Updated on August 4, 2015

Winner of $150 United Cert

The randomly selected winner of the Giveaway $150 United certificate is Viv, who wrote

United search engine is great for award searches on partner airlines.

• Congrats to Viv – if your redemption plans change and you end up having no use for the certificate, let me know and I will pick another winner (who will probably have less than a day to use it).

I decided to add a surprise prize to the giveaway:  1 United Club lounge pass.  The  surprise prize is for the best response by: Christopher Warner, who wrote:

Great offer, appreciate it!

Used to fly UAL revenue and airman-nonrevenue quite frequently, including international JFK-LHR (before it was disposed of to DAL), IAD-MUC and IAD-GRU roundtrips.

Love the people (the former UAL, CO appeared to have had reservations with “nonrevs”), but overall the airline has deteriorated since the merger. Great when UAL offers upgrade at check-in for their extra revenue / my extra comfort. Besides that, it’s another “United States” airline – every detail is cost driven – and mediocre on an international scale. Food on former VARIG, now TAM of Brazil a different class, even in economy, Lufthansa same. Cleanliness and technological advangarde is always second rate on any US carrier – compared with Lufthansa, Qatar Airways, even Norwegian – “the Low Cost Carrier”etc. (But haven’t flown on UAL’s few 787s yet – that’s why I’m applying for the drawing)

Thanks again for the offer!

Avianca Update (USA-GUM One Way Now 32.5k Coach / 65k Biz)

I had previously posted about one way NYC-Tokyo for 12.5k coach / 25k biz using Avianca LifeMiles.  Thanks to Gary who posted the question “I heard Avianca just reclassified Guam to the Phillipines region ending this award pricing. Can you confirm whether this is true?” I can confirm that it is indeed true.  Avianca is infamous for award chart devaluations without notice and it looks like they pulled another fast one on us (or a very slow one since this trick has been around for over a year).

USA-GUM one way now costs 32,500 Avianca LifeMiles for coach and 65,000 Avianca LifeMiles for business class – more than 250% increase.  Based on Avianca’s partner award chart, it appears GUM has been reclassified from the USA to North Asia, in line with all other mileage programs.

It was good while it lasted.  I hope my post didn’t kill the deal.  I don’t think it did given my 10s of 10s of subscribers!  Regardless of what I think, I suspect I will receive the flaming that Mr. Pickles got when he had a similar post September 2013.

For what it’s worth, I hope readers were able to take advantage of the redemption based on my post from 6 days ago.  I am very glad I pulled the trigger for May 2015 redemption.  The death of the USA-GUM award marks a sad day for many of us.  Another 100k aa miles should lift our spirits – how about we follow the footsteps of the 1 million AA mile guy and sign up for another Citi AA card?

 

 

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