Miles & Points tips

Following is our regular summary of the latest travel news and best frequent traveler promotions reviewed during the past week.

Travelers who grumble that the airlines have gone too far in shrinking the width and legroom of coach-class seats won’t be getting any relief from Congress any time soon.

Enter the PureWow “2016 London Trip” sweepstakes by May 14, 2016, for a chance to win the grand prize: a three-night trip for two to London, including business-class air on La Compagnie, hotel, breakfast, and afternoon tea.

Effective today, one of the world’s largest airlines is making a surprising change to its booking policy. According to a confirmation email received this morning:

Another day, another survey designed to put the airlines in rank order, from best to worst. And another win for Virgin America, which will soon be merged into Alaska Airlines.

La Compagnie, an all-business-class airline based in France, is selling round-trip flights from Newark to Paris for just $1,300. And because it’s called the Family Trip Offer, the airline has cut the fare for kids ages 2 to 11 to $1,000.

The average payback for six major hotel chain loyalty programs—the value of what the points will buy, compared to what you pay to earn the points—is near 9 percent. That’s substantially higher than the return from the big three airline programs, which fetch about 4 to 6 percent. Those figures come from IdeaWorks’ 2017 CarTrawler Hotel Reward Payback Survey. Among hotel programs, Wyndham’s payback is highest, at 16.7 percent.

Add the new AAdvantage MileUp Card from Citibank to the (very) short list of no-fee credit cards that earn airline miles. It offers one American Airlines mile per dollar charged, plus double miles for purchases at grocery stores or with American Airlines.

Uber and Lyft simultaneously announced new reward programs this week, with both set to roll out in the coming weeks. Like the respective services themselves, both programs are similar but offer some nuanced differences—so users of both might be wondering which is more worthwhile.

The Department of Transportation announced this summer that it will issue new guidelines governing service animals on planes. The agency published a list of enforcement priorities, which offer insight into how it will structure rules around this growing issue.