4 Easy Ways to Spend Less Time on your Miles Hobby

I think miles and points are one area where you don't have to spend hours per day to get great results like flying some of the world's nicest First Class products or taking your family of four on vacation for pennies on the dollar.

Easy enough to get here

You could probably cut the amount of time you spend on this hobby to 20% of your current input and still get 80% of the results.

There is Still Award Space for Thanksgiving Trips Home

If you've somehow made it until two days before Thanksgiving without booking a flight and would like to book one, there is award space available.

What? You were expecting a picture of the other turkey?

Two Tricks I Used on My Last Award Booking

As you read this, I'm 35,000 feet up on my way to Medellin, Colombia.

I was in Tucson over the weekend for a tennis tournament, and I didn't have any exit flight booked. I really wanted to return to Colombia because I had enjoyed Bogota so much and heard even better things about Medellin, but award space didn't appear to be available for a Monday departure from Tucson to Medellin.

I used two tricks and a little bit of creativity to come up with a Saver award, save myself $75 in fees, and give myself a chance to hang

Delta Improves Award Searches Dramatically

An actual improvement to delta.com!

Previously, you could search award space one month at a time with a calendar on delta.com, but that calendar only took into account award space on Delta flights. Because much of the Saver award space available to people with Delta miles is available on partner airlines, that meant that in practice, you really had to search delta.com one day at a time to get the full picture.

Gold Mine Award Space to Europe for Summer 2015

United miles are the best to Europe, though the routes with gold mine award space for Summer 2015 might surprise you. For Summer 2014, I wrote Route from the US to Europe via Canada for Better Award Space, and I decided to check back in on some of our old favorite routes to see if they were again gold mines for 2015.

The answer is a resounding yes.

Virgin Atlantic Opens Up Lots of Last Minute Award Space in Upper Class

Virgin Atlantic is a London-based airline that serves or has plans to serve 12 American airports. Virgin Atlantic releases a ton of award space in Upper Class between the United States and Europe in the last days and weeks before departure.

Detroit begins 6/1/15, Atlanta begins 10/27/14

You can book Virgin Atlantic Upper Class with Delta miles.

New Virgin Atlantic Routes, Best Use SkyMiles?

I recently received an email about changes to the Virgin Atlantic route network.

Virgin Atlantic is a London-based carrier that is not a member of any of the three major alliances, but does have a partnership with Delta.

Using 125,000 Delta miles for a roundtrip in Upper Class from anywhere in the United States to anywhere in Europe is a fantastic use of SkyMiles.

Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Marketing

I checked a few of the Virgin Atlantic routes for award space for May 2015 and found award space nearly every day on one route

Five Under-Priced Awards on the American Airlines Chart

Yesterday's post on the Coolest Thing You Can Do with 60,000 Miles was a hit, so I thought I'd follow up with how you can create your own THINK BIG itineraries with miles.

The basic premise of that post was connecting far-flung regions into a single trip by taking advantage of under-priced awards between the regions.

More Cathay Pacific Flights = More Cathay Pacific Space

Cathay Pacific is a Hong Kong-based member of oneworld with a mind-blowing First Class and a top-notch business class.

Cathay Pacific First Class Bed

Cathay Pacific flies from six North American cities to Hong Kong (and from there to the rest of the world), plus Boston to Hong Kong starts in May 2015.

from gcmap.com

Cathay Pacific flies 777s between the United States and Hong Kong, which have only six First Class seats.

US Airways Now Pricing Awards as Sum of One Ways

US Airways is now pricing roundtrip awards as the sum of two one ways.