Posted by Seth Miller on May 2, 2013 under frequent flyer, points | 
As part of the FTU event last weekend I presented a session on maximizing United’s MileagePlus program. I don’t think that there is anything particularly groundbreaking in the content, but I do think that it is a good reminder of how their award chart works (or doesn’t in some cases) and how a bit of thought can help you book some pretty incredible awards for the same price (or less!) as a more traditional award.
At the beginning of the session I asked the crowd what they were in the program for. I was quite surprised – and pleased – that domestic upgrades were at the bottom of the list. That’s a good thing in the United program as those upgrades are less forthcoming than with other airlines. Most people were interested in the awards and routing rules and I think that is still an area where United shines. Maybe too much, and I don’t expect it to last forever, but for now the opportunities truly are grand.
I’ve posted the slides online here. I’m not entirely sure that they’re actually going to be completely useful without the conversation as they’re more of an outline than a detailed analysis of what to do and how to book the awards. But I do think they can get you started on where some of the sweet spots are in the awards and how to think about the travel options so that you can get more from the trips you’re taking. If nothing else, they’re a good way to start a conversation on just what can be done.
Give them a look if you’re interested and let’s have that conversation, either in the comments here, on FlyerTalk, on MilePoint, via email or however else works for you.
Posted by Seth Miller on April 12, 2013 under frequent flyer, points, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
The Qantas website is one of the top options for searching award inventory online when it comes to oneworld partners. A recent update to the site extends that functionality to now include the ability to search for award seats on their newest partner: Emirates.
For those of you who are fans of the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools oneworld award alerts tool, this update also means that you can now set free award alerts for flights on Emirates metal. Yeah, I’m pretty excited about that, too.
Posted by Seth Miller on March 17, 2013 under Dining, Flying, frequent flyer, Internet, PaxEx, points, Trip Reports |
I was only a bit surprised to find a wide range of choices available for award flights from New York to Northern Germany in mid-March. After all, it is the middle of winter and most spring break folks are headed to sun and surf or other more traditional destinations. We had our choice of the non-stop United flight to Hamburg or taking a connection in Frankfurt and flying in to Hannover. Given our initial destination of Hildesheim is much closer to Hannover, plus the better flight time (9pm departure rather than 5:30pm) I figured we’d take the extra travel time. Plus it meant I’d get to experience Singapore Air in their economy cabin, rounding out the full set (I did suites a couple months ago and business a year ago). So, thanks to some MileagePlus points I got us booked on JFK-FRA-HAJ with a reasonable layover in Frankfurt for breakfast and a shower in the Senator Lounge.
We got to JFK a bit early so that we could have dinner. We considered the options in the Swiss lounge in T4 and quickly decided to have a real dinner instead. There is a branch of The Palm in the terminal and, despite some previous bad experiences with other airport steakhouses, we gave it a go. Mostly because it was the only reasonable meal option there. And it was surprisingly good. It was helped by our waitress Victoria who was old-school NYC in a good way. But the food was also quite tasty. And by virtue of sitting there rather than in the lounge we got to see this guy and his sparkly backpack. All sorts of good happening there.
Once on board we were treated to the bonus of having the middle seat between us empty. We almost got lie-flat coach but I was slow to jump into the seat across the aisle. Yeah, loads were light. That was good because the space on board isn’t particularly generous down the back of the plane. There is a foot rest which mostly just got in my way, preventing me from extending my legs under the seat in front of me. And the seats are the articulating ones so the recline slides the bottom forward a bit. Reclining decreases legroom. Yuck.
On the plus side, economy class got amenity kits (socks & a toothbrush) and earplugs/eye mask were available on request from the flight attendants. Also, free drinks with the dinner service, though it was really only beer & wine. Liquor was available but not on the drink cart so the delay in having the FA go to the galley to get it made it a rather unappealing option. The meal was OK. Nothing special, really, either good or bad. I suppose that’s about all one can really hope for in coach these days.
On the plus side, Singapore has quite a selection of movies loaded up on their IFE systems. Most were relatively new releases but there were a few from the archives as well. It took three reboots for my IFE to actually work properly (others around me had similar troubles) but once it got working it was pretty good. The in-flight internet was not working, making me 0/2 on trying that product out with Singapore Air. I’m happy my plan was to sleep and not be working.
Oh, and just because I can, a laviator shot on board showing off my RouteHappy shirt.
Overall I’d say that the timing of the SQ flight was still better than the UA option I had. But seat comfort would have been better on United, especially vis a vis personal space since I can get EconomyPlus for free. The meal was maybe a smidgen better on Singapore Air but with the later departure that matters less. And United’s IFE selection is sufficient for my tastes, maybe even better if you like the classics more than current cinema. In premium cabins there are a many more reasons to favor Singapore Air over United. In economy I’m not so sure about that choice. Especially if you’ve got elite status.
Tags: award, Dining, Flying, Frankfurt, frequent flier, frequent flyer, IFE, in flight, internet, New York City, PaxEx, Photos, points, reward, Singapore Air, Spring Break 2013, United, United Airlines
Posted by Seth Miller on March 7, 2013 under frequent flyer, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
Seems to me that, in the interest of being able to more easily find awards, having a listing of all the long-haul routes, by alliance and region, would be useful. And I haven’t ever found a good collection of them so I decided to start building one. Shocking, right??
I’m sure you’ll also be shocked to learn that I started with Star Alliance and the transatlantic (TATL) routes. I’m defining TATL in this context as between North America and Europe. I know there are more flights than just these but I’m going to have a series of posts in the coming days breaking it down and adding to the collection. And I had to start somewhere. So here it is.
There are, by my count, 172 173 route/carrier combinations across the North Atlantic Ocean operated by one of the thirteen Star Alliance members with at least one flight in the regions. Some are seasonal but, if you’re looking for seats, this is probably a good place to start.
Putting them all on a single map is actually pretty useless, other than just to show how massive the coverage footprint is:
To make it slightly more useful here’s a collection of maps split up by carrier. Still sortof sloppy in some cases, but better.
And, if you prefer the data in a less graphical format, it is also available in a table format here.
If you can see any I’ve missed let me know and I’ll update the tables.
Unique North American Gateways:
- ATL
- BOS
- CLT
- DEN
- DFW
- DTW
- EWR
- IAD
- IAH
- JFK
- LAX
- LAX
- MCO
- MEX
- MIA
- ORD
- PHL
- SEA
- SFO
- YEG
- YHZ
- YOW
- YUL
- YVR
- YYC
- YYT
- YYZ
Unique European Gateways:
- AMS
- ARN
- ATH
- BCN
- BFS
- BRU
- CDG
- CPH
- DME
- DUB
- DUS
- EDI
- FCO
- FRA
- GLA
- GVA
- HAM
- IST
- LGW
- LHR
- LIS
- MAD
- MAN
- MUC
- MXP
- OPO
- OSL
- SNN
- STR
- TXL
- VCE
- VIE
- WAW
- ZRH
Tags: Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Austrian Airlines, award, awards, Brussels Air, frequent flier, frequent flyer, LOT, Lufthansa, reward, SAS, Singapore Air, Star Alliance, Swiss, TAP Air Portugal, tools, Turkish Air, United, United Airlines, US Air, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools
Posted by Seth Miller on March 4, 2013 under frequent flyer, points, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
It seems that SkyTeam is finally getting on board with the theory that having all members use common fare buckets for award bookings makes life easier for everyone. A couple weeks ago it was confirmed that Vietnam Airlines is updating their booking classes on April 1, 2013. Next up would appear to be China Eastern Airlines. Effective July 1, 2013 the carrier will be using the same booking classes – X for economy awards and O for business awards – as Vietnam Airlines and most other SkyTeam members.
I ran a couple quick checks on my award inventory search tools and was surprised to find that China Eastern wasn’t among the airlines included in the list. I have access to the inventory so there is no reason to be excluding them. Needless to say, I’ve righted that problem. They will now be an available option on the award search and award alert tools. Like most of the other award searches the UI isn’t particularly beautiful, but the data should be accurate.
Also of note is that I expect the Shanghai Airlines award classes to change at the same time. They are currently the same as those of China Eastern, which makes sense since Shanghai is owned by China Eastern. Based on that assumption I’ve updated my award search tools for both carriers, not just the one.
Tags: award, awards, China Eastern, frequent flier, frequent flyer, points, reward, Shanghai Airlines, SkyTeam, tools, Vietnam Airlines, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools
Posted by Seth Miller on February 25, 2013 under frequent flyer, News, points, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
Back when Vietnam Airlines joined the SkyTeam alliance it seems that they ignored the common believe shared by most airlines that award inventory should be severely limited. They used revenue booking classes for both business and economy awards and, especially in business class, had very few limitations on the inventory. Alas, it seems that all good things must end some day. In the case of Vietnam Airlines that day appears to be March 31, 2013.
Starting in April the award buckets are changing. Currently business class awards book into J class and economy awards into U class. The new booking classes will be O for business class and X for economy. There are a few negatives which come from this change. Most notably, with the inventory now separate from revenue bookings Vietnam Airlines can more tightly control access to the seats. And, from what I can see in a few test scans of their inventory, they are tightening down pretty badly. I’m having trouble finding any seats from Ho Chi Minh City to Singapore over the next several months, for example. And even where the inventory is still available it is more often than not in economy class, not business class, where the seats are showing.
Another negative of the change is that, by separating the awards into dedicated fare buckets, the ability is earn points on an award ticket is going to disappear. Sure, you shouldn’t have been able to in the first place but loopholes like that exist in a few places. This one is getting closed up.
I do see the X and O inventory still available in limited instances so it isn’t that Vietnam Airlines is hiding the inventory from the public GDS interfaces. That means the seats will still be open to searches and alerts through the interfaces I have on the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools site. But with the limited inventory out there in the new buckets, I am rather saddened. Vietnam Airlines was a great option for getting around within southeast Asia as a SkyTeam partner. Seeing that award space drying up is no fun at all.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth Miller on February 20, 2013 under frequent flyer, Hotel, News, points |
Like most people who saw the news late yesterday that the Hilton HHonors award chart was changing I was quick to note how bad the changes appear to be. And, to be fair, they are bad in many, many places. But I also like to make sure I’m getting (and sharing) the full picture, so I decided to delve a bit deeper into the data. Hilton has built a website for figuring out the points required at any given property under the new scheme. And, fortunately, it is reasonably easy to script that site. So I did. I picked, somewhat at random, Alaska, Missouri, Illinois, Idaho, Texas, Florida, Georgia, New York and Virgina as US states to query. I also chose Canada, Mexico, France, Japan, Thailand and Slovakia as countries to research. The site limits to returning only the first 100 properties in any query so I know it isn’t a complete set of data but I ended up with 862 valid data points to analyze, roughly 20% of the HHonors properties. I then listed them out with the month-by-month rates in the new program compared to the fixed rate in the old program, looking to see how many were higher, lower or the same. I ended up with just over 10,000 data points – rate at a hotel in a given month – to review. 
Yes, there is a lot of red (higher rates) on the chart. But I was also surprised at how much green (lower rates) I saw. Of the rates I compared more that 4,500 are now higher under the new scheme. That is roughly 45% or 9% more than what Marriott increased in their recent changes. But there are also just over 3,000 instances (about 30%) where the rates are lower than before. That’s much better than what Marriott did. As a means to try to calculate something resembling a weighted average I also totaled up the cost to redeem one night in each month of the year under the old and new rules for every hotel in the set. There are 60 properties where that total weighted change is a drop of 100,000 points or more. If we presume that my sample is reasonably random then that extrapolates out to about 7% of the total properties. Not a huge number but it does represent significant drops in the redemption rates at those hotels. There are properties dropping 2 or 3 levels in the award chart in some cases. The biggest drop was 300,000 points across 12 redemptions. Not to be too satisfied with seeing the number of hotels which dropped in price, I also checked for the number which increased by 100,000 or more points using the same metrics. There were 103 of them in my set; using the same extrapolation as above that is about 12%. The biggest increase was 430,000 points across the 12 redemptions at the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square and Hampton Inn Manhattan-Times Square North. The increases absolutely outweigh the decreases. There is no doubt about that. But there are some areas where it isn’t actually horrible, maybe even slightly better. The big picture might not be quite as bad as initial impressions suggested. I still think that they’ve made it excessively complex and that the overall value of the program is not one where I think there is a reasonable RoI for my travel patterns, but it isn’t all completely awful. If you want to review the data I based the above on it can be found here.
The 60 best changes:
The 40 worst changes:
Posted by Seth Miller on February 13, 2013 under frequent flyer, PaxEx, points |
Alaska Airlines has announced they will be severing ties with partner Icelandair effective June 1, 2013. The two will have a "phased" winding down of relations following that date per an email sent to Mileage Plan members this week:
Alaska Airlines is announcing a change in its Mileage Plan airline partnership with Icelandair, which is scheduled to conclude June 1, 2013. In an effort to minimize impact on our customers, we will phase the relationship out over eleven months. To learn the details of this phased approach, please visit alaskaair.com. We know many customers have found value in our partnership with Icelandair and apologize for any inconvenience that this change may cause.
The phased approach is actually reasonably generous, based on the purchase date of the ticket as defining the earning rules. Here’s what their website shows:
Effective June 1, 2013, Icelandair will no longer be a Mileage Plan™ partner.Tickets purchased on or after June 1, 2013, will not earn Mileage Plan™ Miles. Tickets purchased on or before May 31, 2013, will continue to earn miles for travel through February 28, 2014.
Existing award travel, and award travel booked by May 31, 2013, will be honored for travel through February 28, 2014. Award travel on Icelandair cannot be booked or changed after May 31, 2013.
That said, the inability to change an award after the cutoff date isn’t so great.
It is not entirely clear why this change came about, though the launch of service by Icelandair from Anchorage to Iceland is one possible reason. Ditto the rather crazed flood of award bookings a few months back when Icelandair was selling miles cheap and they could be used to book first class awards to Hawaii at bargain rates. Whatever the reasons, the relationship is ending and that’s a shame. Fewer partners is rarely a good thing.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth Miller on February 12, 2013 under frequent flyer, points, Wandering Aramean Travel Tools |
Just a quick update here as I continue to integrate details of Malaysia Airlines joining oneworld into the various tools over at my Wandering Aramean Travel Tools site. The latest to be addressed is the Avios Redemption cost calculator. There are about 150 new routes now in the database, ranging from 4,500 to 20,000 points each way for awards. Here’s a sample shot for Tokyo to Bangkok, now with Kuala Lampur as a connection option:
As always, let me know if you have any troubles with the tools.
Posted by Seth Miller on February 7, 2013 under frequent flyer, News, points |
It would seem that at some point in the past 10 days or so the US Airways award chart has seen a change for the worse. The 60,000 point business class award between North America an Europe has disappeared. This was one of the gems of the Dividend Miles program and losing it will be quite unfortunate for their members. Here’s what the chart looks like now:
And here’s what it looked like on January 27, 2013, the last date there is a copy in the archive.org system:
US Airways has also split out Alaska as a separate destination zone for flights from the continental US, raising the rates at the medium and high levels. And low-level first class awards between North America and Hawaii are now 80K rather than 70K. High level business class between North America/Hawaii and Europe are up to 350K from 325K. High level business class between North America/Hawaii and Europe/South America are actually going down to 325K from 35oK. Finally, the middle and high tier rates between North America/Hawaii and the Middle East have spiked dramatically; at the top end a first class award goes from 240K to 350K.
OUCH!
