Posted by Seth on November 17, 2009 under points | 
Diamond Club, the loyalty program of bmi, has long been a rather attractive program for folks who live in the United States and like to earn huge heaps of miles on relatively cheap first class fares. Apparently they also have some loyal customers in the UK who actually fly on their planes but I’ve not met too many of them yet. Still, they’ve announced a number of changes this morning that affect folks in both groups, some for the better and some for the worse.
So here are some of the changes:
Mileage Upgrades
It is actually somewhat hard for me to believe that these didn’t exist before, but apparently that is the case. Now members will be able to redeem 5-25K miles each way for upgrades on bmi-operated flights. These upgrades will only be available for customers booked on relatively higher fares (U, L, Y, S, O or B buckets) so it isn’t a great benefit, but it is out there at least.
Family Memberships
This is a nice benefit for folks with families who want to combine their miles to redeem for rewards. And, if you’re a bmi customer, it might also be nice for you to include “staff such as nannies and security” to join in the family account (yes, they really did write that on their website). The family membership feature actually is quite nice and a welcome benefit to the program.
Electronic Upgrade Vouchers
Historically bmi has given their elites four upgrade coupons (aka GUVs) annually to allow for upgrades on bmi-operated flights. Having never actually been on one of their planes I don’t really know much about the GUVs other than that they had to be redeemed at the airport on the day of travel and that there were always plenty of folks in the UK who were happy to accept them from me when my packet arrived each year and I offered them up. Now there will be no more paper upgrade GUVs; they are going to be electronic (eGUVs) and assigned to the account of each gold elite member. That means mo more trading/gifting the certificates. Bummer.
On the plus side, however, the certificates can be redeemed up to seven days in advance of flights now. It will also be possible to use the vouchers to upgrade on the longer and premium service flights (e.g. London-Cairo/Tel Aviv) though it will require as many as three eGUVs for those upgrades. And each member only gets four eGUVs annually so I’m not sure how one would be able to upgrade more than one trip. Maybe they’ll start selling the eGUVs or offer up another way to acquire them??
Overall I think that this is probably a wash in terms of the benefits. The lack of ability to trade/horde the eGUVs isn’t very welcome but the expanded utility of them probably is. Then again, I’ve never used one so I really have no idea.
Change is always difficult to gauge and it will affect each customer differently. For me the changes are mostly cosmetic since it means I can’t give away the vouchers anymore. That’s it. I can handle that. But for the folks who actually fly bmi with some frequency it means losing out on some benefits of the GUVs and getting the ability to use miles instead in very limited scenarios. Probably not great for them at all.
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Posted by Seth on November 17, 2009 under points |
Since the original partnership announcement between Continental and United Airlines almost 18 months ago there has been plenty of speculation about the exact details and which elites would see which benefits. When United announced the wholesale changes to their elite upgrade upgrade scheme the writing was on the wall rather clearly. And now the writing is on the Internet in the form of multiple press releases (and here) and other announcements.
So now that most of the details are out, what does it all mean? For starters, all elites from both are eligible for upgrades on flights operated by either carrier. There are some notable exceptions (p.s. service is still not eligible, for example) and some notable inclusions (Continental elites can now get free upgrades to Hawaii on United service). The hierarchy for the upgrades depends on which carrier you are flying on – each is pretty much taking care of their own elites first for the most part – and it breaks down like this:
| On Continental Metal |
On United Metal |
- Continental Platinum Elite
- United Global Services
- United 1K
- Continental Gold Elite
- United Premier Executive
- Continental Silver Elite
- United Premier
|
- United Global Services
- United 1K
- United Premier Executive
- Continental Platinum Elite
- Continental Gold Elite
- United Premier
- Continental Silver Elite
|
One of the biggest quirks is that United’s second tier – for folks who fly 50,000-99,999 miles – get prioritized over Continental’s 75,000+ customers on United metal. But on Continental metal they’re below the comparable tier so not all that crazy.
Probably the most significant change is that all Continental elites will have access to United’s Economy Plus seating. United’s customers get access to Continental’s “premium” seats which are the exact same seats and pitch, just at the front of the plane. That is definitely a rather lopsided win in favor of Continental’s elites. Of course, Continental might decide to implement E+ at some point and even things out, but I’m not holding my breath.
Instant upgrades will also be available for all elites. Elites on Y or B fares (and CO Platinum, UA 1K and UA GS on M fares) will access to the front cabin (B and M fares are capacity-controlled; Y has last-seat availability) on Continental flights. And access to the exit row seats on Continental will be extended to United’s 1K and GS customers.
So that’s the bulk of the details…but what does it all mean? At the end of the day the arrangement is remarkably similar to what Continental and Northwest Airlines had prior to Delta buying out NW. It is pretty much full reciprocity as much as there can be given the minor differences in the two carriers’ products. There are some cases where Continental elites will do better (mostly in E+ seating) and some where they will not (upgrade hierarchy on UA metal). Similarly, United’s customers get access to upgrades and, for the top tiers, exit row seats. I don’t really see the new policy causing a sudden swing in the number of folks choosing to fly on the partner’s metal or otherwise skewing the upgrade ratios all that badly. Yes, there will be some CO elites now flying on UA, but there will also be the same in reverse.
In the end, this is what partnerships and alliances are for. The provide the customer with a reasonably consistent experience and benefits across multiple carriers. More options and more destinations and better connections while not sacrificing the benefits of elite status earned on the home carrier. It makes a ton of sense and the CO/UA version of such a deal isn’t such a bad one at all.
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Posted by Seth on November 16, 2009 under News |
But before you get all excited about the fact that the feds might intervene keep this in mind: they aren’t doing it for the consumers. Sure, they may talk a big game but at the end of the day it always has been and always will be about the money. And it turns out that Congress is just now wizening up to the fact that the airlines are screwing the US government just as much as they are screwing passengers.
Every ticket sold in the USA is hit with a federal excise tax of 7.5% of the base fare. The feds like collecting that money and using it to fund various programs. But what happens when an airlines switches from selling $300 tickets to $100 tickets with a $200 fuel surcharge? The feds lose $15. Multiply that out by the millions of passengers that take to the skies daily and you can see where the feds might start to notice.
Who knows where this will end up. I know that many airlines love being able to use the fees as a means to increase revenue on reward seats, corporate contract discounts and many other types of tickets. And apparently to reduce their tax burden, too. On the plus side, good call by the accountant who figured this one out. I wonder if they were able to negotiate a percentage of the savings as a bonus??
Posted by Seth on November 13, 2009 under News |
Yeah…that’s me quoted in this article on cnn.com, making the point that it isn’t just leisure travelers or “kettles” who are responsible for the problem. And I stand by my claim: “Business travelers never want to check a bag; they want to get off the plane and go.” Those are the passengers who likely wouldn’t have to pay the checked bag fees but they (we, really) carry-on anyways. And many times it is two bags in the overhead and nothing at the feet. After all, that little bit of leg room is precious.
I really have to laugh at the claim in the same article by Joe Brancatelli, an “expert” on frequent flyer habits. His claim that “[Business travelers] know the rules…and they’re prepared to hit the rules,” is a farce. They know the rules and they also know that as customers with status in the frequent flyer programs they are going to board first, take up as much space as they want and not care about anyone else. Oh, and they’ll pitch a fit if someone suggests that they aren’t allowed to carry the bags on.
Every time I see one of those fits pitched it is by someone claiming to have status or more power or who is never going to fly said airline again. And every time I laugh my ass off.
I flew from Los Angeles to New York City earlier this week on Virgin America. I watched as about 40 bags were gate checked. I chatted at baggage claim (my bag was WAY too big to fit at the end of a 10 day jaunt) with one of the passengers who was late to board and had to gate check her bag. She “packed a smaller bag specifically to avoid waiting at baggage claim.” Of course, when the bag came out I chuckled a bit as there was no way it should have been a carry-on. But who’s fault is that? Checking that first bag would have cost her $20 so I can understand wanting to avoid that, but no one was enforcing the sizing rules telling the customers that they have to check the bags. As for all the customers who had to check their bags – not one whining, complaining or fit-throwing among them.
It isn’t a problem for the most part in Europe. Either the agents are enforcing the rules much more strictly or there is better self enforcement. But the same problems do not exist there at nearly the same level. I don’t know why, but it just works better there.
I doubt the airlines are going to step up and spend the cash on the extra man-hours it would take to have their agents effectively police the situation. They certainly don’t seem inclined to do it for a long enough period of time that they actually manage to change the behavior of the traveling American public. Then again, with the TSA prohibiting customers from effectively locking bags and the constant stream of stories about theft and loss in the baggage handling departments I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to gamble with their bags that way. It is a lose-lose situation. And it sucks for everyone.
Posted by Seth on November 12, 2009 under News, Trip Reports |
I’ve never been particularly coherent or eloquent about explaining my passion for travel. Fortunately there are some professional writers out there that I can babble at who seem to make pretty decent sense of my ramblings. During last week’s crazy adventure across Europe we were accompanied by Scott McCartney, a WSJ writer. He’s posted a video this morning showing just a few of the things that we got to experience during the week.
That left ear you see in the opening sequence is mine. I’m also the guy drinking from one of the glasses in the drink try while collecting the empties from passengers. Typically me.
Posted by Seth on November 11, 2009 under Internet |
For a while now I’ve been a rather strong proponent of the theory that paid in-flight internet isn’t going to attract enough business to survive, at least not with the current pricing scheme. I just don’t think that there are enough people out there willing to pay $8 or more per flight for the access that is available. Of course, the good news for those few deep-pocketed (or reimbursed) folks out there is that not many others are using the service so they get pretty good performance from the system.
But what happens when the cost barrier disappears? This.
Yeah…that pretty much sucks. Maybe it was the fault of the schmuck across the aisle who thought it was a good idea to have a video chat with folks on the ground. Or maybe there are several dozen folks on the plane using the service rather than the average 10-20% that normally do. And maybe it is just that the intertubez are slower over Iowa than elsewhere in the country.
Regardless of the reason, it seems that when stressed the in-flight systems start to bend under the load. They haven’t failed outright (at least not yet) and having any free coverage is better than having none. But I also wonder what the chances are that customers paying $13 for a transcon flight will put up with the lower performance metrics that come with a system that several customers actually use. I know that I wouldn’t. Then again, I probably wouldn’t pay for it anyways.
I don’t know if the speed issues I’m seeing are really typical of a heavily loaded system but if they are then Aircell has a lot of work ahead of them to get the gogo system scaled up to deal with the utilization that they need to realize for profitability.
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Posted by Seth on November 10, 2009 under Trip Reports |
As part of the Star Alliance Mega Do event last week just over 200 of us chartered a 757-300 to fly around Europe for the day. One of the stops was a visit to the Airbus factory in Toulouse, France. Yup, we showed up at Airbus in a Boeing. It was all we could get our hands on that would have enough seats and be at the right price.
And what an arrival it was. Rather than just show up and land like most folks would, our cabin crew decided to buzz the tower. Call it a missed approach, a fly-by or whatever else you want. We were 20 feet off the ground for the full length of runway 32L – several thousand feet. The atmosphere in the cabin was downright euphoric. Hoots and hollers of excitement.
And the view from the cockpit was amazing. Fortunately a friend was sitting there and had the foresight to take a video of the pass. It is awesome!
Posted by Seth on November 9, 2009 under Trip Reports |
Damn, that plane is big. Huge. Just plain (plane??) enormous. And going to the facility where they assemble such planes means several of them around in all their enormity. As one of the main events of the Star Alliance Mega Do event last week we visited the assembly facility in Toulouse and got to see the planes up close. And I was part of the press crew working the event which meant that I got to bring my cameras in. Yeah, I’m still experiencing a bit of a high from that.
We walked through the facility with representatives of Lufthansa and Airbus, with access that most don’t have. They were quite happy to speak with us about the planes and some of the plans that are in place. Things like how long it takes them to perform final assembly once all the parts come in to Toulouse (about 95 business days) and how they are seeing demand for travel on the A380 (very high).
We wandered among the planes for about an hour and it was truly an amazing experience.
Getting a sense for just how huge everything is on the A380 can be difficult from the photographs. Getting a person in the picture was hard enough because there were not too many folks actually working on the floor while we were there. And then to get it so that you can realize that the speck is actually a person in the photo AND that you can see just how small they are against the backdrop of the plane was just amazingly hard. Here’s one shot of a couple engineers up in the wheel well of the nose gear. There is plenty of room for both of them (and probably a few more) up in there. It is really a big plane.
Or check out how big the tires are compared to the normal sized forklift. Yeah. Big.
After the factory tour we headed over to their cabin demonstration facility. This is a building filled with fuselages of each Airbus series (A318/219/320/321, A330/340, A380 and a mock-up of the A350). Each model is configured with a variety of seat types from different manufacturers. This allows the airlines (and special guests on tours) to walk through and see how the plane would look with various seating arrangements. Sadly, no photographs permitted on this tour, but the variety of cabin layouts was quite impressive. While a typical airplane has three or four seating types in it those in the tour had as many as twelve (in the A380) to show off just how varied the options are. The first class lounge demonstrated on the A380 at the facility was ridiculously nice. I’m pretty sure that the space was larger and better appointed than my apartment. The “living room” space in the middle had a wrap-around couch that could seat six.
If you happen to find yourself anywhere near Toulouse, France and a fan of airplanes, I highly recommend that you try to get a tour of the assembly line. I’m pretty sure that they are generally open to the public. It is an amazing experience.
Posted by Seth on November 8, 2009 under News, points |
Although initially announced to be launching on Monday, TrueBlue 2 – the new loyalty program from jetBlue – is now alive and well on the jetBlue homepage. The details are all there and most of them appear to match exactly what was previously suggested so no real big surprises there.
Among the new program features, there are no more black-out dates on reward travel. Not only that, but there are no inventory restrictions either. This means that every seat on every flight can be booked as a mileage redemption. It will likely cost a ton of points (one example is below), but it is possible.
The points also no longer expire, but again with a small catch. All the points in the account will stay active as long as there is some activity in the past 12 months. The 12 month window is at the shorter end of the scale compared to other carriers’ programs, but it is a significant improvement over the old program that expired the points even if you did have activity.
jetBlue also continues to offer double points earning for all flights booked on their website, www.jetblue.com. This again sets them apart from many in the industry and it is a nice touch that they are keeping the bonus in place.
Dollar-Based Earning
The most significant way that jetBlue is changing the program is that points earned are now directly tied to the fare price rather than miles flown. Some folks will love this change and some will hate it. For the business traveler it almost always comes out better this way, especially with jetBlue’s route network being the way that it is. For leisure travelers who are more price-sensitive in their purchasing behavior it will probably reduce their earning potential. That being said, there is a bit of hope that the other improvements will offset those changes.
The redemption process is also shifting to be more dollar-value based, though not specifically such. As noted above, every seat on a flight can be redeemed using points but the number of points required shifts based on advance purchase, demand, etc., just like the actual fare price changes. Even more interesting is that the value of the points is not linear; each point does not just have a set dollar value. A quick sampling of the reward costs this evening (more details analysis to come) shows that the points can range from 0.87 cents per point up to over 1.3 cents per point. Again, more detailed analysis is needed and will be forthcoming, but this is a good starting point for consideration. With an earning potential of 6 points/dollar spent (plus the bonuses detailed below) and an average redemption value of about one cent per point TrueBlue 2 members are looking at about a 6% return on their travel investment. That’s not bad at all, and it only gets better from there.
Bonus Points
jetBlue also is offering a couple different means to earn bonus points either for miles traveled or overall spending. There are bonus thresholds at every $500 threshold (assuming all purchases happen at jetblue.com) and the number of bonus points awarded increases as the spend does:
- 3,000 points ($500×6 points/dollar on jetblue.com) earned = 500 bonus points
- 6,000 points earned = 1,000 bonus points
- 9,000 points earned = 2,000 bonus points
- Each additional 3,000 points earned = 4,000 bonus points
It is important to note that ONLY points earned from buying tickets – excluding baggage fees, credit card spending or any other points earned – count against the threshold levels.
The bonus scheme for folks who fly long distances is also new, with every ten “long” one-way flights (>2000 miles; listing here) earning 10,000 bonus points. That can add up in a hurry for folks who fly a lot of transcons, even if they are on cheap fares.
Both of these bonus programs are calculated on a 12-month cycle, with the earning starting from a member’s first earning event. This is unlike the traditional calendar year qualification that many legacy carriers use and is much more similar to bmi’s Diamond Club scheme in the timing. One minor difference is that after the 12-month window expires the next window does not start until the next flight event.
Taking the bonus schemes into play, a member who spends $3,000 in a year to fly ten transcon round trips (~$350 for each trip, considering taxes and all) should bank about 48,000 TB2 points. That’s a 16% return on the trip investment. Not too shabby at all. A short-haul flier with the same spend would net only 28,000 points (no Go Long earnings) but that’s still over 9%.
One other bonus offer out there is for 100 bonus points on every Even More Legroom seat purchased. Not too shabby at all.
Summary
There is a lot of information to still digest (and a big thanks to Dave Canty over at jetBlue for answering my questions about the program on a Sunday evening). A lot more is coming in the spring when the Sabre conversion happens. But the new program looks to be rather revolutionary in the industry and also to be a very strong value proposition.
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Posted by Seth on November 5, 2009 under Trip Reports |
And I’m exhausted. Seriously.
Sure, I’ve never actually had to do it before so remembering things like the stirrer sticks for the coffee service or making sure I actually served everyone who asked for a drink – sorry again, guys – were things that I really think that I’d do better with a bit of practice. Still, it was a bit of a humbling experience realizing that it was actually a bit of a challenge to sling a few drinks out to the 50 passengers I was responsible for. And the real flight attendants were working at least 50% of the cabin, plus doing the actual meal service.
I’m sure I’ll being seeing pictures galore in the coming days and weeks of me working as a flight attendant and drinking on the job. After all, I had well more than my fare share of Sect on the fight, and a bit of vodka, too. So it wasn’t really a truly honest effort as to what it would take to serve the cabin. But it was close, and it was definitely more work than I expected.
But it was also a TON of fun. I was walking the aisle clearing glasses from the business class cabin while we were on the active taxi-way. I was trying to figure out which pedal locked the cart and which released it. I was walking the aisle closing the overhead bins and turning off the call button lights and I was actually supposed to be doing it. I really enjoyed myself.
Oh, we did do the safety demo work, too. That was fun. It was harder in that I didn’t have a demo seatbelt to use – I just took the belt off of the seat I was standing next to at the time – and the announcements were done in German, which made it even more challenging. Still, we all managed to do the demos and arrive safely so no real harm there.
We were also fortunate to have with us some coffee brought along specially by a member of the tour. Vince Mills runs Kena coffee in Hawaii and produced a special Star Mega Do reserve blend for our flights. As I understand it the coffee was delicious. So, again, sorry to the few guys who I never made it back to with the cups of coffee. My bad. If you’re interested, check our Kena Coffee. I’m pretty sure he’s got plenty to share with the community.
Note: I also posted this report on the main blog site for this event, www.StarMegaDo.com.
