Author: Shane

Alaska Air Mileage Plan sale now on again: get up to 40% bonus miles

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Works out to an effective 28.6% discount on the miles purchase. Book now until 1 November 2019, 3pm. Alaska Air is back with a bonus miles promotion for miles purchase – this time round offering a 40% bonus when you buy miles. Note that the bonus is tiered: you will need to purchase at least 30,000 miles to trigger the 40% bonus. There is a limit of 60,000 miles that you can buy per transaction, up to a maximum of 150,000 miles (including all bonus miles) per year, per account. This limit is actually rather inconsequential, given that you can redeem air tickets for virtually anyone from any account. Having said that, status holders (MVP, MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75K Mileage Plan) have no annual limit on the number of miles which may be purchased or gifted. How much will it cost? At the time of writing, Alaska Air Mileage Plan is selling miles at 2.75 US cents per mile, not including a 7.5% ‘tax recovery’ fee. At a 40% bonus, this works out …

DBS raises foreign currency transaction fee to 3.25%

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From 1 November 2019, DBS will have one of the highest fees for foreign transactions for its Visa and Mastercard credit cards. DBS will be raising its foreign currency transaction fee on all DBS & POSB Visa and Mastercard credit cards from the existing 3% to 3.25% from 1 November 2019. The notice did not mention anything about Amex cards, so it should be staying at 3% for now. What are foreign currency transaction fees? When you use your credit card overseas, there are typically two fees involved that is added to the converted amount: The card network fee (charged by Visa, Mastercard or Amex) The bank transaction fee These fees are incurred for processing the transaction, converting them into the billing currency (Singapore dollars for those using Singapore credit cards, etc). The prevailing rates charged by the card networks are as follow: Visa & Mastercard – 1% American Express – 1 to 1.25%, depending on bank Different banks have different transaction fees, which will bring the total up to anything between 2.75% to 3.25%. …

Transfer your DBS points to Qantas Frequent Flyer and get 25% more

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Qantas is now running a points transfer promotion, offering a 25% bonus on top of the usual transfer rates. So that means, for every 5000 DBS points transferred, you will get 12,500 Qantas points instead of the usual 10,000. The baseline number of points will usually show up within a couple of days (DBS says it will take up to 7 working days, but in reality it’s usually quite fast), and you will receive the bonus points by 14 November 2019. Qantas first partnered up with DBS earlier this year in March 2019, and offered a launch offer of 20% bonus. Back then, I transferred 30,000 points to Qantas, and the bonus showed up that very weekend. Should you transfer your points to Qantas? If you are familiar with the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme, you will know that the points are generally worth less than an equivalent mile on other programmes such as Krisflyer and Asia Miles, so transfer bank points to Qantas points is usually not a worthy endeavour. Even with a 25% bonus, …

Qantas’ refurbished A380 takes to the skies

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After more than 18 months since Qantas announced a refurbishment programme for its A380 fleet, the first of the refreshed birds is finally out of the factory and back in the skies. The first of Qantas’ twelve refurbished Airbus A380 will begin flying the flagship Sydney-Singapore-London route next week, following an extensive make-over which includes a modernisation of the first class cabin and installation of the airline’s latest business class seats, along with two new upper deck lounges. What has changed? The multimillion-dollar upgrade most significantly features an upgraded business class cabin featuring their flagship business suites, as well as their latest premium economy product. The upper deck is also now exclusively premium, with all economy class seats now moved to the lower deck. The on-board lounge has also been redesigned.  Don’t expect to see a brand new first class product on the Qantas A380 – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing given that the product actually works (see my review here!) and remains pretty luxurious even a decade after it was first rolled out.  …

Scoot removes all payment processing fees with immediate effect

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From today onwards, Scoot will no longer be charging a payment processing fee for its airfares. You’ll no longer need to pay any additional fees regardless of which method of payment you choose to use, whichever sector you buy, and from which city you booked it from. Singapore customers were previously charged S$10 per person, per flight for payment made through selected credit cards and PayPal, so that means that if you were booking a return ticket, you would have to spend an additional $20 on top of whatever fare and add-ons you chose. With this change, Jetstar and AirAsia, two of the other key low cost carriers, remain to be the only ones still charging a ‘convenience’ fee for using credit card payments – it remains to be seen if they will follow suit.