The new Gotthard tunnel is now open! (sort of)

Billed as a marvel in engineering, the Gotthard base tunnel is now open in Switzerland (though not accepting passenger traffic for another bunch of months).  It's quite impressive all around and will definitely save travel time for trips to the north and south through the country.  It also has unique safety aspects with evacuation areas and tunnels throughout.  More info can be found here.

I'm looking forward to trying it on a future trip - here's hoping we can figure out something similar in the US someday.

Vacation upcoming

July is almost here (June seems to be flying by) and that means its almost time for vacation.  I'm ready for a break after a long semester and year.  I'll be using miles and points to escape the US coming up mid-month and will look forward to some fresh mountain air, on-time trains, and flavorful wine.  Anyone wanna guess the destination?  : ) 

American Airlines introduces changes to the AAdvantage program

I think I may need to evaluate my options.

Some months ago we heard about American introducing changes to the AAdvantage program in the second half of this year.  None of us knew exactly what that would entail but the announcement came today about what those changes will be.  And they're not good.

Award earning based on elite level starting August 1st:

New Elite tier and Revenue Requirements as of January 1st, 2017: Platinum Pro (still wondering about the name...):

Overall, pretty terrible.  In fact, the revenue requirement alone makes it impossible for casual travelers to see any type of benefit.

I think this may cause me to seriously think about being a flying "free agent" while relying on the status provided by credit cards to get me by.  It's really too bad that the three major airlines have all copied each other, though I'd say it's not surprising.

A shared reflection on the state of miles and points

I wanted to share this short opinion piece about the state of the miles and points game.  And in some ways it really is a 'game', since the airlines and hotels have been devaluing redemption options with some frequency over the past number of years.

Post: Fewer Points and Miles

I'm not sure if I subscribe to the notion of hoarding of points, but that may be a possibility to try and hedge against further devaluation.  I'm confident it's not going to cramp my travel style, though, in the short term.

Sprint Free Global Roaming Expands

Almost one year ago to the day I posted about Sprint's new option for roaming overseas - a service that is free though speed-restricted to 2G but includes free texting.  The list of available countries was also limited and I was hopeful that they might expand this in the future.

Well, it appears as though they've done just that.  Now called "Global Roaming", it captures a much wider base of countries and includes many of my favorite places:

The full country list includes:

I'm excited to see Qatar and Switzerland are now included, as well as an expanded base in Asia.  Looking forward to trying out the service on my next trip!