Triangle Trip

With the pending merger between Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, Alaska will be merging its Mileage Plan with Virgin America’s Elevate Frequent Flyer programs. Virgin America’s Elevate Points will be converted to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a rate of 1.3 Mileage Plan miles per 1 Elevate point. Unlike previous airline frequent flyer program conversions where it’s 1:1, the Virgin to Alaska miles conversion will net you 30% more miles. Everyone should try to earn more Virgin Elevate Points before the merger of the two frequent flyer programs.

Given Alaska’s generosity, we also recommend you move your hotel points to Virgin America’s Elevate points. For example, transferring your Starwood (SPG) Starpoints to Virgin America Elevate points is 1 Starpoint for 1 Elevate Point. If you transferred 20,000 SPG Starpoints, SPG would give you another 5,000 points for the transfer. After transferring the SPG Starpoints to Virgin Elevate Points and the Alaska Virgin frequent flyer merger, you can net up to 63% bonus in Alaska miles. We highly recommend you execute the above strategy before the Alaska and Virgin America programs merge on January 9, 2017.

Here are two related articles you may also find interesting:

If you are not an Alaska Airlines frequent flyer or do not want to maintain too many airline accounts, did you know that you can bank your airline miles with SkyTeam and OneWorld partners!? Click here to find out.

Here’s an article on why we think hotel points are more valuable than airline miles.

The Triangle Trip Team would like to congratulate The Coach for making SPG Lifetime Platinum, and Terminal D and Captain G for making SPG Lifetime Gold.

Here’s a link for more more information about SPG Lifetime Gold and Platinum statuses.

Starwood (SPG) just announced new benefits including SPG Lifetime Platinum and Gold members. If you have 500 eligible nights within the past 10 years, you will be made Platinum for life. With 250 eligible nights within the past five years, you will be made Gold for life. Lifetime Membership begins March 1, 2012.

In addition, SPG Platinum Members who reach 75 Eligible Nights during a calendar year will qualify for the Your24 benefit through the following subsequent calendar year. With Your24, you can check-in as early as 9AM as long as you give the hotel a 48 hour advanced notice. SPG 75 Platinum members will also receive 4 points for every $1 spent at a SPG hotel.

SPG Gold Members with 50 Eligible nights during a calendar year will get 10 Suite Night Awards which is used for upgrades.

SPG Platinum members are given continental breakfast as a complimentary gift. That’s in addition to the free WiFi platinum members get today. SPG continues to wow us with great perks which makes them a the best loyalty program on earth.

For more details, click on this link to the SPG Lifetime Benefits site.

For the record, I have 284 stays and 805 nights since 2000 😉