Why Your 'Free' Flight Costs $700 (and How to Dodge It)
You found the seat, you have the points, and the checkout page wants $700 anyway. Carrier surcharges are the tax on not paying attention, and they're almost always routable around.
The Archive
Everything, in order
44 pieces on miles, points and the seats worth chasing. Filter the board, or dig through the lot.
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Hyatt Points at 2.08 Cents, and This Time the Chart Is New
A 20% discount on purchased Hyatt points runs through October 5. The rule for buying points has not changed, but the chart you are buying against has, so run the numbers again.
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Alaska Is Flying Seattle to Athens, and the Award Space Is Already There
The longest route Alaska has ever flown, the only nonstop between Athens and the US West Coast, and business class already loading at 95,000 points to Paris. A US airline is quietly building a long-haul network.
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World of Hyatt Is Still the Best Hotel Program. It Just Got More Expensive.
Hyatt rewrote its award chart in May: eight categories, five pricing bands, 78 price points. Here is what a night actually costs now, what survived intact, and why this is still the one hotel currency worth holding.
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American Is Putting the Screens Back In. It Only Took a Decade.
Seatback entertainment returns to every mainline narrowbody, premium seating goes from a quarter of the cabin to nearly half, and the first aircraft arrives in 2028. Progress, at the pace of a fleet plan.
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Flying Blue Kept the Price and Took the Product
The 60,000-mile business award to Europe survives. What it buys does not. Air France-KLM is splitting every award into three tiers on September 8, and only one of them is the deal you remember.
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How Much Are Your Points Really Worth?
Valuation charts say a mile is worth 1.4 cents. Airlines say a seat is worth $8,000. Both numbers are marketing. Here's the arithmetic that tells you whether a redemption is actually good.
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Star Alliance, oneworld, SkyTeam: Why Your Points Care
Alliances exist so airlines can sell each other's seats. For points people they exist for one reason: the same seat has many prices, and the alliance decides which currencies get to bid.
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American Is Repricing Everything It Used to Give Away
Single-cabin upgrades, Admirals Club prices up 60-75%, a $695 credit card, and a cash-and-miles button. Four announcements, one strategy, two deadlines worth knowing.
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Turkish Airlines Will Fly You From Singapore to Sydney. Yes, Turkish.
Starting October 26, an Istanbul airline sells lie-flat seats on the Singapore-Sydney corridor. Fifth freedom routes are where award travelers eat, and a new one just opened.
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Amex Is Paying You 30% Extra to Learn the Avios Trick
Through September 27, a thousand Membership Rewards points become 1,300 Avios, in any of three programs at once. The bonus is good. The currency's party trick is better.
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Blackstone Just Bought a Quarter of Your Favorite Points Program
Air Canada sold a 25% stake in Aeroplan to a Blackstone-led group at a C$10 billion valuation. Nothing changes for your points today. The clock that just started is the story.
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Chase Is Adding 20% to My Favorite Points Program
A 20% boost into Aeroplan, the program behind most of my best redemptions, through September 30. Take the discount. Spend what you send.
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How to Actually Find Award Space
The most expensive mistake in points is transferring before you've found the seat. The tools that let you find it first — and the discipline that makes them matter.
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Virgin Atlantic's Points Program Makes No Sense. Use It Anyway.
The fees can be brutal and the pricing looks random. It also hides some of the best premium-cabin redemptions in the entire points world — if you know which ones to chase.
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Start Here: How the Points Game Actually Works
Every article on this site is a piece of one simple machine. This is the map — the four moves that turn a credit card balance into a seat you'd never pay cash for.
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Amex Points Are a Currency, Not a Statement Credit
Sixteen airline partners, three hotels, and one rule that decides whether any of it is worth it — the difference between a lie-flat seat and a glorified gift card.
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Transfer Bonuses Are Getting Bigger and Worse at the Same Time
A 100% bonus into IHG. A 25% bonus into Frontier. A 20% bonus into Flying Blue. Only one of those is worth taking, and the percentages tell you nothing about which.
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American Didn't Raise Its Status Requirements. Look at What It Cut Instead.
Three years running, AAdvantage has held the status thresholds flat — genuinely rare, genuinely good. Now read the rest of the announcement, where the reward ladder quietly got cheaper to fund.
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The 777X Is Seven Years Late. Stop Planning Trips Around It.
Boeing's flagship has slipped to 2027 and taken $15 billion in charges with it. The problem for points people isn't the plane — it's every premium cabin that was designed to launch on it.
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American Is Selling Miles at the Year's Best Price. Should You Bite?
AAdvantage miles are up to 50% off through July 22 — the cheapest they've been all year. That's the right question to ask, and mostly the wrong reason to buy.
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Chase Will Double Your Points Into IHG. Mostly Don't.
A 100% transfer bonus sounds like free money. But a huge bonus on a weak currency is still a weak currency — here's when to bite and when to walk.
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The Most Comfortable Way Across the Atlantic Is Neither American nor European
The best business class between Europe and New York is flown by an airline with no business being on the route at all — and the received wisdom about how to book it is wrong. I booked it for 60,000 points.
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Alaska Just Brought Back Earning by Distance. I Give It Three Years.
Every major US airline killed distance-based earning a decade ago. Atmos Rewards is bringing the option back — and that's either the smartest differentiation in domestic loyalty or a very good deal with an expiry date.
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Aeroplan Just Got More Expensive. It’s a Devaluation, But Not a Massacre.
Air Canada refreshed the Aeroplan award chart this summer, and if you’ve been sitting on a pile of points waiting for the “right moment,” I have some mildly annoying news: the right moment was probably a few months ago.
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Delta Invented Basic Economy for Business Class. Of Course It Did.
Delta has launched “Basic Business,” and I want you to sit with that phrase for a second, because it is doing a lot of work.
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Your Points Are Worth 30% More to Virgin Atlantic Right Now. Do Something.
There is a transfer bonus running that you should probably care about, and depending on when you’re reading this, you may need to move quickly.
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Delta SkyMiles Are Bad… Until You Leave America
Delta SkyMiles have a pretty terrible reputation among points people, and honestly, that reputation is mostly deserved.
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I Got Thousands of Dollars in Flights From Chase Points. Here’s How.
I think Chase Ultimate Rewards points are some of the most valuable points somebody can have.
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What Is Etihad Doing?
There was a time when Etihad Airways looked like it belonged in the same sentence as Emirates without any qualification.
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KLM’s New 787-10 Business Class to Los Angeles: Charming, Comfortable, and Very Dutch
KLM is not usually the airline people fantasize about when they think of long-haul business class.
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Why Taipei Is the Perfect Layover City
For many travelers, layovers are something to minimize. The goal is usually to find the shortest connection possible, get through the airport quickly, and move on.
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How I Beat Jet Lag on Transpacific Flights
Jet lag is one of those things people talk about as if it were either completely unavoidable or easily solved with a miracle hack. In reality, it’s neither.
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How to Book Etihad First Class Apartments for Under $100
Etihad’s A380 First Class Apartments are one of the most absurd luxury products in commercial aviation: a private suite with a separate bed, elevated dining, and access to onboard shower facilities.
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The Cheapest Way To Fly In Business Class Between North America And Europe (For Cheaper Than An Economy Class Ticket)
Let’s pretend you’re in some imaginary hypothetical where you’re just curious what the easiest possible way to sit in a lie-flat seat crossing the Atlantic is.
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Al Safwa Review: My Favorite Airport Lounge
Airline lounges come in many shapes and sizes. In the United States, most travelers are familiar with airline-operated lounges tied to the three legacy carriers, each of which runs a two-tier system.
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Qatar’s A380 Business Class from Paris to Doha
Among premium airlines, few carry the reputation for refinement that Qatar Airways does. This A380 flight from Paris to Doha was no exception.
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3 Days in Shanghai: The Best of the Magic City
Shanghai is not subtle. It is loud, vertical, hyper-modern, and unapologetically theatrical.
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Traveling China… Without a Visa
The first time I traveled to China, I was alone, I had no visa, and it was a logistical nightmare.
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ANA Business Class from Tokyo to Brussels: The Long Way from Asia to Europe
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian airspace was closed to most international carriers.
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The Five Best Aeroplan Sweet Spots
The single biggest piece of advice with Aeroplan is simple: unless you absolutely have to, do not redeem Aeroplan points on Air Canada-operated flights.
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EVA’s superb Short-Haul Business Class from Taipei to Shanghai
In my last post, I explained why EVA Air’s business class remains my favorite way to cross the Pacific. But another area where EVA truly excels is its short-haul and regional flying.
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Thai Airways First Class from Tokyo to Bangkok - Exceptional
As most airlines continue to scale back or eliminate first class altogether, citing high costs and limited profitability, a small number still buck the trend. Thai Airways is one of them.
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LA–Taipei on EVA: Where the Food Shines
EVA Air’s business class has long been my favorite way to cross the Pacific, even if the nonstop from Los Angeles to Taipei is noticeably longer than similar routes from airports like Tokyo Haneda, Tokyo Narita, or Seoul Incheon.
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