7/4 Weekly Recap

 These were the noticeable developments in travel from last week.

1. Virgin Atlantic guarantees award seats on every flight

Virgin Atlantic now guarantees a minimum of 12 award seats on every flight (8 economy and 2 each in Premium Economy and Upper Class). This is only the minimum and I have seen instances of Virgin Atlantic releasing more space as award space gets taken up. Frequent Miler reports that this is mostly when booking directly with Virgin Atlantic and availability when booking via partners is not guaranteed. Also worth noting that Virgin Atlantic releases award seats 331 days in advance and awards seats earn tier points towards the two Virgin Atlantic elite status - Silver and Gold.

From OMAAT, Virgin Atlantic

2. Star Alliance adds a non-airline partner in Deutsche Bahn

Star Alliance has added a rail partner in Germany's Deutsche Bahn. TPG reports it will become effective August 1, 2022. With this you should be able to pair a rail ticket with your airline ticket when travelling in Germany. It is yet to be seen how this will work with different alliance partners and what the award bookings, if any, will look like.

From TPG, OMAAT

3. Delta issued a ticket change difference waiver from July 1-4

This was in anticipation of increased travel and cancellations during the US Independence Day long weekend and provided Delta flyers option to change to another date without paying a fare difference.

From OMAAT, Delta

4. Bilt introduced limited time Signup bonus (YMMV)

New reward points player Bilt sent out a limited time credit card signup bonus to some members via email. Bilt is mostly geared towards renters but rent payments do not count towards this bonus. Bilt is a very exciting development in credit card reward space and racked up big names like American Airlines, Hyatt and United as transfer partners, all three of which even old players like Amex and Chase have not been able to pull off. I mostly joined the program (which you can do without signing up for the credit card) to earn easy bonus points for linking some transfer partners. They usually reward 100 points for linking a travel partner but they had 500 point bonuses for linking Hyatt and American Airlines in the past. They have 11 total transfer partners listed on their site.

The Bilt credit card signup bonus has been called out by some as lacking. With this mailer, it looks like they are listening. I won't be jumping on this offer as I am not a renter and it is not worth a credit card slot for me at this point.

Limited time Bilt signup bonus


Bilt transfer partners

4. Bilt launched a new travel portal with 1.25c points redemption option

This week, Bilt launched a travel portal in conjunction with Expedia. This should allow you to get a base value of 1.25c from your points. I would still advice against it as you can get a bigger value by transferring to partners like Hyatt and American Airlines.

From Bilt

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