A pleasant surprise in my email today. Effective 1 January 2011, Delta frequent flyer miles no longer expire.  Delta still has wording enabling accounts to be terminated for non-activity and non-response to contact (whatever that means).  So it isn’t quite in agreement with the email wording – “no asterisk, no fine print, no ifs, ands or buts”.

I think it is a good move, particularly those who have gotten orphan miles (eg through involuntary rereoute onto Delta from another airline).  Gary Leff isn’t quite so convinced.

I’ve updated my summary of frequent flyer mileage expiry policies for all major airlines.  Hopefully some other frequent fleyr programs follow suit.

Qantas has announced a raft of changes to their frequent flyer program which will become effective over a period of several months.

From 1 October 2010:

• GAIN Silver status requires 300 status credits to earn and 250 to requalify (down from 350 and 300 respectively).
• GAIN (temporary) Partner Gold status can be applied to anyone on reaching 2100 status credits (currently limited to partner residing at the same address).  Offer valid only until 3 May 2011 and cannot be combined with Platinum+ benefit (see next bullet point).
• GAIN (net) new Platinum+ benefit at 2400 status credits – a choice of Complimentary Gold (replaces current Partner Gold benefit), 3 complimentary Qantas valet parking or chaffeured transport invitations, or 50,000 bonus points.

From 1 December 2010:

• LOSS increase in award assistance and change fees (eg from 2500 to 3500 points)
• LOSS increase in points transfer fee
• LOSS removal of option to pay lost ticket replacement fee in points (cash fee is unchanged)
• GAIN reduction in replacement card fee (from A$25/2500 points to A$10/1000 points)

From 1 February 2011:

• LOSS Qantas Club members and Silver lose priority check in on domestic flights (benefit is retained for international).
• LOSS Platinum loses anytime lounge access, but can use lounges on arrival provided flying on Qantas, Jetstar, Jetstar Asia or Oneworld.

From 4 May 2011:

• GAIN Silver gets increased award availability for classic awards flying Qantas (an existing benefit for Gold and Platinum).
• LOSS 2nd increase in award assistance fee for international tickets (to 6000 points, currently 2500)
• LOSS increase in service fee, and these are added to any other applicable fees

From 1 June 2011 (travel date for tickets purchased on or after 1 December 2010):

• LOSS change in checked baggage allowance for domestic economy class from weight concept to piece concept (1 piece with maximum weight less than old limit).
• GAIN change in checked baggage allowance for domestic business class from weight concept to piece concept (2 pieces with maximum weight per piece).
• GAIN Qantas Club members, Silver, Gold, increase in checked baggage allowance for international business and first class (excluding travel via Americas)
• GAIN Platinum increase in checked baggage allowance for international all classes (excluding travel via Americas)

Overall changes are:

• negative for Bronze (no status)
• negative for Qantas Club
• mixed for Silver – lose some benefits and gain others
• negative for Gold (due to the higher fees)
• mixed for Platinum – lose some benefits and gain others
• small positive for Platinum+ even though the threshold is higher there are more options which helps those for whom the current Partner Gold benefit is worthless

Changes to the airline alliances continue with confirmation that Shanghai Airlines will leave Star Alliance at 31 October 2010. 

The alliance status of some of the Chinese airlines has been up in the air for a while due to the complicated and evolving cross-ownerships in each other – Shanghai is in the process of being merged with China Eastern, which earlier this year announced an intention to join Sky Team.  China Eastern is itself partly owned by both Cathay Pacific (Oneworld) and Air China (Star Alliance). So it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Shanghai Airlines would leave Star Alliance.

Travellers on Shanghai Airlines will now have a period of a year or two without alliance benefits but existing Star Alliance awards on Shanghai Airlines for travel after October will be honoured. Those flying on paid tickets on Shanghai Airlines from November will no longer be able to earn Star Alliance frequent flyer status miles.  Whether redeemable miles can continue to be earnt will depend on the frequent flyer program being credited to as some may continue to have Shanghai Airlines as a non-alliance partner and others may drop them.

A few months ago many savvy readers with bmi Diamond Club accounts got a scare with the purported closure of the generous frequent flyer program. It turned out to be a false alarm – Diamond Club was closing accounts in a few countries only (see details here).

At a recent investor day, Lufthansa revealed the timetable for Diamond Club closure (see presentation).  Lufthansa says the 2012 accounts will reflect the full effect of Diamond Club closure. This means Diamond Club will be closed by around 30 June 2011.  Other aspects of integration refer to a country by country approach, and this may continue to be used for account closures.

We have other hints from the Lufthansa treatment of Brussels Airline and Swiss programs.  Roughly 6 months notice was given of changes.

Hat tip to Miles Quest for their alert that the job of Director of United Mileage Plus Integrated Marketing is available.

Yesterday the bmi website suggested that Diamond Club is closing 16 May.  Today a bmi official lurker posted on Flyer Talk that only Diamond Club members in some markets (the ones they no longer serve) are being transferred 16 May.

However, I think this is only a temporary reprieve. Clearly Diamond Club is in the process of being closed. Transferring members to Lufthansa Miles and More, changes to some partner offers (eg branded credit cards) and promotions are not signs that the program has long to live.

If you have lots of bmi miles then my advice remains to use them before they get significantly devalued.

Edited to add: Reports from those who are in the process of being transferred is that bmi Silver is being matched to Lufthansa Frequent Traveller, bmi Gold is being matched to Lufthansa Senator, but the Lufthansa status is valid until February 2012. This means to requalify they need to do so either in 2010 or 2011 calendar years.

As promised, I am answering some of Wendy Perrin’s readers’ frequent flyer questions. This batch of questions deals with which program works best in different circumstances.

Read More…

As promised, I am answering some of Wendy Perrin’s readers’ frequent flyer questions. This batch of questions deals with a wide range of problems including credit cards, awards vs upgrades, cancelled tickets, United Mileage Plus starnet filtering and more.

Read More…

When Virgin America launched their frequent flyer program eleVAte a significant criticism was the lack of earning and redemption on other Virgin airlines.

Finally, eleVATe members can now earn points when flying Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, Polynesian Blue and V Australia. No redemptions are yet possible, and no word on when earning and redemption of frequent flyer miles will be possible on Virgin Atlantic.

In the other direction, neither Virgin Blue Velocity Rewards nor Virgin Atlantic Flying Club allows earning or redemption on Virgin America.

Confused? The following summary may help. VX is Virgin America, VS is Virgin Atlantic and DJ/VA is Virgin Blue, Pacific Blue, Polynesian Blue and V Australia.

• VX members can now earn points on DJ/VA flights. No redemptions.
• DJ/VA members can earn points, earn status credits and redeem on VS flights.
• VS members can earn miles (but not tier points) and redeem on DJ/VA flights.
• DJ/VA and VS members cannot earn or redeem on VX flights.

I recently posted about a ticket where all 16 flights have been changed. It is best if you find out as soon as possible when significant schedule changes to any of your bookings occur. Significant here means has a consequential impact – which could be missing an onward flight, requiring a change in flights/route, missing a night of already paid for accommodation or requiring an extra night, missing a cruise, etc.

The reason is because by being informed as early as possible you maximise your options. More on this later.

How to keep informed

There are a number of things you can easily do to keep up to date.

1. Make sure whoever you booked with (whether airline or travel agent) has your phone and email contact details.
2. Regularly look up your booking for travel on a single airline on that airline’s website. This is usually called “manage your booking” or similar. Not every airline provides online view of bookings.
3. Some airlines (eg Qantas) also allow bookings with your frequent flyer number entered against them to be viewed when logged into your account.
4. Use the public websites which access airline CRS (computerised reservation system). There are a few sites and you need to use the correct one for the airline you have ticketed with – see my previous post to find out the site to use to look up tickets for all major airlines.
5. Close to travel dates, keep informed of major disruptions such as those during disasters or strikes. News media alert of the potential for an issue and most airlines will have a disruptions or breaking news page or alert prominent on the website.

Twice a year schedule disruption

Major airlines and major airports coordinate schedules in 2 six-month periods – Northern Summer from April to September and Northern Winter from October to March.  Conveniently the start and end of each “season” loosely coincides with the start and end of daylight savings in the countries which have daylight savings time in their summer.  The non-alignment of daylight savings dates and travel between northern and southern hemispheres means there are some scheduling issues for most international airlines around those dates.

Anyway, when most of the schedules for the next season are worked out, well in advance of course, it is common for airline systems, websites, etc to take several days to adjust all the impacted flights and bookings.

This means you need to be careful not to assume a schedule change has created a problem.  For example it may be the first flight has been retimed in your booking but the second has not yet but will do so to restore the connection.

The ticket I referred to above, with 16 flights changing, is a good example of ongoing changes. It is also an example of a ticket for travel in a subsequent season being bought before the new season’s schedule was updated.

What to do about schedule changes?

How to deal with schedule changes is a big topic in itself, so I’ll follow up in a later post.