USA-2017 Review: Etihad Apartments Sydney to Abu Dhabi I have been counting down the days till this flight, whilst I have been lucky enough to try a few First Class products, I had not yet experienced Etihad Apartments, so I was understandably very excited! Boarding was scheduled for 7:50 pm and the lounge attendant had told us
USA-2017 Review: Sydney Etihad Business/First Lounge Our next trip report kicks off with a chauffeured ride to Sydney airport followed by some (underwhelming) time in the Etihad Business lounge. At T-48 I was contacted by the chauffeur company to confirm the pickup details, for some reason Etihad were suggesting a 4:45 pm pickup which I
USA-2017 The Long Way To Vegas... This trip came a little out of nowhere. Usually when we plan a holiday (especially if it involves award flights) we have locked the basic plan, including flights 12 months in advance.
News United MileagePlus 100% Bonus Miles As luck would have it, 24 hours after I posted an article about buying miles & points in Australia, United is running a new promotion offering a massive 100% bonus until the 12th of September! As per usual, the bonus is tiered, meaning you get the best amount of bonus miles
Tutorials Guide Series: Buying Miles & Points in Australia for Cheap Premium Cabin Flights So a little-known trick that can sometimes get you super cheap premium cabin fares, is to actually purchase miles & points and then redeem them for award flight as opposed to directly buying the revenue ticket. Many overseas airlines sell large amounts of frequent flyer points that are designed to top-up
Photography Series Photography Series: London We spent 4 days in London as part of our Europe trip late last year. It is a spectacular city. Although somehow we managed to visit during an epic heatwave and discovered the hard way the London does not know about air conditioning.
Tech Reviews Tech Review: Sony MDR-1000x Noise Cancelling Headphones For years now I have had a love/hate relationship with Noise Cancelling headphones; for a few reasons but mainly cost and sound quality. As a result, I have never pulled the trigger on a pair of Bose Quiet Comforts despite being close many times in the past. Well that
Photography Series Photography Series: Singapore Late last year we were in Singapore for a quick stopover during Chinese New Years. It is a great city to visit, with fantastic sight. Marina Bay had been decorated with lanterns for CNY.
Tutorials Guide Series: Redeeming Velocity Points for Etihad Apartments As discussed in the previous Guide Series post on finding award availability, one of the great ways to secure award flights is to leverage the partner relationships of airlines to secure award seats on airlines other than the one you have the miles & points with. One excellent example is using
News Get a free 2,000 Qantas points in 10 seconds! [UPDATE] It looks like this deal is now expired, If you managed to see it in time, I hope you scored some free points! Qantas is currently running a promotion to encourage people to check and update your contact details. Apparently, this is to do with the current rollout of
Photography Series Introducing the Photography Series So other than travel, one of my hobbies is photography. My interest in photography started in high school where I had access to a darkroom to process black & white film and I have been playing around with different cameras since. Now, whilst I generally add the various photos from our
Tips The Showdown - Qantas QFF vs. Virgin Velocity Someone recently asked me in the comments on my first Guide Series post about Getting Started with Mile & Points in Australia, why I picked Velocity and if that was just a personal preference or if I thought that Velocity was indeed 'better' than Qantas Frequent Flyer. I've recently started accumulating
News Some (positive) Changes to the Velocity Program Earlier this week Virgin Australia announced a few changes to their partner network, with this comes a few exciting changes to the Velocity program. New Chinese and Hong Kong Airline Partners On the 6th of July, Hainan Airlines, Hong Kong Airlines, Capital Airlines and Tianjin Airlines were added as partner
Reviews Review: Virgin Australia 737 Business Class After my successful UpgradeMe bid on my return flight from Brisbane, I was somewhat looking forward to the flight home rather than dreading the small packet of snacks and beer I would normally get, I would actually get to enjoy a proper meal, this would also save me from the
Travel Virgin Australia UpgradeMe Bid Experience So purely for the purposes of creating blog content I decided it would be a good idea to put an upgradeMe bid in for an upcoming trip I had from Sydney to Brisbane, it had nothing to do with the fact it was a day trip and the thought of
Tutorials Guide Series: Tips for Finding Award Availability In my getting started guide I touched on the golden rule of miles & points which is to only use them for true award seats and not any-time or points + pay tickets. Now whilst this might sound obvious, the challenge many people have is finding these golden award seats. I have
Win 1 Million Star Alliance Miles The Star Alliance recently turned 20 and to celebrate they are running a competition to with a million miles that will be created to the Star Alliance airline of your choice. They are going to award 21 people with the 1 million mile prize! To put this into context 1
Reviews Review: Virgin Premium Entry Brisbane Airport Arguably one of the best benefits of holding status with Virgin is getting access to the priority entry at Sydney and Brisbane airport (which also happens to be a route that I travel fairly frequently). As with almost all airlines, once you hold status with Virgin Australia you get access
News Further Updates on US Electronics Ban The other day I was super excited to post that Etihad was no longer affected by the portable electronics ban and was the first airline to manage to get the restriction removed after the recent announcements from the Department of Homeland Security. Well more airlines have been joining the party
News Qantas WiFi Rollout Update Qantas release and interesting post yesterday "This is your Wi-Fi speaking – update on Qantas inflight connectivity" with some updates on their WiFi deployment to the domestic fleet. Both Qantas and Virgin have been trailing WiFi on one plane each since early April. I have been lucky enough to try the
News Update on Lifemiles Devaluation Back on the 15th of May Lifemiles made some changes to their award chart for flights to the Australia & New Zealand region. What was interesting at the time was that the changes we published as return awards and there was an odd note at the bottom about the change being
Tutorials Guide Series: Getting Started With Miles & Points in Australia I thought it would be good to write a getting started post that addresses many of the questions around miles & points from what they are, how to earn them and most importantly how to use them. If you already have a good understanding of miles & points then this post is
News WOOT!! - Etihad Lift US Portable Electronics Ban Last Friday I wrote about the new regulations the US Department of Homeland Security are putting in place for all airports that have flights that are US bound. The announcement talked about the new measures as being a way to halt the further rollout of the Portable Electronics Ban. It
Tutorials Introducing the Guide Series Over the comming weeks I will be working on a series of guides, tutorials and tips to help people get started with miles & points or maximise thier use. The guides will focus mainly on miles & points from an Australian perspective. I will aim to get a new guide out each
News Facebook Page & Newsletter Pointy end of the Plane now has a facebook page! All new blog posts will automatically post up to the facebook page so it is a great way to stay in the loop and get updates when new posts occur. Simply like the page and you will start to get
