With bmi poised to leave Star Alliance next week, those sitting on a mountain of Diamond Club miles would be wise to burn as many possible before 18 April. Even if British Airways transfers Diamond Club miles into Executive Club Avios points at a 1:1 rate and even conceding that the new BA Avios chart does have a few good deals, bmi currently has one of the most generous redemption charts in the industry. The chances that such a consumer-friendly award chart will survive the merger are ...

I received an e-mail this evening from a client whom I had assisted with an award reservation to South Africa on Swiss (San Francisco- Zurich-Johannesburg) using United miles. Tickets had been issued last October and were in economy class.

Matthew,

Hope you've been well.

We logged into our United account online and saw that the OUTBOUND is now missing the first segment -- the SWISS 39, from SFO to Zurich is no longer showing up!  The 2nd segment, from Zurich to ...

Swiss, Adria, and Croatia Airlines award seats are now bookable on continental.com, meaning that 26/27 Star Alliance carriers can now be booked quickly and easily online. Only Ethiopian Airlines, which joined Star Alliance last December, is yet to be added.

 

 

Up until now, the use of the Air Canada/Aeroplan or ANA award search ...

I wouldn't call this the sale of century, but if you are planning an economy class award redemption to the lower half of Africa or Europe (not recommended--go in business or first), you can save 20-25% off the published mileage rate through United and Continental for travel occurring in the next few months.

The Points Guy sums up nicely the key points of this offer:

Book by January 16, 2012 Travel between January 27, 2012 and March 22, 2012 Available only ...

I'm using Etihad Airways to get to the Maldives next fall, but if your bucket of miles are with a Star Alliance carrier, your only option for flying directly out of the Maldives (MLE) is Singapore Airlines to Singapore. Singapore runs two daily flights:

SQ461, MLE-SIN, departs at 3:00PM, lands at 10:50PM SQ451, MLE-SIN, departs at 11:25PM, lands at 7:15AM

So basically you can leave in the afternoon and get in late or you can take a redeye. Singapore AIrlines uses a 2-cabin ...

People often ask me how they can squeeze the most value out of their frequent flyer miles. I begin my answer by stating that maximizing monetary value and actual value are two very different things and ultimately there is no magic formula that tells you whether you are effectively using your miles.

I find the biggest waste of miles is to use them to purchase consumer products, like spending 200K miles on a $700 television set when those miles could have been used for two business ...