Author Archives: Tonei Glavinic

About Tonei Glavinic

Tonei Glavinic is an Alaskan travel expert, educator, social justice advocate, and digital nomad currently based in Mexico City. Find them on Twitter @tonei.

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Chasing American Airlines Elite Status and Knowing When to Stop

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Buenos dias everyone. Last weekend, I was doing some trip planning for May, based on the following parameters:

  • I’ll be in Washington DC for work from April 29–May 5
  • My partner and I want to go to Japan in early May to see the wisteria at Ashikaga Flower Park and the Ghibli Museum (we have tickets for May 13). Dates are still up in the air because we’re waiting for him to get his university class schedule
  • I have a meeting in New York City on May 20th
  • I have a Qatar business class mistake fare booked from Denpasar to Los Angeles on May 26 that earns nearly 20,000 Elite Qualifying Miles and 2,600 Elite Qualifying Dollars each way towards AAdvantage status
  • I need to be in Providence for the graduation of one of my best friends on May 28, and then have a work meeting in Boston for several days afterward
  • I’ll be away from home for a month from mid-June to mid-July

I was racking my brain trying to figure out a way to make this all work, and came up with the following options, which I sent to my friend Jon, a fellow travel hacker and food blogger:

A flight map illustrating the following routing: MEX-SFO-TPE-NRT-HKG-NRT-JFK-NRT-HKG-DPS-LAX-BOS-EWR-MEX

Option 1: stay in Asia after my partner leaves, fly to NYC for meeting, fly back to Asia, return to US on QR mistake fare then go straight to Providence/Boston, return home June 1 or 2. Over 44,000 miles in less than a month

Continue reading →

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Lesson Learned: International Uber Rides Do Not Earn 2x Membership Reward Points

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Buenos dias everyone. I was looking at my Membership Rewards account recently and noticed that although I have used Uber many times in Mexico City over the past couple of months, I only had a couple of credits for bonus Membership rewards points. After some further digging, I realized that I was actually missing a lot of the Membership Rewards points I expected: over the past year or so, I’ve put $869 in Uber charges on my Membership Rewards-earning cards (American Express Business Platinum and my American Express Everyday), but only received 346 bonus points over that time period.

Screenshot of an American Express Membership Rewards summary showing two line entries for "Uber Earn 2x MR Points"

I was hoping to see a lot more of these on my Membership Rewards activity history…

I had an idea of why these were missing, but I reached out to American Express via web chat anyway. The agent said they would file a ticket for me and someone from the Membership Rewards department would call me in a few days. In the meantime, I decided to do some research. Continue reading →

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Copa Airlines Announced Minor Changes to Copa ConnectMiles Program Effective January 1, 2018

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Buenos dias everyone. I received an email from Copa Airlines announcing “changes” coming to their ConnectMiles program in 2018. Program changes aren’t usually a good thing for most members, and that’s also the case here – with one exception.

An email screenshot with the Copa Airlines ConnectMiles logo and motto, and the text "ConnectMiles changes starting in 2018"

At least they didn’t call them enhancements.

The program changes all apply only to flights on Copa, and most of the negative impact falls on their Silver members (the lowest elite level in their program) and those buying the cheapest paid tickets. Continue reading →

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Tonei’s January Credit Card App-O-Rama Results

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Buenos diás everyone. I’m not usually one for credit card App-O-Ramas, typically preferring to apply for credit cards one at a time when they have high bonuses, but at the end of January, I decided to throw caution to the wind and apply for five new credit cards in one day, from three banks: Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, Bank of America, and Chase.

Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

I finally decided to jump on the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico 60,000 Avianca LifeMiles offer that Grant wrote about in December. Like Grant, I also got instantly approved with a large credit line.

Image of the front of an Avianca LifeMiles Vuela Visa card with "Mr Grant Thomas" on the front. The numbers have been blacked out.

My card looks just like this, but it doesn’t have Grant’s name on it.

I paid my annual fee in February and made purchases on the card in March and April, but my LifeMiles balance is still zero. I emailed customer service to ask about it but got an automatic reply to call for assistance – when I did so, the representative (who I could barely hear) just said it takes 6-8 weeks for miles to post and that I should keep an eye on my balance at lifemiles.com. I’ll also email LifeMiles customer support and see if they can check whether I might have a duplicate LifeMiles account. Continue reading →

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Earn 1,000 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Miles for Referring a New Member?

Buenos dias everyone. When I was reviewing my weekly AwardWallet summary, I noticed an extra 1,000 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles that I wasn’t expecting. When I logged in to the Singapore website, this is what I found this:

A screenshot of "Recent Activities" from a Singapore KrisFlyer account showing 1000 miles for "LOYALTY PROG - INDIRECT (SQLP1) KF Activation Campaign (3)"

I couldn’t find anything on Google for “LOYALTY PROG – INDIRECT (SQLP1) KF Activation Campaign (3)”, though I did come across an Australian frequent flier forum where the same code (SQLP1) was attached to bonus points that Krisflyer awarded to new users. Continue reading →