Tag Archives: Chase Bank

Trip Booking Report: LAX-DUS-BCN with AA Miles and MAD-MUC-LAX with UA Miles

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Trip Booking Report: LAX-DUS-BCN with AA Miles and MAD-MUC-LAX with UA Miles

(Thanks to Josh for the idea of talking about booking my award tickets).

I’m not a huge fan or reading (or writing) trip reports, so I thought I would do a trip booking report – a report on how I used frequent flyer miles to find and book my current trip to Spain.  If you guys like this post, I will cover my recent trips to Utah (Delta SkyMiles), Seattle (BA Avios), Hamburg and Copenhagen (Virgin Atlantic economy and Air Berlin business class), Amsterdam (US Airways) or any other award trips.  For my current trip, here are my award flights:

  • Los Angeles to Dusseldorf, Germany to Barcelona, Spain (LAX-DUS-BCN) on Air Berlin with American Airlines miles (30,000 miles one way)
  • Madrid, Spain to Munich, Germany to Los Angeles (MAD-MUC-LAX) on Lufthansa with United Airlines miles (30,000 miles one way)

Airline Credit Cards and Frequent Flyer Miles

For my current trip, I am traveling with my parents and my younger brother.  We used 120,000 American Airlines miles and 120,000 United Airlines miles for 4 round trip economy tickets (I am such a boring travel blogger, I know).  My parents used their United Airlines miles that they acquired from their Chase United Airlines MileagePlus Explorer Credit Cards (50,000 mile sign up bonus with a 5,000 mile bonus for adding an authorized user).  They both got a Chase Sapphire Preferred Credit Card and topped up their United Airlines account balances to book the award flights.  As for the American Airlines miles, my parents have been long time users of the Citi American Airlines Credit Cards, so we redeemed miles from my mom’s account.  She recently got her first Citi American Airlines Executive Credit Card to replenish her stash of American Airlines miles.

To find the award flights, my dad was looking 330 days before the start of the trip and booked 4 American Airlines award tickets the day the award seats were released.  Then after waiting 2 weeks, he booked 4 United Airlines award tickets as soon as those seats were released.  I used the following steps to find the award seats, but the dates below are for future (imaginary) travel and for simplicity, I only searched for 1 award seat.   Continue reading →

Random News: How to Connect to Free Boingo Wireless Hotspots, Alaska Airlines Platinum Plus Credit Card Update, and Changing Credit Lines on Chase Credit Cards (Online)

Boingo Logo

Random News: How to Connect to Free Boingo Wireless Hotspots, Alaska Airlines Platinum Plus Credit Card Update, and Changing Credit Lines on Chase Credit Cards (Online)

Greetings from San Sebastian, Spain!  Here are some random posts that might interest you…  Have a great Sunday everyone!

On May 31, American Express announced their new partnership with Boingo Wireless to provide free unlimited WiFi at over 1 million Boingo wireless hotspots around the world to all American Express Platinum cardholders (personal, business, and Mercedes Benz versions).

Boingo2

Read the post here.   Continue reading →

Crazy Weekend: UCLA Graduation, San Diego Wedding, LAX Flight, and My Credit Card App-O-Rama Updates

San Diego City Logo

Crazy Weekend: UCLA Graduation, San Diego Wedding, LAX Flight, and My Credit Card App-O-Rama Updates

TGI Friday everyone!  This might be my last post for a few days, but I will still be able to answer comments with the WordPress iPhone app.  Here is my schedule this weekend:

  1. Friday Night – My younger brother’s UCLA graduation
  2. Saturday Afternoon – My older brother’s wedding in San Diego
  3. Sunday Night – Family vacation from LAX to Spain/France for 2 weeks

My dad scored 4 award seats 11 months ago for LAX-DUS-BCN on Air Berlin (economy baby, woo hoo!) returning on 4 separate awards seats from MAD-FRA-LAX on Lufthansa (economy again!)  We are doing a big road trip from Barcelona up to Carcassonne, France west to San Sebastián, and down to Madrid.  I imagine some epic World Cup viewing parties in my future.

Spain Road Trip

Continue reading →

App-O-Rama Update: 4 Approvals, 2 Recon Calls, 1 Pending Application, and a Barclays Denial

Which Credit Card

App-O-Rama Update: 4 Approvals, 2 Recon Calls, 1 Pending Application, and a Barclays Denial

Advice: you do not need to apply for 6 credit cards at one time.  You should only attempt this if your credit score is high and you have the ability to Manufacture Spend $5,000-$10,000 per month.  Please proceed at your own risk/skill level.

In a nutshell, this is what happened yesterday morning when I applied for 6 cards.

  1. Barclays Arrival Plus Credit Card – automatically denied :(
  2. Citi American Airlines Executive World MasterCard – recon call approved, $5,000 credit line + $4,500 moved from Citi Dividend Credit Card.
  3. AMEX Premier Rewards Gold Charge Card – automatically approved (charge card, no preset credit limit).
  4. Chase Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Plus Credit Card – recon call approved, $2,000 credit line.
  5. US Bank Club Carlson Business Credit Card – pending, must wait 24-48 hours for results.
  6. Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Credit Card – automatically approved, but for a Platinum Plus credit card with a $2,000 credit line.

Here are more details about each application and approval/denial process…  Continue reading →

What’s on My Mind: US Bank FlexPerks FlexPoints, Experian Credit Score, Using Square for Restaurant Bills, Screening Exchange, and my Upcoming App-O-Rama

What's On My Mind

What’s on My Mind: US Bank FlexPerks FlexPoints, Experian Credit Score, Using Square for Restaurant Bills, Screening Exchange, and my Upcoming App-O-Rama

I know, I know, we are all devastated by the United Airlines revenue-based frequent flyer mile announcement, but hopefully some of these random credit card and news stories will take your mind off of that for a few minutes…

I did a little experiment last month with my US Bank FlexPerks Credit Card and Target (link).  Since my credit card is a Visa and since my local Target is classified as a grocery store by Visa, I wanted to see if I could load $1,000 onto my Target AMEX with my US Bank FlexPerks Credit Card and see if it counted as a “grocery store” purchase, therefore earning 2x FlexPerks.  You can use the Visa Merchant tool by reading this post.

Target AMEX viw US Bank FlexPoints CC

After a “few” grocery store purchases, that sounds like I bought grocery stores.  Let me rephrase that.  After a “few” purchases at grocery stores, I racked up $5,000+ in charges.  I have mostly Ralphs and Pavillions grocery store purchases and 1 large purchase from Target (in the middle).   Continue reading →