Southwest Holding Huge Winter Fare Sale

The Southwest forum on FlyerTalk is buzzing about Southwest's recently announced "Big Winter Sale." Fares to most cities are a whopping 40% off which creates some incredible values in the Southwest route network. To take advantage of the sale, you must book by midnight on Thursday, October 11 and fly 11/28 - 12/12 or 1/7 - 2/14 excluding Sundays.

To book, simply go to the main Southwest home page and enter your city pairs.

The Chicago Seminars are in two days, and I'm flying out to the Second City tomorrow! Several readers have asked about the possibility of a meetup, which sounds great because it's always fun to share stories and tips face-to-face.

Here's my schedule:

Friday 4 PM - 5 PM, helping with Registration

If you're one of the early birds to check in, I should be at the table.

Friday at 8:30 PM - ?? at the Pizza Restaurant/Bar attached to the Hotel

Parag from Frequent Flyer University and I will be having drinks at the bar.

US Airways miles stink because their routing rules and fees are frustrating.

But US Airways miles are incredible because the award chart is so generous. I've talked about sweet spots here and here.

Overall, the sweet spots on the award chart and US Airways off peak awards more than make up for the routing restrictions, so I value US Airways miles more highly than any other airline mile at 1.95 cents each.

If you use US Airways miles correctly, you can reap incredible value.

Last Friday's winner of the gogo pass was David C. Lucky him: he can read MileValue for free from 35k feet.

A generous reader, James, offered me two more passes to give away, so I'm giving another one away in this post.

This post was mostly written before today's story that Qatar is joining oneworld, but it has been edited to reflect the good news.

Would they or wouldn't they? The rumors have been swirling for several weeks about Qatar Airways joining the oneworld alliance. Today Qatar announced that it was joining oneworld, becoming the first major Middle Eastern carrier to join a global airline alliance.

My Award Booking Service has been too successful. People have responded to the low prices, excellent service, and searching skill with enthusiasm.

Over the past few weeks, I've been getting so many requests, I've struggled to keep up with all of them on top of maintaining this blog. I didn't want to cut back on the blog or raise my price to lower the number of requests I got. And luckily I won't have to.

A few months ago I met Tahsir, the Bengali Miles Guru. Tahsir rose to prominence by offering free award booking services on FlyerTalk.

Delta only allows you to hold an itinerary if you don't have enough miles in the account to ticket at that moment. (If you sweet talk the right agent, you might get a hold even if you have enough miles, but it's not easy.)

Here's a trick to avoid this annoying policy if you have enough miles in your account to ticket the award you want.

Call Delta at 800-323-2323.
Instead of giving the SkyMiles account number you'll be using, give the account number of a friend that has very few miles.

Another Aloha Friday, another free GoGo single-flight inflight internet pass.

This is Part 2 of my two-part post on using AA miles to get to Australia and New Zealand. Read Part 1 first.

Here are a few more ways to get to Australia and New Zealand with American miles.

Air Tahiti Nui and Air Pacific: Connect in the Middle of Nowhere

One horribly annoying rule when redeeming AA miles is that your award cannot transit a region other than the origin region and destination region unless explicitly permitted.

There has been quite a bit of recent discussion on FlyerTalk on Radisson's new "Stay One Night, Get One Night" promotion.

Club Carlson properties Radisson, Park Inn, and Country Inn have run similar promotions in the past--I mattress ran in Krakow, Poland to take advantage--though those deals awarded Club Carlson points instead of a free night certificate.