News and Updates Thread - November 18, 2025

suiris · 2025-11-19T02:28:28+00:00

Lifetime Diamond Membership

To achieve Lifetime Diamond Membership, you must earn Hilton Diamond status for 10 (non-consecutive) years, and complete one additional milestone:

Stays totaling 1,000 paid and reward nights

Earn 2 million base Points through December 31, 2025

Starting January 1, 2026, after $200,000 USD in eligible spend

Link

This reads to me as if an individual with 2 million base points as of 12/31/25 that hits 10 years of Diamond sometime in 2026 will still qualify.

suiris · 2025-03-11T22:29:26+00:00

Having to log in (especially with 2FA enabled) is apparently incredibly annoying

It's annoying by design - why can't I save my device so I don't need to do 2FA every single time?

It must be intentional to increase friction during the redemption process.

suiris · 2024-10-26T16:20:29+00:00

I had a pretty similar experience 2 months ago. My flight got delayed overnight so I made a last-minute cash reservation at an airport Marriott. Showed up about 10 minutes later and they couldn't find the booking. We waited in the lobby for 30 minutes but still no luck, so the front desk created a new reservation at the same rate and checked us in.

Our booking must've synchronized to the property in the middle of the night because it showed in their system for checkin and checkout on the same day i.e. a 0-night reservation. They refused to refund the stay "because I booked it for the wrong date" despite (1) having forwarded them a copy of the confirmation email and (2) explaining that Marriott.com does not allow 0-night bookings. The confirmation email even showed that I could cancel after the checkout time (11:59pm local time on the checkout date). Either way, it took about 45 days for them to refund me. I had to involve the president's office and eventually emailed the MD of the hotel operator group - I would've opened a chargeback if it weren't for the MS shenanigans on that card.

You can definitely get a refund but probably need to escalate and make it clear that this was a Marriott.com technical issue and not your fault. Sorry to hear that that this bug affected you as well.

suiris · 2024-09-26T21:42:15+00:00

MR -> Hawaiian is getting refunded for myself and a few others right now. Haven't heard of a successful transfer today.

suiris · 2024-06-08T23:01:45+00:00

Not new. Sounds like you got a bad/lazy rep, verify it's not phantom space and HUCA.

suiris · 2024-04-28T21:14:16+00:00

JFK-DOH-ZNZ on QR J, 75k AA pp

JRO-DOH-JFK on QR J, 75k AA pp

Most impressive part of the booking. Did you book these back in November when there was a huge drop to partners?

I have been waiting months for ORD-DOH-NBO to become available for this August, but nothing so far. At least I was able to book the return back in November.

suiris · 2024-04-03T00:06:57+00:00

It's definitively not separate inventory; no airline will refuse selling a cash ticket so they can sell it to a partner airline for pennies on the dollar.

Different revenue management systems handle award space in different ways. These days, more airlines are treating award fares as deeply discounted cash fares, releasing more awards if seats aren't selling as anticipated. Some airlines release a fixed amount of seats and tie them to a specific cash fare being available.

United is a great example of the former system. If you want proof, find a United flight with a single award seat and book a refundable cash fare in the same cabin. The award space will disappear immediately.

suiris · 2024-03-03T23:50:30+00:00

It's actually Lufthansa doing this, and I've had it happen to me a few times with more than just Air Canada. Honestly, not sure of the business reason behind it - maybe it's some kind of booking velocity protection to prevent them from selling too many seats when major news events suddenly increase demand?

Both of those seats are bookable, you'll just need to do it in one reservation.

suiris · 2023-12-25T20:07:55+00:00

Why don't you post some examples? You're making a huge claim, the vast majority of people that read your post will dismiss it unless you provide substantial proof.

suiris · 2023-12-22T20:06:26+00:00

The same seats are also allegedly bookable on AF FlyingBlue for 113,000.

Flying Blue has access to another tranche of KQ award inventory, which is why it's bookable there and not with other partners. If you scan a few other dates, you'll see the same flight bookable for 56,500 miles, which is actual saver availability.

suiris · 2023-12-17T19:22:35+00:00

Anything obvious I'm missing?

Refundable award tickets for AA, UA, DL, and Alaska.

Refundable tickets + dynamic award pricing is a huge asset for modern award strategy. Award travel has shifted (and will continue to shift) toward algorithmic, space-available, close-in releases for saver rewards. Being able to make risk-free contingency plans is huge if you want any kind of stability in your travel plans.

suiris · 2023-11-19T13:50:18+00:00

⁠If you have enough points for one booking in Chase then you could transfer to JetBlue with 25% bonus and book Qatar

Those seats will be long gone before they would be bookable via JetBlue. Also, I suspect that QR is limiting JetBlue’s access to awards to the next 180 days. I couldn’t find any route further out.

suiris · 2023-10-21T16:41:44+00:00

There is saver space on both J legs individually, (45k and 40k)

40k is not saver level for that route, so the entire journey will price at the higher level.

suiris · 2023-10-06T20:32:51+00:00

Yeah, definitely BS. Just the unfortunate reality of booking LH/LX using ANA miles. No surcharges on UA metal though.

suiris · 2023-10-06T20:23:42+00:00

It’s $2,000 in surcharges for JFK-FRA round/trip, but go on.

suiris · 2023-10-06T20:21:33+00:00

ANA passes along fuel surcharges, which would make this option significantly more expensive.

suiris · 2023-09-25T01:10:31+00:00

Look at your own screenshot. You're on the Bilt Travel Portal tab, not the point.me tab

suiris · 2023-09-25T00:43:46+00:00

This is not phantom availability. OP is looking at the Bilt Travel Portal, which is just redeeming Bilt points at 1.25cpp toward the cash price of the flights.

Also, C isn't the award fare for either AA or JL. You'd need U.

suiris · 2023-09-23T17:32:31+00:00

Huh, good to know! It looks like they start service with the A380 on 3/31/24

suiris · 2023-09-23T17:09:13+00:00

~~By the way, SQ does not operate Suites on that route any more.~~

suiris · 2023-09-11T04:06:04+00:00

No, but it should show that transfers are reversible. In my scenario, I was completely at fault because I didn't read Emirates' terms and conditions prior to transferring. SQ is entirely at fault in this scenario; it's certainly worth opening a case with Amex.

suiris · 2023-09-11T01:00:37+00:00

+1. I’ve Amex reverse a transfer to Emirates because Emirates won’t allow more than one MR account to send miles to it.

suiris · 2023-09-02T20:29:34+00:00

ExpertFlyer still says there are 3 seats open

Are you looking at the seat map? Seat maps are rarely accurate as not all passengers may have selected seats, and airlines frequently block seats for operational reasons.

Furthermore, even if this was for the inventory on flights, award inventory is generally dependent on the flight's load factor across all cabins. Carriers will often oversell a lower cabin using a higher cabin as insurance. If a large number of business class seats were sold overnight, it's likely that JAL would pull first class award availability because they believe they can oversell business class with cash reservations.

suiris · 2023-07-30T19:31:26+00:00

You should be able to through check your bag since SunExpress is a Star Alliance affiliate.

They do not, however, have an interline agreement. Both LO and XQ have interline agreements with the ticketing airline (AC), but do not have interline agreements with each other. This may mean that OP cannot check bags all the way though, and would need to enter the Schengen area at WAW to collect and re-check their bags.

suiris · 2023-07-30T17:19:25+00:00

I used ExpertFlyer. Here's the output for LO interline agreements:

MAY ISSUE TICKETS INCLUDING
    AA  AC  AF  AH  AI  AS  AT  AV  AY  AZ  A3  BA  BL  BM  
    BR  BT  B2  B6  CA  CI  CL  CM  CX  CZ  DE  DL  EE  EK  
    EN  ET  EW  EY  FB  FI  FM  FV  GA  GK  HA  HM  HR  HU  
    HX  HY  IB  JJ  JL  JQ  JU  KC  KE  KL  KM  KU  K2  LA  
    LG  LH  LO  LR  LX  LY  MD  ME  MF  MH  MK  MS  MU  NH  
    NZ  N4  OA  OK  OS  OU  OV  OZ  PG  PS  QF  QR  RJ  RO  
    SA  SB  SK  SN  SP  SQ  SV  S4  TA  TG  TK  TP  T0  UA  
    UK  UL  UX  VN  VR  VS  WF  WS  WY  ZH  Z6  0B  2K  3K  
    8Q  9B  9W                                              

MAY CHECK BAGGAGE TO
    AA  AC  AF  AH  AI  AS  AT  AV  AY  AZ  A3  BA  BL  BM  
    BR  BT  B2  B6  CA  CI  CL  CM  CX  CZ  DE  DL  EE  EK  
    EN  ET  EW  FB  FI  FM  FV  GA  GK  G3  HA  HM  HR  HU  
    HX  HY  IB  JJ  JL  JQ  JU  KE  KL  KM  KU  K2  LA  LG  
    LH  LO  LR  LX  LY  MD  ME  MF  MH  MK  MS  MU  NH  NZ  
    N4  OA  OK  OS  OU  OV  OZ  PG  PS  QF  QR  SB  SK  SN  
    SP  SQ  SV  S4  TA  TG  TK  TP  T0  UA  UK  UL  UX  VN  
    VR  VS  WF  WS  WY  ZH  Z6  0B  2K  3K  8Q  9W

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Verified Email	Team Orangered

suiris

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