News & Notes For Wednesday, August 28, 2013
American Airlines made View From The Wing soil his pants a bit today. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I got pretty nervous myself. Fuel surcharges are the 800 lb. gorilla in the room when it comes to awards. The airlines that charge them (yup, looking at you British Airways) can make it a really bad value to redeem certain types of awards. The somewhat firm response from American coupled with the fact that it’s a horrible time for American to announce a change like this make me believe this truly was just an error.
Points Hound is offering double miles on all stays that are booked through their website today through August 31st, 2013. Points Hound is a great new way to earn a whole bunch of miles. I grabbed a couple of bookings myself to take advantage of the promotion. If you sign up using the link above I do receive a 250 mile bonus just like you do. I generally try to bundle such things up for giveaways (note: I’ve got a fun giveaway coming up shortly).
One Mile at a Time tells us about the 3X promotion Hertz Gold Plus Rewards is offering for September rentals. I’ve written about the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program in the past and have found some value but generally see fringe value in the program based on normal earning rates. For example, one-way rentals are a great value. But, 3X is intriguing.
I still think most people will find value in taking advantage of the airline bonuses associated with rentals, like the current 4X-6X offer from Hertz. But, at 3X Gold Plus Rewards points, it may make sense to credit a few rentals to Hertz. The history of the points earning & redemption options of this current iteration isn’t very deep, so keeping a large balance is probably not advisable.
Hope you’re travels are taking you somewhere interesting soon!
Related articles
