Via Randy Petersen’s blog, Mileopoly:

I’m predicting that early February will be when we see the start of their database merger with both programs allowing members to convert miles from one program to the other — without a transfer fee. This full mileage transferability is not as easy as it looks since to squeeze the pennies, Delta has opted to do the technology work in-house.

Furthermore, as Randy goes on to say, take full advantage of the separate programs until they’re fully merged. They have different award levels, and you can save quite a few miles by redeeming with one program instead of the other in some cases.

It’s time for a reader photo. Thanks to mudba for sending in this one.

Correct Answer: Central Turkey (Cappadocia Region)
Winner: Gary

If you’d like your photo featured, please email it to me at onemileatatime@hotmail.com, along with the correct answer.

Via the December Priority Club Rewards Statement:

Exciting Changes are Underway!
We’re committed to offering InterContinental® Royal Ambassador members a level of personal service rarely experienced in today’s hectic business world. In February, we will be introducing a fresh new look to the Royal Ambassador programme with new benefits and a brand new web experience. Keep an eye out for these enhancements early next year.

Ambassadors got a similar email as well, so it seems like they’re totally restructing their loyalty program. While some seem to be optimistic about the changes, thinking they’ll add substantial benefits without taking anything huge away, I’m not really looking forward to this. Royal Ambassador status is already the most rewarding top tier elite level, so I see no reason for them to make it any better.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if they add a few benefits, but it’ll cost us dearly. I’m thinking the first thing they’ll eliminate is the free minibar. Next I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get rid of upgrades, or at least reduce the upgrades substantially. It seems like they’ll have some cool new web service based on this email, but I doubt it’ll make up for whatever they take away.

For those that still think the changes will be positive, look at the key word in the email — enhancements. Has that ever been used to describe a good change?

This year American is offering to extend Gold or Platinum status through February of 2010 for those that didn’t requalify for a hefty fee. The pricing is two tiered based on how close you got to status this year. Gold members that earned less than 20,000 miles or 24 segments would have to pay $449, while Gold members that flew more would pay $339. The fees to renew Platinum are $200 more.

Certainly no bargain, but I guess this could be worthwhile in certain situations, especially since American is now charging for elite challenges.

Starting July 2009 Delta will start flying LAX to SYD nonstop daily on their 777′s, operating the following schedule:

Delta Air Lines 17
Depart: 10:40 PM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)
Arrive: 6:40 AM +2 Sydney, NSW (SYD)

Delta Air Lines 16
Depart: 9:15 AM Sydney, NSW (SYD)
Arrive: 6:00 AM Los Angeles, CA (LAX)

Two things immediately come to mind. First of all, this really makes Delta live up to their self-titled “new global airline” status. They fly basically everywhere nowadays, and this will be a nice addition to their route network. Second of all, the return flight leaves awfully early, and as a result gets into LA really early. This can be a good thing or bad thing, depending on your travel preferences.

With Qantas and United already in the market and Delta and V Australia entering the market soon, we might finally see some decent fares to Australia. While Delta seems to be loading fares of $2,000+ as of now, I’m sure they’ll plummet nearly as fast as oil prices over the past few months.

Also, in the long run this means more award seats in the US to Australia market. With the added competition we’ll see a lot more seats and a lot more premium seats going empty, so over time I would expect to see more and more premium saver award seats.

A while back My Coke Rewards made their program useless by capping Priority Club redemptions at three per account. Since that was the only reasonable award for me, it destroyed any value in the program. The workaround was opening a new account after three redemptions, but that’s a violation of the rules.

Well, it seems like some middle ground has been reached. We’re now able to redeem for up to two Priority Club rewards per 30 day period, which seems reasonable.

A major point of discussion given the upcoming Continental and United partnership/alliance has been lounge access, since Continental’s Presidents Clubs are far superior to United’s Red Carpet Clubs.

While Continental and Northwest have liberal lounge access rules when it comes to accessing partner lounges, I speculated that it would be a bit different with United, since Continental’s lounges are superior in every way to United’s, while that wasn’t the case with Continental and Northwest.

Well, maybe I was wrong. Check this out. Basically Red Carpet Club members and United international first and business class passengers will now be able to access the Presidents Club in Las Vegas. While this is only one location, it seems to suggest that we might see more of this in the future.

This could mean that once the alliance is finalized, Red Carpet Club members could have access to the Presidents Clubs, even when traveling on United, as opposed to just when traveling on Continental.

That would be great news!

I requested a BMI status match last Thursday night, and got upgraded to Gold status today. An elite card (such as Northwest Platinum) is enough to get matched. I didn’t have to send an account statement or anything.

There are rumors going around that BMI will stop status matching soon, which wouldn’t surprise me, so I figured I’m better off safe than sorry, even though I don’t have any travel plans in the next few weeks.

We ended up arriving at SFO at around 9:05PM. I was a bit bummed since both of the previous flights showed as sold out, yet neither needed volunteers. I headed to the gate for my SFO-JFK redeye, and was surprised to hear the gate agent making an announcement asking for volunteers to take the EWR redeye instead. Despite having a confirmed business class seat I added my name to the volunteer list, since I’d gladly trade a transcon upgrade for a free ticket or travel credits.

I was surprised by the size of the upgrade waitlist, since there are only 72 coach seats. There were around 25 people waitlisted for business class, 11 of which were 1K’s (or at least that’s what I overheard the GA saying)! I noticed that there was only one person on the upgrade waitlist for first class, while there were three seats remaining. I figured that if I didn’t get a bump I might as well try for an upgrade to first class, since they needed to fill all the seats.

Eventually they announced they wouldn’t need volunteers, but I decided to stick around the boarding area anyway. I waited for most people to board (except for the five or so people that didn’t have seat assignments yet), and as I went up to the boarding pass scanner I asked “Are you by any chance selling upgrades for cash to first class?” The agent paused for a moment, started typing, mumbled something to his colleague about a 1K, and out comes a boarding pass for 1B! He says “Thanks for being a 1K with us.”

I was shocked, especially since at least half the passengers on this flight were 1K’s or up. While I wasn’t planning on actually paying for an upgrade to first, I figured I would give the strategy a try, and didn’t actually expect it to work.

The flight was great, although way too fast (as the Captain said, “It’ll take us a smokin’ hot 4.5 hours tonight”). The first class crowd was exactly what I expected for a Monday night redeye, and I got a few looks because I was just about the only person not wearing a suit with a tie. The guy next to me was a proud Global Service — I say proud because he made sure that I saw his boarding pass — and a surprisingly nice guy.

I had a snack after takeoff and then went straight to sleep. I remember being woken up by an announcement about half way through the flight asking if there were any doctors aboard, but I thought it was a dream, at least until we landed at JFK and the purser announced that all passengers should stay seated because paramedics would be coming aboard and going to the back of the plane. I never found out what happened, but there was a stretcher in the jetway and about three paramedics that boarded.

The best part of flying F was being able to use the International First Lounge upon landing while waiting for my connection. For the three hours I was there I only saw one other passenger, and this place is staffed with two to three people at a time – talk about a place UA could do some cost cutting!

I totally suck at my celebrity identification skills or else I’d have a story. The Global Services/Celebrity concierge answered the phone in the IFL and said something like “Ok, so she’ll be here in five minutes….. I’ll come down to meet her then.” Of course I have no clue who the heck she was, but I assume she was someone at least semi-well known. She came in wearing sweats and a sweatshirt, and sat in a chair reading magazines for about 30 minutes, before her flight to LA boarded. She was escorted to the plane by the concierge, so now I’m left wondering who she is.

Regardless, a most enjoyable experience.

Yesterday was an interesting day of flying. Due to strong headwinds I ended up misconnecting at LAX, and got rebooked on a 6PM LAX to SFO flight. It was showing as booked out, so I was hoping for a bump. Unfortunately the flight kept getting pushed back, first to 7PM, and then to nearly 8PM. Of course they only broke the news to us in ten minute increments, in typical gate agent fashion.

There was an Italian passenger, flying LAX-SFO-MUC-NAP on an award ticket, waiting for the gate agent. He had a strong accent and some trouble speaking English, but was worried that he would misconnect at SFO, since his SFO-MUC flight left at 9:15PM and we were scheduled into SFO at 9PM (and I thought that was an optimistic arrival time). The gate agent sort of blew him off, while all of the other passengers were trying to help him. Unfortunately most of the passengers were just as clueless as he was (“Oh, you’ll make it fine, it’s a three minute walk once you get to SFO”), so I stepped in and tried to help. There was a nonstop Lufthansa LAX-MUC flight at 9PM, and that seemed like the only alternative, since misconnecting in SFO was inevitable, and he would end up having to pay for a hotel and arrive home 24 hours late at the very earliest.

I went with him to the customer service desk, and explained the issue to the agent. While she was competent, she wasn’t really willing to go above and beyond. Someone had rebooked him on the nonstop Lufthansa LAX-MUC flight (apparently at check-in as a backup), but the ticket wasn’t reissued and Lufthansa was refusing to accept it, since it was a mileage award ticket and the “X” bucket wasn’t available. The guy only made the situation worse by panicking and constantly asking the agent questions, which only annoyed the agent, especially since he asked me to handle the situation since I had a better grasp of what was going in. It cracked me up when he even said “You can rebooked me in business class too, that would be fine.” Hah!

Long story short the agent said that Lufthansa wasn’t willing to accept the ticket unless the “X” bucket was available, and it wasn’t, so she basically said “tough luck,” and that he should fly to SFO and deal with the agents there (after having misconnected). First I tried to reason with her and explained that I understood she was doing her best, but that misconnecting was inevitable and ultimately United and Lufthansa were codeshare and alliance partners, so there had to be a better solution. She ultimately gave up, so I tried to get her to escalate it to a higher authority, but flight time was quickly approaching and I could see she didn’t really want to. We went back to the gate to try to deal with the agent there, since the agent that was there in the meantime seemed helpful enough.

Long story short, after spending about an hour trying to rebook him, we were finally successful. This agent went above and beyond, and called just about every supervisor she could find to make this work, at least after she received a bit of encouragement. He wished me a Merry Christmas, hugged me, and ran off to TBIT.

It’s always nice to help out another passenger, especially when agents are clearly blowing them off. This is especially easy for the agents to do when someone doesn’t speak the language well or isn’t exactly “in the know,” and I’m happy it worked out in the end. The lesson I learned is that logic can ultimately prevail; you just need the right agents to help out.

As luck would have it, the airline karma Gods smiled down upon me later that night. Stay tuned…..