It seems like the hotels are equally desperate. After FFN Q4 of last year and double credits for Q1 this year, we now have a Q2 promo. While it’s nothing revolutionary, it’s quite a few bonus points if you stay at Hyatt hotels:

As a Hyatt Gold Passport member, you can earn Hyatt Gold Passport points and 2,000 bonus miles on your second eligible stay between April 1 and June 30, 2008. You can continue to earn 1,000 bonus miles on each additional eligible stay completed by June 30, 2008. The bonus miles are in addition to the points or miles you choose to earn for your stay. The number of bonus miles you can earn is unlimited.

You can find the full details here. Thanks again to Peter for the tip.

United Airlines Customers Stay Connected With Complimentary Wi-Fi Service

CHICAGO, March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — United is rolling out the red carpet at its U.S. airport lounges and welcoming its guests with complimentary Wi-Fi service. From e-mailing a presentation to a colleague to surfing the Web for a new restaurant in San Francisco or even updating a blog, United is providing better access to wireless technology that will
create a more convenient and rewarding travel experience for its customers.

“To deliver a best-in-class customer experience, we want to provide our guests with lounges that are convenient for conducting business and comfortable for relaxing in while traveling,” says Barbara Higgins, vice president, Customer Experience. “We continue to refurbish our airport lounges to make them more comfortable, and based on further input from our guests, we are now providing complimentary Wi-Fi service to make it easier for them to stay connected.”

The complimentary Wi-Fi service powered by T-Mobile(R) HotSpot is available in the U.S. starting today in 27 Red Carpet Clubs and all five International First Class lounges. It is available to all Red Carpet Club members, United customers traveling internationally with a first class or business class ticket and customers who purchase Red Carpet Club one-time passes for $50. All other guests still have convenient access to high-speed Wi-Fi through a T-Mobile HotSpot subscription or per-use option. Please see hotspot.t-mobile.com for more details.

Instead of taking the “it’s about time, the other clubs have it” approach, I’ll take the “this is awesome” approach. Ultimately UA was filling up their RCC’s before this enhancement, so it’s nice to see them actually do something to substantially improve the value of membership when they don’t really have to. It seems like Star Golds are excluded here since it applies to members, one time pass holders, and F/C passengers.

The one thing I’m really curious to see is whether this has a major impact on how full the clubs are, which I am sure we’ll at least notice a little bit, and more importantly whether this leads to a price increase or not. While it would be logical to raise the price, I think airline club membership is very elastic, and I doubt they could get away with higher prices. The one thing I see them doing is getting rid of the option to purchase a membership with miles, which is an awful value as it is, in my opinion.

Just came across this awesome video today:
 

Those that have flown ANA know that this is almost spot on and isn’t just another unrealistic promotion. Not to advertise, but ANA really is a great airline and this video brought me back to my most recent ANA trip last summer, which was excellent. Enjoy!

View From The Wing had a post today about Delta’s new fees, and this as we all know is only the beginning of creative revenue enhancements. We can probably all agree that the “handling charge” for partner awards that DL instituted is ridiculous, although I would argue the same about the close-in fee for awards that many US airlines charge now. I’m not sure why Delta went that route instead of just instituting additional fees on their awards like their international peers do, which while ridiculous, are commonly accepted globally.

That being said, most of these fee increases aren’t that ridiculous, at least compared to United. Let’s do a little comparison here between UA and DL after DL’s “junk fee” increase:

• Lounge pass: DL- $30 / UA- $50
• Unaccompanied minors: DL- $100 / UA- $99
• Pets in cabin: DL- $100 / UA- $100 (interestingly enough UA raised the price from $85 effective May 5, something I haven’t read about yet)
• Pets as checked luggage: DL- $200 / UA- $200 (for medium size and up)

…and the list goes on. My point is that except for the “handling fee” for awards, none of these changes are revolutionary, and for that matter are basically just getting on par with their competitors. I think UA was on to something when they were talking about “a la carte” pricing and how that’s the route they might go. I think we’ll see the resemblance more and more every day. If the choice is between raising the fares across the board and instituting all these fees, count me in for the fees, and I don’t just say that because I am an elite. While I’d prefer to see no increase at all, it’s inevitable so charge people for what they choose to get individually, IMO. I’m excited to see what creative ideas the airlines come up with next!

Ah, here’s one of those stories I hate to tell, because it makes me feel like a total moron, so enjoy!

As I’ve mentioned before I was planning on burning some AA miles for a trip, and most recently I was looking at Asia. We would fly AA for the transpacific portion and then CX (Cathay Pacific) for the intra-asia portions, all in First for me and my mom. I’m sitting at 247,000 AA miles right now, so even buying a few thousand miles for $140ish wouldn’t have been too bad in order to get to 250,000, especially for the value we could have gotten out of it. Heck, I even had the trip all planned out with hotels and everything, although fortunately nothing booked!

Everytime I was doing searches for AA awards it was coming up as 125,000 miles per person in First to NRT, so I assumed that much like United that would apply to most parts of SE Asia as well, including SIN, BKK, HKG, etc. So last night, being the bright guy that I am (yeah right), I wanted to double check that I was correct, just to be certain. I looked at AA’s award zoning in Asia and saw that only “Asia Region 1″ costs 125,000 miles, while “Asia Region 2″ costs 135,000 miles. OK, no sweat on my end, I assume that Asia Region 2 might be Nepal, Maldives, etc.

Then I get the genius idea of acutally clicking to verify how they define their regions, and anger immediately starts to build up in me for being such a moron. Here’s what I find:

• Asia Region 1: China Japan, Korea, Mongolia
• Asia Region 2: Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Saipan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam

My anger quickly wore off as I started to laugh. Mongolia?!?!?!? Huuuuh? I’d be hard pressed to tell you the capital of Mongolia (ok, maybe just the spelling), let alone realize that they would include that in Asia Region 1. So I tell my friend Robert about this and we start doing some research, only to find out that no OneWorld carrier even serves Mongolia. Can someone explain to me why the heck they even have that on the chart then, let alone with the cheaper awards, which otherwise consist of China, Japan, and Korea?!?!

Another thing we found really strange is the number of miles required for Asia Region 1 vs. Region 2 award travel. Let’s compare:

• Y: Asia 1-65K/Asia 2-70K/difference=5K
• C: Asia 1-90K/Asia 2-110K/difference=20K
• F: Asia 1-125K/Asia 2-135K/difference= 10K

Is there any reason that they charge double the premium for C over F when comparing the two regions? Just seems odd to me.

I guess it’s time to keep saving AA miles, cause they wont be taking me anywhere this new in Asia this summer. While it was frustrating, I ended up being more confused by AA’s structure than anything else. I guess it’s time to look into other options, although with the value of the Euro I’m not quite sure what…

As I’m sure almost everyone has read, AA grounded 204 of their MD80′s today, forcing them to cancel hundreds of flights.

American Airlines grounded its fleet of Boeing MD-80s on Wednesday so crews could reinspect wire bundles to comply with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. The nation’s largest carrier canceled more than 340 flights — or about 14 percent of its scheduled service — according to the latest results from FlightStats.com.

The need for the new inspections became known during an audit of American by a joint team of inspectors from the FAA and the Fort Worth-based airline.

“Preliminary results of the audit show a high rate of airworthiness-directive compliance,” Alison Duquette, FAA spokesperson in Washington, D.C., told msnbc.com. 

I’m really starting to get puzzled over all of this, especially after UA grounded some 747′s last week and WN not only grounded their planes, but was forced to pay a massive fine.

If I am understanding this correctly, it was an ”audit” that found out there wasn’t full compliance, so now they’re fixing their wiring issue. If this were a single event I would understand it, but with three cases like this in the span of about a week, I’m thinking there has to be more to the story. Has the FAA been totally lax the past few years and not seen the non-complying airlines? Did the airlines stop caring about safety overnight (highly doubtful)? Is the FAA overdoing it at this point and just trying to find things that are wrong, or are they doing a massive audit of all airlines?

Someone please enlighten me, because I’m confused!