Get your SkyMiles gathered because Delta announced a flash sale yesterday, with select roundtrip routes within the United states starting at 11,000 Skymiles, Europe starting at 33,000 miles, Asia starting at 50,000 miles, and the Caribbean and Latin America starting at 11,000 miles (all with taxes and fees, of course). It’s a fash sale, so you better hurry with making those reservations – the offer ends tomorrow, June 13th.
Happy Saturday-before-Christmas, friends! If you need a break from last-minute holiday happenings, here’s a quick recap of the posts we wrote this week:
This week Joe wrote about:
• How planning for intra-Europe flights was an OCD nightmare come true.
• What to do if you get sick while at Universal Orlando.
• When we stayed up the road from an active volcano.
• The bonus points system Hilton Hotels will have in early 2018.
• Why you need to diversify your miles and points portfolio.
Sharon wrote about:
• Google Maps’ latest enhancement, a public toilet indicator app.
• An airline doing good in a time of travel tragedy.
• The new water park that’s coming to Central Florida.
• The TSA’s recommendations for flying during the holidays – and it’s FUNNY!
• Her report on Bagrider: the carry-on bag that doubles as a baby stroller.
Like this post? We have plenty more just like it and would love if you decided to hang around and clicked the button on the top of this page to follow our blog and get emailed notifications of when we post (it’s usually just once or twice a day). Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
Imagine booking a flight (granted, a discounted flight) and you don’t know what your final destination will be until you’ve paid for the flight. Does the spontaneity make you feel excited? Or does it make you cower at the loss of control? Either way, it’s exactly what German airline Lufthansa is doing, and despite the preferences of control freaks like me where everything has to be planned ahead of time, it seems to be doing quite well!
Continue reading “Book Your Flight To Europe & Learn Where You’re Going Afterwards?!?!?!”
We like to poke fun at Ryanair on here every once in a while. After all, looking at how Ryanair operates gives us a welcome break away from being upset about how United, Delta and American are constantly one upping each other with customer unfriendly policies.
I’ve shared the time when the CEO called the customers a bunch of whiners because they didn’t pay for seat assignments. Sharon found what might be the funniest customer complaint letter ever written by a passenger after their experience with Ryanair agents at the airport when they were running late for a flight.
The airline has recently been in the news over their decision to cut over 2,000 flights from the schedule over a six week time period. The airline said the cancellations were to increase on-time performance of the airline but it was quickly figured out the cancellations were because they didn’t properly schedule for pilots’ vacations. Even the company CEO has said this situation was handled poorly, while at the same time saying that it was the correct decision to make.
For us, we’d made a decision to not take Ryanair even before they were in the news for canceling 2,000 flights. There was one time when we could have taken a Ryanair flight. Here’s why we considered it (for a second) and why we still didn’t fly with them.
Continue reading “The Reasons We Didn’t Fly on Ryanair and Probably Never Will”
By now, I’m sure you have a credit card with a chip, or EMV chip to be specific, in your possession. It’s that thing on your card that makes the person at the checkout tell you, “You need to use your chip in the bottom thingie,” or makes them say when you try to insert your chip card, “We don’t use that chip thing yet, so you need to swipe your card.”
In the U.S.A., we like the think we lead the world in just about everything, but when it comes to credit card security we are decades behind the curve. EMV ( Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip technology was introduced back in the 1990s and rolled out throughout Europe in the 2000s. The chip in the card is used to confirm the information instead of reading the information off the magnetic strip on the back. This technology is harder to counterfeit and, supposedly, cuts down on fraud. The banks in Europe rolled out this technology first because credit card fraud was, at the time, much more common there. When the chip cards were introduced and helped prevent fraud, the criminals went to the least protected market, the USA, so they could continue with the scamming. Lucky us.
Continue reading “Chip & PIN Cards & Why You Should Have One”
We love traveling and TransAtlantic trips are extra special. Living on the east coast of the U.S., flights to European cities are not much longer than trips to the west coast. While I’ve made the trip in economy class, making the overnight flight there in a lie flat business class seat is just so much better. You actually might even sleep on the flight and arrive for your big vacation well rested.
Unfortunately, I will never have the time to try all of the airlines that fly between the United States and Europe. Lucky for me, The Points Guy has just posted a list of all the airlines and comments on the business class service available on each one on this page of their blog. They also pick what they feel are the Top 10, based on factors like availability, service and cost.
I’ve only flew a few of these but will give my quick opinion of each. I did my research before all of these flights and picked out what seemed to be the best airline available to fit our needs. I actively avoided airplanes which had bad reviews but did not go out of my way to book a particular airline/airplane/seat type. I can say that I was happy with all the flights. None were amazing beyond compare but we had much more comfortable flight than we would have had in economy while soaring over the Atlantic Ocean on all of them.
This was how we got to London on our most recent trip in the fall of 2016. I was able to get flights in business class from Orlando to Dublin, then onward to London in economy. We were even able to arrange for a 10 hour layover so we got to leave the airport and spend the afternoon in Dublin so we could eat at one of our most favorite restaurants, Gallagher’s Boxty House. The seats were very comfortable and I even managed to get several hours of sleep on the flight. Since Aer Lingus is a partner with United Airlines, I was able to book the one way ticket for 70,000 United miles + $23.80 each.
This was our airline to get us home from Europe in 2016. Since we hopped around a little bit, we needed to fly home from Austria. I was able to get a ticket from Salzburg, Austria to London to Miami and finally to Orlando, all in business class.
I managed to get us seats on an American 777-300ER, which is one of their newest planes, for our flight from London to Miami. It had lie flat seats, everyone had aisle access and a really big TV screen. We were flying home during the daytime so I didn’t sleep very much on the flight but did enjoy reclining to read. To book the tickets, I had a healthy stash of American miles. At the time, this award cost 50,000 American miles (now it costs 57,500) and $200.20 each.
I love the vibe of Virgin Atlantic. We flew them back in 2013 in Upper Class from Orlando to London and then home from Manchester to Orlando. Flying there, we took a 747 and were the first two seats in the nose of the plane. It was so cool. Apparently it was so cool that we didn’t want to appear silly taking a bunch of pictures. This was the only one I could find.
Flying home from Manchester we were on an Airbus A330-300. The seats were jammed in much closer and it wasn’t as luxurious a trip back. I guess that’s why we have no pictures of the flight.
That trip was the first time I used some miles and points tricks without help from others. I booked this flight using miles from ANA (All Nippon Airways). They are partners with Virgin Atlantic and only charge 68,000 miles for the flight. I was able to get ANA miles by transferring points to them from my American Express Membership Rewards account. This was good for me because back then I didn’t have a big stash of miles to spend. The kicker was that they do charge taxes and fees which ended up costing $1100.00 per ticket. I viewed it as if I was paying cash for a premium economy ticket and the miles I used was the cost to upgrade to Upper Class.
We flew these airlines to Ireland back in 2011. The information about the flights and such are really out of date. Flying up in front of the plane was also still a new thrill for us. Apparently the only thing that excited us was the amount of legroom we had as these are the only pictures I can find of the flight.
To book this flight, I used an award booking service I read about in a magazine called Book Your Award. Using a service to take advantage of your miles was a new idea back then. They are still around and I will refer people to them if they need help to book a complicated award ticket with miles.
