We sold our Disney Vacation Club one last year. We sold it for about 50% of what we bought it for which given the times we used it, felt we made out in the end. We used one of the resale real estate groups and fees were like 8% of the sale price. Sold in just a few weeks.

Decided to get the CapitalOne Venture X card for $395 annual fee. Our "premium" card right now is the Chase Preferred (not the Reserve) for $95.

From my research, the Venture X is the "best budget premium travel card".

The rationale and benefits are:

• It gives you $300 credit if you book travel through their website (supposedly competitive with AMEX, Chase etc.).
• A one-time 75k miles if I spend $4k in first 3 months.
• An annual 10k miles every annual year.
• Basically 2x dollars for point for anything

And the 2 really nice perks are:

• Free 2nd card for wife
• Access of Priority Club lounges worldwide

There's other stuff but those are basically why I'm going with the Venture X.

We know we'll travel and spend more than $300 on flights & hotels. So that makes it effectively $95 annual fee.

The miles are nice, not sure how really good they are, but supposedly transferrable to their partners.

Newyorkrentalbyowner.com is a great if you're planning to visit NY. I’ve had great success using it in NYC to find affordable, furnished housing. Just message the hosts ahead if booking with any and all questions. Basically the same as AirBnB.

So, I was supposed to fly to DEN from ORD today with my son to go skiing for the weekend.

Yesterday morning I wake up to a message from United: "Hey, we've canceled your flight, but don't worry, we've booked you on a flight first thing Friday morning!" Which, not great, but whatever.

I'm in meetings from 8:00 to 5:00 straight, so can't deal with it at work.

Then, at lunchtime I get another message: "Hey, we've canceled that flight too, but don't worry, we've booked you on another flight Friday morning that gets to Denver by going through Atlanta!" Which, really not great.

Apparently this is all happening because they're pulling 737 MAXs out of service to run safety checks.

Anyway, the happy ending is that once I got out of meetings I went into the app and managed to book a direct from MKE to DEN that leaves this afternoon. MKE is less than an hour drive, so that's fine.

Anyway, this 737 MAX thing is a real pain, and I hope the airlines give Boeing some shit about it, especially as I read somewhere that last year Boeing was applying to the FAA for a waiver for some of its quality processes so that it could deliver orders for the plane faster.

Honestly, if anything, Boeing should be under a consent decree right now, not getting "get out of jail free" cards from the government.

dola: https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...it-in-the-air/

I had a nightmare time getting home from Houston after the national championship game because of this. Ended up getting stuck for a night in West Palm Beach. They have a nice Cheescake Factory there.

So wait, planes aren't supposed to do this?

BREAKING REPORT : ⚠️ Atlas Air Boeing 747-8 from Miami International Airport CATCHES FIRE MID AIR..

DEVELOPING.. pic.twitter.com/Qk6QLZ6U7E

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) January 19, 2024

Story was short on details but if I was the pilot of Delta 982, I'd buy the other pilot that saw my tire "roll off the runway" a drink for letting me know.

Nose wheel comes off Delta Boeing 757 shortly before takeoff | CNN


A recreation & recording below. Kudos to the pilots ... calm, cool, professional. I'd be bitching up a storm or laughing my head off.

I may have mentioned it here before, but if not... If you cruise, I suggest using cruiseplum.com. Not only is it helpful for finding cruises and getting an idea of pricing history, deals, etc., before you book, but it can also help you on existing reservations as well. I set up price drop alerts for a couple of cruises we have booked and one of them came in this morning. I contacted Princess and they rebooked me at the lower rate. About $250 cheaper. I'm going to re-do the alert for a lower price and see what happens before final payment is due in October.

BTW are you predominantly in Amex, Chase, Citi or Capital One's travel rewards or just a mixture?

I think I'm going to focus on Capital One.

Amex does have good travel rewards & benefits but many of them don't apply to me (e.g. Lyft credits, dining etc.). So its really between Chase vs Capital One for me.

Chase and AmEx. I think Chase is the best. I've resisted Capital One even though my oldest credit card is C1 and they've been bugging me to upgrade it. I don't think their transfer partner list is all that great, and I believe their top card just lost a couple of benefits.

I recently jumped into AmEx and agree that if you're not going to take advantage of some of the freebies offered, it probably won't make sense. But I just got the Gold followed quickly by the Platinum due to elevated SUBs that I lucked into, allowing me to bank 225K MR (worth over $4K), so I'll deal with the AFs. I did set up some stuff specially to use the credits, like the $10 and $20/month streaming credits. I booked a night at one of the FHR hotels in Auckland to use the $200 credit.

But Chase is so much easier. For instance, the Reserve has a $550 AF but you get a $300 statement credit per year for any travel booked with the card. That effectively makes the fee $250. With AmEx, the $200 credit has to be booked through their portal for luxury hotels. Those are kinds of differences between the two.

I wanted to cover my bases as far as transfer partners so between AmEx and Chase I've got quite a few covered (outside of AA). Plus, I couldn't pass up $225K MR.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Sitting at LAX waiting for flight #2 of 3 headed back home from New Zealand and Australia. We did 4-5 days in the Auckland area and 4-5 days in the Sydney area. There is so much more I want to do in both places. Some thoughts:

- NZ was amazing. The people were super friendly, the food was great, the culture is really cool, our hotels were right on the harbor. In 3 days we toured the city, a rain forest, a black sand surf beach, a volcanic valley with bubbling water and mud, and Hobbiton.

- Apparently they don't like ice in either country. The only time I got ice was when ordering liquor on the rocks. Table water was always room temp. Pop was usually chilled with a glass to pour it in, no ice. One time I ordered a Coke Zero with lunch and they handed me a warm bottle!

- We took our first international airline flight on Qantas round trip between Auckland and Sydney. I'd heard the US airlines were crap compared to international and I believe it. Both flights were 2.5-3 hours long and we got a hot meal, coffee/tea service, another round of drink service and then they passed out Lindt chocolates before we deplaned. I'm about to get on a 4 hour flight from LA to Detroit in Comfort+ and will get snacks. Step up your game, US airlines!

- Sydney was cool. I didn't realize how big it was. 5.5 million people, housing crisis, and you were still in Sydney driving an hour in any direction. Did a couple of rainforests there as well, plus went south and toured a number of beaches. Didn't scratch the surface of the country.

- We stayed down by the harbor. Really cool area, has to be one of the best ports to sail in and out of. We saw several cruise ships while we were there. The port is nice and big, only one ship, and you're sandwiched between the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. I mean, it doesn't get much better than that.

-Speaking of the bridge, you walk up to the top and we were going to do it., then I saw it was $350-400 a person. Fuck that. About 10 years ago it was like $80. I was figuring maybe $150 a person. I'm less afraid of heights than getting ripped off.

- TV was interesting in both countries. I ended up watching a lot of older game shows and stuff. I didn't realize Jimmy Carr hosted a celebrity panel show called 8 out of 10 Cats Countdown. No clue what that means but it was funny as hell.

- Both countries' money was cool. Nice and colorful. Special props to Australia for coordinating the size of the bill to the denomination. I had a 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 at one time and they were small to large based on the value. Great idea.

Was this the trip you booked kind of on a whim because of a crazy miles redemption sale?

I love stuff like that - finding yourself in a place really just out of circumstance.

Either way though, sounds like a great trip.

Yes. 92K SkyMiles and $189 for 2 RT tickets to Auckland, and then I used 40K Chase points to book RT between Auckland and Sydney. I also used about 200K IHG points to stay at Intercontinental Auckland (just opened 2 days before we checked in) and Intercontinental Sydney. Final night we stayed in a balcony room at Park Hyatt in Auckland which I booked through AmEx FHR so I used my $200 annual booking credit to cut the price down to about $500 for the night and received $150 to spend at the hotel and free breakfast this morning.

Ended up being a reasonable spend for such a cool trip. Bonus points for the exchange rate - I think NZ was around 61-62 cents to the dollar and Australia was around 65 cents.

Damn. I'll be lucky if 92k Delta points gets us to Cancun in October.

Delta has some decent deals if you are flexible. Some have more availability than others. They were running deals to Costa Rica, Tulum Mexico, and Jamaica within the past few weeks. All under 30K miles. Some of the best Delta deals are booked with Virgin Atlantic or Flying Blue, although I did see one to Taiwan under 90K miles RT with SkyMiles.

From my travels to Europe & Asia, I've come to realize that ice is an US thing. Also, free refills.

I enjoyed myself in Melbourne. Lots of great ethnic food from all over. Loved the tram system, very convenient to get from suburbia to downtown.

Do you focus getting hotel points from a specific chain? Which one do you recommend?

I'm a lifetime Marriott Titanium but I've not been staying at a lot of Marriotts in my personal travels. In Europe, I find the Accor chain more economical. In Asia, it's IHG or the local hotels. I'm not in it for the hotel "experience", I've stayed at enough nice hotels.

So, I'm going to focus on IHG for the next year, got the IHG credit card. I would actually prefer Accor but they don't have a great credit card/rewards program.

It sucks not enjoying my Titanium privileges but not worth the $30-$40 premium a night.

I like IHG's 4th night free when you book reward travel, and, they seem to have well-located hotels in places I've been lately. And I actually got upgraded with their card the last couple of trips.

But I've had success with all of them. Just juggling sign-up bonuses and going all in on Marriott or Hilton or whatever for a year or two than switching.

I get a lot of value from IHG, and yes, a bunch of that is from the 4th night free. That's how I set up our vacations now when I have flexibility. I did it in Auckland/Sydney, I'm doing it in May in London, and even when we go to ND/SD in October, I've split it into 4 day increments to use IHG points for the free nights (effectively lowering the points cost by about a quarter).

The downside - IHG rewards booking are generally for a low-level/basic room. You're often times not getting any kind of a chance to book a suite or upgraded room with IHG points. But I've gotten great value out of them combined with having an IHG Premier card for Platinum status and Intercontinental Ambassdor status.

The way I look at rewards points - unless you are running a business or spending so much money that you are able to accumulate hundreds of thousands of points a year where you have enough points to do both option A and B - is that there are two options:

A - Use your points to maximize free/low cost flights. Obviously, economy travel is going to get you more trips, but researched/flexible luxury travel can be even more cost-effective in terms of points value if you care about such a thing. Having just flown in non-business class back and forth to NZ and walking like Fred Sanford today, this is a priority for me going forward (unless the deal is just too good to pass up for main cabin/economy). It's imperative to learn about alliances and whose flights can be booked through partners, which are the best value, etc.

If you do this, you either have a different strategy for hotels, or you just pay cash for hotels that is freed up by not having to pay for travel.

B - Use your points for Hyatt. It is by far the best redemption for hotels out there. You can book 5 star hotels for a week in some places for under 200K points. I've read about people booking $500-1000 rooms for 10-20K points. In places like SE Asia where things are relatively inexpensive from a US perspective, you can get unbelievable value at luxury hotels for next to nothing. It's phenomenal value.

I would not use my AmEx/Chase/Capital One points to transfer to IHG, unless it's just a small top-off to use immediately. Marriott is also not a great use of transfers, but better than IHG based on relative value (those points are better used for flights or Hyatt based on what you get for the points). Personally, as an IHG person, I'd rather accumulate some points through IHG stays, IHG credit card spend (we use ours for gas since its 5X points and IHG stays where you get up to 26X points), or buying points when they offer 100% bonuses. The bonus buys yield .005 cents per point cost and I guarantee if you do it right, you'll get at least 1.2-1.5+ cents per point value in rewards bookings with IHG (particularly if you maximize the 4th night free option). We're staying 12 nights at Intercontinentals with a per night cost of anywhere from $300-600 and I bet I didn't spend more than $1500, tops, for the points.

I suppose there's Option C, which is booking travel through the bank's travel portal, or D, which is the terrible option of using points for stuff like Amazon or other low-value redemptions the banks would love you to do. I have a Chase Reserve, so I get 1.5x the value of my points in their portal. That's decent. BUT... lots of issues I prefer to stay away from. You sometimes can't use your loyalty rewards number for flights or stays since it's booked through a third party (which can be important for status or accumulating points in their currencies), and if you have an issue (cancelled flights, etc.), you have to work through Chase/AmEx, etc. - typically, the airlines and hotels treat them like Expedia and make you go through them instead of helping you directly. For that reason, I almost always book direct.

So, for me, Option C isn't a great deal unless it's tied to some sort of cashback or perk opportunity (like my Delta Reserve has a $200 a year credit for stays booked through Delta Stays - I book a 1-night stay, get $200 off, and that's it). Or, the AmEx Platinum Fine Hotels and Resorts deals - $200 a year credit plus some nice perks like free breakfast, late check out, upgraded room based on availibility, and usually a credit that can be used at hotel restaurants, spas, minibars, etc. I just did this for our last night in Auckland - booked a Park Hyatt balcony room that was $1000 on Hyatt's website for $700 on AmEx's portal, got a $200 statement credit, plus free breakfast and $150 to spend. Good deal!

That's the basics of how I use my points and general philosophy on the best way to maximize value.

Thanks again. I'll have to start digging deeper into the travel hack websites you shared.

Going scuba diving in Asia.

Looking forward to it. Question now is deciding if I really need a dive computer and how much to pay for one.

This shit in Haiti is getting crazy. We are going on a cruise that stops there in a few weeks. The stop in Haiti is actually a private peninsula that royal Caribbean owns. apparently it is heavily fortified and has armed guards. We were supposed to do an excursion that is a coastal boat tour and it just got cancelled. Sounds like anything away from the land is cancelled. Doesn't give me a great feeling. I suspect the stop gets cancelled and the itinerary changes.

Scuba diving in Philippines. World definitely slows down when all you're focused on is diving.

Met the local husband & wife team of the dive resort. Essentially, started small and it evolved over the past 15+ years. They have locals helping with boats, air tanks, cooking & housekeeping. Absolutely no complaints. Some limited in English but everyone very helpful. A cultural thing I think but all the women smile when interacting with me, only a minority of men.

No idea how profitable they are but comparable land (without the actual structures) are at least $350k. Toss in the structures, and am guessing in the $2M+ range. A pretty decent chunk of money when some say $60k net worth is enough to get you into the 1%.

I can see myself operating a dive resort here. Enjoy the view, sea breeze, night sky, hosting a bunch of rich tourist/expats, giving employment to local community etc.

You probably already know this directly from RC, but it appears they've scrapped port calls to Labadee for the foreseeable future. The lawyer in me completely agrees with RC on a potential liability basis...

Interesting weekend on the seas. On Friday, on a Holland America ship docked in the Bahamas that an old law school buddy of mine was on, 2 crew died on what was reported as a steam pipe explosion. My friend told me they basically kept up with a "nothing to see here" message for hours even as basic services (like toilet and hot water) stopped working and Bahamian authorities boarded the ship, and then eventually the captain announced what happened.

Yesterday, in the same general area (not docked but about 20 miles or so off Freeport), a Carnival ship was possibly struck by lightning and the tall red stack on top of the ship caught fire, part of it breaking off and falling onto deck 10. The ship was dead in the water and crew shut down access above deck 9. Fire burned from about 3 to 5:30. Apparently the weather was really bad (thunderstorms, 50 mph winds) and they weren't able to dock before the fire, and while waiting out the storm, got struck by lightning. Later yesterday the ship was able to move and presumably docked somewhere.

Crazy.

Thanks for posting this as I get ready to leave for a sailing on Friday

Ha! The way I look at these kinds of things is they are low-chance occurrences, so if they happen that means it's even less likely to happen immediately again.

I used to watch Air Disasters all the time, even before flights. Freaked my wife out, but I don't know why - the entire premise is what the industry learned and improved upon as a result of the accidents.

The air disaster show with the chesey renactement actors rules.

And despite some problems here and there we've clearly come a long way. It's crazy the shit that used to go down.

The time & energy put into understanding why air accidents happen and creating new procedures so that they don't happen again is seriously impressive. Which is why Boeing management's attempts to cut corners in pursuit of profits is so absolutely terrible and, as I said previously, is why they should be candidates for a Consent Decree.

Luckily, there are still engineers at Boeing willing to sound the alarm:


Source.

In standard LEAN manufacturing processes, issues such as this would trigger a line shutdown and immediate work to identify and rectify the root cause. It would appear that Boeing has moved away from this philosophy, and I can only imagine what the Boeing workers were thinking all along.

This is unreasonable and unacceptable and frankly everyone in the management chain responsible for this oversight (all the way up to the C-level) should be censured in some way.

Yep. We moved to KY in 2006 and less than 2 months later, Comair Flight 5191 went down at LEX about 10 minutes from my house, killing 49. Maybe we've had a US incident kill as many since then, but none immediately comes to mind. But that show is filled with major accident after accident in the 70s-90s.

The one I always think of is ValuJet Flight 592, Miami to Atlanta that crashed into the Everglades. That was the oxygen canisters ignited in the cargohold crash.

Killed all 110 on board, between the fire and the crash itself, but s&r efforts were hampered by the presence of alligators and the more than a mile from any road crash location.

Among the victims was Chargers RB Rodney Culver.

Yes, I recall that one. My parents had left South Florida by then, but my future wife was living down there at the time. In fact, I believe that was right around when I graduated law school.

It's funny how things about crashes tend to stick sometimes.

Will had the option of flying into DeGaulle or Orly.

Not only did I immediately say "DeGaulle" but he understood exactly why that was my reaction.

Mind you now, that crash occurred 5 years before I was born and over 35 years after he was born ... but one of those on board was from the little town we lived in when he was born so he's pretty much always known about it. In fact, we have a chair from the victim's estate sale, which didn't take place until some 40 years after the crash (family simply left her house as it was for decades).

Air France Flight 007 - Wikipedia

Good news.

Incredible article.

Suicide Mission - The American Prospect

Saw breaking news about injuries on a diverted flight between NJ and Tel Aviv and immediately thought the worst, but fortunately it was just a high wind/turbulence issue with minor injuries.

Again, the company needs to be operating under a consent decree, now.

And every exec since 2005 needs to be fully investigated and barred from future leadership roles. Which won't happen because this is America, they're rich, and they can buy their own justice.

Trump already gave them criminal immunity for the deaths they caused. They already bought their own justoce.

People who sit in the aisle or windows seats and hog the armrest from the person in the middle deserve to die in a fire.

Been to 7 of the Top 10 busiest airports. Haven't been to Turkey or Dubai, and not counting Delhi (that was decades ago).

World’s busiest airports: There’s a new No. 2 | CNN


Above list is busiest airports. Below is list for busiest "international" airports. Been to 7 of the 10 also.

Singapore Changi is just an incredible airport. Going from O'Hare to LAX and then there was like entering a new reality.

In addition to the above "busiest" airports, below is "best" airports in 2024

Been to 10 of the 20.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/worlds-be...hnk/index.html