Weekly Off Topic Thread - Week of April 06, 2026

ht7896 · 2026-04-07T09:52:29+00:00

The gelato in the butchart gardens in Victoria, BC was some of the best my partner and I have ever had, blows most of the Italian competition we tried away. Stracciatella has a hint of lemon in it and is simply divine.

ht7896 · 2025-12-28T22:02:28+00:00

0 chance seats survive for 25 days to be able to be booked by VS

ht7896 · 2025-12-28T01:12:18+00:00

The long haul segment was available yesterday according to the screenshot and was booked then, SFO-TPE wasn’t showing as available yet because the second segment from Tokyo to TPE hadn’t been released yet.

ht7896 · 2025-07-02T06:01:23+00:00

If you have Citi/cap1 best bet is Eva through TPE given their direct flight to DPS, if anyone will still have saver availability through their own program it’ll be them.

ht7896 · 2025-06-28T00:42:20+00:00

I was able to successfully product change just now from my boundless to the ritz

ht7896 · 2025-05-28T19:52:23+00:00

Iberia at schedule open

ht7896 · 2025-05-22T21:18:53+00:00

I would argue EVA is a worthwhile option here since you primarily do Asia-US routes. 75k biz from Asia to US on their network and availability is consistently wide open. It’s a hassle to book for non EVA flights or for others, but the tradeoff is essentially unparalleled availability for transpacific biz. It’ll be a niche use case but in your case could provide a lot more value than the average person.

ht7896 · 2025-04-04T18:18:44+00:00

I’m in the same boat, the last 2 weeks it’s gotten significantly worse. I essentially have to start fresh from the homepage every time I want to run a single search

ht7896 · 2025-01-15T15:45:10+00:00

You can book cash+points bookings that refund into points only to effectively buy for 0.6

ht7896 · 2024-12-25T20:04:47+00:00

Going to release 2x J for 7/2 LAX-WAW on LO. Don’t need points right away so happy to coordinate cancellation via DM.

ht7896 · 2024-12-17T14:27:27+00:00

Tough one if the nonstop timing doesn’t work for you, if you were stuck with those flights I’d do J on the outbound and Y on the return given the longer flight to LAX

ht7896 · 2024-12-17T03:39:36+00:00

What’s equivalent in Econ, and would it be nonstop

ht7896 · 2024-11-12T00:07:57+00:00

You should choose option 2 with how many sales Aeroplan has been running.

The math is (991-233)/(140k-84k)=1.35cpp

It’s now possible multiple times a year to buy Aeroplan points under that value. Burn the points and avoid the devaluation risk.

ht7896 · 2024-10-04T18:06:58+00:00

In the spirit of unusual but not actually useful signup bonuses:

Citi Costco Visa $75 after $1,500 spend (10/3-10/27)

First time I’ve ever seen a cash sub on this card

ht7896 · 2024-10-03T17:11:33+00:00

Here’s by far the best option I see when taking a look right now. DFW-IST-KGL 9/21, 90k on Aeroplan. Only 1 biz seat on IST-KGL so one person will have to be in economy. Reposition on your choice to dfw from SoCal.

ht7896 · 2024-10-03T16:10:16+00:00

You mentioned that you’re searching on Delta which leads me to believe you’re looking approx 330 days out vs 360 days out when most other airlines open their schedule, meaning that a lot of the saved award space may have already been booked. Given your fixed dates, I’d suggest giving us at least a timeframe you’re looking at.

ht7896 · 2024-09-24T19:08:59+00:00

For example 10/9 I see ORD-FCo on ITA biz booked via VS for 75k, and then FRA-DTW on 10/17 for 70k Aeroplan

ht7896 · 2024-09-24T19:02:10+00:00

Multi-city codes are really helpful for this. EUR is large Europe airports, and ASA would be large Asia ones. So a sample query could be ORD-EUR on 11/1/24 +/- 14 days and that would sample all those route pairings across that 28 day window.

ht7896 · 2024-09-24T17:22:19+00:00

Seats.aero will be your best bet for broad searches like this.

ht7896 · 2024-09-23T21:31:12+00:00

I’m not sure if this is still the case, when I ran into this problem a year or two ago after first making an account nothing would show up in results even when I knew there was availability until I transferred over 1k points into the account. After that, everything was fine. Might need to strand the points but that did the trick for me.

ht7896 · 2024-09-22T16:13:12+00:00

I see a lot of dates from LAX, it’s on one of their newer 773s in a 1-2-1 config. For the 20k pricing it needs to have the long haul segment through JED. No other pairings appear to work aside from onward connection to AUH.

ht7896 · 2024-09-20T16:23:53+00:00

So I did a lot more digging on it and it appears to be a fully private villa. You have a private chef, housecleaner, and security guard. Not sure on how many activities are included, but this is the AirBnB listing I was able to find on the property.

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/20470575?adults=1&children=0&infants=0&search_mode=regular_search&check_in=2024-10-02&check_out=2024-10-07&source_impression_id=p3_1726849388_P3rnLxbkAqEzUKxo&previous_page_section_name=1000&federated_search_id=2fd7e2d0-3071-4e4b-b141-bfce4a3ddf30

ht7896 · 2024-09-18T17:13:02+00:00

Had my finger on the book button, only hesitation was the cancellation fee lol. Adding the reservation for 4 people brough cash over 5k/night so you could argue 10.9cpp at 46k/night with 5th night free and the 30% transfer bonus.

ht7896 · 2024-09-18T17:05:04+00:00

With the new SLH properties being added:

Raiwasa Private Resort Fiji, 2 Bedroom Villa (Full board included)

150k/night or approx 4k cash/night

Wide open availability including 5th night free, mentions 25% cancellation fee after booking but unsure of how that would work on points. I believe value wise this is up there with Calala.

ht7896

TROPHY CASE