How to Redeem Barclaycard Arrival Miles

The card offer described in this post has expired. To see the latest top travel credit cards with big bonuses that will save you tons, check out our Top 10 List for Consumers and Top 10 List for Small Businesses.

The Barclaycard Arrival Plus is a tool every frequent flyer should have in their wallet, especially big spenders and families. In essence, the card earns 2.1% back toward travel on all purchases.

How to Search for Award Space on Aeroplan.com

Aeroplan is Air Canada’s spun-off loyalty program. Aeroplan.com is an awesome search engine that displays award availability on almost all Star Alliance flights.

You should know how to use aeroplan.com whether or not you ever plan to redeem Aeroplan miles because you shouldn’t necessarily search the website of the miles you’re using. You should just search the website that is easiest and best at displaying award availability. Any award availability shown at aeroplan.com will be bookable with Aeroplan, United, Singapore, ANA, Lufthansa, and Avianca miles.

Aeroplan.com is usually my backup search engine.

How to Use the ANA Search Tool for Awards with United and other Star Alliance Miles

I use united.com for most of my award searches when redeeming Star Alliance miles because it shows most Star Alliance partners' award availability, but it does have some drawbacks. Namely, it doesn't show all partners and it sometimes displays phantom award space--award space will show as available but in reality, it doesn't exist.

Star Alliance Airlines Whose Award Space I Want to Search

The best way to confirm Star Alliance award space is using the All Nippon Airways (ANA) search tool. ANA's tool is trickier to use, but it's the most reliable.

How to Credit Your Miles to an Airline’s Partner

Every day people come to my Award Booking Service with a few hundred thousand Lufthansa miles and want to fly a Business Class award to Europe. Or worse, they come with 20,000 Turkish miles, 20,000 Lufthansa miles, 20,000 United miles, and 20,000 Asiana miles.

The problem is that most people blindly credit the frequent flyer miles they are earning from paid flights to the airline they're flying, racking up the wrong kind of miles for the redemptions they want to make.

How Long Does It Take Me to Manage My Credit Cards?

When you get deeper into the world of opening rewards cards to get free or luxury travel, there is an inevitable amount of bookkeeping that comes with managing your credit cards.

You have to track:

when you opened each card
when the annual fee is due on each card
how much you've spent toward the minimum spending requirement associated with the sign up bonus
when each statement closes
when payments are due on each card
category bonuses

While that looks like a lot to track, and may seem daunting, I estimate that I spend about 30 minutes per month on

How to Request United to Manually Sell Award Seats

Here's how I got United to "manually sell" me award seats for an itinerary. While this technique is not possible in most circumstances, in my case, it turned no award into my dream award!

I was in the midst of constructing a simple roundtrip itinerary from the US to Europe when I ran into some big trouble.

United's online award calendar displayed Austrian award space on the only day I could return to the States.

How to Get to the World Cup 2014 in Brazil for Cheap with Miles & Points

I just booked myself a roundtrip First Class award from Honolulu to Sao Paulo, Brazil during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. I also booked myself five nights at a hotel in Sao Paulo.

Rooting for the Home Team (Poland) at the 2012 UEFA Euro Cup!

The cost?

125,000 US Airways miles
100,000 IHG Rewards points
$109

If you want to go see the biggest sporting event in the world in the world's best footballing (soccer) country, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

How to Transfer SPG Starpoints to Airline Miles

Update: My transfer took two days. I made the transfer on December 18 and received the miles on December 20. Yours may take more or less time.

Starpoints (or SPG points) are the points earned from the Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express and Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express.

Starpoints are the most valuable mile or point in my opinion--worth about 2.5 cents each.

They can be used for free hotel nights, complete vacations, discounted hotel nights, or transferred to airline miles with over 30 airlines.

How to Search for Nonstop Award Space on AA.com

American Airlines' website is a great place to search for oneworld award space, especially on oneworld partners such as airberlin, Qantas, and Finnair. American's site is also useful for searching award space on non-oneworld partners like Hawaiian and Alaska. Scott wrote up a good introductory post on AA.com earlier this month.

This brief post will show you a quick tip on how to search for nonstop award segments on AA.com.

How do you manipulate aa.com to show only non-stop results? When would you want to do this?

American's site is intuitive and displays accurate award space.

PointBreaks Hotels List Released Today. Summer Hotels from $35 per Night if You Book Now!

If you buy IHG Rewards points for 0.57 cents each today (6/28/13) only instead of the 0.7 cent method in this post, PointBreaks hotels cost only $29! For more info, see IHG Club Points on Sale Today Only for 0.57 Cents.

There are several posts on today’s new PointBreaks list. Even if you’ve read those, read this. I’ve honed my strategy for getting $35 per night rooms quite a bit, and I want to share it, so everyone can have access to the best practices.