Trump’s Pick to Head DOT Is Bad News for Travelers

This series of articles about credit cards, points and miles, and budgeting for travel is brought to you in partnership with The Points Guy.

Nordstrom devotees know summer is the best time of the year to score deep discounts at the department store. Unlike most major sales, Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale isn't just a way to get rid of last season's spillover—shoppers can find deals on brand-new items and made-for-the-sale kits across every category (clothing, shoes, luggage and bags, travel accessories, and home goods included). Whether you're new to the annual sale or look forward to it each year, here's everything you need to know about the 2023 shopping event, which runs through this Sunday, August 6, as well as our curated list of the best deals for travelers.

Picnics signal a return to a simpler life, when there was plenty of leisure time to spend lazing about in a bucolic, pastoral setting, stuffing yourself full of delightful food and drink in the sun-dappled company of family and friends.

With no published award-price charts to refer to, members of Delta’s SkyMiles program don’t know when award prices are higher or lower than normal. That’s because there is no baseline to use as a reference point; there is no normal. Or rather, normal is whatever Delta chooses to publish as the price for an award ticket on a particular flight.

It’s a basic premise of savvy loyalty-program participation that the best return-on-investment is to be had by redeeming points for the program host’s own services. Airline miles are best redeemed for flights, and hotel points are best redeemed for free room nights. Sure, all major programs offer alternative award opportunities—consumer electronics, clothing, event tickets, and on and on—but when you do the math, it inevitably turns out that such options offer very poor value.

Until yesterday, American Airlines customers dismayed at the airline’s August 1 pivot to a spend-based mileage program had a fallback option: Earn miles for their American flights in Alaska Airlines’ Mileage Plan program, which still awards miles the old-fashioned way, according to the distance flown.

If you haven’t heard about the U.K.’s heated debate on cutting ties with the European Union—dubbed a “Brexit”—you certainly will this week. Britons headed to the ballot box on Thursday and made the historic decision to leave the European Union.

On Friday evening—traditional timing for bad-news announcements that companies hope will go unnoticed by the public and unreported by the media—American published the new mileage-earning rates, effective from August 1, for travel on AAdvantage partner airlines.

Warren Buffet is famous for being one of the world’s savviest investors, earning billions for himself, and plenty for his stockholders as well. As chief of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, he’s been accorded the honorary title of the Oracle of Omaha.

Since diplomatic relations with Cuba were reinstated and a newly liberalized U.S.-Cuba aviation agreement was enacted last year, travel between the two countries has been a decidedly up-and-down affair.

United has come in for more than its fair share of criticism lately, from travelers, from employees, from Wall Street. Now, the Department of Transportation can be added to the list of United-bashers.