It’s rare that I get really, truly f*&^@$% angry at a loyalty program. Hilton had a more or less unprecedented devaluation of their HHonors program earlier in the year, though I still couldn’t really be mad at them. They made an extreme business decision, but at least they provided a bit of advance notice, and time will tell whether it was in their best interest or not.

But for the first time in a while I’m angry. Really, really angry. And the target of my anger is the Lifemiles program. AviancaTaca is a newcomer to Star Alliance, and their award program has looked promising, for reasons I outlined in this post.

However, last week they raised award prices in many markets without any advance notice. Not only did they not provide any advance notice, but they didn’t make any sort of an announcement either. And that wasn’t even the first time. Back in December of last year they devalued their award chart as well with no advance notice or announcement of any sort.

And now for a third time they’ve devalued their program with no advance notice or announcement whatsoever. Up until now you’ve only needed 40% of the miles for a redemption, while the remaining 60% of miles could be purchased for 1.275 cents each. Based on doing award searches on lifemiles.com, they’ve raised the cost of that.

For example, below is a business class award between Detroit and Frankfurt, which ordinarily costs 52,500 miles. Using the “flexible payment” option, previously you could have knocked off 31,000 miles for $395.25. However, now they’re charging $483.79 for the 31,000 miles, which is 1.56 cents per mile. So they’ve basically raised the cost from 1.275 cents to 1.56 cents per mile, which is a ~22% increase.

Look Lifemiles, I understand you’re new to Star Alliance and it’s natural for you to want to tweak the numbers so they work in your favor. I think we can all understand that. But you can’t — CAN’T — make devaluations without some advance notice, or at the very least without an announcement.

Sadly they don’t seem to have a Twitter account, but I’d highly recommend we all write on Lifemiles’ Facebook page to let them know this isn’t okay. I’d really appreciate if you guys could join me, regardless of whether you have Lifemiles or not. We’re all in this together in the miles and points game, and I think it’s important to let them know what they’re doing isn’t okay, if for no other reason than to prevent similar actions from other loyalty programs in the future.

(Tip of the hat to Canadian Kilometers)

Posted on May 23rd, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Other Airlines | 34 Comments »

Introduction
Aloft San Francisco Airport
Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco
Cathay Pacific First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to Singapore
St. Regis Singapore
Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge Singapore
SilkAir Business Class Singapore to Koh Samui
Conrad Koh Samui
Bangkok Airways Economy Class Koh Samui to Bangkok
Le Meridien Bangkok
Thai Airways Royal Silk Business Class Lounge Bangkok
Royal Jordanian Business Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

As I sit here and try to write this installment, I just can’t get any words out. It’s not that I don’t know what to say, it’s that I have so much to say and I don’t know where to begin. Truthfully this has been the most difficult trip report I’ve ever written, simply because with every installment I’ve had flashbacks of this flight in my head, and I feel like a total idiot about it. So let me give it a shot, at least…

Royal Jordanian 182
Bangkok (BKK) – Hong Kong (HKG)
Saturday, March 30
Depart: 3:25PM
Arrive: 7:00PM
Duration: 2hr35min
Aircraft: Airbus A330
Seat: 3H (Business Class)

I was kind of excited to try Royal Jordanian on this route. Bangkok to Hong Kong is one of those unique routes that’s operated by a bunch of carriers on a “fifth freedom” basis. Heck, Emirates, Ethiopian, Kenya Airways, and Royal Jordanian all operate this flight as a “tag.” So rather than flying Cathay Pacific on the route in their regional business class we decided to fly Royal Jordanian. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to sample them without flying them longhaul. It’s my goal to review as many airlines as possible, so I couldn’t not do it. Besides, I’d flown the three Middle Eastern giants — Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar — and was curious to see how Royal Jordanian compared.

Upon boarding through door 1L we were acknowledged by three flight attendants. They were all Jordanian men and wearing pinstriped button downs, which actually looked pretty sharp.

We quickly found our seats in row three. Royal Jordanian has angled flat seats in business class on their A330s and while they’re probably not the most comfortable in the world for longhaul flights, for a flight between Bangkok and Hong Kong they’re tough to beat. The design and colors of the seats were sufficiently neutral so that I neither loved nor hated them. The cabin consisted of 24 seats across four rows, each of which was in a 2-2-2 configuration.


Our seats in row three


Seats in row four


Legroom

At each seat was an unwrapped pillow and blanket.


Pillow and blanket Read More…

Posted on May 22nd, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Other Airlines, Travel, Trip Reports | 55 Comments »

A reader emailed me to ask if I could write a tutorial on searching Etihad award space. I wrote a tutorial back in October of 2011 when Etihad’s partnership with American began, though Etihad has redesigned their website since then, so I realize perhaps it’s not self explanatory anymore.

As a refresher, you can most practically redeem American AAdvantage and ANA Mileage Club miles for travel on Etihad. American has a zone based partner award chart and doesn’t levy fuel surcharges for travel on Etihad. ANA, meanwhile, has a distance based partner award chart, and does levy fuel surcharges for travel on Etihad. It’s worth noting that Etihad has embedded fuel surcharges, meaning it’s not always so easy to tell what the fuel surcharges are, since they don’t appear on the “surface” when doing a fare search. The last time I booked a roundtrip business class award ticket through ANA between New York and Abu Dhabi, the taxes and fuel surcharges totaled about $900.

Anyway, the best place to search Etihad award space is on Etihad Airways’ website. You first need to join their Etihad Guest program if you haven’t yet, which is free and can be done here.

Once you’re logged into your account click on “Your Miles” in the left tab and then “How to Redeem.”

From there, on the left of the page click on “Click here to book flight” under the “How to redeem” section.

From there just enter your origin, destination, dates, and desired class of service, and then click “Select Flights.”

When you get to the results page, you’ll want to look for “GuestSeat” availability. If there’s not GuestSeat availability then you won’t be able to book that flight. As you can see below, there’s no first class GuestSeat availability from Washington to Abu Dhabi on June 9.

Meanwhile on June 16 there’s one first class award seat from Abu Dhabi to New York.

You can easily use the calendar function along the top of the page to search multiple days quickly, and then use the arrows to scroll forwards or backwards a week.

Always keep in mind that the mileage costs listed are irrelevant if you’re redeeming through another program. You do need the GuestSeat availability, though the price you’ll be charged is per the respective award chart of the airline you’re redeeming with.

So the redesigned website is actually an improvement over the old website, as it’s now much easier to search for saver award space. And that’s good, because in many cases Etihad is a great option for award travel.

Posted on May 20th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Advice, Awards, Etihad | 13 Comments »

In theory the past year or so has been exciting on the Emirates first class award redemption front. Back in October 2012, Japan Airlines actually improved their partner award chart to the point that award redemptions on Emirates became more lucrative. Then earlier this year Alaska Airlines published their award chart for travel on Emirates. So in theory things have been looking up as far as redeeming miles for travel on Emirates goes, though unfortunately that’s not the case, because Emirates has been progressively releasing less and less award space.

When I make posts like this I try to study the award availability trends so I can draw some conclusions. For example, Lufthansa doesn’t release first class award space to partner airlines more than 15 days out, and I think that’s a useful data point.

But unfortunately I’m struggling with drawing conclusions about what Emirates is doing, other than saying that first class award availability has gotten a lot worse. In the past it wasn’t too difficult to get two first class award seats on “prime” A380 flights. First class award seats on other aircraft was a near guarantee — for example, when Emirates launched service to Seattle, they had two first class award seats on almost every flight.

Anyway, that’s not the case anymore. There aren’t many conclusive statements I can make about Emirates first class award availability, though there are a few things I generally find to be true:

  • Emirates is releasing a lot less first class award space across the board than before
  • Emirates is almost never releasing more than one A380 first class award space more than 30 days out
  • Emirates seems to sometimes be releasing an extra award seat about four weeks out
  • Emirates seems to sometimes be releasing two award seats about two weeks out

For example, two weeks out there are exactly two first class seats between Seattle and Dubai and also between Dubai and Seattle.

However, looking at award space for all of next year as far as the schedule is released, there’s not a single first class award seat from Dubai to Seattle the entire year, while there are less than a dozen dates with a single first class award seat between Seattle and Dubai.

But unfortunately the situation is even worse than that when redeeming Alaska miles, according to this FlyerTalk post. Basically Alaska can’t piece together an itinerary if a one-way involves more than one segment, but rather has to use married segments.

Let me explain in the form of an example — say you want to fly from Seattle to Dubai to Tokyo on Emirates. Say two weeks out Emirates opens up first class award space on Seattle to Dubai, but has nothing from Dubai to Tokyo, so you just lock in your award as far as Dubai. Then say a few days later first class award space opens up on Dubai to Tokyo. You can’t just add that segment in first class to the itinerary, but rather first class award space has to be available on both segments in order to make that change. This makes booking a multi-segment Emirates award extremely difficult, especially for two people.

So anyway, given that Emirates first class is for the most part no longer bookable on ex-CMB fares (at least under the “EK” code), RIP Emirates first class for cheap (for the most part). They’re certainly going the way of Lufthansa in terms of only releasing space close to departure, though unlike Lufthansa they’re screwing over their own members and their partner airlines’ members.

Now here’s to hoping Alaska makes one-way awards on Emirates possible soon, which will at least make this a little bit easier.


Infamous Emirates A380 shower suite

Posted on May 20th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Emirates | 25 Comments »

Lufthansa offers one of my favorite first class products in the world, though unfortunately over the past few years it has become progressively more difficult to redeem miles for it. They only release first class award space to partner airlines at most ~15 days before departure, and even within that timeframe I’ve found they’re becoming stingier with releasing award space to the point that it’s tough to even find one first class award seat within a few days of departure in many of their premium markets (basically anywhere other than Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Montreal, Vancouver, etc.).

One thing that causes a lot of confusion regarding Lufthansa first class award space is that for over a year now United’s website has been showing phantom first class award availability on Lufthansa. Not only has United’s website shown Lufthansa first class award space more than ~15 days out that wasn’t actually available, but it has also not shown the correct award space within the timeframe where it’s actually released. In other words, United’s website has been utterly useless for searching Lufthansa first class availability. That’s not a huge deal, given that the ANA website can be used to accurately search Lufthansa first class award space, though it is a bit of a pain to use since you have to search route by route.

There’s finally good news as of a few days ago, though — best I can tell United has fixed their phantom Lufthansa first class award availability issue for the most part. For one, I no longer see them incorrectly showing Lufthansa first class award space more than ~15 days out. I also find that when the United website shows Lufthansa first class award space within ~15 days of departure, it’s accurate.

However, there’s one case in which I don’t find availability displayed by United to be accurate. Take a look at space from Frankfurt to Detroit in first class, for example. ANA shows award space every day between May 22 and June 2, which is 15 days from now.

United.com shows award space for all those dates as well, except June 2. When I checked about eight hours ago (Saturday afternoon) it didn’t show space for June 1 either. So it seems now that United’s website is only showing space for travel within 14 days. That means if Lufthansa releases award space 15 days out, United’s website won’t immediately pick it up. I’m willing to bet that in another 24 hours United’s website will show the space for June 2 as well.

But since award availability can accurately be searched on ANA’s website, why should you care about United’s website now displaying Lufthansa first class award space accurately (for the most part)?

Because ExpertFlyer.com lets you set availability alerts for flights, whereby they’ll email or text you when the space you’re looking for opens up (you specify the flight and fare class you’re looking for). Up until now this has been useless for Lufthansa first class, because ExpertFlyer is pulling their availability from United’s website. That means if United’s website was incorrectly showing Lufthansa first class award space you’d get an alert. Similarly if Lufthansa first class award space was actually available but just wasn’t showing on United’s website, you wouldn’t get an alert.

Anyway, Lufthansa first class award space is tougher than ever before to find, so being able to set ExpertFlyer alerts and getting accurate results is more valuable than ever. Here’s a post I wrote on how to use ExpertFlyer to set award availability alerts.


Hopefully this makes finding Lufthansa first class award space with partner miles a bit easier…

Posted on May 19th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Advice, Awards, Lufthansa, United | 21 Comments »

Reader Brad sent me an email asking the following:

I just tried to book an award ticket using American miles from Los Angeles to Hong Kong by way of New York. In a previous post you wrote this should be allowed since it does not exceed the MPM by more than 25%, yet the agent told me that routing would require two awards. Any clue why?

I believe Brad is referring to this post, in which I covered three major topics related to redeeming American AAdvantage partner awards, which I’ll very briefly recap:

1) American will let you exceed the maximum permitted mileage (MPM) for a city pair by up to 25% on an award reservation. For example, from Los Angeles to Hong Kong the MPM is 8,698 miles, and 25% more than that is 10,872 miles. Los Angeles to New York to Hong Kong is 10,547 miles, so in theory it should be allowed.

2) In order for an award routing to be legal, the transoceanic carrier has to publish a fare between the origin and destination. For example, Etihad publishes a fare between New York and Male, but not between Tampa and Male. So if you want to fly to Male using American miles on Etihad, you’d have to book your ticket from Tampa to New York separately.

3) On an award you can’t transit a third region (other than the region of your origin and destination), unless it falls on the exception table, listed in this post.

But back to the point of this post. Should Brad be allowed to route from Los Angeles to Hong Kong via New York since it exceeds the MPM by less than 25%? Sort of.

American has seemingly contradictory policies. On one hand they say you exceed the MPM by up to 25%, but on the other hand they also say say that “passenger must travel the most direct routing.” Those two seemingly contradict one another, don’t they?

That’s because American’s award routing rules are based on intent and not necessarily numbers. Back in the day mileage running was great because most airlines would let you make three or four connections in each direction on a domestic ticket. Why? Because the assumption was that nobody on earth would want to fly more than they have to, and that if someone was making multiple connections it was out of necessity based on availability. Of course we proved them wrong, and over the past few years airlines have tightened up the fare rules on domestic tickets, now that they’ve seen some of us actually do like making extra connections to earn more miles.

I think what it all comes down to is this clause from a memo on flex awards that’s posted on Traveling Better, which I think seems to apply to most American awards nowadays:

The number of awards assessed should be determined by the customer’s intentions. If the indirect routing is booked at the customer’s request, multiple awards should apply using Pricing Override Options – Force Fare Breakpoint. If the routing is booked based on lack of award availability on direct routes, then an exception may be made, allowing Sabre to price as one award.

So basically you should be allowed to exceed the MPM by up to 25%, but only if it’s not your intention to do that. So if you’re still intent on routing via New York, perhaps approach this a bit differently. When you call American don’t say “I’d like to fly from Los Angeles to Hong Kong via New York. I have the flights that are available, so may I give them to you?” Perhaps instead ask what’s available, and when they can’t find anything, say “shoot, I really need to fly on those dates, do you mind maybe checking award space via another Cathay Pacific gateway city?” See if they’ll suggest New York, which they might if they’re creative. Otherwise it can’t hurt to suggest it at that point if they don’t.

So it’s odd for a company this big to have rules based on intentions and not purely what the computer will price, though hopefully by understanding this you can modify your approach towards booking a “complex” routing using an AAdvantage partner award.

Posted on May 17th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Advice, American, Awards | 25 Comments »

Lifemiles is one of the most exciting new Star Alliance frequent flyer programs, given that they’ve been offering 100% bonuses on purchased miles several times since joining the Star Alliance, including last December and in April. They’re a great program because they sell miles cheaper than any other program I can think of, have reasonable redemption rates, allow one-way awards, and don’t impose fuel surcharges on award redemptions, among other reasons. I shared my reasoning for why I purchased Lifemiles during the last promotion here.

At the same time I don’t have much “faith” in the program. They don’t have all that much to lose in the US market yet — even though they did win a Freddie Award — so if they try to pull a “fast one” on us they’ll more easily get away with it.

And that’s exactly what they’ve done. You can find their new Star Alliance award chart here (which, interestingly, I don’t actually know how to access from the Lifemiles website). On the plus side they’ve “cleaned up” the award chart. Previously the pricing was completely off depending on which side of the chart you started searching on. For example, the prices listed from North Asia to South Asia were different than the prices listed from South Asia to North Asia.

Unfortunately they’ve also increased the redemption rates in many markets. Basically the cost of business class awards has gone up by about 5,000-10,000 miles for many city pairs, so it’s not a complete Aeroplan or British Airways style slaughtering of the award chart, but still pretty bad without any notice.

The good news is that best I can tell they haven’t updated the prices in many markets yet, so you should still be able to book awards at the old rates. For example, searching for travel between the US and Singapore (South Asia) returns a cost of 62,500 miles one-way (which is the old price), while it should be 65,000 miles under the new chart.

So it should still be possible to lock in some redemptions at the old rates before they update the booking engine.

I don’t like how they’re doing it, but hey, I’m not surprised they’re doing it and I guess it could be worse.

(Tip of the hat to LoyaltyLobby)

Posted on May 15th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Other Airlines | 9 Comments »

Introduction
Aloft San Francisco Airport
Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco
Cathay Pacific First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to Singapore
St. Regis Singapore
Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge Singapore
SilkAir Business Class Singapore to Koh Samui
Conrad Koh Samui
Bangkok Airways Economy Class Koh Samui to Bangkok
Le Meridien Bangkok
Royal Jordanian Business Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

SilkAir 772
Singapore (SIN) – Koh Samui (USM)
Monday, March 25
Depart: 9:00AM
Arrive: 9:50AM
Duration: 1hr50min
Aircraft: Airbus A319
Seat: 2C (Business Class)

Upon boarding we were welcomed by two flight attendants dressed in bright orange and green uniforms. They directed us to our seats in row two.


View of the coach cabin from business class

The SilkAir A319s have eight business class seats, each with about 40 inches of pitch (slightly more than domestic first class in the US). At each seat was a pillow and blanket.


Our seats


Legroom

Each seat had a legrest which wasn’t especially useful with only 40″ of pitch, and three manual control levers on the right side of the seat.


Seat controls Read More…

Posted on May 14th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Singapore, Travel, Trip Reports | 21 Comments »

Introduction
Aloft San Francisco Airport
Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco
Cathay Pacific First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to Singapore
St. Regis Singapore
Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge Singapore
SilkAir Business Class Singapore to Koh Samui
Conrad Koh Samui
Bangkok Airways Economy Class Koh Samui to Bangkok
Le Meridien Bangkok
Royal Jordanian Business Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

We arrived at Changi Airport terminal two at around 7:30AM.


Terminal exterior


Terminal interior


Departures board

We quickly found the SilkAir business class check-in counter, where there was no queue. Within a couple of minutes our boarding passes were printed and we were invited to use the Silver Kris Lounge.


SilkAir check-in Read More…

Posted on May 13th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Singapore, Travel, Trip Reports | 15 Comments »

Introduction
Aloft San Francisco Airport
Cathay Pacific Lounge San Francisco
Cathay Pacific First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to Singapore
St. Regis Singapore
Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge Singapore
SilkAir Business Class Singapore to Koh Samui
Conrad Koh Samui
Bangkok Airways Economy Class Koh Samui to Bangkok
Le Meridien Bangkok
Royal Jordanian Business Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

We landed at around 6:40AM, and by the time we cleared transit security and found ourselves at The Wing it was 7:10AM, meaning we had less than 20 minutes in the lounge before we needed to head to the gate for our 8AM departure. This was actually my first visit to The Wing since it was renovated, though I’ll share most of my impressions of the lounge with my return trip report, where I had a much longer (and more eventful) layover than on the outbound.


The Wing seating

Once in The Wing I requested a cabana so I could grab a quick shower. My gosh, these are probably the nicest shower rooms in any airport, and that includes those in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal in Frankfurt.


Cabana


Cabana


Cabana Read More…

Posted on May 9th, 2013 by lucky
Filed under: Awards, Cathay Pacific, Travel, Trip Reports | 59 Comments »

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