Nadia

No, and I would change it today. On separate tickets you have to collect your checked bag, clear immigration and customs if you are arriving internationally, walk to departures, check in again with a different airline, and go back through security. Fifty five minutes is not enough for the immigration queue alone at most large airports.

The part that makes it worse than it looks is that nobody owes you anything when it fails. Two tickets means airline one's job ended when they landed you. Airline two will call you a no show and the fare is gone, so you are buying a walk up ticket the next morning plus a hotel.

If you cannot rebook onto one ticket, put at least four hours between them for an international arrival, or fly the next morning deliberately and sleep somewhere.

Also watch refunds. If you return something before the window closes, the refund usually comes off your qualifying total and people get caught out by that in the last week.

Two smaller things while you are renewing. Blank pages matter in some places, typically one or two facing pages, and a passport that is technically valid but nearly full has caused people problems. And if you have a visa or an electronic travel authorisation tied to the old passport number, renewing may mean redoing it, so check that before you assume the renewal solves everything.

The rule to internalise from this, and everyone learns it the same expensive way: never transfer speculatively. Get the booking to the point where the only thing missing is the points, then transfer. If your programme allows a courtesy hold on an award, take the hold first.

Also know your transfer times before you need them. Some pairs are instant, some take one to three business days, and a few are unpredictable at weekends. Twenty hours is long enough for anything popular to disappear.

Check who you are writing to. Operations managers at mid sized companies is a description of a job title, not of a person with a budget and a burning problem. The best cold email I ever sent went to people who had publicly complained about the exact thing my tool fixed, in forums and job adverts. Twelve emails, five replies, two customers.

Was my backup plan. Good to know it is not a mad one.

Splitting at the halfway city found two seats within ten minutes of each other. Twelve euros more and I am not flying. Thank you.

Whichever you pick, build in one deliberately empty day around day five or six. Not a rest day in the sense of doing nothing, just a day with nothing booked. Every long trip I have taken without one turned brittle exactly at that point, and the first argument is usually about a train.

Downgrade rather than close, in almost every version of this. A product change to a no fee card in the same family usually keeps the account and its opening date intact, so your history is untouched, and it keeps a line of credit open which helps your overall utilisation.

Before you do it, two checks. First, move or use any points sitting on the card, because points can be forfeited when a premium card is closed or changed and the rules differ by issuer. Second, ring retention and ask plainly whether there is an offer to keep it, worst case they say no and you downgrade the same call.

Also be honest about how many people you have actually spoken to. Ten conversations is not a market test. I did not get a customer until conversation 60 or so, and the rate of learning per conversation stayed high until about 30.

Split whatever cash you carry across at least two places, a small amount in your wallet and the rest in your bag or your accommodation. Same with cards, one in the wallet and a spare somewhere else. The point is not theft so much as the ordinary disaster of leaving a wallet in a taxi at the start of a two week trip.