New Southwest Sale, Saving $250 With 1 Free Rental Day, The Chase Sapphire Reserve Beats the US Bank Altitude Reserve – Again, and More

The first week of 2018 has come to a close – and it has brought a lot of weather mayhem around the US. As someone who got stuck with some of it (and about to head back into it tomorrow), the one thing I came away with is that JFK is a mess. I think most people agree on that one!

Miles, Points, and Travel

• Best Price on the New GoPro HERO6 Camera – $100 Off! – [Expired] I normally do not include expired deals like this one but this was a genuinely incredible deal and I jumped on it. If you have your eye on this new GoPro, keep your eyes open in case such a sale pops up again – now you know it has decreased in price already once! 🙂
• First Southwest Sale of 2018 – Fly From $40 Into May! – Nothing new as far as Southwest sales go but this one is bookable for another couple of weeks so check it out!
• How To Track Your Chase Sapphire Reserve Travel Credit for 2018 – A new year is here and for all the early adopters of the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, your $300 travel credit for 2018 is live! I have already spent mine, how about you?
• My Experience with Icelandair – Dustin had the chance to recently fly Icelandair and he covered the experience nicely! There are some aspects of the flight that Dustin gives high marks to so check out the review!
• New IHG Devaluation Increases Value of IHG Credit Card – This post direction was met with some criticism! 🙂 No one likes a devaluation, including me, but when such devaluations come, it is up to us to find ways to continue to save points. If you like to redeem for top tier hotels, this is where the value of the of the card increases.
• Good News for Hilton Gold and Diamond Members at Waldorf Astoria Hotels – I would imagine most of us in the this community are Hilton Gold members (at least), thanks to the many cards and methods to pick it up. If you stay at WA properties, that status just got a bit better!
• I Just Saved $250 With A Single Free Rental Day! – To my surprise, this particular car rental free day can be used on one way rentals and it saved me $250 on a trip last week!
• How I Handled the “Bomb Cyclone” Storm for Traveling – This storm last week wreaked havoc up and down the East Coast and it made for a lot of cancellations and delays. This impacted my trip as well and I had to start it by driving to make my international flight.
• Another Way the Chase Sapphire Reserve Beats the US Bank Altitude Reserve – The Chase Sapphire Reserve is really a king of premium credit cards and this is just one more way that it beats out cards like the US Bank Altitude Reserve.
• Emirates Lost My Bag Almost 4 Weeks Ago – What Is Happening Now? – And now we are exactly 4 weeks since Emirates lost my bag and I still have not received any contact from Emirates now that I am eligible for compensation. In fact, even the Twitter team (previously very helpful) has gone quiet on me. Really disappointing for this airline.
• Hyatt Points + Cash Sale At Certain Hotels – From $17 and 2,500 Points – This was a strange sort of sale and if the hotels worked for you, you could save a bit of money on them!

That is it for last week! I left Rochester, NY late Thursday night to drive to JFK in the blizzard. My flight from JFK to Istanbul was delayed about 4.5 hours and included 1.5 hour on the runway.

From there, I landed in Istanbul about 3 hours late, missing my flight to Greece. Turkish was not a help initially as they wanted me to wait 21 hours for the next flight to Thessaloniki. Eventually, they got me to Athens but made me buy my own ticket to Thessaloniki (for which I am to be refunded – we shall see). In the end, I was about 10 hours late, pretty bad for a trip that is only 2 days long!

Anyway, I am sitting here in Athens now preparing to head back towards JFK tomorrow morning. When I had booked my flights, the couple of hours of layover I gave myself in JFK was plenty of time. Now, we shall have to see!