August 15, 2022
Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 16 seconds
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Good afternoon and welcome to another week of The Daily Drop - the newsletter that keeps you coming back every day. It's like Wordle, but less work.
- ✈️ Airport offers to reimburse passengers
- 💰 Last chance to earn free Alaska miles
- 🥇 Interesting world record
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✈️ Airport CHOOSES to compensate passengers?
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In the never-ending saga of the Summer 2022 travel drama, you probably heard about Amsterdam's Schiphol airport at least a few times. Between capping the number of passengers allowed at the airport to KLM flying 50 empty planes to Amsterdam to help with passenger loads, Amsterdam airport has been on the struggle bus lately…
Well, in true European fashion, Schiphol airport announced that it will voluntarily be offering compensation to passengers who were affected by all of this craziness. As long as you meet all of the criteria, you will just need to fill out a simple form online to request compensation. For any of you who had the pleasure of traveling through Amsterdam this Summer, this is probably welcome news.
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Before you get too excited, make sure you are aware of the terms:
- You must have missed your flight at AMS due to long lines between April 23rd and August 11 of 2022
- You must show proof that you were at the airport WELL before your flight time (they offer a number of ways you can do this)
- You can be compensated for things like change fees, rebooking costs, and any other expenses incurred as a result of missing your flight.
- You get a free Stroopwafel for your troubles (not really, but that would be pretty sweet, right?)
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As long as you fit those not-so-strict parameters, you'll end up with a few extra bucks to put toward your next trip… Maybe avoid Amsterdam for the short-term, though…
You only have until September 30th to claim compensation, so don't miss out if this applies to you! Here is a link to the online form.
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💰 ENDING TODAY: Earn bonus Alaska Miles through their shopping portal
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Portals are a great way to rack up miles for making everyday purchases. And no, I'm not talking about this kind of portal 👇
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I'm talking about shopping portals. I won't get into the nitty gritty of them now, but I use them all the time to earn points on many of my purchases.
Until the end of the day today, you can earn up to 1,200 bonus Alaska Miles by making a purchase through their shopping portal.
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Obviously, it's not worth spending $600 on something JUST to get some bonus miles. However, the Alaska portal has so many retail partners that you might be able to earn some free miles off of something you were already planning on buying.
For example, maybe you have a trip coming up and need to book a hotel. If you were to book a Marriott hotel, you can use the Alaska portal (which gives you 1 point per dollar on Marriott purchases) and then get your 1,200 bonus Alaska miles if the hotel stay costs more than $600.
Here's where things start to get fun. Since Marriott members get 10 Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar on hotel stays, you could also get another 6,000 Bonvoy points for the same stay. Now let's say you use a Marriott credit card that earns you 6 points per dollar on Marriott hotels. The rewards start to add up. If we value Marriott points at .84 cents each and Alaska Miles at 1.8 cents each, here is the return you'll now get on that $600:
- 1,200 bonus Alaska miles: 1,200 x 1.8 cents each = $21.60
- 10x Marriott member points: 6,000 x .84 cents each = $50.40
- 6x Marriott credit card points: 3,600 x .84 cents each = $30.24
- 1x Marriott shopping portal points: 600 x .84 cents each = $5.04
If we add everything up, you could reap a total return of $107.28, or 18% of your purchase back in the form of free travel. This is just one of the ways you can really max out your rewards and start taking your travel hacking (or general finance hacking) to the next level. Next time you need to make a purchase online, make sure you try to use some kind of shopping portal.
Wondering how I came up with the values of Marriott points and Alaska miles? Well, you'll have to stick around to find out - I'll cover that topic in a future newsletter 😛
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🥇 Interesting World Record
So I've been flying a lot lately. Like a LOT. Like 9 flights in the last 2 weeks.
As I was lying awake wondering why I do these things to myself, I wondered if there was some kind of world record for frequent flying. It turns out there is, and It's way crazier than I thought it would be…
In November of 2021, Takuya Iwamoto set the Guinness World Record for total flights in one month with a whopping 228 flights. That's an average of 7 flights every single day for 30 days.
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Iwamoto chose to go for this record in support of the airline industry in Japan, which had been suffering because of the pandemic.
After reading about that, I suddenly don't feel so bad about my 9 flights 😬
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Well, that's going to do it for today, folks. How many times have you flown in the last month? Are you planning on taking advantage of the Alaska Miles deal? Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.
See you tomorrow,
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Mike Dodge
Head Writer, The Daily Drop
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