Lucky, over at OneMileAtATime, has detailed instructions on how to connect your Starwood Preferred Guest number to your Marriott Rewards number. It only takes a few minutes, and the status match is virtually instantaneous. It already matched my Platinum SPG!
In another post, he details some of the benefits of this link. The big thing to note is that the connection isn’t one way – you can transfer Starpoints at a 1:3 ratio to Marriott Rewards points, or go the other way and transfer 3 Marriott points to one Starpoint. Since AmEx changed their signup bonus this year, that means you can use the Marriott credit card to convert 80,000 Rewards points into just over 29,000 Starpoints!
Similarly, SPG Platinums are Marriott Platinums, which means we get complimentary United Silver Elite status. United Gold Elite members are Marriott Gold as well, so they can match to SPG Gold! Not a bad deal, all things considered.
If we keep all the programs separate, I can live with this! At the very least, it seems that the programs will remain independent until 2018, so that is a relief as I love the Starwood Preferred Guest program.
I just received an email for affordable round-trip companion tickets from the US to Italy, courtesy of Alitalia!The sample fare they showed was from JFK to Milan for under $700. That is including all taxes and fees, per passenger. You can get all the details and search for flights on Alitalia’s website.
With schedule changes, I took some time to dig through all of my upcoming travel when I noticed this gem… I didn’t know Delta used Eurocopter EC155s! 😉
A Delta helicopter?
I did verify that I would not be on a helicopter, which I have mixed feelings about… it would certainly make for a fun day! For those curious, this is what a Eurocopter EC155 looks like:
The Boeing 757 is an iconic plane in its own right, though not always as distinguishable to the untrained eye as a 747 or A380. It has been in production from 1981 to 2004, and in service since 1983. In fact, many airlines are holding onto their 757s tightly because of the versatility offered by this plane, in range, passenger capacity, and flight abilities.
While browsing Reddit’s /r/Aviation subreddit, I came across an article about Norwegian looking to Airbus to use the A321neo to take the place of their 757s. While Norwegian is a staunch Boeing supporter and purchasing their new 737-MAX, they recognize that the 737 simply does not have the range that the 757 does, even with the improvements provided by the MAX variants. The A321neo’s Long Range variant, however, does meet this need.
Benjamin from Business Insider goes on to explain that the issue is the size of the engines and the way the original 737 was designed. As I mentioned the other day, he A321neo-LR uses the CFM LEAP-1A engines, while the 737-MAX uses the CFM LEAP-1B engines:
An upgrade to a larger engine will likely involve a redesign of the 737’s landing gear. That’s because the 737 was designed in the 1960s to be powered by Pratt & Whitney’s JT8D engine with a much more compact fan diameter of 49 inches.
[…]
This means that whether it decides to modify the 737 or to build a new plane from scratch, it’ll be a move that will likely cost billions.
Also in the Business Insider article, there is a link to Patrick Smith’s Ask the Travel, where he discusses the shortcomings of the 737 from a pilot’s perspective. Most of what is discussed won’t directly affect a passenger, but one excerpt stands out:
Short runway? Stiff headwinds? Full payload? No problem. With 180 passengers on board, the plane can safely depart from a 6,000-foot runway, lifting off at a measly 135 knots (assuming flaps at 15 or 20), climb directly to 39,000 feet, and fly clear across the country. Nothing else can do that.
While the cramped cockpit of the 737 (versus A320, A321, or 757) isn’t something we won’t experience as passengers, one thing we can appreciate is versatility. The 757’s cabin is also roomier than the 737, as the 737 was initially designed as a regional jet.
Like I said, there are many airlines that are holding onto their 757s (Delta still has more than 150 in service) to be able to optimize the ratio of passengers to fuel-costs and maintenance. If the A321neo-LR can fill the void left by aging 757s, it would be a huge win for Airbus.
While many credit cards have innate earnings programs, like the Membership Rewards program from American Express or the Unlimited Rewards program from Chase, there are independent programs that give you points, miles, or straight cash-back.
Doctor of Credit has put together a fairly comprehensive list of these programs. While I frequently use Thanks Again and various dining programs, I hadn’t considered stacking it with IDine! With the frequency I dine out for work, it would make a substantial difference, I think.
A lot of stacking comes down to trial and error, though the page above has a few sites that are known to share back-ends. Programs that share back-ends won’t allow you to stack, while those that are independent of one another (Thanks Again, AAdvantage Dining, and IDine, for example) are more likely to. This is in addition to anything the card earns on its own, of course!
What about you – do you belong to any of these programs?
Due to a silent flight cancellation, my flight from Salt Lake City to Dallas-Fort Worth would have only a 19 minute connecting time, so I opted to re-route through Detroit instead. The new itinerary takes my girlfriend and I from San Diego to Detroit directly, and then from Detroit to Atlanta, and then on to Raleigh.
The nice thing about having a 3 hour layover in Detroit is my girlfriend can knock out her Global Entry interview! Boston, the other airport we frequent, is apparently backlogged through early 2017, so it’s nice to be able to do this before our trip this Christmas.
On my first flight today, I managed to catch a glimpse of a nearly full moon (Waning Gibbous, 96% visible) on the departure out of Raleigh. This past Friday was a rare occurrence of a Harvest moon and an Eclipse, so I was excited to see it from the sky.
I used FlightAware’s tracklog feature to correlate the times of the pictures to the approximate locations and altitudes (approximate because as the photos weren’t taken at the exact same time the plane reported in). There is a lot of information available with the tracklog, but I only captured the first few columns. I put this information under each of the pictures:
