ANA is devaluing its award charts for bookings made October 15, 2015 or later. This is all the notice they've given. (Hat tip @saianel on Twitter.) To beat the devaluation, book by October 14 for travel through mid-September 2016.

This devaluation affects you because you "have" ANA miles in the form of Membership Rewards and SPG Starpoints, both of which can be transferred to ANA miles.

Avianca LifeMiles and InsideFlyer are offering a 150% bonus on purchased miles through October 12, 2015. You must buy 100,000 to 150,000 LifeMiles (pre-bonus) during the sale at a minimum cost of $3,300.

LifeMiles cost 3.3 cents each, so with a 150% bonus, you get the miles for 1.32 cents each. For instance, if you purchase 100,000 LifeMiles with a 150,000 mile bonus for 250,000 total miles, it would cost $3,300 or 1.32 cents each. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen LifeMiles sold.

On alaskaair.com, the following message appears:

AeroMexico is a SkyTeam member. Including seasonal destinations, AeroMexico serves 13 American destinations from Mexico City.

From Mexico City, you can connect through Mexico, Central America, and South America. The South American destinations:

Delta is the American member of SkyTeam, so I went to delta.com to see if Delta miles can book AeroMexico award space at the moment. I found this itinerary on October 18 from Chicago to Buenos Aires on AeroMexico flights.

If Alaska had access to AeroMexico award space, the same exact flights would be 45,000 Alaska miles.

New codes at 12:08 PM ET 10/2/15

Enjoy one of these 65 free upgrade codes to six months of Award Wallet Plus. Award Wallet is the free way I track my 33 miles and points balances and store my login information for those programs.

Read more about Award Wallet.
Sign up for Award Wallet.

Here are the extra features of Award Wallet Plus:

These Award Wallet code giveaways sometimes get complaints. Unfortunately I don’t think there is any way to improve them.

To anyone who will listen, I say that you should not expect to use your miles at peak times on high demand routes. Airlines use miles to get rid of distressed inventory--seats they don't expect to sell.

Trip Report Index

Emirates Lounge Zurich
Emirates A380 First Class from Zurich to Dubai
Emirates First Class Lounge Dubai
Emirates A380 First Class from Dubai to Houston

After my stopover in Dubai, I had a 9:05 AM flight to Houston in Emirates A380 First Class.

Wanting to enjoy the Emirates First Class Lounge and having stayed up all night anyway, I arrived at the airport almost exactly four hours before departure.

I followed signs for First Class check in and had my boarding pass quickly.

The Points Guy and View from the Wing have reported success asking American Airlines to open up award space in two circumstances: to complete a party and to complete an award.

"To complete a party" is when you find two Saver award seats but you need three or something similar.

"To complete an award" is when you live in Houston and you find award space from Dallas to Miami to Lima, but you cannot find award space from Houston to Dallas to start the trip.

That's all according to JonNYC from the Traveling Better forum who always seems to have

American Express christened the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the day after Black Friday, as Small Business Saturday in 2010. Every year since then, American Express has offered $10 to $30 in statement credits per American Express card for shopping at small businesses on Small Business Saturday. There are probably people who have racked up over $1,000 in free statement credits from American Express in the last five years.

Well this gravy train is over, at least for this year, but I'd guess forever.

I've come to Colombia four times in the last year, and one thing I've learned is that leaving Colombia is a lot like redeeming Arrival miles.

Every time you redeem Arrival miles for travel, you instantly get 5% of the points you just redeemed rebated back to your account.

I don't turn down free miles, but I do find this "lock in" annoying.

United operates a route from Honolulu to Guam with five stops twice per week on Mondays and Fridays.