The World In Economy Class
I’m flying from Vancouver to Las Vegas for DEF CON on August 3. To get there, I originally booked a WestJet flight using Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points. This was a spectacular deal: only 9,000 points each way, and I got the Flying Club points with a 40% transfer bonus.... Read more "Virgin Atlantic Wants Me to Gamble on a WestJet Strike"
We’re taking my niece to Scotland following her high school graduation this summer. While the rest of the family is navigating their own flights on a separate adventurous itinerary (including a stop in Dublin), I’ve been busy piecing together the routing for Rakhat and me from Vancouver. My initial booking... Read more "Always Garden Your Reservations"
A lot of people seem very excited about the idea of Alaska buying JetBlue. I get it. The combined route map looks pretty compelling. Buying jetBlue would give Alaska a strong position in Boston, JFK, Fort Lauderdale, and San Juan along with a much bigger East Coast presence. JetBlue would... Read more "Alaska Buying JetBlue? Not So Fast"
Everywhere you look, people are telling you to transfer bank points to Hyatt because “Hyatt is the best hotel program.” The brand is practically Teflon. It’s about time that someone call it out, so we ran the numbers. Hyatt is often the best hotel program. It is also a program... Read more "Hyatt’s Brutal 2023-2025 Devaluations"
Greetings from San Jose del Cabo, where we’re enjoying a long weekend before returning to our home airport of Vancouver. We have spent the past week in Mexico going through various bureaucratic processes to obtain Mexican residency for my spouse (that’s a whole separate topic). That took Monday through Thursday... Read more "Our Harrowing Volaris Oversold Experience"
I got a breezily worded letter in the mail yesterday from Citi. “You may not have gotten a copy of the ThankYou Terms And Conditions when you signed up for your card,” it said. “Don’t worry, there’s nothing you need to do.” The letter included a link to the ThankYou... Read more "Bank Points Aren’t Safe From Devaluation"
You’re forgiven if you have never heard of “I Prefer Rewards.” I hadn’t until they were added as a Citi ThankYouPoints transfer partner. And when they were added, it mostly didn’t matter. The program was mostly useless because hotels in it seemingly weren’t required to offer any award inventory, so... Read more "Crazy Hotel Values With I Prefer Rewards and Citi ThankYou Points"
Chase issues a cobranded credit card with Air Canada Aeroplan. It has a very interesting feature called Pay Yourself Back. This card isn’t especially popular in the US, but I have gotten pretty good value out of it over the past year. Although I live 900 meters inside the US,... Read more "How I Fixed Chase Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back Failures"
Since getting married earlier this month, we’ve been busy assembling a giant package of documentation for Rakhat’s US green card application. The insane complexity of an I-485 adjustment of status application is another article in and of itself (particularly given where we live), but we finally got the forms filled... Read more "How Capital One Torpedoed Our US Green Card Application"
I have been trying to figure out the best way to write about this because it’s so hard to believe it actually happened. I realize that what I’m about to describe is deeply personal, and I do try to keep the blog to topics that could impact other people. But... Read more "How Amex Charged Me $100 And Then Tried To Ruin Our Wedding"