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Airtran

Flight Review: AirTran Airways Business Class PIT-TPA

May 6, 2013

I recently had two press interviews in Pittsburgh and then one in Tampa the following day. I didn’t have much flexibility in terms of scheduling and I wanted to fly nonstop from Pittsburgh to Tampa, so my only option was to book on AirTran, which I haven’t flown since college when I got a super-cheap Vegas [...]

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Maximize Monday: How to Stay Connected in the Sky- An In-Flight WiFi Roundup

March 18, 2013

The more time I spend up in the skies, the more I have come to value in-flight WiFi. Although some people, including myself from time to time, like to disconnect onboard and enjoy a few brief hours of email/Facebook/Twitter-less bliss, losing six hours of work and communication time while flying cross-country can be a daunting [...]

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Maximize Monday: Taking Advantage of New Southwest AirTran Codeshares With Ultimate Rewards and the Companion Pass

February 4, 2013

TPG contributor Jason Steele was booking tickets on Southwest last week when he came across an interesting new codeshare option on AirTran that he discusses along with how to maximize it in terms of Ultimate Rewards points and the Southwest Companion Pass. Last Saturday morning, January 25, 2013, I was surprised to find nine daily [...]

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Maximize Monday: Choosing the Best Site and Credit Card for Purchasing Airfare

January 7, 2013

Maximize Monday is a new weekly series, where I’ll dig into different topics and offer my suggestions on how you can change your habits in order to get the most bang for your buck (and points). If you have any topic ideas, please feel free to Tweet me @thepointsguy or email me at [email protected] For [...]

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Southwest 50,000 Bonus and AirTran 32 A+ Points Bonuses Rundown – Which Card Should You Get?

December 5, 2012

Update: The Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Credit card bonus is now down to 25,0000 points. With the 50,000-point sign-up bonus on the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card and the AirTran Airways A+ Rewards Credit Card with 32 A+ points both available, you might be wondering which card to get. As a reminder, [...]

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Chase AirTran Visa With 2 Roundtrip Sign Up Bonus

November 15, 2012

Update: The Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Premier Credit card bonus is now down to 25,0000 points. Until now, the public offer on the Chase AirTran Visa has been 16 A+ Rewards credits when you spent $1,000 in 3 months and two single-segment business class upgrades with your first purchase. Now, however, Chase has increased the [...]

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Travel Tuesday Top 10: Best Credit Card Companion Tickets Deals

June 12, 2012

In addition to earning cardholders frequent flyer miles or points, several travel credit cards offer another valuable perk: airline companion tickets and passes. To qualify for one of these tickets or passes, it’s usually a matter of meeting a certain spending threshold within a year, or just outright purchasing a pass that’s good all year [...]

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The Benefits of Moving AirTran Credits to Southwest and Vice Versa

April 21, 2012

With anxiety-inducing echoes of the merger of Continental and United, the acquisition of AirTran by Southwest means that the two airlines are also going to be merging their frequent flyer programs: AirTran A+Rewards will become a part of Southwest Rapid Rewards. If you don’t want to read in detail below, the key things to note [...]

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Last Days to Transfer Amex Points to Airtran

February 27, 2012

This Wednesday, February 29, 2012 is the last day to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to AirTran. This is significant, because at some point AirTran A+ credits will transfer into Southwest Rapid Rewards points, however Southwest has not yet announced the transfer ratio, which is annoying. I suspect news will come in March, since [...]

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Attaining Airline Elite Status Series: The Basics and Why People Mileage Run

October 26, 2011

This is an installment in my Maximizing Elite Status series. Articles include; The Basics and Why People Mileage Run, Using ITA Matrix to Find Cheap Flights, How Much is Elite Status Worth?, Comparing Top Tier Status, Comparing Mid-Tier Status, Comparing Low Level Status, How to Get Elite Miles Without Flying, Understanding Elite Status Bump Thresholds, The Lowdown on Soft Landings, How to Cope with Losing [...]

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Consolidated List of Airline Award Charts and Partner Airline Lists

June 14, 2011

I thought it would be convenient to have a page that TPG readers can bookmark with links to the award charts for the major frequent flyer programs. This is by no means a final list, as I’ll continuously be updating the page (feel free to comment below with the links to any other program or [...]

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Is This An April Fools Joke?

April 1, 2011

I always check membershiprewards.com on the first of the month for new transfer bonuses. This one caught my eye, because its asbolutely ridiculous. Air Tran is running a “special” discount of a whopping 5 points per credit. Per their advertising the normal 1,125 transfer ratio is now 1,120: This basically amounts to a less than [...]

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Twenty of My Favorite Airline Awards

February 21, 2011

I book millions of miles a month in awards for clients and I’m always trying to think about what award option works the best, since most people have multiple mileage balances and flexible credit card points. Whether its wrangling a Delta award to the “low” level or helping someone maximize an American Express transfer bonus [...]

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Free Facebook on Gogo In-flight WiFi All February

February 5, 2011

Gogo and Facebook are teaming up to provide free access to Facebook on all Gogo equipped flights during the month of February. I actually noticed that Facebook was working before I logged into my Gogo account on a flight last Friday, January 28th. I shrugged it off as a glitch, but now realize it was [...]

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25% Discount on American Express to Airtran Transfers

February 4, 2011

I don’t think I’ve ever created an Airtran frequent flyer account, or even helped a client use their points. Airtran operates a very simple program for which I did a program score card last year. I think the most unique thing about the program is the companion pass, which allows free companion flights for a year. The [...]

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How to Use Same Day Flight Changes to Your Advantage

January 31, 2011

One of the perks I enjoy most about my Diamond elite status, is the ability to Same Day Confirm for free to other flights when traveling domestically. Knowing how to use Same Day Flight changes with your airline is critical to traveling “smarter,” even if you aren’t a frequent flyer. I have personally used SDC to increase [...]

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Free WiFi on Delta, Virgin America and AirTran Courtesy of Google

November 8, 2010

Google is giving us frequent flyers an early holiday gift: free wifi on Delta, Virgin America and AirTran from Nov 20- Jan 2. The catch? You have to try out the Google Chrome browser briefly, which they are hoping will increase their market share. Not a totally shameless gift, but I’ll certainly try out a [...]

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AirTran Frequent Flyers Start “Save Our Seats” Campaign Against Southwest

November 3, 2010

Frequent flyers can be very passionate people. For some reason, people get very attached to their airline of choice and whenever that comfort level is threatened, all hell can break loose. This is happening now with the impending takeover of AirTran by Southwest, which I wrote about in September. AirTran elites are mad that many [...]

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Southwest AirTran Acquisition Impact on Frequent Flyer Programs

September 27, 2010

Wow! Didn’t see this one coming. (Link) How will this effect the frequent flyer?I think this move will have an impact on all US flyers- not just Southwest and AirTran customers. This acquisition gives Southwest access many new markets- including Delta hub Atlanta, US Air mini-hub DCA and American hub Boston. I hope this spurs [...]

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Program Score Card: AirTran A+ Rewards

August 12, 2010

If you live in the Southeast corner of the US, you are probably familiar with AirTran. If you live anywhere else, you are probably more familiar with ValuJet and it’s infamous 1996 crash in the Florida Everglades. Before the crash, ValuJet was cited many times for safety violations, so the negative publicity wave after the [...]

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