The richest credit card offer ever for frequent flyer miles — British Airways, is ending today living up to its “limited-time only” announcement. Thought to perhaps go into February, this rich offer has garnered nearly 150,000 viewers to FlyerTalk and made many travelers rich with miles. It does continue with many of the benefits such as bonus for $35,000 spend and companion voucher, but the buzz was never higher than for this.
Follow the buzz!
Bid online for Lufthansa flights to Germany and other destinations in Europe from the U.S. in a one-day only auction with bids for flights starting at just $1.47. This auction, only on Thursday, December 10 will be for flights beginning Christmas Day through April 30, 2010. The timing of this is very crucial so schedule your time at work on Thursday from 9:00 a.m. – 10:25 a.m. eastern standard time (EST). Numerous flights from the U.S. to Germany and other destinations in Europe will be open for bidding as follows:
9:00 a.m. – From any U.S. destination to Europe in Business Class
9:05 a.m. – From Charlotte to Munich in Economy Class
9:16 a.m. – From Chicago to Dusseldorf in Business Class
9:35 a.m. – From Florida to Frankfurt in Business Class
9:55 a.m. – From New York to Dusseldorf in Business Class
In addition, a worldwide auction of 72 flights from Germany to Europe, Asia and Africa will take place from 4:00 a.m. – 10:25 a.m. EST. Bidders who wish to participate in the auctions must use their Lufthansa.com profile username and password to log in. Customers can create a free profile under Lufthansa.com >Login > New Registration. Miles & More members can simply use their Miles & More membership number and pin tolog in and participate.
In prescribed steps, customers can then place a bid for their chosen flight: From 10 to 50 euros for an Economy Class flight to European destinations, or from 10 to 100 euros for a Business Class flight. Bids for a seat on long-haul flights in Economy Class start at 10 euros rising to 100 euros in Economy Class, or range from 30 to 300 euros in Business Class. Participants can check directly under “My Bids“ whether their bid for their dream flight has been successful. The Lufthansa Service Center will then phone them and make an immediate booking.
Flights in the auction must be taken in the period between December 25, 2009 and April 30, 2010. If specified in the bid, they may include a feeder flight within Germany as part of the deal. Depending on availability, flights in booking classes V and Z can be re-booked for a fee of 50 euros, even if a ticket has already been issued. Should a flight be re-booked, the booking guarantee will elapse. Moreover, those flights for which tickets have been issued already cannot be cancelled. Mileage on flights won in the auction in booking classes V and Z will be credited to the accounts of Miles & More members.
Further details on individual flights are available under terms and conditions in the respective “auction room“ on www.lufthansa.com.
Up in the Air, which opens today, stars George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer, motivational speaker and über frequent flyer with the loathsome job of helping fire unlucky (and unsuspecting) employees, and Vera Farmiga as the hotel-lobby-bar hottie who shares his “Airworld.”
Airworld is a mythical place where many frequent flyers find themselves going about their daily lives at 33,000 feet—a world keenly described by Walter Kirn in his book of the same name, on which this movie is based. You’ll be sure to recognize his protagonist: the well-mannered but slightly odd management-consultant or business-owner type who spends way too much time on planes. You’ll also laugh at Bingham’s countless odd mannerisms and obsessions, even as you see the hints that there is a seriously dark side to the guy’s life.
Surprisingly, the film does a truly convincing job of portraying a frequent flyer’s relationship to the skies. But as you might guess, 108 minutes isn’t long enough for real attention to be paid to the details of what it’s like to fly. Film critics will judge Up in the Air based on its cinematography and appeal, and I predict it will be a bona fide critical and audience darling. Fair enough—but it’s also fair for us to judge the movie based on the lives and times of actual frequent fliers.
To log his 10 millionth frequent-flyer mile, Bingham embarks on a complicated six-day, eight-city trip during which he juggles business, family matters and a love affair. He deals with absent car rental upgrades, a stay at a hotel where he’s not a member of the elite program, talkative seatmates, a not-especially-believable airline captain who (spoiler alert!) awards Bingham his coveted 10 millionth mile while flying over Dubuque, Iowa—and a few commercial plugs from the likes of American Airlines, Hilton HHonors and Hertz’s #1 Gold Club.
Let me make one thing clear to my fellow flyers who will flock to see this film: In the hopes of identifying with the nuances of elite cards, pursuit of miles and “That’s me!” moments, you may be missing some very good entertainment. So, see it once for yourself and see it again for the story line because this one will surely have the Oscar buzz! But beyond the Clooney factor, the miles, the identification of the road warrior and the theme that no man is—or at least no man should be—an island, the true stars of this film might be the real-life interviewees who have lost their jobs. That element of the story will surely strike a chord with sympathetic audiences.
Is the movie real? Well, Director Jason Reitman told me that two years ago, he did a mileage run in December from Los Angeles to Chicago just to requalify for elite with United. He bought a Gino’s pizza right there in the airport, then flew directly back. That’s real enough for me—he knows the game.
Rating: Five upgrades.
NOTES:
As to the “product placement” of American, Hilton and Hertz: American does well, they seem to over promote the Concierge Key program which really does exist — but is invitation only so don’t get any ideas. The overall images of American in the movie are positive. Rating A.
As for Hilton, the hotels look fine, the hotel bar where the pickup scene is truly Hilton and of course the pillow that George Clooney is leaning on and the robe that co-star Vera Farmiga half wears is truly Hilton style (haven’t seen those items listed on eBay yet.). But, in a scene where Mr. Clooney overhypes the ability for HHonors members to go to the head of the checkin line, well let’s say that may be true but the way it was portrayed in the movie was a bit arrogant and wanted to make me go back to being a regular member, not to be seen elitist. Could have been written in with a little less pompous so will have to write them down to a rating of B-.
As to Hertz #1 Club Gold. Well, let’s say that in rating their part in the movie from one to five, I’d give it a 2, as in “2 many mentions of Hertz #1 Club Gold.”. Entirely too commercial and this is a weakness on the part of the director Jason Reitman to let some of the commercial interests write their own parts into the script. One of the most cringing parts of the movie from the eyes of the road warrior is when Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) returns to Chicago unsuspectingly to surprise his elite status loving love interest and uses the Hertz #1 Club Gold. He appears to use the service but yet when driving away from the Hertz lot in the snow, the Hertz rental agent in the lot raises his clipboard and yells “You forgot to give me your Hertz #1 Club Gold card number.” I wanted to stand up and yell, “It’s in the members rez profile dummy, how do you expect he was able to use the #1 Club anyway.” Well, to the delight of the actual film critics, I didn’t. Too bad there isn’t a real car rental company named “Maestro.” (see the movie and you’ll get that joke). Hertz, you actually are number one, as in one out of five for your part in the movie … Rating D+.
As mentioned, we easily adopt Jason Reitman, the director of the movie as a fellow frequent flyer. About the only criticism we have (love the opening music by the Dap Kings) is that in all his flying time (about 100,000 miles annually), has he really paid attention to who flies these planes? I know, Hollywood can be tight and as such, he likely casts Sam Elliott because he’s worked with him in Thank You for Smoking. But Sam Elliott wearing the uniform of an American Airlines pilot awarding Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) his ten-millionth frequent flyer mile is just a little too close to the parachute ripcord. Sure, I know that American is located in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and there is certainly a history of the old west there, but please, Sam Elliott (and I like him for his cowboy dude roles) is not pilot material. The only real miscast part of the whole movie.
There is a very positive effect that will come out of this movie and I’ll refer to it as the Clooney Connection. Many of the more traveled frequent flyers who amass the miles and the mileage runs have often suffered as fools in the eyes of significant others or distant employees and even family members in the role of “I don’t get it.” Now that we have Mr. Box Office, George Clooney, playing the role of a miles obsessed man traveling with the goal of achieving his 10,000,000th frequent flyer mile, how hard do you think it will be to simply refer to Mr. Clooney when he stands up to collect an Oscar for this movie. Seriously, when you tell your wife or others that George Clooney is playing you as a road warrior in this movie (forget the rest of his sins), you’ll never ever have to plea for a kitchen pass for a mileage run or answer the question about seeking frequent flyer miles again. What’s good for George Clooney (more miles) is good for us all. Frankly, I was going to suggest that he play the part of me if they ever did a movie about frequent flyer miles anyway.
Notable quotes from the movie:
Do you want cancer? (do you want the can, sir?)
Everyone needs a co-pilot
To know me is to fly with me
What’s in your backpack
I have a number in mind and I haven’t hit it yet
Nothing cheap about loyalty
322 Days on the road, 43 miserable days at home
Where are you from?
The most infamous mileage run ever conceived is ready for flight with nearly 250 frequent flyers from around the globe gathering in Chicago, New York, Frankfurt and Oslo to partake in a series of flights that serve no purpose other than to boost one’s mileage balance and to be able to talk about frequent flyer miles non- stop for four whole days … might as well include the nights as well. We’ll have a special ‘LiveFlyer’ blog about the mileage run starting on Tuesday.
It is called the Star Alliance MegaDO.
| Up in the Air: This Is A Mirror Image of You |
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| [Here's a reprint of a story ran in InsideFlyer magazine in August 2001] |
“Up In The Air,” a new novel from author Walter Kirn, has become an instant cult classic among the mileage junkies who inhabit the unique, and often times absurd, world of miles and points.
Ryan Bingham is the frequent flyer at the center of this story – and he is one of us. He sits next to us as we navigate the demands of our business travel and our need to earn frequent flyer miles. Ryan makes his living as a career transition counselor (read: He professionally fires people), but he also lives a parallel life trying to accumulate one million frequent flyer miles.
For many of us, this product of fiction will read like a non-fiction diary. In fact, readers may well be forced to read the book twice – once to savor the color commentary on life as a frequent flyer and the familiar references to things we endure in our own quest for the holy grail, and a second time to enjoy the story line.
Like riding a raft in the ocean, Kirn’s book gently moves the reader from crest to crest of Ryan’s quest, yet never neglects the troughs in between. We share in Ryan’s ecstasy over seeing his miles post after completing his final push: a fiendishly difficult itinerary of eight cities and countless meetings in just six days mixing business, pleasure, and family duties. He’s convinced he can pull things off, conditions permitting-and there, of course, is the catch. Weather problems. Maintenance foul-ups. Needy seatmates. Mysterious credit card glitches. Deepening guilt for his professional sins. The persistent sense that someone is paging him over the airport loudspeaker. Through it all, though, Ryan Bingham points his compass at true north: one million miles. Six zeroes and a one. And you, the reader, follow along like a travel companion, experiencing all the joys and sorrows that are par for the frequent flyer course.
This excerpt from the novel will give you a taste what you are in store for:
“Finally, someone has come up with a name for it. “I call it Airworld; the scene, the place, the style,” Ryan says. ”My hometown papers are USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. The big-screen Panasonics in the club rooms broadcast all the news I need, with an emphasis on the markets and the weather. My literature — yours, too, I see — is the best seller or the near-best seller, heavy on themes of espionage, high finance and the goodness of common people in small towns. In Airworld, I’ve found, the passions and enthusiasms of the outlying society are concentrated and whisked to a stiff froth. When a new celebrity is minted in the movie theaters or ballparks, this is where the story breaks — on the vast magazine racks that form a sort of trading floor for public reputations and pretty faces. I find it possible here, as nowhere else, to think of myself as part of the collective that prices the long bond and governs necktie widths. Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood and even its own currency — the token economy of airline bonus miles that I’ve come to value more than dollars. Inflation doesn’t degrade them. They’re not taxed. They’re private property in its purest form.”
“Up in the Air” is the first – and will surely remain the best – novel about one man’s quest to accumulate one million frequent flyer miles. From the opening chapter to the closing sentence, this is a witty chronicle of life as a frequent flyer. And, while millions of us share in this quirky yet consuming pastime, it took Walter Kirn to expose our behaviors and to make a brilliant social observation in the process.
As a frequent flyer myself, there’s one last thing I can say when reviewing this book: I’ve read it, I’ve flown it, I’ve earned it, I’ve upgraded it, and I’ve lived it. I am this book.
CHAPTER ONE
Up in the Air, By WALTER KIRN
Doubleday
To know me you have to fly with me. Sit down. I’m the aisle, you’re the window–trapped. You crack your paperback, last spring’s big legal thriller, convinced that what you want is solitude, though I know otherwise: you need to talk. The jaunty male flight attendant brings our drinks: a two percent milk with one ice cube for me, a Wild Turkey for you. It’s wet outside, the runways streaked and dark. Late afternoon. The first-class cabin fills with other businessmen who switch on their laptops and call up lengthy spreadsheets or use the last few moments before takeoff to punch in cell-phone calls to wives and clients. Their voices are bright but shallow, no diaphragms, their sentences kept short to save on tolls, and when they hang up they face the windows, sigh, and reset their watches from Central time to Mountain. For some of them this means a longer day, for others it means eating supper before they’re hungry. One fellow lowers his plastic window shade and wedges his head between two skimpy pillows, while another unlatches his briefcase, looks inside, then shuts his eyes and rubs his jaw, exhausted.
Your own work is done, though, temporarily. All week you’ve been out hustling, courting hot prospects in franchised seafood bars and steering a rented Intrepid along strange streets that didn’t match the markings in your atlas. You gave it your all, and for once your all was good enough to placate a boss who fears for his own job. You’ve stashed your tie in your briefcase, freed your collar, and slackened your belt a notch or two. To breathe. Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
“Is that the one about the tax-fraud murders? I’m hearing his plots aren’t what they used to be.”
You stall before answering, trying to discourage me. To you, I’m a type. A motormouth. A pest. You’re still getting over that last guy, LA to Portland, whose grandson was just admitted to Stanford Law. A brilliant kid, and a fine young athlete, too, he started his own business as a teen computerizing local diaper services–though what probably clinched his acceptance was his charity work; the kid has a soft spot for homeless immigrants, which pretty much describes all of us out west, though some are worse off than others. We’re the lucky ones.
“I’m on page eleven,” you say. “The plot’s still forming.”
“It hit number four on the Times list.”
“Don’t read that paper.”
“You live in Denver? Going home?”
“I’m trying.”
“Tell me about it. Nothing but delays.”
“Foul weather at one of the hubs.”
“Their classic line.”
“I guess they don’t take us for much
these days.”
“Won’t touch that. Interesting news about the Broncos yesterday.”
“Pro football’s a farce.”
“I can’t say I disagree.”
“Millionaires and felons–these athletes sicken me. I do enjoy hockey, though. Hockey I don’t hate.”
“That’s the Canadian influence,” I say.
“It ameliorates the materialism.”
“In English?”
“I talk big when I’m tired. Professor gasbag. Sorry. I like hockey, too.”
The atom was split by persistence; you relax. We go on chatting, impersonally at first, but then, once we’ve realized all we have in common–our moderate politics, our taste in rental cars, our feeling that the American service industry had better shape up soon or face a crisis–a warmth wells up, a cozy solidarity. You recommend a hotel in Tulsa; I tip you off to a rib joint in Fort Worth. The plane heads into a cloud, it bucks and shudders. Nothing like turbulence to cement a bond. Soon, you’re telling me about your family. Your daughter, the high school gymnast. Your lovely wife. She’s gone back to work and you’re not so sure you like this, though her job is only part time and may not last. Another thing you dislike is traveling. The pissy ticket agents. The luggage mix-ups. The soft hotel mattresses that twist your spine. You long for a windfall that will let you quit and pursue your great hobby: restoring vintage speedboats. The water–that’s where you’re happiest. The lake.
Now it’s my turn. I make a full report. Single, but on the lookout–you never know, the woman in 3B might be my soul mate. Had a wife once, the prospect of a family, but I knew her mostly through phone calls across time zones. Grew up in Minnesota, in the country; father owned a fleet of propane trucks and served as a Democrat in two state legislatures, pressing a doomed agricultural agenda while letting his business slip. Parents split while I was in college, an eastern hippie school–picture a day care run by Ph.D.’s–and when I got home there was nothing to come back to, just lawyers and auctioneers and accusations, some of them true but few of them important. My first job was in computers. I sold memory, the perfect product, since no one has enough of it and everyone fears some competitor has more. Now I work as a management consultant, minoring in EET (Executive Effectiveness Training) and majoring–overwhelmingly, unfortunately–in CTC (Career Transition Counseling), which is a fancy term for coaching people to understand job loss as an opportunity for personal and spiritual growth. It’s a job I fell into because I wasn’t strong, and grew to tolerate because I had to, then suddenly couldn’t stand another hour of. My letter of resignation is on the desk of a man who will soon return from a long fishing trip. What I’ll do after he reads it, I don’t know. I’m intrigued by a firm called MythTech; they’ve put out feelers. I have other logs in the fire, but no flames yet. Until my superior flies back from Belize, I work out of Denver for ISM, Integrated Strategic Management. You’ve heard of Andersen? Deloitte & Touche? We’re something like them, though more diversified. “The Business of Business,” we say. Impressed me too, once.
As the hour passes and the meal comes (you try the Florentine chicken, I take the steak, and neither of us goes near the whipped dessert), the intimacy we develop is almost frightening. I’d like to feel it came naturally, mutually, and not because I pushed. I push sometimes. We exchange cards and slot them in our wallets, then order another round and go on talking, arriving at last at the topic I know best, the subject I could go on about all night.
You want to know who you’re sitting with? I’ll tell you.
Planes and airports are where I feel at home. Everything fellows like you dislike about them–the dry, recycled air alive with viruses; the salty food that seems drizzled with warm mineral oil; the aura-sapping artificial lighting–has grown dear to me over the years, familiar, sweet. I love the Compass Club lounges in the terminals, especially the flagship Denver club, with its digital juice dispenser and deep suede sofas and floor-to-ceiling views of taxiing aircraft. I love the restaurants and snack nooks near the gates, stacked to their heat lamps with whole wheat mini-pizzas and gourmet caramel rolls. I even enjoy the suite hotels built within sight of the runways on the ring roads, which are sometimes as close as I get to the cities that my job requires me to visit. I favor rooms with kitchenettes and conference tables, and once I cooked a Christmas feast in one, serving glazed ham and sweet potato pie to a dozen janitors and maids. They ate with me in rotation, on their breaks, one or two at a time, so I really got to know them, even though most spoke no English. I have a gift that way. If you and I hadn’t hit it off like this, if the only words we’d passed were “That’s my seat” or “Done with that Business Week?” or just “Excuse me,” I’d still regard us as close acquaintances and hope that if we met again up here we wouldn’t be starting from zero, as just two suits. Twice last October I sat in the same row, on different routes, as 1989’s Miss USA, the one who remade herself as a Washington hostess and supposedly works nonstop for voting rights. In person she’s tiny, barely over five feet. I put her carry-on in the overhead.
But you know some of this already. You fly, too. It just hasn’t hooked you; you just don’t study it.
Hey, you’re probably the normal one.
Fast friends aren’t my only friends, but they’re my best friends. Because they know the life–so much better than my own family does. We’re a telephone family, strung out along the wires, sharing our news in loops and daisy chains. We don’t meet face-to-face much, and when we do there’s a dematerialized feeling, as though only half of our molecules are present. Sad? Not really. We’re a busy bunch. And I’m not lonely. If I had to pick between knowing just a little about a lot of folks and knowing everything about a few, I’d opt for the long, wide-angle shot, I think.
I’m peaceful. I’m in my element up here. Flying isn’t an inconvenience for me, as it is for my colleagues at ISM, who hit the road to prove their loyalty to a company that’s hungry for such proof and, I’m told, rewards it now and then. But I’ve never aspired to an office at world headquarters, close to hearth and home and skybox, with a desk overlooking the Front Range of the Rockies and access to the ninth-floor fitness center. I suppose I’m a sort of mutation, a new species, and though I keep an apartment for storage purposes–actually, I left the place two weeks ago and transferred the few things I own into a locker I’ve yet to pay the rent on, and may not–I live somewhere else, in the margins of my itineraries.
I call it Airworld; the scene, the place, the style. My hometown papers are USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The big-screen Panasonics in the club rooms broadcast all the news I need, with an emphasis on the markets and the weather. My literature–yours, too, I see–is the bestseller or the near-bestseller, heavy on themes of espionage, high finance, and the goodness of common people in small towns. In Airworld, I’ve found, the passions and enthusiasms of the outlying society are concentrated and whisked to a stiff froth. When a new celebrity is minted in the movie theaters or ballparks, this is where the story breaks–on the vast magazine racks that form a sort of trading floor for public reputations and pretty faces. I find it possible here, as nowhere else, to think of myself as part of the collective that prices the long bond and governs necktie widths. Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood, and even its own currency–the token economy of airline bonus miles that I’ve come to value more than dollars. Inflation doesn’t degrade them. They’re not taxed. They’re private property in its purest form.
It was during a layover in the Dallas Compass Club, my back sinking into a downy sofa cushion and coarse margarita salt drying on my lips, that I first told a friend about TMS, my Total Mileage System.
“It’s simple,” I said, as my hand crept up her leg (the woman was older than me and newly single; an LA ad exec who claimed her team had hatched the concept behind affinity credit cards). “I don’t spend a nickel, if I can help it, unless it somehow profits my account. I’m not just talking hotels and cars and long-distance carriers and Internet services, but mail-order steak firms and record clubs and teleflorists. I shop them according to the miles they pay, and I pit them against each other for the best deal. Even my broker gives miles as dividends.”
“So what’s your total?”
I smiled, but didn’t speak. I’m an open book in most ways, and I feel I deserve a few small secrets.
“What are you saving up for? Big vacation?”
“I’m not a vacation person. I’m just saving. I’d like to give a chunk to charity–to one of those groups that flies sick kids to hospitals.”
“I didn’t know you could do that. Sweet,” she said. She kissed me, lightly, quickly, but with feeling–a flick of her tongue tip that promised more to come should we meet again, which hasn’t happened yet. If it does, I may have to duck her, I’m afraid. She was too old for me even then, three years ago, and ad execs tend to age faster than the rest of us, once they’re on their way.
I don’t recall why I told that story. Not flattering. But I wasn’t in great shape back then. I’d just come off a seven-week vacation that ISM insisted I take for health reasons. I spent the time off taking classes at the U, hoping to enrich an inner life stretched thin by years of pep-talking the jobless. My bosses matched my tuition for the courses; a creative writing seminar that clawed apart a short nostalgic sketch about delivering propane with my father in a sixty-mile-per-hour blizzard, and a class called “Country-Western Music as Literature.” The music professor, a transplanted New Yorker in a black Stetson with a snakeskin band and a bolo tie clipped with a scorpion in amber, believed that great country lyrics share a theme: the migration from the village to the city, the disillusionment with urban wickedness, and the mournful desire to go home. The idea held up through dozens of examples and stayed with me when I returned to work, worsening the low mood and mental fuzziness that ISM had ordered me to correct. I saw my travels as a twangy ballad full of rhyming place names and neon streetscapes and vanishing taillights and hazy women’s faces. All those corny old verses, but new ones, too. The DIA control tower in fog. The drone of vacuum cleaners in a hallway, telling guests that they’ve slept past checkout time. The goose-pimply arms of a female senior manager hugging a stuffed bear I’ve handed her as we wait together for two security guards–it’s overkill; the one watches the other–to finish loading file cubes and desk drawers and the CPU from her computer onto a flat gray cart whose squeaky casters scream all the way to an elevator bank where a third guard holds down the “open” button.
I pulled out of it–barely. I cut that song off cold. It took a toll, though. Because I seldom see doctors in their offices, but only in transit, accidentally, my sense of my afflictions is vague, haphazard. High blood pressure? No doubt. Cholesterol? I’m sure it’s in the pink zone, if not the red. Once, between Denver and Oklahoma City, I nodded off next to a pulmonary specialist who told me when I woke that I had apnea–a tendency to stop breathing while unconscious. The doctor recommended a machine that pushes air through the nostrils while one sleeps to raise the oxygen level in one’s blood. I didn’t follow up. My circulation is ebbing flight by flight–I can’t feel my toes if I don’t keep wiggling them, and that only works for my first hour on board–so I’d better make some changes. Soon.
Excerpted from Up in the Air by Walter Kirn. Copyright (c) 2001 by Walter Kirn. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. (C) 2001 Walter Kirn All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-385-49710-5
As a ‘thank you’ it is pretty rewarding. As a recognition that cutbacks in business travel will effect the elite status of all but the most frequent of flyers, it is a nice tip of the hat. As a stake driven into the ground, it is the start of a new season. The introduction of double elite qualifying miles for AAdvantage members when flying American, American Eagle and AmericanConnection through Dec. 15, 2009 is yet another example that 2009 may go down in history as the best year ever for frequent flyers. All those award sales, and who would have guessed that twice in a single year members of a specific frequent flyer program would be able to run for the Gold … or Platinum at twice the speed of sound?
A couple things: you absolutely must register for this promotion to be eligible for the double EQMs. My suggestion is that all members register. Even those who may not normally known what an elite level is like could with the right circumstances find themselves in the elite circle of friends. Here’s an example of how this may work for the not-everyday flyer. Let’s say you live in Los Angeles and have a single flight planned to Paris by the (near) end of the year. Roundtrip that is nearly 13,862 miles when flying American Airlines. If registered for this promotion, you’ll earn double miles toward elite status, that’s over 27,000 elite miles, good enough with a single trip to earn you AAdvantage Gold elite status.
Big deal? Yes, for you and others. Earlier in the year when AAdvantage launched this promotion, so did other airlines to match. Good news for all and follow my single advice: YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THIS PROMOTIONAL BEFORE YOU FLY.
Don’t miss a single elite mile, follow this link to register NOW!
Also, AAdvantage is responding to the Delta SkyMiles elite program enhancements and rather than introduce ‘roll over’ miles for their elite members, is introducing Elite Rewards which offer choices of special benfits for elite members within each elite level. Designed to help elite members “stretch” their participation, you also have to register for this program and it can be done at any time at the same link above.
Regardless of your program, this news from AAdvantage means to start calling the airlines, mileage run season is coming a little early this year.
Looks like a trend … among the low-cost darlings. JetBlue’s TrueBlue will convert their earnings structure to that of basing the “point” accumulation based on fares being spent rather than the current length of flight, something that competitor Virgin America’s Elevate does. This change will happen this fall but leaves a few (OK, a lot …) of questions unanswered. For instance, the information we have says “If you have TrueBlue points left over when the program relaunches in the fall you will be able to use the points you earn in the redesigned program and convert them back into old TrueBlue points in order to get to an Award Flight.” Uh …. convert them back? Sounds a little confusing to me and Lord knows I’ve been through some of these “grandfathered” things with miles and points. But, we’ll have to wait and see just how easy this task and comprehension will be for members.
The new TrueBlue:
A quick comparison and it looks like you’ll get to a free flight faster with JetBlue vs. Virgin America and if you’re wanting to compare TrueBlue to the other major programs, a good place to start is here on FlyerTalk:
For the official notice of these upcoming changes, click here:
With this essay competition ending in just a few weeks, there’s a really good chance you can win a free biz class ticket to London or beyond and fly with some other entrepreneurs and frequent flyer types. British Airways is dedicating three entire planes, flying from New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles toward what they call, “The Face of Opportunity.”
You have until July 31 to write an essay telling British Airways what you could accomplish if you had the chance to have meetings abroad.
The prize? First, a send off event with other winners before your flight to London from New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. Then, in London, networking opportunities and insights on growing your business internationally from top business leaders and government officials. Finally, continue on your own path, to wherever British Airways flies, to have the meetings you need to move your business forward. The return date is open.
For the essay, tell British Airways what opportunities you would take advantage of – whether they are meetings with potential investors, visits to distributors, or introductions to new clients. That’s all.
Here’s the tip. There will be 1,000 winners and so far … only 1,000 people have submitted essays. Surely you think you’ve got the stuff to out-write a few hundred or even a thousands others but right now, the odds look pretty good for you to be a winner.
NOTE: My essay is in so join me in a chance to do business in the sky.
LINK: http://opportunity.ba.com/contest
I saw this thread on FlyerTalk and it gives many of you a perfect opportunity to read up and learn about a unique opportunity that is going on out there in mileland:
The folks over at MileageManager are looking for a few beta-testers that can help them test a new award planning tool that will be part of their mileage management service. If you’ve got a few minutes over the next few weeks, I’m sure they would appreciate it.
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