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If you’re planning to book a flight on Virgin America this summer, this current promo could be an easy way to earn some extra Elevate points.Now through August 31, you can earn 50% extra points on all Virgin America-ticketed flights. To be eligible, you must be a member of the Elevate program and register for the promotion here. Also, according to the terms & conditions, it looks like you need to both book and fly between now and the end of August, so previously reserved tickets likely won’t qualify:In this offer, you will earn 50% bonus points per $1 spent on the base fare for a total of 7....

Last week, my family and I went on vacation to beautiful Hilton Head, South Carolina. And unlike some relatives who were driving from various parts of the country, I decided to fly.A couple months before the trip — in early March — I purchased a round-trip flight from my base in New York (JFK) to Charleston (CHS) on Delta. Since, like TPG, I’m jumping off the AA elite status hamster wheel, I just went for the cheapest flight without regard to the carrier and earning elite-qualifying miles....

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.Yesterday I shared my first New York Times Travel Show presentation on Maximizing Credit Cards for Free Travel. For my second Travel Show seminar on Sunday afternoon, I expanded on that concept to include other strategies for my talk on “Travel Pointers for a First Class Lifestyle on a Budget....

UPDATE: Membership is no longer available.Over the past year, I’ve really enjoyed getting to know the readers of The Points Guy and I’ve tried to incorporate your feedback as much as possible. One of the things I hear almost daily is that I need to launch a weekly newsletter and provide breaking updates on amazing time-sensitive deals, like the $150 roundtrip tickets to Europe deal I wrote about yesterday.In an effort to take my commitment to the next level, I’m officially launching an optional membership program....

If you are a small nation engaged in a diplomatic row with large and powerful neighbors, you want to keep whatever friends you have as close as possible. And one way to make your friends happy is to give them expensive gifts. If you are the Emir of Qatar, ruler of one of the wealthiest states in the world, those gifts can be really expensive.Like, say, the largest and most luxurious private jet in the sky....

Are you a travel procrastinator? While it may only be April, it’s time to finalize where you’re traveling this summer. According to price-analysis data released by Hipmunk, the best time to book your summer travel is this week, April 23-29, if you want to save big.According to Hipmunk’s report, US travelers can save up to 12% on domestic travel for June, July and August if they book this week compared to those who wait until mid-June....

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.For this week’s Thursday Giveaway, Hotels.com is generously giving one lucky TPG Reader a $500 Hotels.com gift card in honor of the introduction of them offering gift cards in both the U.S. and Canada. The Hotels.com Gift Card is redeemable at over 100,000 hotels, chain properties, resorts, and bed and breakfast accommodations worldwide through their site, so it’s really a great gift for travelers this holiday season....

One of our new content initiatives at TPG is to start covering the cruise industry a little bit more. Today we started by covering the basics of the recently revamped Celebrity Cruises Captain’s Club, which includes a tiered membership programs and an elite status program that allows you to achieve perks at each level- and retain them for life (no annoying yearly requalifcation, like airlines and hotels).Celebrity Cruises Captain’s Club Loyalty ProgramIn honor of the relaunch of this program, the team at Celebrity Visa Signature Card (the official co-brand card of Celebrity Cruises, issued by Bank of America) have generously provided 4 incredible prizes for 4 winners of this weeks Thursday Giveaway!...

Running is a fitness activity people gravitate toward for its simplicity: All you need is a decent pair of shoes, a little time and the desire to put one foot in front of the other. However, when traveling, it can become challenging to keep up your momentum — the roads are unfamiliar and your normal schedule is disrupted. The following fitness-forward apps make it easier to run anywhere, are all available for iOS and Android, and free unless otherwise noted, so no excuses....

Update 9/25/17: We reached out to United about the ongoing Wi-Fi issues, and a representative responded with the following statement:We are working with Panasonic to upgrade the inflight Wi-Fi system on all of our Panasonic-equipped aircraft, which will improve Wi-Fi performance. This process is slated to begin later this year and will be done on a rolling basis.I fly United quite a bit, so over the years I’ve had my fair share of issues....

There is a common misnomer that using miles to upgrade paid fares is the most lucrative way to spend your miles. While it may make sense in some situations, most airlines have instituted hefty co-pays and/or it’s only the most expensive coach fares to eligible for international upgrades.Delta is known for being the stingiest when it come to upgrading international fares - you need to buy the most expensive coach fares (Y, B, or M), which sometimes are even more expensive than discount (I) business class seats....

Two members of the Afghanistan parliament have been accused of forcing a commercial airliner to fly back to its departure airport so that the pair could get on the plane after originally missing the flight. According to Al Jazeera, the incident occurred on Tuesday morning when Kam Air Flight RQ-814 took off from Kabul (KBL) for Bamiyan (BIN) in Afghanistan early in the morning, as scheduled. Parliament members Ghulam Hussain Naseri and Abdul Rahman Shaheedani were booked on the flight — but not on board amongst the 30 passengers....

Starting at some point today through Sunday, September 16, American Express is offering a 35% bonus on transfers of Membership Rewards points to Air France/KLM’s loyalty program, Flying Blue. If you’re not yet a member of Flying Blue, you can join here.The normal ratio is 1:1, but during the promo, if you were to transfer 1,000 Amex points, you’d end up with 1,350 Flying Blue miles. Note: Flying Blue charges huge fuel surcharges and taxes on most transatlantic awards, though Delta domestic flights and many intra-European awards have reasonable fees....

A driver for the ride-sharing company Uber reportedly shot and killed his passenger on the side of a Denver interstate early Friday morning.Police told ABC 7 Denver that the incident occurred at 2:45am Friday on Denver’s Interstate 25. After getting into an altercation with his passenger during the ride, the driver reportedly pulled out a gun and shot the unidentified male passenger multiple times.Emergency dispatchers say that the driver then called 911....

United just launched a new “mystery bonus” offering up to a 100% bonus when buying United miles. If targeted, you can buy miles at 1.88 cents each. That’s not bad… but how about the opportunity to buy 1,000 United miles at 0.1 cents each?Now through November 16, you can subscribe to the Wall Street Journal for two months for just $1 through the United MileagePlus Shopping portal. As long as your subscription “remain[s] active (i....

Every year many carriers discount premium tickets to Europe by up to 50% or more. Some fares even work for Christmas/New Years travel and recently many of these fares were filed. Many just require a Saturday night stay, but some do require a week. Play around with ITA software so be flexible to find the lowest fares. Remember, you can’t book your flight on the ITA Matrix, once you know your dates and flight numbers you can look up the trip by going directly to the airline website or your preferred online travel agency such as Orbitz to book....

Chrissy Teigen is at it again, live-tweeting another flight. No, she wasn’t on yet another flight to nowhere — this time, she was on a 15-hour flight to Bali… with her 2-year old daughter, Luna, and her 3-month old son, Miles.(Maybe she took a cue from The Points Pups with that name? Hey, you never know!).A 15-hour flight for any person is difficult, let alone with two kids in tow. And, well, it seems she’s just like any other mom — full of both relief they’ve made it through the first leg, and anxiety for the next....

Rocketmiles - a hotel booking service where you can earn bonus miles with the site’s 11 airline partners instead of hotel points - is offering a “Dublin” miles double miles promo on bookings in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.To be eligible, you must book by 11:59pm CT for hotel stays now through December 31, 2014 (check-out must be by this date). It’s valid only on bookings made today in Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia, and it’s only valid on new bookings, not existing reservations....

New facial recognition technology at Washington, DC’s Dulles Airport (IAD) stopped an impostor attempting to get through the immigration checkpoint with a fake passport, officials said Thursday.The man was taken into custody in a first-of-its kind arrest in which a biometric facial recognition system detected and stopped passport fraud.His authentic-looking but fraudulent document probably would have passed muster under solely human judgment, federal authorities noted. The facial recognition system was implemented at the airport on Monday and stopped the imposter on its third day of use....

Over time our bodies become less pliable, and the bumps and bruises we experienced as younger versions of ourselves sometimes manifest into chronic issues that plague the frequent traveler. For most, it’s issues with their neck and/or back. While I’m no international businessman, I do travel domestically for business once or twice a week, to the tune of about 100,000 miles a year.I also briefly competed as a Division 1 high jumper in college over 12 years ago, and that 10-step approach combined with the twisting of my spine over the bar in the technique perfected by Dick Fosbury has done a number on the lumbar and thoracic regions of my back and left hip....