New Jersey knows the difference between getting a flight from Newark or a flight from LaGuardia. First of all, there’s the getting to and from the airport. Many people in New Jersey can take public transportation to Newark Airport with NJ Transit to the AirTrain. If not, they can drive there and only have to pay a moderate toll on the Turnpike or Parkway. When I lived there 20 years ago, we could drive there on HWY 1&9 and didn’t have to pay a thing besides the airport parking fee. The good old days. But New Jersey residents getting to LaGuardia would be kind of crazy – it’s not close, it would take at least two trains, and there’s a lot of traffic if you decided to drive it. So not really a realistic alternative.

I’m sure that the NJ residents who were accustomed to flying on Southwest weren’t happy with the news, so I decided to look at where Southwest flies from Newark and what options are still available. (Spoiler Alert: I hope you don’t mind flying on United)

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How To Understand Airline Seat Class Names

Have you ever felt like this when booking airfare? “I’d like to book a seat in Basic Premium Extra Plus Comfort Class that includes exit row seat assignments but without an extra carry on bag.”

Knowing what class of airline seat you were buying didn’t use to be hard. There were only two or maybe three classes to choose from. First Class. Business Class and Coach. Yep, that’s Coach. Not Economy. Not Main Cabin. Not Core. Just plain old Coach. And do you know what? Everyone was fine with that. No one was complaining that the names were inappropriate. You knew what class you were in and everyone was happy.

Flash forward to today and there are numerous names differentiating the seat choices offered by each airline. None of the names are the same and names that happen to be similar can still mean very different seat types. American Airlines leads the pack with eight different types of categories. United follows closely behind with seven and Delta has six. Southwest Airlines is the easiest to understand, as they only have one class of seat, and they don’t even bother to give it a name 🙂

Here’s my attempt to make sense of all of these names, from top to bottom…

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Want To Watch Movies On A Plane? You Need To Have The App

Airlines love to tell us the reason they no longer have seatback entertainment is that people prefer to watch their own personal devices instead of the screens provided by the airline. While that’s a lie that’s a questionable assumption to make, we have to live with the fact that some airlines don’t provide any onboard entertainment and others say they do provide entertainment that you can watch on your own device.

I agree that airlines will never get seatback entertainment right but that doesn’t mean they should stop trying. I’m also sure removing the entertainment screens has nothing to do with the weight and the increased costs involved with having them because we all know that airlines don’t care about trying to save weight on planes however possible. (/sarcasm)

Since you’re on your own, here’s what you need to do before your flight to make sure you can watch the provided entertainment during the flight.

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RIGHT NOW! 4 Airline Flash Sales, A Mileage Sale, AND Up to 40% off Hotel Rates!

There are a whole lot of travel sales going on right now, friends. They’re all pretty awesomesauce, but heads up that some end today, some tomorrow and some next week, so do’t take to long to check them out…

Continue reading “RIGHT NOW! 4 Airline Flash Sales, A Mileage Sale, AND Up to 40% off Hotel Rates!”