Virgin America (Vx) which claims to be A breath of fresh Airline is taking on United and American Airline by trying to steal their elite customers by offering them a FREE status match! Virgin America launched their own elite program earlier in an attempt to take on the legacy carriers and to lure business travelers onto their metal tubes and is now offering status matches to encourage people to make the leap.

The Virgin America Elite Program is fairly comparable to the legacy ...

On a positive note, last night United announced on Flyertalk that they have revised their expiration policy for GPU and RPUs.  Now, instead of expiring a year from their issue date, they will expire at the end of the January of the status year.  So, if you earned your 2012 certificates, they won't expire until 1/31/2014.  

This is great news and matches the old Continental policy, which was better than the United one.   The original United granted you certificates on January 1st and gave you 13 months to use them.   The current policy grants them the day you hit 100,000 miles, so if you earn them in June, you get them for an extra six months.

United said any certificates issued in 2012 will automatically have their date adjusted and sure enough, when I logged in this morning, all of mine have been extened to 1/31/2014.

Bonus!

OzFest 2012 (Canberra) - Introduction Lufthansa First Class, Denver to Frankfurt Lufthansa's First Class Terminal and LH901, Frankfurt to London Hilton Paddington Station London to Sydney, the Long Way, in United Business Sydney's Qantas Club & The Q400 to Canberra The Park Hyatt Canberra Touring Canberra Canberra's Qantas Club & The Beginning of a 13,000 Mile Journey

Before I start this trip report, I want to offer my apologies for taking so long to write it. This past ...

My favorite perk of being a 1K member with United is having zero fees for changing award tickets. I'm constantly looking to improve my routings for trips that I've booked. Imagine my surprise when I found this one the other day (click here for the full screenshot).

See anything out of the ordinary? Take a look at the plane for the NRT-SEA flight. Yup… I was able to score two business class tickets on the ANA 787 home from Asia in business class! Wooooot! We're gonna fly the Dreamliner!!!

How freaking cool is that?!!?

FYI - I'm checking that route on a couple other dates… and I see some more availability on the dreamliner… so if you're interested in flying on that plane, I'd recommend taking a look before everyone else does!

Introduction United Airlines Economy Plus LAX-Singapore The Grand Hyatt Singapore United Airlines Economy Plus Singapore-Denver

As is usually the case for mileage runners, I spent the better portion of a Saturday on ITA & United.com in search for some decent fares to help me reach the 100,000 elite qualifying miles necessary to renew my 1K status on United.

When I look for mileage runs, I aim for a trip that will cost between 2-4 cents per mile (CPM). While it can be ...

The good new is that United is finally using Twitter a bit more regularly than they used to. The bad news is that it appears that if you booked a flight in November or December that was originally scheduled to be on a dreamliner, you might be out of luck. Here is the full text of their update: 

Update (October 26, 2012)

Our first 787 is continuing with pre-certification proving runs and we expect it to enter commercial service on ...