Air Travel Tips

Airlines have been tweaking their frequent flier programs for the past year, which may be bad news for those who’ve dreamed of putting their miles toward a big family vacation. Here are five things you should know.

1. The old ‘green stamps’ program is dead

When your mother or grandmother collected green stamps at the grocery story, it was really simple, and so were the original frequent flier programs: Fly the required number of miles, get a free trip. But nothing is simple now, thanks in part to the airlines’ return to financial health, which included cutting flights and filling every middle seat. That means fewer available seats for free awards trips. Throw in the devaluation of miles as redemption levels rise and it adds up to fewer people with a shot at a freebie. 

2. Forget the most popular destinations

All those domestic airline megamergers and the virtual mergers between U.S. an…………… continues on Fox News

Former Alberta premier Alison Redford flew her daughter on 50 separate government flights, including one with her family’s nanny, a CBC News investigation has found.

Redford also used government planes to fly to Jasper for two long weekends with her daughter. On each trip, they were accompanied by a friend of her daughter, a sheriff and an executive assistant.

‘What it looks like, right now, is that a government plane was used to, essentially, take a family vacation.’- Wildrose critic Rob Anderson

The former premier’s public expense disclosures show Redford expensed at least one weekend’s stay at the luxury Jasper Park Lodge — June 28 to 30, 2013 — for herself and her executive assistant. It is not known if Redford also expensed the second weekend — Sept. 28 to 30, 2012 — or where the premier and her entourage stayed.

The reason for the trips provided by Redford on the public flight manifests was listed as “meetings with government officials.”