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In just a few weeks, United Airlines is retiring its entire 747 fleet. The final flight will carry passengers from San Francisco (SFO) to Honolulu (HNL) on November 7, and the airline’s pulling out all the stops, commemorating both the retirement and its 747 inaugural from July 23, 1970.Tickets for the final flight sold out within minutes, and two packages for a pair of economy seats on United Flight 747 ended up going for more than 500,000 miles each — this is clearly a moment that frequent flyers are willing to go far out of their way to experience....

Update: PerkStreet Financial will be closing permanently and ceasing all business operations on September 26, 2013.While 2011 has been an unprecedented year for credit card sign-up bonuses, the exact opposite has been happening with debit cards. In July we saw Continental discontinue all mileage earning on their Chase debit cards and most other mileage debit card programs are rumored to be ending soon. New financial regulations make debit card purchases not lucrative enough for the banks to make it worthwhile to give out points....

TPG reader Mike wants to use miles for one of my favorite purposes: helping a family member take charge of their points for a great travel redemption. Mike’s issue is that he’s in Hong Kong and his dad doesn’t have quite enough points or miles to get himself there in business class. Here’s his question:“In the next month or so I will be moving to Hong Kong for work. My father has roughly 80k AMEX miles and would like to optimize his points to get a free trip to HK (I doubt business class is in the picture with that amount of miles)....

Since the close of the Alaska Airlines-Virgin America merger last year, details about what the future will look like have slowly rolled out. But, we do know that Alaska will discontinue the Virgin America brand as of the beginning of 2018, and the two will become one entity. Now, we have details from Virgin about what it plans to do with its partners.Today, Virgin America published a page on its site explaining when Elevate members can last earn points with partners, last redeem points with partners and the last day to travel on an award with its partners....

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here - Chase Sapphire ReserveWhen the new Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card came out a few months ago I did everything I reasonably could to get the card and its 100,000 sign-up bonus points worth $1,500 (or more) towards travel, but I was hit with an unrelenting and unwavering “no” because I had opened more five or more new credit card accounts in the previous 24 months - otherwise known as the Chase 5/24 rule....

Virgin America is running a Facebook promotion to celebrate their 2,000,012th member signing up for the Elevate mileage program. They are giving everyone who signs up for this promotion 1,000 free Elevate points and a chance to win one of 20 grand prizes of 100,000 Elevate points each.The contest promotion page on Facebook.You must link your Facebook page to the Virgin America Yearbook app and fill out the form including your name, your “major,” and a blank space saying what you’re the “most likely to…,” just like back in high school, and you also have to load in a photo for the form to be complete....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.Update: It looks like this promo will come to an end at 10am central time, so hurry up if you want in! I just got this email from the hotel:To whom it may concern:Due to the overwhelming response from your promotion on your website of our SPG points for liking our page, we are going to pull this advertisement as it was to be aimed at our frequent guests and local people....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.One of my biggest concerns when we recently went to Europe with a one-year-old and six-year-old wasn’t the actual plane ride, but rather dealing with jet lag once we landed. Jet lag and major time zone changes aren’t fun parts of travel, even for adults, but as adults who have experienced it multiple times, Josh and I know how to deal with it relatively well....

Alaska Airlines currently has a fall award flight sale where you can book one-way award tickets for as little as 7,500 miles plus taxes.The Alaska Airlines Fall Sale runs now through October 31, 2013.Book travel from now through October 31. 2013, for a number of destinations both domestically and internationally, such as to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While the US locations are mainly on the West coast thanks to Alaska’s route map, Boise, Idaho and Las Vegas are also included in the list....

It’s official: American Airlines is stepping up its game. In recent months, the airline has added new routes to its ever-expanding network, maintained its status as the country’s largest carrier — and as one of the safest carriers in the world — and offered reduced mileage awards for Q1 2016 to select destinations. Although its devaluation goes into effect as of March 22, American Airlines is taking steps in the right direction to make up for it, like introducing new amenity kits for passengers....

When I first announced our Into the Blue: Marathon to a Million contest a couple of weeks ago, only two things were certain — that we would get some excellent photo submissions from readers’ travels and that one person would be walking away with one million JetBlue TrueBlue points. After selecting our five semifinalists, flying cross-country in JetBlue’s Mint class and participating in a wild scavenger hunt across the city of San Francisco, I’m thrilled to announce the winner of the competition: Brian Biros....

To me, one of the most interesting parts of flying is the seatmate. There’s something unique (and strange) about sitting next to someone in a metal tube for hours and we’ve all heard (and experienced) our fair share of horror stories. In fact, on my flight to Mauritius this week, my seatmate was pretty bad- he was unaware of his surroundings and spilled his drink while getting up from his seat, he put his stinky feet way up on the seat in front of him and he coughed on me all night in his sleep....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.Starwood Preferred Guest is targeting members to earn bonus Starpoints with its latest promotion. Some members have reported getting offers for up to 7,500 bonus Starpoints for completing stays. However, this promotion is targeted.To see if you’re targeted — and there’s no reason not to check — visit the select member exclusive page....

In 2018, Air France-KLM’s Flying Blue mileage program ditched standard, region-based award charts for a new flexible mileage calculator based on the origin and destination airports. And the only way of describing the resulting program is “illogical.“That said, there are some diamonds in the rough. And, when you combine cheap mileage options with Flying Blue’s monthly Promo Rewards, you can end up with some really cheap award tickets. The trouble is the offers change from month to month....

Say “Hi” to Cora, Google Co-Founder Larry Page’s newest baby.Cora is an electric air taxi that can carry two passengers. (Photo by Richard Lord, via Kitty Hawk)Cora is the brainchild of California-based Kitty Hawk, an aviation company headed by Sebastian Thrun, who is the former director of Google X. The company’s mission is to bring fully electric, self-piloting aircraft into the public transportation realm.“With our prototype air taxi Cora, we are applying eight years of research and development into an entirely new way to commute,” Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun said....

Later this month, US Airways is officially leaving Star Alliance to join Oneworld, the alliance of its merger partner, American Airlines. I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this on Twitter, like the following two:TPG reader Nat asked:@thepointsguy With US leaving *A, if I want to fly NYC to Cape Town 3/2015, does it make sense to book an earlier date now and rebook later?And TPG reader Andrew asked:@thepointsguy @HalRomer Will my bro receive USAir miles on United flight booked pre-12/9 merger for post 3/31 int’l flight?...

Now through August 31, 2012, Hyatt is offering bonuses between 10-30% on purchased Gold Passport points (for your own account, you can’t buy them for someone else).Crunching the NumbersHere’s how it breaks down:-Buy 1,000 - 9,000 points and get a 10% Bonus-Buy 10,000 - 29,000 points and get a 20% Bonus-Buy 30,000 - 40,000 points and get a 30% BonusNormally, Hyatt points cost 2.4 cents each. With this promo, however, when you purchase 9,000 points, you get 9,900 for $216, so 2....

Utah is home to some of the most awe-inspiring landscapes in the United States, and there’s a reason outdoor enthusiasts are so invested in the otherworldly terrain. Simply put: it’s stunning. Biblical billion-plus year-old rock formations line the highways. Hoodoos rise out of the desert canyons like ancient abstract sculptures. And mountains loom over the horizon like holograms throughout the state. Plus, there’s world-class skiing, great food and one of the coolest animal rescue centers in the entire country....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.What was already a bad situation appears to have gotten worse. The massive Equifax data breach first reported in September 2017 in which hackers gained access to the sensitive information of 145.5 million Americans is reportedly even worse than originally expected....

Each Saturday, we round up news stories that you might have missed from the week before, including several that already appeared on The Points Guy and some more that we haven’t covered yet. If you’re an avid TPG reader, scroll down for the new stuff. Here’s the top miles, points and travel news you might have missed this week.What Credit Cards Does The Points Guy Have?Take a look at TPG’s credit cards and just exactly how many points and miles he’s racked up....