Reviews

ViaSat is just.plane.impressive. I just streamed Love Island 5 miles in the sky

an airplane with a person standing in the middle

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“Laura tells Dani and Meg that she snogged Paul last night”

One of the fringe benefits of having a British significant other is getting absolutely hooked on their pop culture phenomenons. Enter: Love Island. Unfamiliar?  Think Bachelor in Paradise meets Big Brother. Except instead of once a week. It’s EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.  Shoot me now, right? Oh, I teased my girlfriend for loving the show, and then I started watching it to the tune of needing to stream it while on my Alaska flight back from Chicago on one of Virgin’s old planes outfitted with Via Sat.

Miles…what does this have to do with Travel? CAUSE I STREAMED IT on a plane! Stop being so judgy 😉

I’ve written about ViaSat before, and how impressive it is. Tonight I decided to really push the limits, fire up my Express VPN, pull up ITV and see if it’d stream. It did. ( You need to be located in the UK to watch it…thus the VPN.)

My cost was $14.99 for the 4 hour flight from ORD to LAX. I’m not only able to blog, but also get in a guilty pleasure.

I’ve been on other flights featuring Gogo and they have been absolutely ATROCIOUS. As in, barely load a page, bad. This was blazingly fast. The only downside is my Amex Biz Plat offers 10 free GoGo passes annually, and ViaSat isn’t covered. However, $14.99 was still a bargain if you ask me.

ViaSat

I mean…not a bad speed test:

a screenshot of a computer

Have you had success streaming with ViaSat?

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


4.8
4.8/5
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is a great starter card that earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott.

Welcome Offer

60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

  • 3x on dining
    •  including eligible delivery services for takeout
  • 3x on select streaming services
  • 3x on online grocery purchases
    • (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel Portal
  • 2x on all other travel
  • $50 Annual Credit on hotel stays purchased via Chase Travel
    • The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
  • 10% Anniversary Bonus
    • Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred® continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel Portal and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including primary rental car insurance, purchase protections, etc.
  • Points are transferrable to 13 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • Redeem in the Chase Travel center for 1.25 cents per point
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Primary rental car coverage is my favorite

We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.

Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.

Main Cast: 

Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.

Supporting Cast:

Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.

If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

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