Beware of Fare Classes

I guess we all make mistakes. After going through a complicated analysis to find the perfect Phoenix flight itinerary to allow me to get my first United Silver elite status, it turns out I'll still miss out.

The other month, we flew back from Israel via Europe. We booked a connecting flight because it saved us a lot of money, but we had the choice of stopping in either (a) Brussels, Belgium or (b) Zurich, Switzerland.

We had already been to Zurich before (also on a 1 day stopover), so my father thought it would be fun to visit a different city together, even if it was for a short over night stopover. Plus there was a very convenient Starwood Sheraton hotel connected to the Brussels Airport.

However, not all flights earn miles equally.  Since we were flying on Brussels Airlines in Fare Class T (a deep discount economy fare), it only earned us 50% Elite Qualifying Miles with United Airlines.

So that 2,022 mile Brussels Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels only earned us 1,011 EQM. That really threw off our calculations!

Had we chosen to stop in Zurich instead, however, we would have flown Swiss Air and their T Fare Class would have earned the full 100% mileage credit!

That meant that because we innocently chose Brussels over Zurich, both my mother and I will fall short of the 25,000 EQM we need for United Silver elite status.

Club Carlson Changes

As people in the Miles/Points community know all too well, May 31st was the deadline for several major changes in the Club Carlson hotel rewards program.

First, it was the last day to book hotel free night awards using the old pricing chart. Several top tier hotels are going from 50k points/night to 70k points/night!

Second, it was the final day to use the Last Night Free benefit that comes with holding an active US Bank Club Carlson Visa Card.

Last Minute Bookings
We had just over 100,000 Club Carlson points in our account. So we made a few future bookings this past weekend before the deadline hit.

1. Radisson Blu in Rome.  My aunt and grandmother were going to be in Italy and fly out of Rome in July, so my father booked them a few free nights at the Radisson Blu to finish off their vacation.

This hotel was a Category 5 (44,000 points/night). It was moving to Category 6 on June 1st (50,000 points/night), so we locked in two nights for a total of 44k points (thanks to the Last Night Free benefit).

To be fair, the hotel isn't that highly regarded. It's rated 3.5 out of 5.0 on TripAdvisor with a #595 ranking among hotels in Rome. Further, we could have paid $152 USD/night cash for the same stay, so it's a weak redemption value (0.7 cents/pt, even after the free last night benefit) relative to booking the expensive Club Carlson properties in London, for example. However, we'd still end up saving $300 in cash for a hotel stay that my family would need in the near future.

2. Radisson Fallsview in Ontario.  My parents still had about 56,000 Club Carlson points left without any clear identifiable need for any future 2 night stays. So we decided to book speculatively knowing that it would be free to cancel.

So for Labor Day weekend, we reserved two nights for the Radisson property at Niagara Falls on the Canadian side. There was also a Country Inn & Suites (limited service hotel) nearby which was actually ranked higher on TripAdvisor, but we wanted to get a more upscale full-service hotel experience (Radisson). So we used 38,000 Club Carlson points for the two nights (saving ourselves about $183 USD/night). That equated to a respectable 1.0 cents/pt redemption.

We're not even entirely sure that we'll be going to Niagara Falls for our final summer vacation, but it was a free option to lock in the Final Night Free bonus. Worst case scenario, we cancel the booking and get back our 38,000 points to use for a free 1 night stay somewhere else.

US Bank Credit Card
Now that the US Bank credit card served its purpose and has less value to my parents, they didn't feel appropriate to pay $75 to keep the card another year. Sure, they would receive 40,000 anniversary points in the next few months (worth about $200 without the Free Last Night benefit) by paying the fee and keeping the card open.

But as you've seen above, these Club Carlson properties just aren't as exciting as those offered by Starwood or Hyatt. We really struggled to find a few properties that we'd actually want to stay at.

The only one might be the Radisson Blu Zurich Airport hotel if we were flying through Zurich on the way to Israel. However, that hotel is now 70,000 points/night, and we're likely only staying there during a long daytime layover, not even a full night.

So with that fact pattern, my father opted to downgrade this premium card to the No Fee version of the card, which had fewer watered-down benefits.

But to be honest, we have no intention of actually spending money on this card. We just wanted something active to keep our US bank relationship (and credit line) in good standing.

Conclusion
So while not our most impressive credit card churn and points redemption, we're still happy we got into the US Bank Club Carlson card program. For using this card to spend $2,500 on things we had to pay for anyway (groceries, daycare, etc), we scored $650 worth of hotel stays.

2014 Travel Year In Review

Well, it's the last day of 2014, and wow, I've had an amazing year.

Since my father's an Asian math nerd, according to his excel spreadsheet, I have:

1. Flown approximately 51,422 miles this year.
2. Taken 26 flight segments (6 of which were 8+ hours long).
3. Flown out of 16 airports.
4. On 6 different airlines.
5. Traveled to 6 foreign countries.
6. Earned 25,931 frequent flyer miles!

I was able to earn Gold Status on Aegean Airlines, but unfortunately, it won't be lifetime as we hoped. I suppose I'll just go with earning United miles and try to hit 1,000,000 miles at some point in my life. I'm only at 5,279 miles with United, so I still have a long way to go.

On the hotel side, we have:

1. Stayed 43 nights in hotels this year
2. Across 21 different cities
3. In 20 unique hotel brands including all 9 of Starwood's.

Our most frequent brand was Westin (11 nights across Atlanta, Austin, Chicago and Costa Navarino). We re-qualified for Starwood Platinum status, but lost our Hyatt Diamond status.

So as we close out 2014, here's a photo snapshot of our favorite lapchild adventures each month.

Toddlers and Time Zones - Europe

One of the questions I get often as a traveling toddler is "How do you deal with the jetlag?" Well, it's not easy, but I do have some great parents to help me adjust to different time zones when we travel long distance.

The challenge with living on the East Coast of the US is that you're almost always going to have inconvenient flight times.

However, when you travel (especially as or with young children), you learn to "deal with it." Here are a few ways we try to adjust as best you can.

Flights to Europe 
These trans-Atlantic flights are often business-traveler oriented, so they're always scheduled to arrive very early Europe time (like 7-9AM) so that people can make their business meetings in the morning or make a connecting flight to another part of Europe. That's great for them, but that means we're departing at 4-6PM and landing at midnight-2AM on New York time. Not ideal for families, or non-senior citizens who don't fall asleep before the show Modern Family comes on.

Plus, the flight from the East Coast is likely only 6-8 hours long, which isn't enough time to really sleep a full night after factoring in taxiing to the gate, dinner service, breakfast service and landing. So you're really only looking at maybe 4-5 hours of actual sleep time. I know this pretty well, because we just did a red-eye flight to Munich this past July.

But I wanted to show you a flight with multiple options, so we'll use the more popular New York-Frankfurt route that has more than 1 flight per day.

Ignore the fact that there seem to be 7 different flight options, because there are actually only 3 (partner airlines like United and Lufthansa often code-share for the same exact flight). You have the following:

• 5PM departure arriving 5:30AM local time (aka 12:30AM New York time);
• 7:30PM departure arriving 9AM local time (aka 4AM New York time); and
• 11PM departure arriving 11:30AM local time (aka 6:30AM New York time)

Your choice will likely be determined by your itinerary the next day. If it were us and we were staying in Germany that trip, then I'd opt for the 11PM flight because it would better align with my normal sleep schedule. But if you're connecting in Frankfurt to catch an morning flight to Rome, then you may have to go with the earlier flight.

For the sake of this blog post, let's just assume you have to take the 5PM flight, so you'd land in Frankfurt just after midnight New York time. We'd do the following:

• Stay up SUPER late the night before in NYC (like 1-2AM) so that we're more likely to be tired for our flight.
• Set our watches smart phones to Frankfurt time as soon as we arrive at JFK. Then try to do everything as if we were on German time already. So assuming it was 3PM when we arrived to the airport, we'd pretend it was actually 8PM, so we'd try to have dinner and I'd get into my adorable Hello Kitty Pajamas.
• Since we already had dinner (or attempted to), we may opt to skip the in-flight meal completely and really try to sleep as early as possible. By the time we take off and reach cruising altitude, it will likely be 6PM New York (11PM Frankfurt). 

If successful, I'd get a good 5 hours of toddler sleep before the cabin lights will come back on at 11PM NY time (4AM Frankfurt) to begin breakfast service.

However, more often, I will not actually fall asleep so early and will only get ~3 hours of sleep and get woken up before I was ready. In either case, I really won't be well rested when we land and get off the plane.

So depending on your plans for the day of your arrival, we try to get to our hotel as soon as possible and beg for an early morning check in. Given most European cities have plenty of active American business travelers, the hotels are pretty used to these requests. I won't lie, it definitely helps if you (a) call in advance to notify them and/or (b) have elite status with their hotel loyalty program.

Then we'd use the blackout shades, go back to sleep for a few hours and wake up to get a late 1PM lunch. We found that it's much better to enjoy your first day in Europe when you're well rested. However, my father NEVER lets us sleep too long, because we still need to be a little bit tired so that we'll go to sleep at a normal (European) time and break from our US time zone.

But now comes the KEY to our success.

During the first day, if I start to doze off, my father will do whatever he has to do to keep me awake. Most parents probably wouldn't be willing (or able) to do this to their adorable tired toddler, but my father's definitely not like most parents. He will tickle me, make me walk, sprinkle me with water, bother me by touching my face as I sleep, and even bribe me with ice cream.  He's pretty strict about me not sleeping off-cycle, because he knows how difficult it will be for all of us if I didn't adjust to the new time zone. After all, having a 3 year old constantly waking up at 2-4AM for our entire trip isn't a recipe for success.

Our Travel Wallet

Over a year ago, my father was kind enough to open up his wallet with my LCD readers. There, he offered an inventory of all the various credit cards he and my mother currently had open (though not all of them were actively used).

Big warning! We are not suggesting that any of you fine upstanding readers follow my crazy parents down this financial rabbit hole. Unlike the popular bloggers, we don't get paid if you sign up for credit cards. 

If you have any outstanding debt at all (student loans, credit card, personal loans or mob gambling debt), then you're better off not opening more credit cards, because you're probably spending more than you're making and ruining your future. The interest charges alone will destroy any point/mile value you may receive. The last thing you need is another credit card.

Recall, there are 3 different types of reward credit cards.

A. One Night Stands (for the sign up bonus)
B. Booty Call (ongoing benefits)
C. Marriage (bonus spending)

Despite having 33 open credit cards from 7 different banks, we only regularly use 8 of them each month (Booty Call). And of those 8, we primarily use just 4 of them (Marriage). The remaining (One Night Stand) cards sit quietly in a zip lock bag hidden somewhere where my toddler hands can't get to them.

Which three cards does my father keep in his excessively slim wallet? Well, I'm glad you asked...

1. Amex Blue - earns 5% cash back on all spend at gas, grocery and drugstores.
2. Citi Thank You Premier - earns 3x on all restaurant spend
3. Amex Starwood - earns 1x on all regular spend and 2x on Starwood Hotel spend (our personal favorite)
4. Chase Ink Bold - earns 5x on internet, cable, cell phone and office supply stores and 2x on hotels and gas

The above lineup is his regular "starting rotation" when he's in the United States.

Sidenote: I tried to find a photo with the 2014 Yankees starting rotation, but there weren't any magazine covers including David Phelps, Chase Whitley, Vidal Nuno with the regular starters Hiroki Kuroda and Masahiro Tanaka.

I qualify that this is his US wallet because a few of these cards aren't as rewarding when you step outside America. The two American Express cards charge an additional Foreign Exchange (FX) fee of 2.7% when used abroad. Since my father hates sub-optimal outcomes within his direct control, he sits those cards on the bench whenever he grabs his passport.

So on this current trip to Israel (via Switzerland), we had to re-shuffle the deck a bit. Kind of like when the Yankees are in the playoffs and are facing a dominantly left-handed batting lineup.

Both the Citi Thank You Premier and Chase Ink Bold were created for travelers so they don't have FX fees. Since we do plan to eat while traveling, we were definitely keeping the Thank You card. However, we use the Ink Bold card primarily for utilities at home and small businesses expenses at Staples, so we left that card at home as well since our monthly cable/internet bill is set on auto-pay anyway.

So out of the 4 card slots, we had 3 open.

First, we needed an ATM card to access cash. So we took our Charles Schwab ATM card which as I mentioned before does not charge any ATM fees worldwide. We've found getting cash from a reputable foreign bank's ATM is the best exchange rate.

Second, we needed a FX fee-free Mastercard to pair with our Citi Thank You (Visa). Fortunately back in March, my father applied for the Barclays Arrival+ World Mastercard which offers a very interesting rewards program where you basically get 2.2% back in the form of travel spend credits.

Every charge you make earns you 2 Arrival miles which can be used to redeem against travel expenditures at $0.01 per mile. But then you also get 10% back. The Arrival miles program is exceptionally easy to use and travel redemption can be put on charges we just made, even though the monthly statement hasn't closed.

In fact, this week we used 5,000 Arrival miles to remove $50 from the Zurich taxi charge from last week and then instantly received 500 Arrival miles back (10% rebate). My father really underestimated this card, but the Arrival+ could be our Masahiro Tanaka - a new surprise addition that is really paying off!

Third, we had a utility slot available. No specific needs on this final card, so we went back and told our veteran workhorse American Express Starwood card that we changed our mind. While we wouldn't use this card at any foreign locations, invariably, there are times when my parents need to make an online charge based in the United States (daycare, medical bills, shopping, etc). Since those transactions would be processed in America using US dollars, the 2.7% FX fees wouldn't come into play at all.

So there you have it, the starting international rotation:

1. Citi Thank You Premier Visa - for all restaurant spend or where only Visa is accepted
2. Barclays Arrival+ Mastercard - for all other international spend or where only MC is accepted
3. Schwab ATM card - for cash withdrawls in local currencies
4. Amex Starwood card - for any US-based transactions that we need to make while abroad

Now, if only my father would agree me to add this adorable little kitten to my rotation.

Zurich Airport

Flight #87 - Swiss Air 256
Zurich (ZRH) – Tel Aviv (TLV)
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Depart: 10:45PM / Arrive: 3:30AM
Duration: 3hr 45min
Aircraft: Airbus 330
Seat: 28E, 28F and 28G (Economy) 
Earned: 1,747 miles
Lifetime Miles: 169,636 miles

After our 14 hour layover in Switzerland where we took an overly long powernap and checked out the city center, we made our way back to Zurich Airport for our connecting flight to Israel.

Our flight was chosen to maximize the time we had on the ground, but it meant that we'd be arriving at a very odd hour in Tel Aviv, 3:30AM. The flight was really too short to get meaningful sleep, so we just played it by ear - a first for my anal Asian father (Great. Now, I think my LCD blog will show up when people Google search for "anal" and "Asian".)

Background Context
Many years ago, my father took a connecting flight through Madrid on his way to visit my mother in Israel. He had previously been in London before Spain, so I'm not surprised that the El Al security team took notice of my father when the boarding passengers had to line up to be interviewed at the gate. Let's review the facts.

1. Single male traveling solo.
2. Asian descent but an American passport.
3. American citizen, but his ticket originated in London.
4. Traveling to Israel to visit someone he barely knew.

As a result of their fact pattern assessment, my father was taken downstairs to the secure area where the entire contents of his carry on were opened so that each individual item could be placed on the table and inspected. Worried that he would miss his flight, he was told that the flight would wait until they were finished with their search. Sure enough, the flight was held for my father (and the other Hasidic rabbi being searched alongside him). But the lesson was that you should arrive to the departure gate with plenty of extra time.

Back to Zurich Airport
We arrived at the airport just after 8PM. We checked in and dropped off our luggage at the front counter and proceeded to the security checkpoint. Interestingly enough, there was no line at all and we were through in a matter of seconds.

My father found a map of the Zurich Airport (seen here) and the layout looked simple enough - one long L shaped hallway with an upstairs. He checked both the boarding pass and the television monitors to see which gate they'd be departing from, but the gate had not yet been assigned.

Since most of the retail stores in the airport were closed for the evening, we decided to go upstairs to the closest Swiss Lounge so we could relax a bit with the extra time we had.

Remember, flyers with Star Alliance Gold Status get lounge access. My father had gold status on United and Turkish Airlines. My mother had gold status on Aegean Airlines. And I was about to get Aegean Gold status as well. Of course, only one passenger needed gold status to get the rest of us in, but the Songer Family is always prepared.

The Swiss Lounge was actually 2 lounges. One was the Business Lounge (for those traveling on business class fares) and the other was the Senator Lounge. Given there were probably more business class passengers in the world than Senators, we opted for the latter in hopes that it would be modestly better appointed and less crowded.

We didn't have a chance to see the Business Lounge to compare, but the Senator Lounge was exactly what we hoped for. It was pretty stylish, clean and had two levels. There were so few passengers there - unlike the overly crowded United lounges back stateside. We quickly found a comfortable area to sit on the 1st floor, and my mother went off to get us some snacks before our flight.

My father passed on the free hard alcohol and went for some local beer while my mother had some coffee. The food at this downstairs station, however left a lot to be desired - mostly pretzels, peanuts and small sandwiches. Not quite enough for a make-shift dinner before our flight, but you really can't complain too much when everything is complimentary.

My mother and I made the most of it and celebrated our successful Zurich adventure. But then my father decided to check out upstairs to see what else the lounge had.

And sure enough, his instincts were spot on. There he found even more seating and even more food. But not just more of the same snacks. There was hot food (beef with potato dumplings and cheese ziti) as well as several different salad options. Jackpot!

After we ate, my father decided to check the departure gate in case we had time to check out the other Swiss Lounge, but he noticed the TV monitor had Gate E46. He didn't see Gate E on the map prior, so he then pulled up an airport map he found online.

Sure enough, there was actually a Gate E that was actually pretty far from the Main Terminal we were at. The Lounge attendant said it would take about 20 minutes to walk over and that we'd have to take the shuttle train. Oddly enough, that was the section we arrived in 14 hours earlier, but we hadn't been paying attention.

Normally, we would have waited til just 5 minutes before boarding started before leaving the lounge. Thankfully, since we had asked her early enough, my family had enough time to pack up and prepare for our long walk over to Gate E.

After two different sets of escalators, a crowded shuttle train, another few escalators and an elevator, we finally found ourselves in Gate E with enough time to spare that my father picked up a Zurich magnet and postcard as souvenirs. Disaster avoided and lesson learned.