Frequent Miler on the Air - Shortcuts to AA elite status | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep251 | 4-19-24

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

American Airlines status isn't as easy as it used to be, but there are some shortcuts for those who think they'll be flying American Airlines enough to really want it. We'll discuss those shortcuts in this episode of Frequent Miler on the Air. (00:58) - Reader, Matt has been frustrated by Bilt's customer service... (Mailbag) (07:16) - AAdvantage® Aviator Red World Elite MasterCard (Card Talk) Find out more about this card here: https://frequentmiler.com/AviatorRed/#Goto We covered these a year ago in the show: Amassing American Airlines Miles | Ep199 | 4-22-23, which you can find here: https://frequentmiler.com/amassing-american-airlines-miles/ (10:22) - AAdvantage® Aviator Silver World Elite MasterCard® (Card Talk) (19:01) - Capital One switches Venture card from Visa to MasterCard...but switches Venture X Biz from MasterCard to Visa (Crazy Thing) (22:03) - Transfer bonus from Citi to Accor (Mattress Running the Numbers) (26:26) - Strawberry Hotels (formerly Nordic Choice) Summer Pass (Mattress Running the Numbers) (33:42) - Etihad A380 first class apartment awards available New York to Abu Dhabi (Award Talk) (37:48) - Qatar cards from Cardless (Award Talk) (39:56) - Daily Getaways (Award Talk) Read more about the Daily Getaways here: https://frequentmiler.com/daily-getaways-2024-complete-preview-of-all-the-deals/ Main Event: Shortcuts to AA elite status (45:26) - American Airlines Elite Overview (48:40) - Loyalty Point Rewards (50:42) - Shortcuts to American Airlines Elite Status (1:04:03) - What is the role of AI in the travel-hacking space? (Question of the Week) Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don't forget to like and follow us on social media. Music Credit - "Ocean Deep" by Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, shortcuts to American Airlines elite status. We're going to talk about different ways you could get elite status for

less than would normally be required. So you don't really have to be that loyal to have your loyalty status or to earn your loyalty points. It's kind of counterintuitive, but we'll talk more about what that's all about later on. First, though, don't forget that we always have the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to jump ahead to something or go back and visit it again, you can just check the show notes for the full descriptions of the sections and the timestamps. And wherever you're watching this or listening to it, don't forget to like it. Give us a thumbs up. Leave us some stars.

Lots of them. The more the better. Or a comment and that sort of thing. We always appreciate that. All right, Greg, drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. This week's Giant Mail comes from Matt, who I don't think is going to be giving us any stars anytime soon, but we'll see. Matt says, I am frustrated by Built's customer service, and I would like you to reconsider your ardent support for them. I got sucked in by your exceedingly positive comments over the past six

months, but my experience has been nothing but frustrating. After linking seven rewards programs, which all appear to be fully linked, I tested transfers with 2000 points each and only Marriott worked. The rest gave me errors that only say something went wrong. Their customer service in app only has been useless. Three of the four chats I've initiated, the chatbot ghosted me.

The other one ended by an agent saying their support team would email me. 60 hours later, I've not heard from them. The app is broken. The customer service is horrible. I hope you will reconsider your support for this two-bit operation. I feel like this is an absolute waste of a valuable 524 slot. I'm going to just bail on this card and wait for my next 524 slot to open up. Ouch.

Ouch. I. Ouch. I'm sorry. That stinks. It sounds like a pretty poor experience. So I wouldn't be very happy either if that were my experience. But I don't know what more to say there. I don't know if we've ardent support. Would I? Maybe ardent? I don't know.

Have we been ardent proponents of the card? We didn't like what you said. It's a good card. It's not how I would frame the way you're talking about it. I mean, we've talked very glowingly about certain promotions, like certain rent day transfer bonuses have been absolutely huge. We've said a lot of good things about their transfer partners. And we've complained about some bad things that have happened at times. We haven't talked, we've had a few readers or listeners

write in about how bad their customer support is, but I haven't experienced that myself. And for every single major program that we discuss, we've had people write in about how horrible their customer support or their product, whatever it is, is. And so it's not our job or intent to go into every one of these programs and figure out, are they really as bad as someone told us? if we have an experience that ourselves, the best we could do is just report what we know and what are factual about these programs. So I think absolutely it sucks that Matt has had such a bad time with Build. say for every um mad out there who's written and there have been people who've written and all excited about how um you know how many points they've earned or whatever it is uh from the build program and from every other program that people have talked negatively about from you know delta to hilton to everything else you know i think the thing is like i i'm trying to think right now and i have a very short list in my mind of the times that I've heard from anyone about the wonderful customer service they've received from any company in this game.

We hear all the time from people who are unhappy with customer service from one program or card issuer or whatever, a hotel or another all the time. Very rare that we hear somebody write in and talk about glowing customer service. And that stinks overall. I mean, everybody's customer service these days is generally not great. I shouldn't say that. That's unfair. Customer service in general, I think the bar has lowered over the years in terms of what kind of customer service to expect. And there's also the fact that I don't rely on customer service often because I know that. And so I tend to be surprised when I get good customer service from just about anybody. So that's usually a surprising thing.

I'll talk about it when I do. And I'll be like, oh, this was great service. I was really impressed by A, B, or C. And I haven't said that about Built because I haven't yet needed any customer service. So I haven't run into that problem myself. And I think that's, you know, to Greg's point that we report on our experiences with things. You know, the test transfer thing is interesting to me because I frequently hear about people talking about making test transfers. And many stories start with, well, I made a test

transfer first and then blah, blah, blah. And I ran into this problem and I've like not totally understood why people are doing test transfers. And I'm not trying to blame the troubles on you, Matt, because surely it's not your fault. But I think that my guess here, the way the story was framed, is if you linked up a bunch of different accounts all in the same day and then transferred 2,000 points to all of them in the same day. Remember, there's a middleman here. Like a built isn't directly connected to everything. There's points.com in between, there's their security team. And that would sound to me like a very broadie type of an action, right? Like if somebody hacked into your account, then that's something that a hacker might do, they might transfer points to every single program

to see, you know, how fast they're all going to move and, and then move as many as they can out. So that could have created a flag. I think that was plausible to me anyway, that that could have been a problem if that's what you did. Now, for all I know, you did that one a week for seven weeks. Obviously, I don't know the details here, but that type of activity, you always have to kind of think ahead a little bit when it comes to transferring the points in terms of what's likely to cause the problem. And the only times I've run into a problem transferring points from any of the transferable currencies to an airline or hotel is when I've tried to make two transfers in close succession to each other. I've had that problem

before with Amex where I transferred to Virgin Atlantic. And then I was like, oh, actually, I want this other flight that's going to cost more. And I went to transfer a second time and the second one's gotten caught up multiple times for me before and not been instant. I've been like, but I haven't even bothered to call Amex because I know their customer service isn't going to be able to do anything about it. So I skipped the frustration, right? So then I don't have the bad customer service experience that somebody else has because I'm like, I know they're not going to be able to do anything about it. I just have to wait this one out. And none of that's to excuse the issues. I mean, like Greg said, we hear negative things all the time from various customer service issues that people have. And we report the ones that we have and we report

the good experiences that we have. Yeah. There you go. There you go. All right. So that's the mailbag. Now we've got card talk. And for this week's card talk, we've got a double header. We've got two things on card talk this week. And this is something we've kind of covered before, right? We were talking about a couple of cards that we've talked about before. Yeah. So a year ago, we did a show called Amassing American Airlines Miles. That was episode 199. And in there, we covered all of the American Airlines credit cards available to the US market. Today, we're going to dig into two of them, though. And that is because we think they're relative. Sure, they are relevant.

They're not relative, but they're relevant to today's main event. Well, they are relative to each other. They are related to each other. But they're from the same family. First up is the Vantage Aviator Red World MasterCard from Barclays. It is $99 a year card, no foreign transaction fees. One of the cool things about this card is usually the welcome bonus is after first purchase so that's unusual these days to get you know a decent welcome bonus without having to spend three thousand four thousand five thousand or more more dollars in order to get it so that's that's pretty cool um otherwise the cards kind of meh

um you earn 2x uh for american airlines purchases and one one American Airlines mile per dollar everywhere else. The perks are kind of standard for airline cards. For the most part, you get free, your first check bag free. You get preferred boarding. One interesting perk is $25 Wi-Fi credit per membership year. So use your card to pay for a, a, a wifi, uh, on board and, uh, $25 will be rebated for that. Uh, you also, if you spend

$20,000 in your membership year, you could get a, uh, companion certificate, um, a $99 companion certificate, meaning you have to pay for your companion 99 plus taxes but otherwise they are uh you don't pay the cost of the flight for that second person uh and then uh yeah yeah that those are those are the main perks of it there's a few other minor things um yeah you know i think it's worth mentioning because this came up on a coffee break episode recently with the American Airlines cards you will just need to be a card holder in order to get the free check bag you don't actually have to pay for your flight with the card to get your free

check bag so this card could be a good one to have and hold if you fly American now and then just to get the free check bag without even ever using the card itself so you know obviously you want to use it the first time for that first purchase welcome bonus, because that is a great bonus. Oftentimes we'll see bonuses that are quite valuable. I mean, the bonus on this card is always decent with one purchase. I mean, it's a great return on, I don't know, a pack of gum or, you know, a thing of M&Ms or whatever. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. But the main reason that I wanted to include this card in today's card talk is because it's the only way to get the second card in today's card talk, which is the Advantage Aviator Silver World Elite Mastercard. The only way to get the silver card is to be offered an upgrade from the Aviator Red. Yeah, and the silver card's interesting. It's got some interesting benefits. There is no welcome bonus

because you just have to upgrade from the red and there's no bonus for doing that. And in fact, you get the bonus of having to pay $195 annual fee instead of $100 annual fee or the $95 annual fee. It is $99 annual fee on the red. So about $100 more,

although you don't have to pay it right away. When you upgrade, you won't pay that $195 until although you don't have to pay it right away. When you upgrade, you won't pay that $195 until your next anniversary. It's got no foreign transaction fees, earns 3x on AA, 2x hotel and car rentals, and 1x everywhere else, just like the Aviator Red. Not particularly exciting, except that in addition to the Aviator Red perks, you get a $50 Wi-Fi credit per membership year instead of the $25 that the Red comes with. And if you spend the $20,000 during your card member year, then you get a companion certificate that's good for two companions instead of one. So you get another companion.

Of course, you still pay the $99 per person, but you can bring two people for $99 each plus the taxes. You do need to, by the way, keep your card open for, I think it's 45 days after anniversary to get the companion certificate. It's not, you don't get that as soon as you hit the 20K spend. So you will end up having to pay the additional $100 in annual fee before that gets issued. And you get a $25 per day in-flight food and beverage credit, which, you know, great if you're on a flight that actually sells food and beverage around American Airlines, but that's not all that common, I don't think, these days. A global entry fee application credit.

And more importantly for today's episode, I think, is that you can earn up to 15,000 bonus loyalty points per year. So you get a 5,000 loyalty point bump with each of the following spend thresholds. So when you spend $20,000, you get an additional 5,000 loyalty points. So you get the 20,000 loyalty points from your spend plus an additional 5,000 loyalty points. Again, we're talking loyalty points here that are the measurement for elite status, not redeemable miles. So you'll get that additional 5,000 at 20K spend, at 40K spend, and at 50K spend. So you could get up $15,000 total. And if you spent exactly $50,000, that means you'll have earned 1.3 loyalty points per dollar spent on your $50,000. So is this worth talking about? We just spent all that time. We spent all that time. What do you think about this card?

Yeah. So if you're a regular American Airlines flyer, I think this is one of the best cards you can get. One thing it doesn't have is club access, the way you can get into clubs with the executive card. That's a city-issued card. But otherwise, I mean, this is pretty special with the extra Wi-Fi credit, especially with the chance to earn a lot more loyalty points through spend. It's the only one that offers that through spend. So that's why it was so important to include in today's episode, because it's a key shortcut right there. So we're sort of giving you a preview of what you're going to see later in the episode. Yeah. And I want to mention that the spending for this is based on the loyalty program year, whereas the spending for your companion certificate

is card member year spend. So whenever you open it, you spend the 20K over the course of the card member year, you get your companion certificate after renewal. But the loyalty point bonuses are based on the American Airlines membership year. So that starts on March 1st and ends on February 28th. So if you were to do, you know, $19,000 worth of spending in February and a thousand dollars worth of spending in March, you're not going to get the loyalty point bonus. It needs to be within the same calendar year, or I'm sorry, rather the same membership year, excuse me, not calendar year, membership year. There's a separate counter for that in your account. Yeah. Boy, I, I'm glad that I'm glad to hear that they have a counter for it because trying to keep track of all these different definitions of years is really tough.

It is annoying. But if you go to the rewards and benefits section of your login, you can see how much you've spent towards the companion certificate and how much you've spent towards these loyalty point bonuses. And even though I'm in the first year of being a cardholder, those two numbers are completely different because one started counting when I opened the card and the other one started counting as of March 1st. Right, right. So I think my takeaway is sign up for this card. Sign up for the...

This is based on when you got the red card, or is it based on when you... Is your membership year based on when you got the red card or when you upgraded to the silver? When you get the red card or is it based on when you up is your membership year based on when you got the red card or when you upgrade to the silver? When you get the red card. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it might reset, but it didn't. It shows the date that I need to spend by in order to get the companion certificates. And that date is the one year anniversary from when I opened the red card, not from when I upgraded. So, yeah, I mean, the idea would be to upgrade to this card as early in your membership year as possible. Right. So like if you had the Aviator Red for a while and your anniversary just passed, then you might as well upgrade as early in the year as you can so that you get the benefits for the entire year.

But don't pay the extra hundred100 until it's time for renewal. And at that point, you could decide, did I spend enough for the companion certificate and the additional loyalty points? And if not, then maybe it's time to downgrade that back to a red. How does Barclays decide that you're worthy of an upgrade? And how do they let you know that you're worthy of an upgrade? I have no idea how they decide, not a clue. How do they let you know when you're logged into your account? Just underneath, there's sort of a menu near the top anyway, right underneath the card information. And one of the options all the way to the right is offers. And oftentimes when

there's a new offer there, there'll be like a little, you know, like a red circle with a number one or something like that showing you there's one new offer. But either way, you click on offers there and then either an offer to upgrade will show up there or it won't. There's another place on the login page where it may show up also. But offers, you definitely will find it there if you're eligible to upgrade. Also, by the way, that's where you'll find a referral link if you have the ability to generate referrals. I think, based on what I read on Flyer Talk that they don't typically offer upgrades to the silver until you've had the Aviator Red for at least three months and referrals. I think you have to have had the card for at least six months in order to get targeted for those things. But

that's what I think based on data points I read on Flyer Talk. So take that with a grain of salt. Some people don't ever see the ability to upgrade. Yeah. Do you need to use the red card much in order to get an upgrade? Like, had you used yours much before? Yeah, I had because I was going to spend anyway. I needed the loyalty points for a challenge I was doing anyway, a status challenge I was doing. And I figured I would spend for the companion certificate anyway. So I was already spending. So, yes, I had spent on it. Did that influence it?

I have no idea. My wife and I had both spent on ours and we both upgraded. But I did see a couple of people who said that they called in even though they didn't see it. They called in to ask about upgrading and I saw a couple of success reports with that. Not everybody though. So if you really want it and it's not showing up, you can try giving it a giving a call and seeing. Yeah. Yeah. I'm asking Nick all these questions because I just got the Aviator Red and I want to upgrade to the silver. And, you know, I don't know, like I only spent like six bucks on it to activate the the welcome bonus. Well, I mean, if you're going to spend anyway towards the loyalty point bonus and the oh i guess well if you're gonna spend anyway towards the companion certificate then you might as well just go ahead and start spending because it'll still count it'll it'll it'll count the

spend you did while it was still a red card towards the companion certificate and from what i read if you've already spent the 20k it will recognize that and give you the companion certificate for two people right right i wasn't planning on on give you the companion certificate for two people. Right, right. I wasn't planning on spending to the companion certificate because I don't know how likely it is I would actually use it. But yeah, nah, so I have to decide what to do. I'm spending it for the sake of science so that I can report on how easy or difficult it is to use because I expect it to be really difficult to use. But then I did hear a couple of people say that they've improved it some. And so I want to know so I can write either this is horrible and not worth spending 20K towards, or this is actually much better than most people think

and might be worth it. So that'd be great. We'll see. All right. All right. That brings us, I think, to this week's crazy thing. What crazy thing did Capital One do this week? Yeah. So Capital One has had enough of the Visa network, apparently, because they decided to switch the Venture Card going forward from Visa to MasterCard. So I don't know that that's crazy. I mean, maybe they just don't like Visa, right? Well, you know, it's crazy to me because I thought I was special. I have a Venture MasterCard and I thought that was a special thing that most people don't have because the VentureCard has been a Visa card for years and years. And I product changed from a different MasterCard.

And so when I product changed to the Venture, they sent me a Venture MasterCard. And I was like, well, I've got a unique thing here. Now my unique thing is no longer unique. So it is a little crazy to me. I don't really know why that matters. It doesn't really matter. But it seemed a little crazy to me that they're switching the Venture Card to MasterCard after all these years as a Visa card. They're done with Visa.

Right. But by itself, that wouldn't be that crazy. They decided we're done with Visa. We're going to switch to MasterCard for the VentureCard. They took a look at their VentureX business card and said, we've had enough of it being a MasterCard. We're going to change it to a Visa. So basically, the net balance of their portfolio is staying the same, the Visas versus MasterCards. They're just switching which one is which. Weird, weird. Yeah. So so first thing up, I'll say that I was perplexed for a long time as to why their card art. So like the official card art, the Capital One puts on like their application pages and stuff. I was perplexed as to why it didn't have a visa or MasterCard logo. A couple

of times I was like, is this card a visa or mastercard logo a couple times i was like is this card a visa or a mastercard i was like clicking around on the the card page and not our card page but on the the issuer page and i was like i don't know which one is it it was hard to figure out i thought that was so weird now i understand apparently they plan on switching teams now and then so uh there's a lot of freedom there that's that's good that's weird but aren't they like didn't they like buy discover or they're merging with discover or like getting discover so maybe this is like all in preparation of they're gonna switch again nah i don't know yeah man could they could they would they change their their uh venture cards in the future to the Discover Network? Well, yeah. I mean, probably, right?

I mean, wouldn't that be the long-term play? Because then they would own the processing, right? So they would get more money. So that's got to be the long-term plan. But it seems weird because it doesn't have the same brand recognition or acceptance as Visa and MasterCard. So a little strange to make that transition. But we're talking about things that are probably five, 10, 15 years down the road. Who knows how long it'll take them to be able to do all that, assuming that all of it goes through and doesn't get challenged and whatnot.

But anyway, yeah. So weird, weird Capital One. I don't know what they're doing. Don't count. All right. Mattress Running the Numbers. This week, we've got a double header for mattress running the numbers as well. So the first one up is a transfer bonus from city to a core live limitless or a core or however you pronounce it. All city to all. And so you've got what normally city points transfer one to half. So in other words, a thousand city points becomes 500. Yeah, two to half. So in other words, 1,000 city points becomes 500. No, two to one. There you go.

1,000 city points becomes 500 Accor points, all points. But now we've got a 50% transfer bonus, right? So it's going to be 1,000 city points to 750 Accor points. That still doesn't sound good to me, Craig. Right, right. It doesn't sound good, but Accor points are worth two Euro cents each. So at the normal transfer ratio, you're basically converting your city points to one-to-one, to Euro cents towards Acc core properties in a way. And since Euro cents are worth a little bit more than a U S cents, you know,

it's a little bit better than, than one cent per point value like that. And because of this transfer bonus, it works out to approximately 1.6 cents per point value towards a core hotels. And 6 U S cents. That value towards Accor Hotels. 1.6 US cents, that is, right? Yep, yep. Which is decent for Citi. I mean, it's a very solid redemption value for your Citi thank you points.

You do have to have, I think you do have to have like a Premier or Prestige card in order to do that transfer. Um, and, uh, my understanding with, uh, Accor is that you, you can either redeem your points ahead of time when you're booking the hotel, uh, just like you do with any other points, but you also have the option of redeeming them, um, like when checking out to pay your bill. And so that gives you more flexibility than you would normally have. So that's pretty cool. Do keep in mind that core points expire. So you have to, points are valid for 12 months

from the date they're credited to your account. And if they're not spent, the only way to extend their validity is by getting more points credited to your account. So I think the easiest way for most of us would be to transfer some more points, but then there won't be a transfer bonus at that point. But you could just do a thousand, whatever the minimum is at that point to renew your account.

But still, the whole value of the transfer bonus will decline the longer you keep doing that. True, true. Well, I would also say that the value you're getting declines as the amount of mental energy that you need to expend to remember to keep your points active increases. So that's definitely a little bit of pressure. But if you're going to stay at a property sometime soon, this could be, I think, a great deal. In the post, I mentioned that you could redeem the points at checkout. And I had forgotten when I was writing that, and I forgot the last time I wrote about one

of these promos, that you can also redeem them in advance. When you're booking, I forgot that you can also redeem them that way. But I think that this is one that I rarely ever look at, but probably deserves a little more attention, especially at the 1.6 cents, not at the normal transfer ratio, but at the 1.6 US cents per city point, essentially. This is a pretty interesting deal because you could book whatever room type you want. I mean, you want the penthouse suite or the three bedroom villa or whatever. That's not what there is wherever it is you're going, but you could book whatever it is you want and know you're going to get that one point six cents.

That's pretty good. Well, and presumably you could also take advantage of whatever special deals are going on for the price of the hotel, which is really unusual with hotel points. So that's that's really nice, too. If they have like triple A discount or whatever it Um, go ahead and take advantage of that. And charge stuff to your room. I think presumably isn't your spa treatments, dining, whatever else, because you can redeem points at checkout. So presumably you could do all that too. So you could, this could really make the trip feel even more free, I suppose.

Right. A lot of ways. So, so right. Yeah. So pretty, pretty good deal. If you have used for a course days. Right. Right.

All right. But that's not it. We got a double header for mattress running the numbers. So this week's second piece is Strawberry Hotels Summer Pass. So Greg, I like strawberries. Tell me, what's this Strawberry Hotel Summer Pass? What's strawberry? Yeah, Strawberry Hotels.

This was the chain that was formerly known as Nordic choice hotels which we knew because you could book uh those hotels with choice points and you still can but this isn't about choice points in any way whatsoever this is about the strawberry hotel chain and how um which are based primarily in nordic countries by the way um where they they have these summer passes where for a fixed price, you get either five nights or 10 nights. And it's very flexible. You could use like, you know, the five night pass for five nights in a row, or you could, you know, spend two at this hotel and three at the other or whatever. You could even do, you know, two rooms in one hotel or five rooms in one hotel, maybe, for one night. So it's very flexible in that way. The prices are 495 euros for the five

night summer pass and 890 for the 10 night. So that works out to $525 US approximately for the five night and $945 for the 10 night. So the one night one works out, or sorry, five night one works out to about $125 per night for these hotels and the 10 night one works out to just under $ dollars per night um their valentine stays for valentine stays from june 20th to august 18th so it really is uh throughout this most of the summer i think 105 per night on the five night pass right 525 divided

by five being 105 oh i typed it wrong yeah Yeah, it didn't dawn on me until just then. But yeah, so $9,505 a night, depending on whether you buy five nights or 10 nights. And again, like you said, valid June 20th to August 18th. So all right. I mean, if you've ever traveled to the Nordic countries, 105 a night or $9,450 a night, that sounds pretty good. Most hotels are expensive. Most things are expensive in the Nordic countries in general. So it sounds like it could be a pretty good deal. I don't know. What do you think? Is this fine? No, I totally think so. I mean, I would do my homework before buying them and see what hotels I plan to stay at and see what the cash rates are. But I would bet that if you have five nights

planned that this would save or 10 nights, this would save a significant amount of money. Um, there are some things you need to know before you jump in besides the prices. Uh, not all strawberry hotels are included in this. So you have to check the online list and see if the hotels you want are there. And then, uh, within each city, there are some blackout dates. Now, they're not huge blackout ranges, but a couple examples I looked at like Bergen, Norway, 20th to the 22nd of July is blacked out. In Oslo, the 21st and 22nd of June and also 26th to 29th of June. So yeah, so watch out for that, of course. Some goodies is that at the Strawberry Hotels, breakfast is included.

At all the hotels except for Comfort Hotel Express, which is a new brand name for both Nick and I, we're like, what is that? And at Clarion Collection Hotels, you have both a daily evening meal included. This is on top of the breakfast. You have both the daily evening meal and fika. Fika. Fika. I know fiko. I don't know. What's, what's FICA? FICA is a, uh, it's a Swedish, uh, custom that, uh, it's, it's sort of like when we say let's have a coffee, um, or a coffee break, really. It's,

it's like having a snack and, and the drink and, and socialize. Um,. It does sound good as Nick drinks from his coffee cup. They, meaning the internet, tells me that Fika is most often enjoyed with coffee and a cinnamon bun. So cinnamon buns can be yummy. So the Fika sounds good. That's included again at Clarion Collection. Yeah. Another tip is before you do this, or actually before you book any of the hotels, make sure that you're signed up for Strawberry's own rewards program, because you're going to actually earn rewards in that program for your stays when using these certificates. And another cool thing, if for some reason your plans don't work out exactly, they will let you use these certificates as partial payment at hotels that are not included in the offer.

So you stay at one of the hotels that's not included in the offer. You can use your certificate for some amount of value towards the bill. Unclear how much. Interesting. So you're not totally out of luck if plans change and you end up needing a hotel that's not on the list, you'll get something anyway towards that stay.

Exactly. Oh, good. So I think an interesting piece here to double back on real quick is that we've talked about strawberry hotels, well, barely strawberry hotels, more so Nordic Choice before they rebranded it as strawberry hotels. And we've talked about it in the past, like Greg said at the beginning, as a good way to use choice privileges points,

because oftentimes those hotels are available for a reasonable number of choice privileges points. And so we've talked about it that way. But one thing we probably haven't mentioned in a long time, and you could read in between the lines from what greg said but i want to emphasize it is that even though you do have the ability to redeem choice privileges when you stay at strawberry hotels when you stay at strawberry hotels you do not earn choice privileges points right you can you can join the strawberry program which was formerly the nordic choice program which was always separate from choice privileges so you won't earn choice privileges points on those days. You'll earn strawberry points. Yeah, that's correct. I mean,

I think that if you booked through the choice privileges website a cash rate, maybe you'd earn choice privileges points that way, but I wouldn't even want to test it. But it does bring to mind another point, which is when comparing to cash rates, you should also compare to point rates. If you have access to choice points, either through transfers, one to two from City Thank You or from Wells Fargo, or buying them on sale, it might actually work out better to get the choice points and book as an award stay, especially since in some of these properties, you can book higher level rooms

for the same number of choice points. So you might be able to get a nicer room that way. Good point. All right. That wraps up our mattress running the numbers and brings us to this week's award talk. So for award talk, we had a couple of things. Etihad is bringing its A380 back to New York. So New York to Abu Dhabi. Once again, you can fly in the Etihad first class apartments. I haven't ever done that, but you did, Greg. It looked pretty nice.

I did. It was the nicest in-flight experience I've ever had. Each suite is like a little room, a little tiny hallway and a bench or sofa, I guess you could call it, and a captain's chair. And the sofa-like thing lays flat at night into a bed. I mean, you don't do it cause you're in first class, you know, the flight attendants come in and turn it into a bed for you, uh, with all the sheets and everything. And there's, there's, there's top shelf champagne and all the goodies that you can expect. And why are we talking about this, Nick? What, what, what's the deal here? Well, first of all, they brought it back. The A380 was obviously out of service during the pandemic and then slowly came back into service just Abu Dhabi to London and back, from my understanding anyway, for a long time. So it's news that they're flying the A380 now between New York and Abu Dhabi.

So that's the first exciting thing. But that's exciting because you can now book award seats on that in the apartments. And Etihad for a while now has limited partner bookings to only being made within 30 days of departure. So if you want to use American Airlines miles to book these, which is probably your best way to book them, then you can only book Etihad premium cabin awards within 30 days of departure using your American Airlines miles. But there was wide availability when One Mile at a Time first reported this this week, that you could book seats almost every day within 30 days of departure. And sometimes two, three, or even I saw four seats on an A380 in apartments, which I never saw that before.

I don't think that was a first for me. Yeah, that's amazing. And it costs 115,000 American Airlines miles one way between New York and Abu Dhabi and no surcharges, whereas you will pay surcharges if you book through Etihad, for instance. And also, you'll have a much worse cancellation policy if you book through Etihad, and you'll pay more miles if you book through Etihad, I believe. So you'd want to book these through American Airlines. Yeah. I mean, the only advantage of booking with Etihad miles, and it's a pretty big one, is that you could book way in advance, whereas American is a last minute thing. I mean, I think if I, I can't find a good time in my schedule to plan on this in, you know, coming up in any recent amount of time. Um, but if I did, I think what I would do

if it was more than 30 days away is I would like book, you know, some other flight as a placeholder, um, with American airlines or with United with a program where you get free cancellations, ideally, or very cheap cancellations. And then, um, and then when the, when it's within 30 days, then try to snag these and cancel the other thing. That's how I would go about that. Yeah, exactly. And it's something I'm going to keep an eye on when I'm traveling this year at times. Oh, well, am I within 30 days? And can I look at that? But absolutely, book a backup. So yep. So you just want to keep an eye on because if that availability trend continues, then there'll be some good opportunities. I mean, of course, they sell more seats in the cabin. I

assume availability will not be as good. They've just started flying this again. So I think that probably played into why there was so much availability, but you know, we can hope. And watch out for, there are two different flights out of New York to Abu Dhabi. Only one of them is the A380 with the first class apartments. The other one has first class, which is very, very nice, but it wouldn't be the same experience. No, it wouldn't be the same, but there were quite a few days where I saw even six, seven, nine seats available on the 787 and first. I think it was nine, so six anyway, for sure. So quite a few, quite a few seats there. All right. So that's the AT&T 380. The other piece of award talk is that Qatar is going to have their own credit cards. Qatar Airways credit cards coming from Cardless. So Qatar will not be cardless was a feature of a, of a, what crazy thing a while ago, quite a while ago, because it's just such a strange name for it, for a company that, that makes credit cards, like physical cards. They don't give you a cardless card when you get approved, right?

You were like, you got to wait for the physical card to come. And then maybe you can get a cardless card in your Apple pay or Google Pay or whatever. Yeah, it's a still card. All right. But anyway, so this is really interesting to me that Qatar is going with cardless for one thing because all the other Avios, everyone else on the Avios team, British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus have cards issued by Chase in the United States. And yet Qatar is going with cardless.

So I'd love to hear the backstory there. Probably never will though. But the other fascinating thing is that since there's going to be both a Visa signature card and a Visa infinite card, that tells us that there's going to be a high end, you know, premium card. We don't know what it means as far as what kind of features it has, but presumably it'll have some, some nice perks that go with it. And, uh, we just have to wait and see what what's happening

there, but you can join the wait list now. And if you join the wait list now, you'll get an additional 10,000 miles when it, uh, on top of the welcome offer, when it launches, if you apply and are approved, right. So you can join the wait list now. So there's no harm. I, I joined it, even though I won't apply for the card. I can't imagine. Although who knows, you know, like you said, if the visa infinite is amazing, great. Then I'll get an extra 10,000 miles. Cause I signed up for the wait list. Yeah. I signed up for me, my, my, my wife and my son for the wait list because why not? Why not? In case any of us want to sign up for it, might as well get the extra points.

True, true, true. I should do that and sign up for the rest of the family. All right. So that was that piece of award talk. But then one more piece of award talk sort of is Daily Getaways. So Daily Getaways is back. The U.S. Travel Association runs this Daily Getaways promotion usually once a year about this time of year where they sell various travel packages at a discount. And those packages sometimes are all sorts of different things. You can take a look at it.

We have a post about those Daily Getaways items. And over the years, this went from being something I always looked forward to and was kind of excited to see what would happen to something I forgot was even on this week when I saw somebody posted something went on sale. So many of the offers are pretty lukewarm. Yeah, they really are. I mean, I don't, there's, there's very little on there to get excited about. And even the ones that you might look at and say, yeah, I want that. Like, so for example, 20% off Marriott e-gift cards on April 23rd, you know, maybe you've got some Marriott stays coming up. You're like, oh

yeah, I could save 20%. That would be great. Um, but don't even bother because the problem is when they're any good like that, they sell out instantly or whatever's less than instant, quicker than instant. And your chance of actually buying them is so low that it's just not worth it. Another one like that, Hyatt points are on sale for between 1.2 and 1.32 cents per point, which is fantastic. It's exciting, but they have a limited set of them. And so again, those are probably already sold out, even though they're not on sale until April 30th, which is like 14 days from when we're recording this. But yeah, every year we'll hear from somebody who's like, I clicked it right at one o'clock and I didn't get it.

And yeah, you're not going to ask. I mean, you have to sit literally, most of these, you have to be there right at 1 o'clock and hit refresh. And most of those that are any good anyway, you have to be there right at 1 o'clock and refresh and just get lucky. It's like a lottery ticket. Either you get lucky or you don't. You can't be angry at the customer service at the local gas station because you didn't get a good winning lottery ticket. You're playing. It's a lottery game.

Either you get lucky and you're able to get one or not. Most people are not going to get struck by lightning or hit the lottery or get a daily getaways package that's worthwhile. Yeah. Yeah. To me, I think that the one package that's worth considering is the choice privileges point sale. So you have, you have points on sale as low as 0.52 cents per point. So about half a cent each, which is, you know, really, really good value for choice points, especially if you're going to use them for, well, however you want to use them. But the point is we often see one cent or better value when using choice points. So you could be getting like a 50% or better discount off of your stays. Don't forget, we've talked about before on the show that you can now use your choice points online to book many preferred hotels and resorts, which is sort of a partner organization.

And some of those, I had a post out where I showed a bunch of hotels where you're guaranteed to get one cent per point value of choice points or better. And I say that because those are places where the starting at price, starting at cash price works out to that one cent per point versus the point price. And of course, in season, you do even much, much better at many of those. So that's a good one. And it doesn't in the past. Anyway, it hasn't always sold out instantly, those choice deals. Yeah, they haven't always, although the IHG one has not always sold out instantly either. But this year, I understand it sold out within a few minutes. So that's, so that's weird because it's, it was identical to their

normal sale that they often have same half a cent each. Yeah. I don't get it, but I guess there's just more people looking or I don't know what it is, but yeah, you're right. It wasn't a particularly special deal, but I guess it was gone in a few minutes. So, uh, so you'll have to be ready at one o'clock Eastern in order to get something. This is not the kind of thing where you're going to remember at three o'clock and probably still be able to get a package. And the choice privileges last year, I got one and then I went back to try and get a second one and it was sold out. So relatively quickly, but you're right. There's a, at least a fighting chance to get one of those. So. Right. Right. You also have a fighting chance of getting Wyndham

points on sale, but don't because strangely, strangely, the cost per point is significantly higher than they regularly go on sale for. They regularly go on sale for less than a penny each, but they're selling them during this for one point one six cents. But but yeah, I mean, I'm not buying him at 1.16 cents, but the one area where it might make sense in the IHG points and the Hilton points, which are already done, I think, by the time we're publishing. The one reason it might make sense is because Wyndham caps the number of points you can buy each year. So you can't buy an unlimited number of points. So if you're looking to redeem for like a Vacasa rental, for instance, where you're looking for a longer stay and you just need more points, then it might make sense to buy them. But very good point. Very good point. Maybe. All right. And so, by the way, just as a reminder, it's April 29th is the choice privileges points and May 1st is the Wyndham points. And then, you know, you said the other

one, the Marriott gift cards are April 23rd. So mark your calendars. All right. That's daily getaways. Let's talk about this week's main event. Main event time shortcuts to American Airlines elite status. All right. First quick overview. What, what is American Airlines elite status? Um, you know, all the airlines have, uh, elite status that you can earn by usually by flying they're flying them and the more you fly the the more the better they treat you and American is a little differently yeah at least that's the idea whether or not it really happens who knows but American is a little different because they are gonna reward loyalty or they do reward loyalty through a concept called loyalty points, which you can earn in many ways besides flying. You can earn them from flying, but it's almost an afterthought in American Airlines' program.

That's a 2022 earning right um and so uh and as you earn more loyalty points each year you move up elite tiers and uh that means you get better perks at higher tiers you earn more points on flights um when you uh have are higher tier and you have better chances of upgrades, for example. So that's kind of the high level progression. And let me talk quickly about each tier of elite status. So gold status requires 40,000 loyalty points. That means you have to earn them within the loyalty year, which is from March 1st to end of February. And then your status is good for the rest of that elite year and all of the next elite year. And so gold status gives you a bunch of things, including things like two free check bags.

Next level platinum status requires 75,000 loyalty points. And there you get all the perks of gold plus you get main cabin extra seating, which is sort of their like economy plus type of thing. You get that right at booking. You don't have to pay more for it. Platinum Pro at 125,000 loyalty points. Among other things, you get One World Emerald status, which gets you into first class lounges when you're flying any One World airline. Even if you're flying economy, you could get into the first class lounge lounge not just business class lounge um so some of those are really special which you would get business class

lounge at platinum pro greg's not listing off all of the perks of each level right we're just mentioning that's right that's right and then uh the top the top tier is executive platinum platinum at 200 000 loyalty points um or the top tier we're going to discuss there's another thing after that but um and uh in addition to those tiers into in addition to gold platinum platinum pro and executive platinum they also have rewards at different loyalty point levels so like at 15 000 once you get 15,000 loyalty points, you get group five rewarding. I'm just kind of laughing because it sounds like so low down the chain already, but maybe that bunch of- Congrats, you get group five.

I mean, what's the last group? Yeah. But you also get to choose from various uh things including one of the choices you could pick is a thousand loyalty points so it gets you closer to the next year um at at 60 000 so i'm not going to talk about all the levels but there's a few that are relevant to the rest of the show um at 60 000 loyalty points you get a 20 loyalty point bonus for points earned through American Airlines Vacations, Simply Miles, Advantage eShopping, Advantage Dining, and AA Hotels. And then at 100,000 loyalty points, that bonus goes up from 20% to 30% for all those things. So basically, once you reach 60K and then 100K loyalty points, your loyalty point earnings can sort of accelerate through those ways of earning.

And then at 175K, I'm just pointing this out because this is the first time you get, I think, super valuable or potentially valuable choices. One is that you could pick two system-wide upgrades. So book, economy, flight, international, and upgrade to business class, for example. That's dependent on availability, which is a big, big, big if, but it's there. Another option is to get 5,000 loyalty points. So get closer to executive platinum with that choice. So for example. All right. So you got a few perks that might be worth it

at various levels, depending on your travel patterns. So that's like an overview of what you get at elite status. So if those things are valuable to you, if you want those, then how do you get them without having to fly a bunch, which is easier these days because American Airlines has kind of separated the flying experience or at least the elite status, I should say, the elite status levels or earning from the actual flying. You don't have to fly anymore. You can earn all of this without ever stepping foot on an airplane. So let's talk about some of the shortcuts so you can get there without having to earn 175,000 loyalty points from sitting on airplanes. Yeah. Yeah. So we're not going to mention every possible way because there are a lot. There's a

lot of American Airlines partners and things that offer points that count as loyalty points towards elite status. But American Airlines vacations. So book vacations through there and you get a lot of loyalty points that way. Simply miles. Now this is a program where you connect your credit card to it and activate various offers. And then when you spend like in person or online at various merchants that are where they have offers, you earn bonus American Airlines miles and loyalty points from that. And worth a mention, you can sync Simply Miles with any MasterCard. It doesn't have to be an American Airlines card. So you got any MasterCard in your wallet there, whether it be a Chase MasterCard or a Capital One Visa that just became a MasterCard or whatever the case may be. It's a joke from earlier in the show if you listen to all the segments.

So, yeah, you can link up any MasterCard during those Simply Miles offers. Yeah, yeah. And another shopping one is Advantage eShopping. So that's their portal where they have offers for, you know, lots and lots of different merchants. And if you click through and buy something online, you earn some multiple of how much you spent. Typically, that's how it's done. So it might say you earn five miles per dollar for anything you purchase at Macy's. So you click through, buy something at Macy's, earn five, both redeemable miles and loyalty points per dollar for that purchase. There are some deals that are like fixed where you get like 2,600 points for, you know, for signing up for this

subscription and so on. There's also an advantage dining program, which is for select participating restaurants. If you sign up for that, you earn American Airlines points and loyalty points in American Airlines hotels. This is probably one of the more interesting ones for those who are just looking for ways to earn lots of loyalty points quickly because they have some really big deals on there, where it varies a lot how many points they'll offer, but you could be looking at earning 10,000, 20,000 American Airlines miles in loyalty points from a single stay by booking your stay through a hotel's. Be careful though, because typically the prices are higher than going through most other routes. Yeah. So you got to decide how much that's

worth to you to get the redeemable miles and the loyalty points. So that's a personal calculation, but something worth a mention here is that sometimes you can stack multiples of these. So for instance, sometimes there are Simply Miles offers that you could sync up to your credit card and then also click through the American Airlines shopping portal and use that card with the synced Simply Miles offer at the merchant where you're clicking through from American Airlines shopping. And so that's nice when that happens because then you earn both rewards. And so that can be great. One that comes to mind that we see quite a bit is IHG offers. There's often some sort of an IHG hotels offer through Simply Miles. And you could sync that up to, say, your Chase IHG card and then click through the American

Airlines shopping portal to go to IHG.com and make your booking. And A, for your booking, you know, when you stay with your IHG card, so you earn your IHG points and you'll also earn the Simply Miles bonus on top of the miles that you earn from the American Airline Shopping Portal. So there's a lot of times where you have those opportunities to double dip. Now, to be clear, that's not going to work if you're booking through AA Hotels, because booking through AA Hotels, you'll be paying AA Hotels and not the IHG property. So there's some caveats and gotchas. You have to kind of understand how those things work, but it is nice to be able to stack some of those things. Absolutely. Another thing that stacks is that, you know, I talked

earlier about how at certain loyalty point thresholds, you get 20% bonus or 30% bonus on these things. So for example, if you had a stay booking through AA Hotels that was going to earn 10,000 points, you'd be getting 13,000 loyalty points because of your 30% bonus if you were up to that level. So that's a really nice feature. So it accelerates your loyalty point earning as you get higher in loyalty points. All right. The last category for shortcuts is credit cards, right? Standard, you earn one loyalty point per dollar spent with pretty much any American Airlines credit card. And the main exception to that is the Aviator Silver Card, which we talked about at the start of the show, where you can earn bonus loyalty points with big spend. So you can earn up to 15,000 bonus loyalty points per year with the Aviator Silver Card.

You get 5,000 bonus points at each of the spend thresholds, $20,000 spend, $40,000 and $50,000. If you spend exactly $50,000, that means you would end up with 65,000 loyalty points because you get 50,000 of them straight up and then a total of 15,000 bonus. And that works out to 1.3 loyalty points per dollar. So that's much better than you'll get with any other credit card. We didn't mention this during card talk and we should have that you only earn one loyalty point per dollar spent, even if you're spending in a bonus category. So even if you use your aviator silver, for instance, to pay for an American Airlines flight, you'll earn three redeemable miles per dollar, but only one loyalty point still. So this is the only way to get more than one loyalty point per dollar spent on most of the,

I think, any of the US-based cards. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a really great point. Now, even though it's not based on spend, another way to get bonus loyalty points with a credit card is the American Airlines Executive Card from Citibank, where you can earn up to 20,000 bonus loyalty points. So after you've earned 50,000 loyalty points in an elite year, they'll give you a 10,000-point bonus, and they'll do that again once you've earned 90,000 loyalty points. And the key here is that it doesn't matter how you've earned them, they'll give you that bonus. So you could be earning, you know, through the Aviator Silver card,

through a Barclays credit card, you could be earning all these loyalty points. And then because you have the American Airlines Citibank Executive card, credit card you could be earning all these loyalty points and then because you have the american airlines city bank executive card uh they'll you could get up to 20 000 bonus points um on top and never having spent a cent with on the executive card so so that's a pretty funny kind of combo i think that yeah it is it is but if i and if you're a big American Airlines fan, you know, you fly them a lot, but not enough yet to have lounge access. Well, I guess you wouldn't have lounge access based on status anyway. So if you value having lounge access, then, you know, great. Get the executive card and get your lounge access and it makes your Barclays card a little bit more valuable it does it doesn't if you have both cards let's talk about what this means if you have both cards fifty thousand dollars spend on the silver card on the barclays aviator silver card results in a total of seventy

five thousand um loyalty points because you have both cards. The aviator is giving you 15,000 bonus loyalty points and the executive card is giving you 10,000. So you're up to 75,000 loyalty points with $50,000 spend. And then once you've earned 15,000 more loyalty points, however you do it, presumably you are flying American some and maybe purchasing things online and that sort of stuff, just 15,000 more, that'll get you to the 90,000 loyalty points, which executive card will bump you up to 100,000 because of that extra 10,000. So you're at 100,000 loyalty points with $50,000 spend and earning 15,000 loyalty points in other ways. I mean, that's pretty- Yeah, which is easy. I mean, like Greg mentioned, there are some things like

when you sign up for Blue Apron, and last I knew it was like 5,500 American Airlines miles in loyalty points just for signing up for Blue Apron and getting a couple of deliveries or something. So there's a bunch of those types of things that you could put together, 15,000 loyalty points at relatively low cost. You could, yeah. And then at that point, you're, what, 25,000 loyalty points away from Platinum Pro. So you'll have earned Platinum already, and you're relatively close to Platinum Pro at that point.

So, yeah, anyway, I think that's, you know, for someone really into American Airlines elite status, I think that's, you know, a winning combination. It does cost you a lot because you've got the annual fees on both of those cards, so watch out for that. And the opportunity cost of spending on an American Airlines card for all that spend. No doubt. $50,000 and spend on a card that earns even 2% back. That's $1,000 that you could have had. And instead, you've got 50,000, presumably 50,000 American Airlines miles. So you paid

two cents a mile, essentially, although it depends on how much you value the loyalty points. And then there's a lot of other ins and outs. So you got to consider all of that. Is it worth even pursuing this in the first place? But, you know, if it is, if you fly American enough that the elite status benefits are going to matter to you and you're going to redeem the miles well, maybe it's kind of interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think it is. So someone who has the ability to spend that high, as well as to spend on the annual fees, you know, if you normally travel enough to maybe get close to first, you know, gold status, but not quite enough to get there, this will get you all the way up to platinum probe you know probably because you're probably traveling enough to get the uh 25 000 extra that's needed on top of what we discussed and and remember that it actually gets easier as you get higher because of the that 30 bump in the uh portal and and other uh earnings yeah yeah yeah So there's easy shortcuts here. You can certainly

get to elite status. And that's why I have American Airlines elite status. In my case, it's kind of silly because I don't fly American Airlines very much. It's more so just the chase of having the status without, you know, with relatively low effort for me that has me doing it in case I can use it to parlay into some other kind of status in the future. Do as I say, not as I do. I'm not setting an example with that by any stretch, but I haven't done this. I don't have the executive card. I haven't done the 50K spend, although I look at it and I'm like, it's kind of interesting. Maybe. Probably not, but it's marginally interesting because it's an easy path to status and And otherwise, I wouldn't earn elite status. So there you have it.

So moral of the story, verdict, what do you think? Well, let me throw one last thing, which is that renewing, if you fly American Airlines a fair amount, renewing becomes easier. Renewing a high-level status because you're earning more for flights. You earn a lot more as your higher level elite status. And so the next year when you're trying to renew, you're at that higher level. And so renewing that higher level becomes easier.

So I just want to throw that out there. So what do I think? I mean, I think that none of these are so easy that it makes sense for the average person who doesn't fly American Airlines to do them, which is a little different. When the loyalty points first came out, there were a lot more opportunities to stack all kinds of deals, and it actually made sense at that time to chase status, even, you might only occasionally use it. Um, now I think it's, it's just hard enough, just expensive enough that, that, um, you gotta want it, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's definitely a good, good way to put it in a good place to, to end that discussion there. So if you want it, you can go get it. And we just told you how, yeah, there you have it for the main event. So that brings us to this week's question of the

week. And I'm excited about this one. Cause I think you're a great person to answer. and finding award tickets with American Airlines Advantage. The results were very disappointing. Lots of generalities and excuses about why I couldn't give specific advice. How's the FM team using AI? Are any of the AI platforms actually good at travel hacking? And the flip side of this question is, how do we prepare for the customer service transition from human agents to AI agents? Once that happens, the concept of hang up call again will cease to exist. But maybe we can use prompt engineering to convince the artificial intelligence

to upgrade our award flights. Overall, do you think that AI will help or hinder the travel hacking hobby? Cheers, Jeff. What do you think about AI, Greg? That's a really good question. Yeah, I am not surprised that his playing around with it resulted in really bad answers. answering general questions. But things about loyalty, the information that's out there is so scattered and changes so often what the right answer is that I would be surprised. AI has to learn from somewhere. Where is it going to learn the right answer when you have to kind of get there over time and you have to keep up with the changes and everything? So yeah, I don't see it being a great way of getting the information from the get-go, except some things it does. I think it does a decent enough job. Like if you're just asking it, what's the expiration policy for American Airlines miles or something like that?

I feel like it does a pretty decent job with very specific questions of summing up what it finds on the Internet about that. It understands the question and answers it. So probably someone's going to find out, no, that particular one, it does a terrible job at, but. Yeah. Well, you know, I think that part of the challenge for the AI in all of those types of things is like you said, they have to learn it from somewhere. And there's so much outdated information on the internet, right? I mean, if you look at the answer to any one of those kinds of questions, you can look at a million different blogs and see different answers that were probably all right at one point or another, but not every page is up to date. And so how does AI know which ones are up to date and which ones aren't? It's going to take a while to get to the point where they're able to answer, I think, those types of complex questions. Or if

you wanted to know what's the cheapest business class award flight from New York to, I don't know, Brussels or something like that. Those types of questions are going to be really hard for AI to be able to answer well for a long time. I won't be surprised when one day it's able to do that well, but I don't think we're going to be there for a while anyway. I agree. I don't see it being a major information source for that sort of thing for quite a while. The question about customer service. Customer service. I found that interesting. I thought that was an interesting one.

That is very interesting. And on the one hand, I think it'd be nice if we thought that if you called, you would get an answer actually based on something presumably written down somewhere. Right, right. Right. On the other hand, if the AI gets it wrong, it's going to be getting it wrong for everybody, I think.

Then is there going to be a process to escalate it to a human being gonna be getting it wrong for everybody i think and then is there going to be a process to escalate it to a human being who could look it over and say oh yeah this is messed up i don't know how that'll work but wasn't there just a story about this it was like an air canada story or something it was just recently a story about this but somebody getting sued or something or i can't remember the details now but but over the AI chatbot essentially giving inaccurate information. I can't remember what it was. So for that reason, I imagine that it'll be a while before we'll see banks, for instance. I can't imagine banks going to AI-based customer service for a long time because of the compliance headaches that they'll have to deal

with when the AI chatbot or answer robot thingy gets it wrong. So I imagine it would be a long time before we see that and the same token in other places. What I would want to see is the bot that directs you, that is supposedly trying to direct you to the right representative because the dumb logic they use today is just so bad. It's just so bad. That will probably improve. Call routing.

Call routing should improve. And maybe being able to answer simple questions would improve as well. But gosh, give me an easy way to get to a person. And the right person. And the right person. Having to get transferred three more times because you didn't get to the right person. Yeah. Yeah. I'll agree with you there. Actually, AI that can recognize a problem that needs to be handled by a person would be wonderful because there's so many times when you call in and you have an issue that you know the automated system can't help you but it's so hard to get to a person and so ai that could even just recognize

that would be wonderful that would be a good innovation um but yeah my guess is my guess is it's not gonna really change things materially for a long time. Are you using it all for anything interesting? Yeah. Not really, no. I look at it sometimes in search results, and it often does a pretty good job these days, summing up what question I'm trying to answer. So I like that, and I like to see reviews. If there's a whole pile of reviews for a product or something, I'd like to see them

summed up by an AI, you know, save me some time. But as far as within the points and miles space, not yet. Not yet.

Yeah, me either. Not yet. Maybe that'll change. I hope it does because I think it'll be a valuable tool when it works well. Like, you know,

many technological improvements just take a bit to get there. All right. That brings us to the end of a long episode today. So we want to wrap this one up. If you've enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to get more in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group, where you can ask and answer questions about this stuff all the time. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this again, give us a thumbs up, leave us some feedback. And speaking of feedback, if you have something you'd

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