Chase is discontinuing their Ultimate Rewards points transfer with Korean Air suddenly. We could speculate as to why but the and result is Chase is losing a valuable transfer partner. Korean Air Skypass is known for its more difficult redemption process but they did have some good sweet spots on their award chart when you [...]
Category: travel
Focus on Earning Transferable Points
A question we get quite often: "Which miles should I earn?" Our response is usually: "What are your travel goals?" -- just as vague as the question asked. The aim is to get the person thinking first about what they want to do and then earn points towards that goal. If the answer is "Europe [...]
Why do airlines offer flights using miles?
Airlines offer tickets for miles instead of real money for many reasons. Marketing, Loyalty, Expiring inventory, and Demand are all reasons award seats exist. We take a look at each reason below. Marketing: In order for airlines to compete they need to offer seats for miles instead of cash. If not they can only compete [...]
Frequent Traveler Tip: Always have 2 bank accounts with debit cards!
Traveling frequently (especially international) comes with its challenges. Money should not be one of them! Here in the USA you are usually fine with 1 bank ATM/Debit and a credit card. Most places accept cards for payment and even expect it these days! Carrying a $20 note doesn't hurt. When traveling internationally you will find [...]
Reducing or Removing the cost of paid cash airfares
Here at AwardBookingSerivce.com our focus is to help clients use their miles to book flights. This usually means redeeming miles from major carriers for long haul international itineraries. We get our clients flights for pennies on the dollar since they only have to pay the taxes and fees out of pocket. This is where your [...]
United makes stealth devaluation of award tickets without warning!
United announced a little while back they would be making a change the MileagePlus program to severely limit stopovers on round trip award tickets. This was not good but we have seen worse devaluations in the miles and points world recently. I thought we could live with it. The change took place on October 6th, [...]
Reminder: Make sure the airlines have your correct contact info!
Airlines change their flight schedules often. It is important to be properly notified when a change happens in case the change is detrimental to your travel plans! These days most airlines notify us of any far out schedule changes via email. In my experience they call only about half the time unless it is very [...]
How to check your expiration date and renew Global Entry for US Citizens
This post is inspired from my own curiosity. I may as well help out my fellow travelers as well! I wasn't sure when my Global Entry was due to expire and with some trips coming up I want to be sure I am "covered" for expedited re-entry into the USA. The process is pretty easy! [...]
Thailand Domestic Paid Flights: Air Asia versus Bangkok Airways
Flights within Thailand (domestic) can be very inexpensive due to lots of competition. Air Asia is the most well known of the low cost carriers operating in Thailand. They also have the largest low cost network within Asia and operate in several countries in the region. In a discussion with fellow travels the question came [...]
Paying Cash for Airfare can make sense — but not most of the time
Award Booking Service focuses on redeeming your miles for flights for international trips. These represent the best general value of using miles and points for travel (most of the time). One downside of miles and points--for the most part--is they cannot be used for every single flight on the schedule. They are capacity controlled either [...]