AirTran's Atlanta flights start up next week

As of next Thursday it will be a whole lot cheaper to get to Atlanta as AirTran commences its service.

From Wednesday, the cheapest round trip flights for that day with a one week Thursday return were $304.

It has forced Delta to up its game. The legacy carrier actually offers a cheaper deal at $297.

A $7 difference isn’t much so you’re best off comparing departure and arrival times to decided what’s best for you.

AirTran leaves Bermuda bound for Atlanta at 2:40pm with arrival in the ATL at 4:50pm.

On the way back you’ll be leaving Atlanta at 10:25am and landing in Bermy at 2:25pm.

The Delta flight leaves an hour later from Bermuda at 3:45pm with arrival in Georgia at 5:52pm. The return flight leaves Atlanta at 10:55am and landing at LF Wade International at 2:45pm, so there’s not much difference between the two airlines in that regard.

However, on AirTran you can also leave Atlanta earlier at 7:30am with a stop in Baltimore before continuing on to Bermuda with a 1:50pm arrival time. You’re giving up three hours in the morning to arrive 35 minutes earlier — that wouldn’t be worth it to me, but you may need that extra time and it gives you an additional option.

As a side note, you’ll be able to find AirTran tickets much cheaper on its website rather than going to Travelocity or Expedia. Travelocity offered the same Thursday to Thursday trip for $382.

Air Canada

Aeroplan is reducing its minimum miles for short haul flights from 500 miles to 250 miles.

That’s bad news for those of you who do puddle jump flights.

Quite often I’ve done the Vancouver to Victoria or Nanaimo airports.

It’s literally a 15 minute flight and an easy 500 miles, but now it will only be worth 250 miles.

It also means instead of earning 500 miles on a 300 mile flight, you’ll just get 300 miles.

The change goes into effect on August 1.

Snooze, I lose

There was a deal this week that was almost too good to be true.

Spafinder was offering $40 air miles per dollar spent but you had to buy the gift certificates by May 31

Hey, I like a good massage and ran the number in my head. I buy $800 worth of massages and I get 32,000 air miles, which is basically a free trip from Bermuda to anywhere in the continental North America.

It’s the equivalent of some guy standing on a street corner in a trench coat going ‘Psst, get four massages and I’ll throw in a free round trip plane ticket’.

I thought about purchasing a few gift certificates, even if I gave them away as birthday presents, but when I went back the next day, the deal was gone.

Well, partially gone.

It was now 10 miles per dollar spent.

Someone had accidentally typed in the 40 mile per dollar spent.

SpaFinder honoured everyone’s purchase who bought the gift certificates at the 40 for $1 offer until it corrected its mistake.

This sort of thing happens from time to time, an employee codes in the wrong numbers. Airlines have been burned because someone forgot to put in the numbers after the decimal so instead of pricing a ticket at $99, it goes into the system at $9.90.

If you stumble across an accident like this, you’re best off buying right away.