AA Elite Changes, Fly to New Zealand With Points, Fear of Missing Out

ByTravelBloggerBuzz Hours Categories TBB

We go over the awful & widely expected AAadvantage Elite changes, show you how to fly to New Zealand with points, share a post about the fear of missing out, shake our heads about the tragic state of tourism in Egypt, check out New York city from 800 feet,  we check out active volcanoes and Silicon Valley beasts and end it with a post about the Fear of Missing Out anything on social media and of course the infamous BLOG BUZZ, my way of dealing with expressing myself and coping with my obvious inadequacies. Lol.

 

TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!

 

Just a few blog posts with the gory American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier loyalty program “enhancements”:

New Changes to American AAdvantage Increase Focus on Customer Revenue  – Travel Codex

American Airlines Finalizes Revenue-Based Loyalty Program and New Elite Tier – Skift (for the quick highlights)

How to Have the Best Frequent Flier Loyalty Program: Copy the Others  – The Gate

Everyone expected American Airlines will go all aboard the revenue based train tsunami. And they sure did. And starting sooner than expected as well. Ridiculous to see all the outrage among our group, really? What the hell did you expect? I have been saying this for several years now, the free loading Elite gaming/upgrading era is OVER! Flying up front goes to the true warriors/big bucks and not to hobbyists like us! I have been a free agent since 2012 when I gave up the Elite disease.

By the way, Southwest works great domestically. Heck, with all the gift cards from various credit cards and other currencies why do people pay to fly is beyond me! The golden era of stacking super low mileage runs/mistake fares with Elite multiplier bonuses is GONE! Deal with it. Waiting to see how enthusiastically the pumping bloggers will keep selling American Airlines and other Citi credit cards now, you just watch!

Here is another good reference post on Getting To Australia/New Zealand Using Your MRs, URs, TYPs Or SPG Points

The tragedy of the tourism in Egypt and especially Sinai. So many luxury resorts have turned into abandoned hotels. The numbers are so grim:

In 2012, tourism visits across Egypt had fallen by by one third; by the beginning of this year, Egypt was losing an estimated £120 million ($170 million) a month and visitor numbers to Sharm had declined by 85%.

New York Above 800 feet. Fascinating account and pictures of how the elite of the elite live high above in NYC.

A list of the most active volcanoes in the world.

The beasts of Silicon Valley. What an amazingly imaginative and brilliantly funny post. It takes companies in Silicon Valley and compares them to mythical creatures. Unicorns is so yesterday!

FOMO: This is the Best Way to Overcome Fear of Missing Out. Must read! Lets take a short detour because this article is so important for all you social media addicts!

FOMO comes from Unhappiness

So you’re not feeling so great — whether you realize it or not — and you turn to social media to make you feel better. Only one problem there: it actually makes you feel worse…

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

“Stop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing” is easy advice to give, but hard to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because most of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the most important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers.

But posting to alleviate your discomfort also has an important secondary effect: by presenting your carefully edited version of life awesomeness, you just made anyone who sees it feel worse. You’re spreading the virus.

Facebook isn’t real life. It’s obviously not life. And it’s certainly not real. Only real life is real life. But you’re comparing yourself to fake life.
Your happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together… The scarcity of attentional resources means that you must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention… So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.
And that’s what the research shows: people with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.
…the more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.
…we found that gratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered: higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.

Here’s where FOMO comes from and how to beat it:

  • FOMO starts with sadness. For the best way to feel better and stop the problem before it starts, click here.
  • Social media makes it worse, not better. Facebook isn’t evil — but relying on it for happiness is.
  • Happiness is about attention. Focus on the good and you will feel good.
  • Gratitude is essential. Imagine losing the things you’re lucky to have and you will appreciate them.

Forget the fake perfect lives of Facebook that lead to FOMO. Instead, try JOMO: the joy of missing out on all those illusions.

When you spend all that time staring in envy at the oh-so-cool pictures of cleverly crafted bliss on Facebook, keep one thing in mind:

It’s your life you’re missing out on.

Wow, that was a long detour! Hey, got to work on the “Inspiration” part of the TBB blog mission once in a while!

We need an awesome picture so how about this museum sign in Japan:

When I've had enough the store is closed...

BLOG BUZZ

Not much buzzing…just my right ear…constantly for a month #weird

Why in this age of digital everything, you end up filling out a bunch of forms in medical provider offices? WTF!

Thank God I had most of this post done on Sunday, I just added the AAadvantage changes beatings.

June 2016; $2.32 in 5 days. Not even enough for a large coffee at Panera! #losing

This is a warning to all aspiring bloggers…again. Inspiring them all not to start blogging lol.

My joke about mileage runs.

Anyone knows if Michael @real_jetsetr is okay?

Looking forward to meet all the participants in the Brooklyn Reality Tour this weekend! I am buying the pizza. Thank God for the day job again.

And I leave you with this…That cat’s look…#ridiculous!

https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/shirk-report-372-12.jpg

 

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18 Comments

    1. No medals to be awarded, sorry. Management just has to cut costs drastically.
      We apologize in advance.

    1. I missed it. I had to cut staff….It’s just bare bones operation around here…

      With Asia trip coming up….perfect time to…slooooowly…faaade….aaaway

  7. With economy and business class fares to Europe approaching $400 and $1,500 RT, respectively, we’re now seeing miles approach the $0.01/mile mark even for business class. Plus you don’t have to spend days trying to piece together award availability into a sub-optimal routing. British Airways and VA look particularly crappy when their fuel surcharges on award tickets are basically the same price as a revenue ticket.

    1. Best.Comment.Today.Right On!
      If I make a post tomorrow I may include it and give you a cut on my Amazon link revenue. LOL
      Thanks.

    2. Not. Gonna. Last.

      This bargain galore “amazingly” coincides with the latest travel warning from the State Department. At the moment, Americans are a bit shaky to travel to Europe. It’ll pass — along with the bargain fares.

  8. Buzz it sure is BORING in the Point/Mile Blogisphere nowadays. When I go to PointsBuzz, I notice that so few bloggers post on a daily basis anymore. So I say thank you to you and those who do for the love of it. And F U to those who whore on a daily basis solely for the money………………….I was thinking of livening things up with a Flight Attendant Tell All on F Buddies. In my day as an F/A, at least half of the Flight Crew (Pilots and F/A’s) would always check the Crew List at the hotel to see if any of their F Buddies were staying there. The Gay dudes were the horniest/most active followed by the divorcee old bats. Easily more than 50% participated in this. Hotels like the Kensington Hilton in London with over 150 crew members staying there nightly would make Caligula proud.

    1. Top 50 Outrageous Things I Witnessed as a Flight Attendant for XX Years.

      We get MMS’s ghostwriter to write it, we sell it on Amazon with my link. We sit back and look at all the dough roll in #fantasy

      Caligula is under rated!

      woohoo!

  9. Pingback: How to Use IHG Rewards Points, Incredible Drives, Singapore Suites - TravelBloggerBuzz

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