The Chicago Seminars were last Friday through Sunday just outside O'Hare at the Holiday Inn Elk Grove. I had an absolute blast, learned quite a bit, and highly recommend everyone go next year. This post is part recap, part tips for next year if you go. Interspersed are pictures of me and some of my favorite bloggers.

Daraius (Million Mile Secrets) and I are both in our signature outfits

I had volunteered to help with registration starting at 4 PM on Friday.

According to this very active thread on FlyerTalk, Taca Airlines is offering 250 LifeMiles for each purchase made through its e-shopping portal through October 31st. (Hat Tip Mommy Points.) The most important part of this deal is, according to the terms and conditions, there are NO minimums on purchases. Conceivably, you could order many inexpensive items separately and rack up Taca miles quickly.

Many in the FlyerTalk forum are attempting to order multiple $1 items from various stores in the shopping portal. If everything goes as planned, they will receive 250 miles for each $1 purchase.

Club Carlson is selling points with a 50% bonus through November 10, 2012 bringing the cost down to 0.47 cents per point. Club Carlson hotels include Radisson, Park Plaza, Park Inn, and Country Inns & Suites.

To purchase points from this non-targeted promotion, start on the promotion's home page. The promotion page lays out the rules. Every 1,000 points purchased costs $7 and earns a bonus 500 points.
The maximum Club Carlson points you can purchase in a given year are 40k, which would get you 60k total points under this promotion.

Delta is selling Alaska Airlines direct flights from San Diego to Maui roundtrip for $297. And American, United, and Delta are all getting in on the sub-$370 party from Los Angeles to Hawaii roundtrip.

There have recently been a ton of great deals to Hawaii. I'm not sure the cause of the sales--tourism to Hawaii is way up this year--but I've taken advantage and been trying to get everyone else to take advantage.

US Airways and American Airlines have merged since the publication of this post so it is no longer valid.

US Airways has some incredible deals on its award chart. I've talked about off peak awards, South America deals, and intra-South Asia before.

I've got a thriving Award Booking Service. I hold myself out as an expert on the nuances of award-booking rules, and yet I don't know United's award booking rules. Let me explain.

On February 10, 2011, someone believed to be a United employee posted on FlyerTalk that the new routing rule for United awards would be that the actual routing you choose can exceed MPM by no more than 15%.

For those who don't know: MPM (Maximum Permitted Mileage) is the maximum length that a routing on a paid ticket between an origin/destination city pair can be.

United is offering its direct flight from Newark to Honolulu for $420.40 roundtrip on several dates in November and December! I hear Hawaii has better weather than New York that time of year.

For all my Oahu-based readers, the same deal is available in reverse December 3 -11.

How do you get in on the deal?

The easiest way is to start at matrix.itasoftware.com. Type in EWR-HNL or HNL-EWR. Tell the software your desired vacation length and give it a date to start searching.

After hitting search, you'll get a thirty-day calendar.

The legacy carriers--United, US Airways, Delta, American--all charge a fee if you ticket your award by phone instead of online. Here's your guide to avoiding those phone fees:

United

United charges $25 per passenger if you book by phone. They will not waive this phone fee just because a booking could not be completed online. That's frustrating because many multi-city and free-oneway awards can't be booked online. They generate error messages despite being within the routing rules.

Here's how you avoid the phone fee with United:

First, search for and reserve any United flight.

Greetings from Chicago. For those of you in town for the Seminars, I updated my schedule to reflect the fact I will be volunteering to help with check in today from 4 PM - 5 PM.

Wednesday's winner of the gogo pass was David S.

Whenever Priority Club announces its new list of PointBreaks hotels, the miles’ world pays attention. The hotels on the list that may ordinarily cost hundreds of dollars a night go for 5,000 Priority Club points for a limited time. The new list is valid for stays from October 16 - December 10.

As loyal readers know, I’m not big on hotel rewards programs; I usually get a better deal pricelining as I explained here.