Posted by Seth on March 23, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Not willing to be outdone by the other major carriers, Delta announce today that they too will offer bonus elite miles for their customers. They even went so far as up the ante a bit, offering triple miles for some fares. This applies for Northwest customers, too.
The theory behind this type of promo is that the carriers need to drive revenue in the very near term (like before the end of Q2) to help make their numbers look almost passable rather than outright anemic. United, American, and Continental all chose a straight 100% bonus across the board. Continental isn’t even requiring that the tickets be new money spent. Delta, on the other has come up with a tiered approach, pushing more bonus miles at the top end of the fare spectrum and excluding the low end of the market.
Fares booked in the front cabin, as well as the top coach fares (J, C, D, S, I, F, A, Y, B, M) will all earn 300% MQMs in the SkyMiles program. These fares would normally earn 150% MQMs so it is only double normal but also triple the base number. Sure, someone is having fun with semantics there and whether it is truly double or triple miles is open for debate, I suppose, but I am willing to call it 300% MQMs and move on, especially since the other carriers are not doubling their class-of-service bonuses. So if you spend lots of money on Delta tickets you’re in really good shape.
For tickets booked in “normal” coach fares (H, K, Q) customers will earn 200% MQMs. This is essentially comparable to the promo from the other three carriers and is a nice match in that sense.
For tickets booked in the “discount” buckets (L, U, T) customers will earn 100% MQMs - no bonus. Delta has a habit of excluding these cheapest fares from promotions and they have done so again here. Basically they are acknowledging that the folks flying on the cheapest tickets are barely covering their costs (and possible not even that) so they get no bonus. This is much less generous than the promotions offered by the other three majors.
I cannot believe that I am typing this, as I rarely think that Delta has done things correctly with their SkyMiles program of late, but I actually applaud them for taking this approach. The are cutting off the bottom feeders which would really contribute to the bottom line anyways and rewarding the high spend customers. When the name of the game is promoting additional revenue this really makes sense. Yeah, a bunch of people will be pissed that they aren’t getting to qualify for top tier elite for less than $1500 like is possible on the other carriers, but that isn’t really what the carriers should be after. Kudos to Delta for actually trying to use the bonus to drive the behavior they want in their customers.
Posted by Seth on March 22, 2009 under News |
A couple bits of news on the “fee” front from over the weekend. Good news out of Oz as Qantas has cut one of the more irrational fees they have. Not so good news out of Chicago, however, as United added a somewhat significant fee to their arsenal, cutting a benefit that many travelers have taken advantage of for years.
First, the good news. Qantas, for reasons that I don’t quite understand, had a fee for joining their frequent flier program if you were a resident of Australia or New Zealand. Nothing like setting up a scheme to encourage loyalty and then charging folks a premium to join. Qantas finally appears to have gotten smart on this front and plans to cut the fee out of their scheme. They are also increasing their partner earning options, adding Woolworths and a number of restaurants into the fold. That’s good news down under.
United, on the other hand, has made another decision in an effort to shore up their books. For many years airline passengers in the United States have been able to buy tickets at any point, knowing that the fares might drop and that they could call the airlines and get a refund or credit for the difference. Over the past several years many airlines have cut that benefit. Specifically they charge the going rate of their “change fee” on restricted tickets. Most change fees these days are at least $150, which means that a fare has to drop a LOT for this type of deal to be of value. As of March 20, 2009, United has joined the ranks of the airlines charging for this sort of change. They did it very quietly, adding a note about the new “administrative fee” to the fine print in their fare rules on Friday afternoon. This has upset a number of customers (at least the ones who have figured this out over the weekend).
United is the last of the legacy carriers to apply this policy, so they aren’t alone by any means. There are still a few airlines that offer such a deal – jetBlue, Southwest and Alaska Airline – but overall it is a benefit that seems to be disappearing rapidly. And I’m completely OK with that. I’m sure that I’ve benefitted from the program at some point in my life. I don’t really remember it, but I am sure I did. It seems like something I would have paid attention to. But I cannot figure out why this sort of policy is really a great thing. I buy tickets when I’m happy with the price and don’t if I’m not. I get that it does take away one little chance that the customer has to get something back from the airline, but that is part of the game in my view. I don’t expect to pay them more when the fare goes up after I’ve bought my tickets, so why should I get money back if the fare drops?
The real question is whether this will help or hurt their revenue flow. There are probably cases of people spending money to confirm the ticket knowing that they can get a voucher if the fare drops, likely using yapta.com as a resource to know when that happens. So that was revenue now with vouchers issued later. If this policy change causes any drop in bookings that will mean a loss of “now” revenue though less lost future revenue, too. Plus the potential increased revenue of people paying the fee. Of course, as quietly as this happened I doubt that many people at all will notice or that it will really affect anything adversely for United, even as many frequent travelers cry wolf.
Posted by Seth on March 20, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Continental Airlines has joined American Airlines and United Airlines in offering double elite miles for travel this spring. Continental’s promotion is actually a bit more generous than that of United and American in that they are offering credit for flights previously booked, not just new spending. The program is valid for travel through June 20, 2009 and it requires registration here.
This makes even less sense to me than the offers from United and American. While those two carriers are looking to drive new revenue for their coffers, the Continental offer actually rewards both new and previously spent money. I’ve already got a couple short trips booked on Continental during the promotion period, so I’ll benefit from this promo. I’m also likely to book another trip or two if I can find a cheap one, so I guess that it will help produce some extra revenue for them from me, but I cannot believe that the revenue I’ll provide comes anywhere close to covering the costs of providing the service to me on the flights I will be booking, both for the immediate flights I will take and also the long term costs of providing me with more upgrades, fee waivers, lounge access, etc.
From the NYC area there are a number of very cheap flights available from Philadelphia to the west coast. They aren’t quite as cheap as the 3x run I did at the beginning of the month on the way to Tokyo, but with the double EQM bonus the cost per EQM is actually about 20% lower. The cheapest fares would seem to only get a 50% EQM bonus, not a 100% bonus, based on the wording in the fine print, but that is not yet confirmed so the exact nuance on those cheapest fares isn’t 100% clear. Still, bonus is good and the prices are low, meaning travel will happen for me. (Now clarified…) Cheap fares booked on www.continental.com get 200% EQMs while those booked elsewhere get 100% EQMs (instead of 50%). Fares typically eligible for 150% EQMs will earn 250%.
Even more interesting to me than the fact that Continental matched this promo is that there are a reasonably vocal number of their frequent fliers who actually didn’t want this promotion to come to Continental. I actually happen to agree with that point of view, as I like taking advantage of the benefits and prefer when they are exclusive, not given to anyone who shows up. It adds value to the program for the customers who actually invest the time and money to qualify. There will be a number of one-hit wonders in all three of these programs this year based on this promotion. It won’t really cost the carriers too much money, but it also won’t generate too much, so I’m not sure where the value lies.
In the meantime, fares are pretty cheap right now and you get double credit for elite status on three of the five majors in the United States. Seems like a good time to go flying. I almost wish I didn’t have so many trips previously booked. Nah…I’ll just book more anyways.
Posted by Seth on March 19, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Airlines seem to be paying scant attention to the economic downturn these days, with fare wars breaking out all over the place. Since Virgin America announced plans to start operating flights from the west coast to Boston American Airlines has been playing a lot of defense. Frequencies have been increased and bonus miles showered on customers.
Things got a bit more interesting today with an announcement from jetBlue that they, too, are entering the bonus fray. The carrier is offering a “buy 2, get 1 free” deal for their TrueBlue members until May 31st. The reward certificate will be issued after June 15th and is only valid until December 15th, so not particularly great there. Also, jetBlue is limiting the deal to a single bonus reward per customer, unlike the AA deal that is wide open for earning as many miles as one can handle flying. The single advantage that jetBlue seems to have is that they are offering to the deal for many more cities than AA is: Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, Denver and Las Vegas are all part of the promo. You have to register here if you plan to take advantage of this deal.
I continue to be amazed by the ability of jetBlue to take a reasonable promo opportunity and completely tweak it to squash the value that it could potentially have. I get that they aren’t out to give away the farm, but I also have to think that eventually their customers are going to wise up to the limitations of the TrueBlue program and realize that it really isn’t very good.
Posted by Seth on March 18, 2009 under TSA |
The TSA ruffled a lot of feathers several years ago when they initially started searching bags as folks boarded planes. Surely if the passenger was screened when they entered the terminal there was no need to do it all over again as then boarded the plane, right? And, over time, the gate searches tailed off and became one of those things that was remembered in stories about the days of yore rather than an everyday occurrence, at least for flights inside the US (many international flights headed to the USA have kept gate searches throughout the whole time.
And then a couple months ago it seemed that the gate searches were starting to make a comeback. They were showing up intermittently at airports around the country with no particular rhyme or reason. The TSA maintained their party line about “layers of security” and life moved on. At the same time, however, the “SSSS” designation on boarding passes for additional security screening started to be phased out. Indeed, such a notation is now a thing of the past as “Secure Flight” makes its way into the TSA and air travel (and that’s a whole different abomination, but more on that later). So now the TSA has all these folks standing around and the number of passengers subject to secondary screenings has been dramatically slashed. What to do?
Certainly firing those employees who no longer have work to do cannot be a reasonable approach. After all, we need high employment numbers these days any way we can get them, even if it costs billions of dollars. Instead, let’s pull out the folding tables again and start searching passengers at the gate. Again. Yippee.
It actually is rather entertaining to me in at least one sense – I like to see when people get their comeuppance, and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio seems to be the latest in the line of folks who got hit by the TSA inanity. Depending on which version of the story you believe DeFazio either flipped out at a TSA employee who pulled him aside for additional screening or calmly explained to the TSO that the check was “stupid.”
"I did not say, ‘Do you know who I am,’ or ‘You can’t do this’ or whatever," he said. "I went over there, I put my bag down and I said, ‘You know, this is stupid. You know, I helped to create the TSA. You know, I’m an expert on security.’ … I didn’t say, ‘You can’t look through my bag.’ I didn’t ask for any special privilege."
DeFazio said he may have mumbled a swear word under his breath but did not recall cursing the security screeners.
It turns out that DeFazio is on the House Transportation Committee and was actually involved in crafting the legislation that created the TSA. So his getting caught up in the annoyance and ineffective process that hinders thousands of passengers a day is actually a good thing in my mind. He finally gets to see the effects of his actions up close and realize how ridiculous it is. The rest of us have been living with it way more than he has.
[DeFazio] said the TSA tried random checks of passengers at the boarding gates but stopped after they were found to be ineffective. DeFazio said he recently noticed the TSA had reinstated the searches and that he intended to talk to the agency about them. He said the searches take staffers away from the main security checkpoints while failing to accomplish much.
Does any of this matter? Probably not. There is no way that any reasonable progress is going to be made in reforming the TSA or instituting a sense of actual responsibility and accountability in that organization in the near future. For one thing, they don’t have anyone running the department yet in the new administration. And besides, what Democratic congressman is going to vote to cut jobs and scale back the TSA? I didn’t think so.
Posted by Seth on March 17, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Business travel is down this year. There is no one arguing that fact. The carriers are all looking for ways to boost their numbers – thus far reasonably unsuccessfully – and it seems that there are a couple different approaches to the situation in play.
On one front, Continental is offering a stealth price guarantee program of sorts, with a $50 change fee on all transatlantic flights for the first 30 days after purchase. So if the fares drop within a month of the purchase you can get the new price for a $50 fee rather than the normal change fee of $250+ on those fares. Decent motivator, but not spectacular.
On another front, American Airlines is leading the charge to try to build up their elite passenger base with fewer miles flown through a repeat of their Double EQM Promotion from last year. The rules are simple enough. Fly between March 18th and June 15th and earn double EQMs for all flights on AA, American Eagle and American Connection. The bonus is only for EQMs, so no extra reward miles that can be redeemed for anything, but it still isn’t a horrible deal. Oh, and United is “expected to match” later this afternoon, though I’m not sure really who is expecting that or why. But that may happen.
I struggle trying to understand how this type of promotion is really good for the carriers in the long term. On the one hand, making passengers feel more welcome by giving them more benefits should drive customer loyalty. That would translate into a customer who knows that they are only going to fly 50K miles this year choosing one of the double EQM programs since they’ll get top-tier benefits for their no-so-top-tier flying pattern. On the other hand, however, it means a potential swelling of the elite ranks, which makes it difficult to truly provide distinctive service as the number of people at that tier is greater. If everyone is special, is anyone actually special?
I have no desire really to hit elite on AA or United. But I can see how this would be beneficial for a lot of folks out there with travel budgets that have been slashed who still want keep their status. Of course, if you’re not really traveling I’m pretty sure that the status is of little value, but that doesn’t seem to figure in to the calculations. And there is always the forward looking aspect of elite status, since flying today is really about earning status for next year, when travel numbers might be up again.
I’m going to be top tier again in my two programs of choice (Continental and bmi) and I’m pretty comfortable with that. And I can do it by taking advantage of the “normal” quirks of their programs rather than needing the double promotions.
Posted by Seth on March 16, 2009 under Uncategorized |
A spring trip out of the cold is a phenomenal idea. A bit of sun, some warm air and relaxing with nothing to do. In college that was spring break on a beach getting drunk and acting stupid. But as a little kid – or now as a very big kid – Spring Training seems to be the way to do it. Somehow, even growing up in Florida, I never managed to make it to Spring Training until now. What a shame. It was a TON of fun and certainly worth repeating.
The colors of spring were out it full force, the weather was a very welcome change from NYC’s and you can get ridiculously close to the action pretty easily. On Sunday a kid, probably about five years old, there for his very first time managed to snag a ball off the field from batting practice and then get it autographed by Johnny Damon. Not bad for his first time at the ballpark. I actually have no idea how he’ll ever top that one. On the bigger kid front, a woman managed to finally get her Tino Martinez jersey signed by the former first baseman, after what was apparently several years of trying.
Even better was that the players were happy to be interacting with the fans throughout all of this. They signed autographs, joked with folks in the stands and along the fence lines and genuinely appeared to be having a good time doing all of it. The fence at the practice field is even built with a cutout for fans to pass items through for autographs. Very cool indeed.
Our visit this past weekend was apparently a fortuitous choice in timing. We got to see Jorge Posada’s first start of the spring, Andy Pettitte’s first start of the spring and a couple pinch hit appearances from Robinson Cano, freshly back from the World Baseball classic.
The other nice “up close and personal” part of the weekend came from having a 500mm lens on my camera. Sure, I still had camera envy watching the guys down on the field with their very long, very fast lenses. But my reasonably slow (f/8), long lens still got the job done. Getting in tight on the shot and being able to mostly freeze the ball in action was a lot of fun for me.
We also got to see a couple legends roaming about during batting practice. In addition to the previously mentioned Tino Martinez, who is only marginally a legend in my mind, Mr. October, Reggige Jackson, was out on the field on Sunday and Yogi Berra was out on Saturday. Good times.
I took about 600 photos over the weekend and culled them to about 100 that were pretty good. I’m certainly not going to post all of them here as the post would be just too long. But they are all online. You can see them all here. Enjoy!
Posted by Seth on March 15, 2009 under Uncategorized |
It was the best of dining, it was the worst of dining. Service of attentiveness; service of apathy. Service based on answering customer questions and service based on sticking out boobs. Food of flavor and food of ridiculously bland. An enjoyable hour and a rather unpleasant one.
Yes, they were two very different dining experiences.
We’re down in Tampa for spring training ‘09 and headed out for dinner on Saturday night. We’re staying over near the airport and there is a mall and dining area not too far from where we were, so we were off to the Bay Street dining area to find some food. It is an upscale food court attached to the International Plaza shopping mall, with some real restaurants in addition to traditional mall staples (Chik-fil-a, etc.). The restaurants all opened on to a common open-air walkway that was actually pretty nice. But the dining experiences are very varied, depending on the restaurant you choose, as we found out.
We avoided the long line for the Cheesecake Factory and eventually found ourselves at the Blue Martini. I have to give credit where it is due, and the waitresses were certainly dressed to extract the most they could from the men there, but the entire rest of the experience was pretty awful. The highlight was probably the hostess’s cleavage as she wiped down the table we were at, but that didn’t make up for the miserable service or the bland food. Suffice it to say, we didn’t stick around for long.
After that we walked around the corner to The Grape. It is a combination of wine bar and wine store where the service was good and the food actually had flavor. It certainly was not the best meal I’ve ever had (or even close to it) but the difference between that at the Blue Martini was so shocking that it was greatly appreciated. The waiter actually stopped by our table several times throughout the meal, offered suggestions that were accurate and had a pretty comprehensive understanding of the wine offerings. Plus, the food actually had flavor – the flavor that the ingredients suggested it should. That was a major bonus.
Blue Martini is actually fine for people watching and drinking. But if you want something laid back and that serves decent food, I’d head around the corner to The Grape. A much better option.
PS- Sorry Mr. Dickens.
Posted by Seth on March 14, 2009 under Internet |
I finally had my first opportunity to try out an in-flight Internet service this morning on my Delta flight from New York to Tampa. I know that I may be late to the game on this front, but I don’t fly many routes or carriers that have had the service up to this point (mostly American Airlines transcons and now the Delta MD88s) so I was downright giddy when I saw the decal on the fuselage as we came down the jetway this morning.
Yes, I paid the $9.95 for my approximately 1:45 of online time. I still think that the price is too high for the short-haul flights such as this one and I’d like to see something like a monthly pass to make it more affordable for the very frequent traveler.
Plus, the performance seems rather intermittent. Right after takeoff it was fine. Then there was a 15 minute window where speeds were rather awful – <100Kbit, comparable to a 2G cell phone – but now I’m back up to 3G/EvDO speeds (1.8Mbit) and web sites are loading up quite nicely. I’ve even been able to connect to a couple remote desktop connections to do some work on the flight this morning. It wasn’t fast enough that I’d want to work that way all the time, but it was nice to get that task completed during the flight. Nothing like paying for the trip while on the flight.
At this point I’d have to say that there is almost zero chance that I’d pay for it again on a short-haul flight unless I had something truly critical to get done. On a long-haul there is a slightly better chance, but the spotty performance worries me. When it is running at full speed it is really good. But when it is running slowly the frustration factor would make me completely bitter that I spent the money.
Posted by Seth on March 13, 2009 under frequent flyer, News, points |
JetBlue’s loyalty program, TrueBlue, is due for a revision. As far back as last June during the JFK T5 tour that I arranged they were telling us that a new program was on the horizon. When I was talking to executives at the JFK T5 grand opening opening they specifically mentioned that major improvements were on the horizon. The rumors have been flying wild and their online focus group/survey program has been pretty good about showing what they are thinking as they attempt to validate the plans. Sadly, the news doesn’t look good for customers.
The program looks to be headed straight towards rewarding customers directly based on how much they spend with the airline. That’s great for the very high spend customers, but reality says there aren’t many of those. And in those situations the low spend customers tend to lose. Badly. Basically they’ll give you some number of points for each dollar you spend. Those points can be redeemed at a fixed dollar value against the price of any ticket available for sale. The good news that comes with that is no blackout dates. The bad news is that earning sufficient points becomes horribly difficult.
Say you fly back and forth between New York and California a few times a year on cheap fares for vacations. You earn your 100 TrueBlue points and cash them in for a vacation somewhere random. That reward ticket probably cost more than you were paying for the individual tickets you were buying, at least if you’re taking full advantage of the program. In the new program, however, a $1,000 spend (~4.5 transcons at the low end of the price spectrum, enough for 100 TB points today) may only earn you enough points for $100 in travel credit. Now, instead of getting a round trip reward to San Juan or Aruba you’ll be lucky to get a round trip ticket to Pittsburgh (no offense) during a sale. Note that I do not know the specific earning numbers that TrueBlue 2 will have, but 10% is where Virgin America placed the value of their points at for their program so it isn’t too far out of the realm of possibility.
The other interesting thing that this opens up is access to redemption partners. One major limitation TrueBlue has suffered from is the inability to redeem points for anything other than JetBlue flights. With their Aer Lingus and Lufthansa partnerships I would expect redemptions to happen with these carriers, too. The problem is that the numbers make redeeming for these rewards horribly uneconomical. A typical coach ticket to Europe from the East Coast will cost between $300-600 at the low end, depending on the season. Using the same 10% number that translates to a $3,000-6,000 spend to redeem. And that is at low season and in coach. Those numbers just aren’t competitive with the legacy programs and their earning potential.
One good thing that seems to be coming is their TrueBlue “SuperFan” designation, their version of an elite program. It is poised to include “priority seating in the first five rows, priority boarding, reseating and rebooking priority in case of a cancellation, and more.” Those are all great benefits, especially the first one, as those front rows are the Even More Legroom seats that normally require a $10-30 up-charge per flight. Getting access to those for is a pretty nice benefit. The catch, however, is what the qualification threshold is rumored to be: $5,000 in annual spend. That is a ridiculously high qualification level, particularly because the benefits are pretty limited. Again, the new TrueBlue program would come up horribly short against legacy programs and similar benefits. Sure, lots of folks spend that much or more on air travel annually, but most of those folks are getting real value, like first class seats, copious amounts of points in a program and the ability to redeem those points at reasonable levels for domestic and international travel.
The problem as I see it is that JetBlue is banking on the upside of this plan, but that upside is all marketing fun. “No expiration of points” is great, though it is sad just how long you’ll need to collect enough points to redeem for a great reward. “Earn points based on what you spend” seems good since you know you’re going to earn points but once you realize how many points you actually need to get a cool reward you’re going to be pretty disappointed. “SuperFan status for big spenders” sounds awesome until you realize that the vast majority of folks won’t get anywhere close. But it all markets well so folks are going to be really excited initially, right up until they read the fine print.
The legacy programs may not be pretty and they may have a lot of fine print and rules to deal with, but those rules can at least be manipulated in the favor of the customer. The new programs don’t seem to have much opportunity on that front. That’s bad for those of us willing to pay attention and play the games, and it isn’t particularly good for the casual traveler either.
Disclaimer: I’m basing a lot of these observations not on actual announcements but on the details I gathered over the past few months from online surveys. JetBlue has stated outright in the surveys that they are being used to refine the details of the new program but has not confirmed and of the specific details yet. So don’t hold me to any of the specific details, but it all looks pretty likely to me.
