Good morning from the brand new Plaza Premium lounge at Toronto YYZ airport. This lounge visit was made possible with one of my favorite travel credit cards.
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Many people don't realize that Plaza Premium lounges are included as a perk on this card. No membership is required; just flash your shiny piece of metal at the reception desk, and voila! You and a guest get in for free.
While there aren't many in the U.S., you can find these lounges everywhere in Canada, some in Europe, India, and Eastern Asia. There are six of them here in Toronto alone!
I thought I'd let you know in case you weren't aware 😉
Now onto the good stuff:
- ✈️ Southwest has an epic fail of a week
- 💳 Last-minute credit card hacks for the end of the year
- 📸 Learn how to edit videos like a pro
- 🌎 Destination spotlight: St. Lucia
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✈️ Southwest has a mid-life crisis
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Oh boy... Southwest, what are you doing?? I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Well, actually... I'm pretty mad.
As many of you know, the past week has been a nightmare in the travel world... From high passenger traffic to nasty weather, it's been rough.
Anyway, most airlines seemed to recover from these issues by the weekend.
Every airline except for Southwest, that is.
On December 26th, Southwest canceled... brace yourselves... 71% of their flights.
SEVENTY-ONE PERCENT!
And another 19% of flights were delayed, meaning only 10% of their flights operated as scheduled... yikes.
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This amounted to nearly 3,000 canceled flights, JUST from Southwest.
And if this sounds absurd, it is. It is very absurd. Unheard of, even.
Naturally, Southwest released a statement taking full responsibility for their mistakes and promising to compensate passengers and never do this again.
Except no, they didn't do anything like that.
Actually, they blamed it on the weather and pushed responsibility as far away from themselves as possible.
Interestingly, the weather didn't seem to affect any other airlines serving the same routes. Here's a fun fact for you:
American Airlines serves many of the same markets as Southwest and even has hubs in similar cities and regions.
Want to know what percentage of American Airlines flights were canceled on the same day? See for yourself...
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Yep. 0%. Well, they actually canceled 14 flights. But rounding to the nearest whole number still comes out to 0%.
So what gives, Southwest? Basically, they're having some severe staffing and other operational issues and blaming it on the weather...
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Sadly, there is no accountability for airlines in the U.S. when they face these situations.
Other places like Canada and the EU require airlines to pay passengers huge sums of money when flights are delayed or canceled, in addition to either refunding or rebooking them.
For example, if Southwest pulled this baloney in a place like Bologna (AKA Europe), they would've been required to pay passengers almost $2 million - just for YESTERDAY's canceled flights.
So here's the bottom line: It's unlikely that Southwest's issues will wind down immediately, so fair warning. Other airlines will be more reliable in the short term.
In the long term, passengers like us have much to look forward to. The U.S. Department of Transportation has proven that they're out for blood with big airlines, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see legislations similar to that of the E.U. and Canada come into play in the U.S.
If that happens, airlines would think twice before risking $2 million in fines per day... It also makes delays much more bearable for us when we know it'll result in a payday.
Sorry for the rant; the weather makes me irritable and long-winded - so it's not my fault.
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💳 Last-minute credit card hacks for the end of the year
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Last week I shared some end-of-year travel hacks around elite status, mileage runs, etc.
Today I wanted to give you some tips to help you squeeze every bit of value out of your travel credit cards.
Since we only have 5 minutes here at the Daily Drop, I'm going to focus on one primary topic: annual credits.
Most annual credits are based on cardmember year rather than the calendar year.
American Express is a little different.
Many of their credits are actually based on the calendar year. So if you play your "cards" right, you can actually double-dip on some of the credits. For example, if you opened a card in November, you could use a credit before December 31st and get another full credit on January 1st, all within just a couple of months of opening the card.
To illustrate this point, I will use the card I referenced in the intro as an example. Here are the credits on that card that you should be sure to take advantage of before December 31st:
- $200 Fine Hotels & Resorts credit
- $200 Airline incidental credit
- $50 Saks Fifth Avenue credit
Since the credits are based on when you charge the card, you can use these now for travel that is taking place down the road. So even if you have tentative travel plans in 2023, you might as well use the credit now since it will expire anyway.
The travel credits are pretty self-explanatory, so I don't think I need to go into detail on those. But let's talk about Saks.
People like to hate on the Saks credit. $50 toward designer dresses and suits you don't want anyway doesn't seem exciting...
But those people are wrong.
I love this credit: there are tons of useful ways to spend it, and you get two of them every calendar year. For example, I just found this nice t-shirt on the Saks website for only $15. The $50 credit could buy three of these! That's pretty sweet if you ask me.
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Plus, if you use our Rakuten referral link (or if you've used it already but haven't made your first purchase), this could be a great way to get an additional $30 or $40 cash back since Saks partners with Rakuten. That means you can get $50 of free stuff and then get paid $30 cash from Rakuten.
Not such a useless credit now, eh?
To summarize, let's run some numbers. If you opened this card in 2022, you would have paid a fee of $695 (yikes).
But here are the credits you could quite easily rack up:
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End of 2022:
- Saks: $50
- Hotel credit: $200
- Airline incidentals: $200
- Total: $450
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Beginning of 2023:
- Saks: $50
- Hotel credit: $200
- Airline incidentals: $200
- Total: $450
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So if my basic arithmetic is correct, you could end up with... *crunches numbers diligently*... $900 of credits to offset that high annual fee just in the first year.
And that's not including things like lounge access, insurance, points, welcome bonuses, or any of the monthly credits (which there are a few of).
I could go into much more detail about this card (and I'd love to, if you want me to), but we simply don't have time. What I want to convey is this: many credit cards have perks and rebates that you might not realize you can actually get some decent value out of.
Make sure you take a good look at your specific credit cards before the end of the year to reap whatever rewards you can.
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📸 Learn how to edit videos like a pro
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Have you ever wondered how Kara & Nate manage to make their videos so beautiful and high quality? I mean, it's like watching a Hollywood movie set in over 100 countries around the world.
What you might not realize is that they've spent years mastering video editing to make their videos as incredible as they are.
Thankfully, you don't need to put in years of work to edit videos like a pro. Instead, you can simply watch a series of easy-to-understand, short-form tutorial videos put out by masters of the craft like Kara & Nate on Adobe's Essential Workflows YouTube playlist.
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👆 In fact, our friend Kara even hosts a couple of the videos herself, giving you a peek behind the curtain at the exact workflow they use to create their gorgeous travel vlogs.
Each one takes about as much time to watch as reading the Daily Drop (imagine what you could accomplish if you do BOTH every day 😉).
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🌎 Destination spotlight: St. Lucia
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Travel hacking is fun on its own, but I also love learning unique about destinations. Today I wanted to share a neat article I read recently that takes a deep dive into the beautiful island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean.
I recently found out that round-trip flights from multiple U.S. cities only cost about $300 (thanks, FareDrop!!!), so this could be a perfect winter getaway when you get sick of the cold weather.
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That's all for today, folks!
Do you want to see more in-depth breakdowns of how to maximize the value of travel credit cards? Would you fly Southwest after seeing their naughty behaviour this week? Let me know by replying to this email or reaching out on social media.
Auf Wiedersehen,
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