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NowBoarding, your daily travel news in 7 minutes or less. This is your host, Ed Pizza, bringing you the latest travel deals and travel news you need to know Monday through Friday.  Tune in daily so you don’t miss any of the best deals!Look for links to all of today’s stories in the show notes on whatever podcast platform you’re listening.  And, please share the show with a friend!First up today is another chance at the 100,000 point American Express Platinum sign-up bonus. The AMEX Platinum carries a high annual fee but has a ton of perks for travelers.  It’s a card I meant to add to my wallet earlier this year.  Instead, I applied for the American Express Business Platinum card.  That turned out to be a mistake, mostly because I can’t read.  I knew I wouldn’t use the 5X points on hotels booked through Amextravel.com very often, as I prefer to earn elite credit.  Booking through the AMEX portal is essentially like using an OTA.  That generally means no elite benefits or elite stay credit on those bookings.However, the big difference for me between the Business and Personal versions of the AMEX Platinum is that the Business version requires you to book through the Amextravel portal to earn 5X on airlines, where the personal version earns 5X when booking directly with an airline. That might not seem like a big deal. In the beginning, it didn’t seem that way to me.  However, within the past 6 months I’ve been charged an extra fee by United to cancel a “travel agent booking” and had an employee’s airline ticket changed with no notification.  We were told by United that they notified our travel agent.  As a result, our employee missed their flight.At any rate, we’ve veered off course here.  I think the American Express Platinum card is a solid card to add to your wallet, especially when you consider how far a 100,000 Membership Reward point bonus will take you.  These offers are being served up to folks through CardMatch.  Check the show notes for instructions on how to see if you were targeted for the offer.  Sadly, I was not.Delta has lead the way into dynamic award charts for domestic US airlines.  The end results have been mostly bad for consumers.  However, industrious travelers have figured out how to play the new games the airlines have created.  No Mas Coach walks through married segment logic, a term you’re going to want to get familiar with.  It’s not as simple as an airline opening up award inventory from a hub to a popular leisure destination like Tokyo or Sydney.  The airlines are hiding the availability by only making it available if you’re leaving from a smaller city and traveling through that gateway.  Essentially, it’s a way for them to offer up award seats, but only in markets where they’re trying to fill seats.In the example Jon uses in his blog post, you can save over 100,000 Delta SkyMiles by leaving from a different city.  That might cost you a few bucks, but that’s a big savings over 100,000 miles.  Married segments will vary by airline and will also likely change frequently over time.  Staying tuned to the various travel blogs (shameless plug for my podcasts here) will help you figure out how to get the best value out of your miles.As we near the end of the year, there are a number of travel benefits tied to credit cards and elite status that require your attention.  Think about things like airline incidental fee credits, transferring points to family members or friends, choice benefits you earned with elite status and the last-minute extension of the WeWork partnership for those who carry the AMEX Business Platinum card.  A lot of these need to be completed before the end of 2019, which is only a few days away.  Frequent Miler has a list of things to remind you of, find the link in the show notes.18 is not only the age which American citizens earn the right to vote.  It’s also the dizzying number of brands Hilton hotels will have when they launch a new, unnamed brand in 2020.  Hilton is apparently trying to catch Marriott with their 30 brands.  I wonder how many Marriott brands I could name without looking at a list.  It’s a far cry from 30, that’s for sure.At any rate, this new Hilton brand has me mildly intrigued.  Aimed at travelers in their 20s and 30s, a group I most certainly don’t belong to, they want to cater to the group with more comfortable rooms and better food experiences.  Hilton believes the brand can support hundreds and hundreds of locations.  I’m a bit skeptical on that number, but I’m hopeful about a brand who’s primary goal isn’t to make the rooms smaller and take more amenities out of them to force me to sit in a lobby to work.  We wrap up today’s news with an update to a valuable program from Bank of America.  Museums on Us provides free entry to over 200 museums across the US.  The list also includes some Children’s Museums, which can be a huge plus for families.To take advantage of this benefit you’ll need a Bank of America credit or debit card.  The update here is that Bank of America is making the rest of 2019, all 5 days of it, free at their list of museums.  As this is a popular week for families to travel, this could be a quick money saver for your final trip of 2019.  Check the show notes for a link to the full list of museums.That’s a full wrap on today’s travel news. If you’ve got a piece of travel news that you think I should feature on NowBoarding, you can e-mail me at ed@pizzainmotion.com, or find me on social media, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. And, you can find me blogging daily at pizzainmotion.com.Lastly, I need your help, for just a minute. Reviews and ratings are a huge part of what helps us reach a larger audience. So take a minute and help us out, leaving us a review and a rating wherever you get your podcasts. And, please tell a friend. That’s your travel news in 7 minutes or less. I hope you’ll join us again on a future flight!