The Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite MasterCard comes with 60,000 American Airlines miles, and you don't even have to spend a large amount of money to earn the bonus. In fact, you hardly have to spend anything--only one purchase is required, along with the payment of the $95 annual fee--to trigger the 60k bonus. Little did you know Barclaycard also issues a business version of this card! It comes with 40,000 American Airlines miles after one purchase and paying the $95 annual fee.

Hyatt Cash + Points Awards let you use only half the number of points needed for a free night award in exchange for a cash co-pay. They can sometimes be a high value way to stretch your points. They can also be a bad deal.

Here are what Points + Cash awards typically cost.

For some reason there are various Hyatt's with Cash + Points awards priced lower than the chart listed above right now, and it's not being advertised by Hyatt.

Thanks to everyone who participated. A winner has been randomly selected. Congratulations to Mike Reitsma! Safe travels.

Happy holidays! Longtime and ever generous reader CaveDweller is once again offering one lucky reader a $51 Southwest gift card. Southwest gift cards are fully transferable and don’t expire. There are two ways to enter:

Comment on this post
Follow us on Facebook.
Retweet this tweet.

GIVING AWAY A $51 GIFT CARD ON SOUTHWEST AIRLINES. FOLLOW & RETWEET TO WIN.

I have an adorable two year old boston terrier named Omar that I share with my boyfriend, pictured below in his carrier on a ferry to Uruguay last year.

If you're looking for a pet carrier, I recommend the brand Bergan.

My home base is Buenos Aires, but when winter strikes come June we escape to Northern hemisphere summer to enjoy warmer temps and time with family and friends around the United States. Sometimes we also fly back for Christmas, like we did a week ago.

United recently announced that they will commence service between San Francisco and Papeete, Tahiti (PPT) as of October 30, 2018. This is great news as it theoretically means more award space to a destination infamously hard to book an award to. At the moment, the only direct flights between the continental United States and Tahiti are on Air Tahiti Nui and Air France, both of which depart from Los Angeles.

Transferable points are points you earn from a credit card that you can transfer to many different types of airline miles or other points. They are valuable because they give you so much flexibility. Each airline program has strengths and weaknesses in terms of the number of miles you need and the availability from point A to point B.

JetBlue is offering a 15% discount on the base fare of all JetBlue flights (save those booked with points) flown between January 10 and February 14, 2017, as well as February 26 and March 14, 2018 and booked by the end of tomorrow. Flights on Fridays and Sundays are not discounted.

Hyatt has announced a few hotels that will go up in award price and one that will drop in price, effective as of 12:01am CST on December 13, 2017 (this Wednesday).

While not widely publicized, right now you can book flights within the United States or to Hawaii for less Alaska Miles in January or February than it would typically cost you.

There are various routes on sale, from short hops between Albuquerque and San Francisco to Hawaiian island routes like Honolulu to Oakland or Lihue to San Diego. Routes listed below are not the only ones on sale, but just examples (hat tip to Travel Codex for notice of the sale and the routes provided).

As time carries on Marriott and Starwood Preferred Guest are slowly altering their loyalty programs to prepare for integration. This morning Marriott announced a few new changes that will affect both Marriott and SPG members.
A Brief Catch-Up
Marriott and Starwood Preferred Guest have been in the process of merging since September 2016 when Marriott announced the purchase of SPG. We were given the ability to link accounts and transfer points between programs (3 Marriott points to 1 SPG Point and vice versa) and elite status match with impressive speed, immediately following the purchase.