Hi everyone!

Those of you who have been following me before my move, welcome back! I am very happy to be blogging at BoardingArea.

For those of you who have not, thanks for clicking on my page. I’m alive (barely) and trying to survive my school exams, so I’ll have more posts, soon. Right now this is about me, for those who are interested:

My Story

I got into travel when planning on for my high school graduation trip. I actually think my original search was on whether I could upgrade an NH one way E fare (as that the extent of a redemption that my mileage balance could get me). Somehow (thankfully!) I managed to stumble on boardingarea and flyertalk, and I realized that my parents had a stash of aeroplan miles that I never knew about. Then the aeroplan award glitch/sale came along, and I booked myself a nice mini-RTW in SQ J on the A380. No going back from that redemption! Retail price, (of course which obviously I’m too broke too intelligent to pay :P) I think was just over $17,000 (so just over 21cpm!) but then at least I got a personal value of 3cpm, and an amazing experience.

So I bought more miles, read more posts, subscribed to more feeds, managed to talk to Randy, and here I am! Obviously I’m not as old as some people here so I’m definitely the new kid on the block. I blogged a bit last year, and it was really fulfilling for me, and just like Travel Blogger Buzz, frequent flyer programs are a bit of therapy for me. No hidden surprises (unless you’re have lifemiles or aeroplan), super nice people to talk to (us airways agents of course), and many many kind helpful people on twitter and flyertalk.

By no means is this a full-time thing (we’ll see I guess?), as I am a student at the University of British Columbia ’16, so I of course may have my panic times with term papers due and the unfortunately bunching of exam dates (3 straight days with exams!). Thus, if I don’t get back to you and/or don’t respond to a comment please don’t assume I’m guilty just yet.

Also, right now note that I’m still in the process of updating the design and still working up out some bugs, coordinating my mailing list with the BA feedblitz mailings, and all of that, so excuse any visual elements that might be lacking. If it really bothers you, feedly is a very nice Google reader alternative that will make your life easier if you subscribe to the boardingarea feed. Please accept my apologies!

About my blog, and the sad plight of Canadians:

Unfortunately, there’s no cookie-cutter way such as in the States to get unlimited and low out-of-pocket cost vacations in premium classes and luxury hotels. We unfortunately don’t have any co-branded Hyatt, Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, or Club Carlson Cards. So it’s not easy to just open cards and get a week of hotels with a value of $2400+ free. Neither do we have a co-branded American Airlines, US Airways, or United credit cards. We have a great Deltapesos card instead with a pathetic signup bonus relative to the not-waived-for-the-first-year (rawr!) annual fee.

So I’ll try instead to be keeping everyone updated on how to get credit cards in the US. I have a few ideas in mind which may or may not work (a la Frequent Miler) so look for those coming out soon.

In any case the oh-so great to get those aspirational redemptions often are pretty much limited to a small echelon of credit card churners who have the capacity to buy miles for cheap and have a decent amount of annual credit card spend. Some of us who live near the border may be able to mileage/mattress run, but I’m sure a lot of you don’t have the time to do that (fortunately as a student my time isn’t worth enough yet!)

Guessing that most points will come from credit cards churning and (manufactured) spending, I will talk a bit about that. However, I have the bad problem of maximizing redemptions to the point (no pun intended) where unless something extraordinary comes up, I’m not redeeming. So I’ll try to put that aside and create useful content for everyone.

I have a fair grasp of the ever-changing world of miles and points, but there’s definitely areas which I could be wrong (and I could definitely learn from others). So while I will try to be a source on miles and points (especially north of the 49th parallel), please feel free to comment/email me anything you think I should improve. This right now is a work in progress so don’t expect it to instantly be as spellbinding at View from the Wing.

If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, please check out my What is Canadian Kilometers? page, which apparently is not up yet so (EDIT: I think it is now) please be patient. 😀

Disclosure:

Finally, I’m just going to say to everyone that might be concerned (*hem* TBB) that I’m a big fan of disclosure. So right now I don’t have any links while there are banner ads courtesy of BoardingArea, if I do get some, there’ll be a disclaimer on my disclosure page (somewhere in the header or the footer). Of course I am also going to disclose whenever I get sponsored.

Please join my adventure deep in the world of points and miles!

Jeff