Capital One / Discover deal may be back on, ETIAS entry program for EU delayed, and

This Saturday we give the Capital One / Discover deal a new look, we revisit the upcoming ETIAS program for entry into the EU, and we pat ourselves on the back a little!

Capital One’s $35 billion deal for Discover clears US DOJ hurdle, NYT reports

Remember when we said the Capital One / Discover deal was shaping up to be a no-go and everyone in the comments seemed pretty pleased to hear it? Well, it looks like the DOJ investigation concluded and gave the deal a green light after all. The Federal Reserve and the OCC will now conduct a review with input from the DOJ. If you were one of the folks rooting against this deal, don’t worry, they’re also still awaiting feedback from the state attorneys general in New York and California – it’s not a done deal yet!

Revised timeline for the EES and ETIAS

Greg just wrote a post about his experience with the new “ETA” required for US residents traveling to the UK, but as you may recall from a previous Saturday Selection, there are similar additional steps soon to be required for entering the EU as well, called “ETIAS” (European Travel Information and Authorisation System). Previously, this update was slated for 2025, but the new timeline is now looking at a late 2026 launch.

March 2025 Frequent Flyer Site Rankings: Frequent Miler Jumps 36%, The Points Guy Falls 21%, Doctor of Credit Holds Steady

Does it still count as a Saturday Selection from “around the web” if it features us? Gary Leff of View from the Wing periodically ranks the most popular websites in the frequent flyer space (based on traffic), using a site called SimilarWeb for his traffic information. In this case, he compared traffic information from this past March to the prior March and came up with some results that caught our attention. For example, our site traffic increased 36% at a time when many others (even the biggest sites) lost traffic.

Tease me all you want, I literally had happy-tears in my eyes when I read these quotes from his article:

I’d say anyone on this list, writing for themselves or as a group of 3 or 4 people, is just really impressive. My must-reads are One Mile at Time, Frequent Miler, and Live and Let’s Fly …

Then he went on to say…

If these numbers are accurate, the continued strong performance by Frequent Miler is a real feather in the hat to that great team.

Needless to say, I’m super proud of our team and this site. I think the winning strategy Greg has cultivated at Frequent Miler is to make sure we’re working on things we’re genuinely excited about (which we can be proud of.) That may sound like an obvious approach, but I think it might be uncommon to let your real-life interests and obsessions set the direction for your content, especially when there’s so many other potential priorities on a monetized website. It seems Greg’s do-what-you’ll-be-proud-of metric is not only good for job satisfaction, it’s also good for our website and our readers.