Yapta

Prize patrol: Yapta’s Caribbean Cosmopolitan Sweepstakes

Contests, Free Stuff,

Doesn’t a free trip to the Caribbean sound good right about now?

beachball-umbrella

Yapta, the online travel shopping service that monitors airline ticket pricing and award seat availability for travelers and helps you get a refund if the price goes down, is sponsoring a “Caribbean Cosmopolitan Sweepstakes” where you can win one of 15 prizes, including a 3-night “Romantic Rendezvous Package” from the San Juan Marriott Resort, a 1-year Clear Pass, (the fast pass for airport security), or a Starbucks gift card.

To enter:  Just use Yapta during February to track an airfare.  You can increase your chances of winning by tracking up to 25 flights anytime between 2/1/09 and 2/28/09.

Register and read the fine print for Yapta’s Caribbean Cosmopolitan Sweepstakes here.

Good luck!

tropical-cabin

New tool helps travelers reach new runways at three airports

Delays, Safety, , , ,

Yesterday was “New Runway Day” at three major U.S. airports. Washington Dulles International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and my hometown Seattle-Tacoma International Airport all cut the ribbon on new runways.

What do these high-ticket investments in airport infrastructure mean for air travelers? Ideally, improved safety, reduced delays, and space for an extra 330,000 take-offs and landings each year.

We’ll see….

(Courtesy: Port of Seattle)

Of course, who cares if more planes can take-off and land unless you can actually get a seat on one of those planes?

So I was pleased to have a chance to stop by the world headquarters of Yapta this week to check out their poker table and learn about their new service that sends travelers e-mail alerts when frequent-flier award seats become available. As someone who recently spent way too many hours trying to figure out how to “spend” a chunk of expiring miles, I totally get the usefulness of this feature.

You can read about Yapta’s free frequent-flier award search service and a few related tools in a recent New York Times article. Or just sign up, snag a seat, and go try out one of those new runways.

(Photo: Daniel Schwen)