Posted by Seth on January 2, 2012 under Flying, News | 
Not sure how I missed this earlier but apparently Air Canada is matching the 50% off base fare sale that Porter Air launched on Boxing day in markets where Porter operates. The deal on both carriers is good for bookings made through this week and travel through April.
On Air Canada the discount codes to use online are PROMO26DEC11 or USPROMO26DEC11. On Porter Air the code is BOX50.
Happy travels!
Posted by Seth on December 13, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Ethiopian Airlines became the third African carrier to join the Star Alliance network this week, growing the alliance to 28 carriers. Of those 28, 16 provide service to Africa, covering 110 airports in 48 countries. The move also integrates Ethiopian into the fare and award products, though some integration on fare products won’t occur until January 2012.
The move also integrates the carrier into frequent flier earning across the alliance. Thus far I’ve seen earing details for Asiana, Continental, United Airlines, Turkish, TAP Air Portugal, Air Canada, Lufthansa‘s Miles & More and Agean Airlines. Those earning rates have been incorporated into the calculators on the Travel Tools site. Generally speaking most of the carriers are providing 100% earning rates for all economy fares and a bonus for business class fares. Full details about the rates can be found on the Travel Tools Update here.
Tags: Africa, Agean, Air Canada, Asiana, Continental, Ethiopian Airlines, frequent flier, frequent flyer, Lufthansa, points, Star Alliance, TAP Air Portugal, tools, Turkish Air, United, United Airlines
Posted by Seth on December 9, 2011 under Flying, frequent flyer, points |
Honestly, these changes have been a long time coming. Turkish Air changed their fare classes a while ago, adding in their "Comfort Class" premium economy product and pulling out their first class cabin. Many of their partners were quick to update the earning charts; Continental and United Airlines weren’t. That has finally been resolved as of today.
The new earning rates are mostly downgrades on the Continental side of things. Y and B fares no longer earn 150% EQMs and G fares – one of the most discounted economy class tickets – now earn nothing at all. There are a few other changes, with F, W and Z fares also no longer earning but I believe those fares are also no longer published so less of an issue.
The Comfort Class fares will only earn at 100% (US Airways and Air Canada both have an earning premium assigned to those fares) which is unfortunate. That said, the change does at least add all three of the Comfort Class fares to the list; previously one was absent.
On the United side of the coin the earning rules are similar, with one additional downgrade. Elite members will no longer earn the 500 mile minimum credit on flights operated by Turkish. Not a huge deal, as most TK-operated flights are longer than that, but still a minor downgrade.
Also of note is that with both programs the V fare class will be deprecated as an earning bucket come January 1, 2012. This is another discount economy fare bucket and losing it will be unfortunate.
Finally, there has been an addition to the earnings tables. Flights marketed by Turkish but operated by AnadoluJet (a regional/express carrier) will be eligible for earning in both programs. The cheapest economy fares (L, Q, T, V) do not earn while non-discount fares (Y, B, M, K, H, S, E) earn at the 100% rate, again with no 500 mile minimums.
All of these earning rate changes have been loaded into the mileage earning calculators on the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools site.
Posted by Seth on November 9, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Following on the heels of this summer’s award chart adjustments that saw many awards increase in cost it appears that Aeroplan, the loyalty program associated with Air Canada, is also adjusting the surcharges they levy on certain award redemptions. Specifically, it appears that the YQ fuel surcharge, to date only levied against redemptions on Air Canada flights, is now applying to flights operated by Lufthansa, Austrian and a few others.
This trend is not a new one. Recently American Airlines began charging the YQ surcharge on flights operated by partner British Airways. Delta charges a similar fee for flights originating outside the USA, even if flown on Delta airplanes, while not charging where the flights originate in the USA. Needless to say, the development is a costly one for customers.
With Aeroplan as one of the last great redemption options for the American Express Membership Rewards program this move also devalues those points a bit. Not great news at any level.
More over at View From the Wing.
Posted by Seth on August 3, 2011 under Flying, Trip Reports |
It seems that about once a year or so a news piece comes across the wire about a passenger who books a flight to Sydney and ends up in Sydney, only to find out that it is not at all what they expected. Rather than arriving in Sydney, Australia they find themselves in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Quite a difference there.
As part of our Canadian Maritimes adventure I purposefully booked an open-jaw award ticket. This was partly to ensure that we got to see as much of the area as possible without needing to double back with the rental car when it was time to leave. Just as much, however, it was to be able to fly out of Sydney. On purpose.
The flight was completely uneventful. Nothing special at all. Well, except that a woman in the row behind us was on her first flight ever and it was on a DASH-8 prop that took just about every bump along the way and transmitted it right into the passenger cabin. There were a few yelps at those points.
Soon enough we were in Halifax and ready to connect to our onward flight back to Newark. Not nearly as entertaining as the flight from the "other" Sydney.
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Posted by Seth on March 8, 2011 under Flying, frequent flyer, points |
In part one of this report I recounted a great award booking – even though it was all in economy and on small planes – to the Canadian Maritime provinces. Part two will cover my exploitation of the bmi Diamond Club program and their quite flexible routing and award zone rules.
It all started with plans to visit Bangkok in July for a friend’s wedding. With Thai Air still operating their incredibly long LAX-BKK flight I figured it would be nice to get a change to fly that route. Plus I have never been on the Airbus A340-500 so that’s an added bonus. It turns out that Thai has had a TON of award inventory available for westbound travel but nothing available coming back east. Turns out that isn’t much of a problem for me as I’ve turned a long weekend in Thailand into a RTW ticket adventure.
By sheer coincidence a friend of mine is going to be in Capetown, South Africa the week after the wedding. And I have the points available so why not? Even better is that the award cost from Thailand to South Africa is pretty cheap with Diamond Club. Oh, and I am flying via Mumbai, flying in on Thai and out on South African Airways. South African operates the A340-200 on the route which is also new to me.
And then I needed to get home from South Africa. This is where the Diamond Club rules become VERY favorable if you’re willing (or wanting!) a bit of an adventure. Most carriers only permit North Atlantic crossings for that award. Diamond Club permits South Atlantic crossings, too. So I’m taking one. Award seats form Johannesburg to Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo are pretty readily available.
Seats from there back north are a bit harder but I found some availability with Air Canada from Santiago to Toronto. Getting from Toronto to New York City is pretty easy with a ton of frequencies and a couple airports to choose from. To get from Buenos Aires to Santiago there is really only Star Alliance routing. It just so happens to leave 40 minutes before the flight from Johannesburg arrives. So I have a 23 hour 20 minute connection in Argentina. That’ll be fun.
So I’ve made it back to New York City and I’m home. That’s the end, right? Not for me. Diamond Club considers Puerto Rico part of their South America/Caribbean zone. And award flights from South Africa to South America are less expensive than those to North America. Based on straight geography that sortof makes sense – it should be fewer total miles flown – but getting to Puerto Rico can only be done via North America with the existing partners and routes. So I have a stopover in New York (one stopover is free on the bmi award) and then, two months later, a flight in first class from Newark to San Juan. It was actually many fewer miles to take the extra flight. Plus, I’ve been looking for a good excuse to get back to Puerto Rico, possibly in daylight this time. Given that the flight down there is better than free, I see no reason to skip that bit.
Put it all together and I’ve got this 31,586 mile masterpiece:
And all the flights save two short ones are in business class. All but one of the lines are new and a few of the aircraft are, too. All for under 200,000 Diamond Club points. I could’ve done it as cash & points for even fewer but I’m trying to use up my stash and this is a great way to do it.
The booking process was bit more frustrating than I generally enjoy, partly because my Skype connection was flaking out but mostly because the agents at the Diamond Club call center don’t have the best grasp of geography nor of the rules of their program. They initially tried to charge me 5 separate awards rather than the three I booked and all at higher rates than I should have paid. Fortunately I was able to eventually get a supervisor to understand and put it in correctly, but that was two extra hours of annoyance on the phone that I didn’t really need. Still, at the end of the day, completely worth it for this trip. Retail value on the ticket is somewhere north of $10,000; getting it on points for the routes and dates I wanted is just phenomenal.
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Tags: Africa, Air Canada, Airbus, Argentina, award, Bangkok, bmi, Canada, frequent flyer, New York City, points, Puerto Rico, RTW2011, San Juan, South Africa, Star Alliance, Thai Air, Thailand, Toronto
Posted by Seth on March 7, 2011 under frequent flyer, points |
Some folks love the challenge of earning frequent flyer points. To me, that’s just business. I do it and I accrue and I move on to the next flight. But when the time comes for redeeming those points, that’s where the fun begins. Part of it is because the airlines really do make it difficult to book awards. Part of it is because there are quirks and tricks and nuances in every program and understanding the rules of your specific program makes a huge difference. And part of it is that I generally feel triumphant when I can beat the airlines at their own game.
I won HUGE last week.
First up, our annual anniversary trip. Now in its 5th iteration, my wife and I have gone somewhere out of town for our anniversary each year. Ecuador, Philadelphia/Washington, DC Norway and Scotland were the previous four. This year’s goal was the Canadian maritime provinces. Turns out they’re a bit too spread out for us to hit as much as we wanted in the long weekend so we scaled back to just Nova Scotia. Not too disappointed about that at all.
With non-stop flights from New York to both Moncton and Halifax it was actually surprisingly easy to find award seats into the region. Our outbound requires a connection in Toronto but we’re waitlisted for the non-stop flight (shown in red on the map) and I’m betting that it clears. Either way, we get where we want to be on the day we want to get there and at roughly the times we want to fly. No complaints there. Coming back we picked Sydney as the departing airport. No, not that Sydney. There’s another one up in Nova Scotia. Being a tiny town with a tiny airport the prices on revenue tickets can be pretty ridiculous. So even though we’re only going a few hundred miles the cash version of these flights was pretty ridiculous. But award inventory wasn’t a problem at all. Connecting in Halifax and then back into Newark at good times and with no real issues.
As an added bonus, there are flights from Sydney to France (in the form of Saint Pierre & Miquelon, shown in purple on the map) that we just might have to try. If the flight schedules work that is definitely on my radar.
Did I mention that these were a pretty good deal in terms of valuation for the points redeemed? I like that the Continental booking engine gives you the offer to pay cash instead of redeeming miles for the trip. But I couldn’t help but laugh when this was the option it presented me:
Purchase this Reservation in Economy for $4,452.46 without redeeming miles
Instead I cashed in 50,000 points and about $100 in taxes for the two seats. I’d say that’s a damn good deal.
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Tags: Air Canada, award, Continental, Ecuador, France, frequent flyer, Norway, Nova Scotia, Philadelphia, points, Scotland, Sydney, Toronto, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on February 10, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Redeeming points for anything other than the travel awards of the program in which they were earnt is rarely a good value. Rather than giving away product that they own the loyalty program is buying something and selling it back to you so the value generally suffers based on the higher costs. Compounding that issue is the fact that awards with a fixed cash value – gift cards, statement credits and the like – are generally even less of a deal since the fixed costs have very little, if any, margin for the retailers to work with. Combine that with the fact that points.com generally preys on the uninformed to exploit their frustrations and fleece them on trade or redemption costs and you have something resembling a perfect storm: Points.com redemptions for PayPal credit.
I knew going in that the numbers would be bad. I just had no idea they would be this bad. The PayPal redemption option is currently available for three programs, American Airlines AAdvantage, US Airways Dividend Miles and Air Canada Aeroplan. The conversion rates vary as shown in the screen captures below, ranging from bad to terrible to so unbelievably horrible that I ran the check three times because I thought there was a mistake in it. Yeah, it is simply awful.
Aeroplan points hold the highest value in the conversion scheme, with 17,734 points converting to $100 in PayPal credit. At 100,000 points (roughly $600 in PayPal credit) you can get a round-trip first class ticket from North America to Europe. So, yeah, the ratio is pretty bad.
A CDN$250 AmEx dining credit is only 32,500 points, Or just get the regular CDN$250 Aeroplan Ultimate Card for 35,000 points. Basically it is an extra $50 in credit for taking the points as a pre-paid AmEx rather than as cash.
The 24,118 AAdvantage points are nearly enough for a domestic round-trip ticket (and AA has some great off-peak awards where those points go even farther) or $100. A 0.4 cents/mile valuation is well below the penny/point nominal cost valuation of the points and even worse compared to some of the better redemption options out there.
And then there is US Airways. I actually feel like there is a decimal point error in these numbers given how high the redemption costs are. A $100 PayPal credit costs over 120K Dividend Miles points. That is simply ridiculous.
The number of better things to do with 120,000 Dividend Miles is rather lengthy. Thanks to their Star Alliance partnerships the redemption options – both in coach and premium cabins – to nearly anywhere in the world are incredible. All for way better than the $100 you’d get instead. If you’re that desperate for the cash give me a call; I’m sure we can work out a deal.
So, yeah, the rates are horrible. And the US Airways option is quite possibly the worst value I’ve ever seen for points. EVER. Just don’t do it.
Posted by Seth on January 3, 2011 under Trip Reports |
It is now the new year, with new goals and new milestones on the horizon. But not too late to take a quick look back at 2010 and the travel milestones I hit during the year. Not surprisingly, the more I travel the harder it is to reach new and different accomplishments. Indeed, 2010 had many fewer than 2009, though in a couple categories it surpassed the previous year.
Perhaps the most significant numbers of the year are the total amount of time in the air:
- 151 segments
- 208378 miles
- 18 days 13:31
Those numbers are “butt-in-seat” and based on the distances between the starting and ending airport as calculated on www.openflights.org. They do not include 500 mile minimums or the like. In most cases the durations are based on wheels up to wheels down as tracked by the appropriate authorities, not the block time of the flight or estimates. The 208K miles is the most ever for me in a calendar year as is the 151 segments.
Of the 151 segments flown, more than half (86, to be precise) were routes I had not flown previously. It is certainly becoming more and more difficult to find new ways to get to different places but I continue to try. New lines and new dots are still of value to me and I’m finding that I’m paying a bit more to get them.
I also passed through 77 airports during the year located in 18 different countries. I actually Immigrated 31 different times, including the various times I returned to the United States. On four of my trips there were multiple foreign countries involved.
I visited 15 distinct countries, plus the USA. Eight of those countries (St. Maarten, Sint Martin, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Togo, Guyana, Morocco and Tunisia) were new to me. Two of the crossings (into Togo and back into Ghana were on foot while the Sint Martin/St. Maarten crossing were by car; The others were all by plane. I also added a new state visited – Idaho – to my list even though I drove over from Spokane to get there rather than flying in.
My travels included flying on 24 different airlines (possibly a few more if regional/express carriers are included by I’m not great at tracking those). Of those 24, 13 were airlines I had not previously flown on (AC, AT, BA, BD, BE, HA, LC, RW, SN, TGY, VS, YV & YX). Again, it is getting much harder to find new ones at reasonable prices but I’m doing my best, including a couple booked for the early part of 2011.
None of my milestones north, south, east or west were new extremes for me this year. Nor was my longest flight (SYD-SFO) longer than previous records. I did get a new shortest flight for my list, one that will almost certainly never be broken.
Somewhat amazingly, of the 151 flights I only had three instances where I was struck by operations so irregular that they caused a missed flight. One of them – during my JetBlue AYCJ adventures wasn’t a big deal and I got back on track without really missing anything along the way. Two others – a US Airways delay out of Belgium and a Royal Air Maroc fiasco in Casablanca – caused me to overnight unexpectedly. The US Air incident wasn’t so bad but the Air Maroc one was pretty awful.
Finally, I managed to pick up five new aircraft types during the year. My favorite was probably the smallest, the Cessna 208 Caravan I, though the
| Saab SF340 was fun, too, and the Embraer 175LR was the best ride of them all.
And I got robbed once where the guy took money directly from my hands and probably a couple more times due to bad negotiating skills in markets. At least I robbed the guy who physically took the cash out of my hand back. |
And while I sit on the airplane now, enjoying a flight from Lufthansa into Frankfurt and on to Munich, I realize that I may only be three days into the new year but I’ve already got a new line for my map and tomorrow will bring another one, along with a rubber duckie souvenir. Not a bad way to start the year.
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Tags: Air Canada, bmi, British Airways, Brussels, Dominican Republic, Embraer, FlyBE, Flying, Ghana, Guyana, LoganAir, Lufthansa, Morocco, Togo, Tunisia, Virgin Atlantic
Posted by Seth on December 24, 2010 under frequent flyer, News |
First there was the announcement that Air Canada’s Aeroplan program would require flights on AC metal to earn elite status. Now there are rumors floating around that booking options for award flights – particularly on partner airlines – are being artificially limited by the company.
Previously one was always able to check for the award inventory directly via a number of different tools (AwardNexus or www.ana.co.jp are the most popular and comprehensive for Star Alliance) and then feed the flights to an agent segment by segment. Now the agents are apparently limited to only being able to sell the seats they see on their search screens. Among other things this restricts some carriers, including Asiana and Swiss, from being displayed at all. Not very helpful.
Currently partner bookings are still being processed by managers but it is not clear how willing they will be to process such requests going forward. Either way, it is a rather unfortunate devaluation of the Aeroplan program. Coming on the heels of their wins at the Frequent Traveler Awards program this past November these devaluations are especially unfortunate.
More discussion on this recent development here.
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Posted by Seth on December 22, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Three more airlines have joined the Star Alliance upgrade program this month, bringing the total number or participating carriers up to 19. The new entrants to the program include Air Canada (December 3), US Airways (December 14) and TAM Airlines (December 17).
Upgrades using the program are still expensive – per segment rather than per direction and they require the purchase of the highest fare buckets – but having the options available is always a good thing, particularly if you’ve got someone else footing the bill for your flexible international itinerary but where they won’t pay for premium cabin service. As always, call the airline where you have points accumulated to redeem for the upgrade awards.
