A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

The Volaris Annual Pass: My Review

Last August, my wife and I both took advantage of an introductory offer and bought an annual pass from Mexican budget airline Volaris. (Now it’s around $500.) The promise is that you can fly as much as you want for one price, but the list of restrictions and drawbacks is a long one. To evaluate whether this makes sense for you if you’re near an airport they serve or you will travel a lot within Mexico, here’s my update on how it went for us and how the math added up in the end. (Bare-bones airline Frontier offers a similar program, sometimes as low as $299.)

Best Travel Rewards Programs

How fast does it pay off to be loyal to a specific hotel chain or airline? US News & World Report ranked the big programs on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to get something free in return and what kinds of perks you earn. Wyndham’s program came out on top for lodging (they have the simplest redemption tiers by far) and Alaska Airlines came out on top for carriers.

Adidas Makes Sunglasses?

I’ve worn a lot of travel clothing items from Adidas over the years and the behemoth brand makes everything from Tae Kwon Do uniforms to tennis shirts. In addition to thousands of shoes. They also make sunglasses though and I recently spent 2.5 months traveling with their SP0070 polarized model, which lists for $120 but goes for far less at the Adidas store or on Amazon. That’s a sporty pair that worked in multiple situations for me, including beaches and boats, but they also make more fashionable options that are high quality but are usually in the range of $50 to $90. See the whole range here.

Free Wi-Fi on Delta Airlines

Delta announced this week that it was the first carrier to be rolling out free cabin Wi-Fi to all its customers. You can use it now on most domestic flights but in the next few months it will be coming to 15 European countries and 5 in South America. Big bodies of water are the tricky part, but they’re working on implementing satellite solutions for that in the longer term. Check this page on their website if you’ve got a Delta flight coming up.