Posted by Seth on March 2, 2012 under Trip Reports | 
At 11:59pm local time tonight Continental flight 1267 will depart from Phoenix headed to Cleveland. This is the last departure of a flight marketed as Continental and it marks the end of an era, with the carrier’s name finally disappearing as the merger with United makes the final customer-facing step – integration of the Passenger Service System. When the final flight was announced I happened to take a look online and there was award inventory available. Plus there were award seats that could get me out to Phoenix to start the adventure. So why not?!?
I’m on my way out to JFK in a few minutes so start my journey west, and I’m well prepared for the event. I’ve got my camera, my netbook, my Kindle, my earplugs and my eyeshade. And, perhaps more importantly, I’ve got emergency supplies for myself and the crews I’ll be interacting with along the way:
I’ve got about 100 so there should be enough for everyone.
Also, because some of us were being rather silly last night (and some of us were also a bit drunk) there was some discussion of biblical verses that might be useful for the travel community as this integration proceeds. I’m not a particularly spiritual person but my sarcasm comes through somewhat often. And that was my approach to the question when posed. Here’s what I came up with:
The Tulip is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in flat-bed seats:
He leadeth me over the oceans.
He restoreth my EQMs:
He leadeth me in the paths of upgrades for His name' sake.
Yea, though I fly over the valley of the shadow of WoS,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy ICCs and thy web site, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a mileage run before me in the presence of sky-high fares;
Thou annointest my account with GPUs; My e-Certs runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Bingo Cage forever.
There are a few bits I might change were I to rewrite it this afternoon while sober, but what the heck.
And now, off to the airport. Catch y'all again from the party in Phoenix.
Posted by Seth on March 1, 2012 under frequent flyer, News, points |
I’m generally a big fan of Scott McCartney’s The Middle Seat column in the Wall Street Journal so I was excited to read his post today about "Getting the Most Out of Your Frequent Flier Miles." I was hoping for some great insight into award pricing algorithms or inventory patterns. Instead I got a primer on how to not get any value from points. Such a disappointment.
There are a number of take-aways from the post but the main conclusion is this:
With domestic coach tickets, you generally get not much more than one penny per mile in value from airlines – that’s a $250 ticket for 25,000 miles. If the ticket now costs $400, you likely will have to pay 40,000 or 50,000 miles.
Not only is it simply wrong, but it is also very misleading in terms of getting the most from your points. Other than the programs of JetBlue, Virgin America and Southwest, (and also one option from Delta or American Airlines) the redemption rates are not tied directly to the selling price of the ticket. If there are no discounted seats left it is less likely that award flights will be available at the lower rates, but that’s tied to the inventory, not to the fare price. As the prices go up at the low end it actually means that the "value" realized for redeeming points is arguably higher since the cash option will be more expensive.
McCartney also picks a few random routes and tries to read into overall domestic award inventory based on his searches for economy class seats on one carrier for each route. His approach fails miserable in many ways.
First off, it appears that the searches he performed were based only on using the website of the carrier where the miles are sitting and then by just putting in the end points. This resulted in finding only a handful of seats for Boston-Ft. Lauderdale on Delta, Orlando-Seattle on American or Washington, DC – Austin on US Airways. For the Delta results this approach overlooks the issues that their website suffers from for award bookings; it is very limited, especially when searching for connections. For American I see very different results than McCartney did, with plenty of award seats open at the "Saver" level.
Both of those are questionable, but the US Airways one is the most egregious bad advice of the three:
And if you’re in Washington, D.C., and have US Airways miles you’d like to use to go to Austin, Texas, get ready to pay a heavy price—besides the $25 processing fee that US Airways charges for a “free’’ ticket. For the 10 months in the rest of this year, there are only five days when US Airways offered a flight to Austin at its basic mileage price.
In addition to only searching on US Airways’s website, McCartney ignores the fact that Dividend Miles can be redeemed for flights operated by United Airlines. Checking the award calendar there it is clear that finding an award seat from DCA-AUS is actually a rather trivial task on most days for the rest of the year. Yes, you’ll have to call in to book it, but that’s a small penalty for saving 25,000 points.
Sorry, Scott, but you missed the boat BIG TIME on this one.
Tags: American Airlines, award, Boston, Delta, frequent flier, frequent flyer, JetBlue, points, Seattle, Southwest Airline, United, US Air, Virgin America, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on February 20, 2012 under Dining, Trip Reports |
I arrived in Istanbul on a crisp, cool afternoon following a short flight in from Skopje, finally finishing off my four day journey that started in Stockholm. I had managed to parlay a single one-way award ticket into a three-night adventure where every stop was wonderful in its own way. Istanbul, however, was the jewel in the crown, so to speak. It was wonderful. It was beautiful. And it was snowing.
Apparently snow is rare in Istanbul. This was my 5th consecutive city over the previous 7 days where my arrival was heralded by snow. It was a light flurry, no real accumulation, and it gave the city a beautiful glow, over and above the regular level of amazing that its history and culture provide.
I watched the sun set as I rode the metro into town from the airport and quickly dropped my bag off in the hotel room in order to enjoy the sights at night, a view I had not previously experienced. It was awesome.
The streets of the Sultanahmet were quiet, save for the occasional taksi or streetcar rolling through. A few tourists wandered about near me but nothing like the crowds of a summer day. I was nearly alone with the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Sarai, able to celebrate them all by myself.
The cold eventually started to set in, as did hunger; it was time to find dinner. As I walked back towards my hotel – I had seen plenty of restaurants in the neighboring streets – I happened past an outdoor café with a group of musicians playing in the back. And there was just enough heat available that I figured I probably wouldn’t completely freeze. I settled in for an Iskender, an Effes and a set with the band.
I’m sure that it wasn’t the best music ever, but they were clearly enjoying themselves and that was all it took for me to also enjoy the experience. Not every night on every trip has that magical sensation. This was a special night in many ways.
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Posted by Seth on February 4, 2012 under Flying, frequent flyer, points |
One of the more notable stories in frequent flyer land this week was that award inventory for Korean Air is being published into the GDSes, meaning that it is publicly visible and searchable. Both Gary and Ben mentioned it earlier today and both of them also note that folks can sign up for an ExpertFlyer account to search the inventory and setup email alerts for it. I’m a big fan of ExpertFlyer and I love the access they have to a lot of otherwise private inventory and fare data, but I’m also a big fan of free access to free data, and in the case of Korean Air awards and upgrades, getting the information for free is absolutely possible.
One of my many travel-related projects is the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools website. It includes, among other things, award inventory information for a bunch of airlines. And now that the data is accessible, Korean Air is part of that collection. You can search for award or upgrade inventory for free. And there’s even an email alert function that can be set, allowing you to get a message if the award inventory opens up.
Yes, you have to register to gain access to the data, but it is free and no strings attached.
Here’s a snip of what the search page looks like:
Not particularly pretty, but quite functional. Also of note is that sometimes the system will provide options that don’t quite get you where you’re going, but to an intermediate connecting point instead. On the above Seoul to Singapore search there are two non-stop flights (KE 641 and 643) that are both available, but there is also KE 683 to SGN, from which you might be able to pick up a connection on SkyTeam partner Vietnam Airlines, another of the carriers searchable in the tool collection. Displaying more than just the non-stop options should help folks with flexibility to better find awards that work.
Coach award inventory is not currently available in the system and first class isn’t available to partners, but otherwise the data should be accurate for redemptions.
Give the tools a try and let me know what you think.
Tags: award, frequent flier, frequent flyer, Korean, points, Seoul, Singapore, SkyTeam, upgrade, Vietnam, Vietnam Airlines
Posted by Seth on January 30, 2012 under Trip Reports |
I had a grand plan for transiting three different cities across Europe on consecutive days. Sure, I’d sleep a couple hours each night, but I was also going to spend most of the 20-ish hours on the ground at each stop exploring the town, eating their food and drinking their booze. It was a grand plan, alright, but the execution was a bit lacking.
My first stop of the hopping was Berlin, a city I’d heard great things about and one I was quite excited to visit. I even sortof knew what I wanted to see while I was there. Sortof. OK, other than the Brandenburg Gate and the Holocaust memorial, nothing at all. But I’d figure it out, right? After all, I always have.
The bus in from the airport was incredibly easy (except the ticket machines don’t make change for bills larger than 10 Euro) and 20 minutes or so later I was in front of the beautiful, towering, modern Hauptbahnhof. I knew my hotel was just a stop or two away from there so I headed inside. Sure, I spent the next 20 minutes or so wandering around lost in the enormous station, trying to find the appropriate S-Bahn train, but I didn’t mind at all. The station truly is beautiful.
And then, after dropping my bag in the hotel I was back out. I had only an hour before I was due to meet a friend for drinks and dinner and that really isn’t much time in a city as grand as Berlin. But I knew the two things I wanted to see and they were only about a 10 minute walk from the hotel; I was doing fine.
The Gate is pretty. They light it up lovely at night. And I even got a couple photos of it that I don’t particularly hate, which is somewhat impressive given that I had no tripod, the exposures were painfully slow and it was pretty darn cold outside so I was shivering a lot.
From Brandenburg Gate I headed around the corner to see the Holocaust memorial. It is beautiful. It is amazing. It is rather intimidating to walk into when it is dark outside. The photo here is a VERY long exposure, making it appear reasonably light outside. Truth is that the sky was the same darkness as the Brandenburg Gate photos above. Still, thanks to the miracles of modern technology I got the pretty cool picture below.
And then my hour as a tourist was up. I had to race to the U-Bahn to meet up with my friend. I found the station, figured out which track and caught the next train going my way. I was rather confused 2 stops later when they made the "Last Stop" announcement (though at least they repeated it in English). Apparently there were track works in progress and I was supposed to find a replacement bus to the next major station. At this point I became acutely aware of just how hard it must be for the tourists in New York City who are forced to navigate the constantly changing construction projects we have, all without the benefit of any communication in their native language. Even with the little bits of English on the signs it was a challenge. I made it, eventually, but it wasn’t easy.
I also had grand plans for the morning, to see more of town before my noon-ish flight onward to Munich and then Ljubljana. Alas, when I awoke I discovered that there had been a schedule change at some point previously and I was now faced with a 5 minute connection in Munich rather than the originally booked 30 minutes. The airport is easy, but not that easy. A panicked phone call to the folks at Continental (this was an award ticket) got me booked on the next earlier Berlin-Munich flight which meant I’d make my connection. It also meant scrapping my plans for a morning in Berlin.
And so, the entirety of my tourist time in town was an hour (plus an awesome dinner with an old friend). I definitely saw a lot in that hour and had a blast, but it also would be a disservice to Berlin to say that I saw the city. Guess I’ll just have to go back.
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Posted by Seth on January 18, 2012 under frequent flyer, News, points |
The frequent flyer partnership between United Airlines‘ Continental subsidiary and Virgin Atlantic is being terminated as of February 13, 2012. This date is the last for mileage earning or redemption ticket issuance on the partner, with award redemptions valid for one year from that date, assuming they are issued. This isn’t a particularly surprising move, though it is a bit of a downgrade in terms of the MileagePlus program.
The Continental/Virgin relationship made a lot of sense when it was originally launched. Continental had a minimal amount of traffic into London at all and none into Heathrow due to the Bermuda II restrictions. It allowed Continental to market flights into Heathrow under their own code and to sell onward connections using Heathrow as a transit point. Since the establishment of the Open Skies agreement between the US and the EU, however, Continental has had access to Heathrow and has steadily increased flights there. Add in the merger with United and there are only a few cities now where Virgin had nonstop service ex-LHR that the combined United doesn’t and those are less significant today.
The end of the partnership is rather unfortunate on the redemption side of the frequent flyer program in particular as Virgin has often had decent award availability, especially in their Upper Class business class product and especially close to the travel date. I’ve taken advantage of that a couple times and, though I’m not a huge fan of the product, it is still an option being lost which is unfortunate.
Also unfortunate is the timing of the announcement. The company provided barely 4 weeks’ notice of the change, one that they have likely known about for some time. It is a shame that the changes to partners and earning rates are trickling out so slowly as part of the merger process.
Posted by Seth on November 20, 2011 under Flying, Trip Reports |
I like to think that I have a pretty solid grasp of how revenue and inventory management work together within the airlines to control the price of a flight. I understand fare rules, inventory allocations and routing rules and I can generally figure out what’s going on. Heck, I’ve even built tools that help find the information and distill it to simple numbers. So I was incredibly surprised this weekend when I went to purchase a few "local" flights for our New Years trip to South Asia. Needless to say, the numbers were not playing nice.
I got an award flight into India using my OnePass miles from Continental and a revenue ticket on the return from Colombo, Sri Lanka on a combination of Emirates and British Airways. That part was relatively easy, though I did run into some issues booking one of the return options (now since discarded) via EgyptAir from Bangkok. But that was nothing compared to the crazy I experienced trying to buy the domestic flights in India and the short hop from Chennai to Colombo.
Here’s a screen shot from the ITA pricing engine for one of the flights we wanted:
Pretty simple, really. Based on that we should have been able to get the flight for about $200 without much trouble, right? So I started checking around a few different booking engines. Thanks to the various referral link/rebate options for flight bookings I was checking three different engines, Expedia, Vayama and CheapoAir (n.b. – those links earn me that rebate if you use them). The rebates offered vary so there is some flexibility in figuring out which is best deal but, all else being equal, I should be able to get the published fare from each, right??
Not at all.
For that flight which nominally cost $200 the options I got were $257 or $247 from Vayama and CheapoAir, respectively:
Exact same flight, date, time and fare bucket, but a price that was 25% higher. Zoinks! Fortunately Expedia was able to book the flight at the "correct" price for that one.
For the flight from Chennai to Cochin a few days earlier, however, CheapoAir was about $50 less than Expedia and actually ended up being less than the published price in ITA thanks to a coupon that they had published, a coupon that didn’t work on the above itinerary.
Similarly, for the flight to Colombo the ITA price seemed decent enough, with flights at the right time for what we wanted:
Once again, Vayama was terribly over-priced, even including the click-through rebate earnt:
And Expedia was still showing the published ITA rate:
But don’t forget to check the operating carrier, too. A quick visit to the SriLankan website pulled up this price:
That converts to USD $213 at the current exchange rates, a full $80 less than the fare published in ITA and a whopping $140 less than what Vayama wanted for the exact same rate.
So, is there a moral to the story? Maybe it is this: Airfare pricing is horribly inconsistent and near impossible for mere mortals to effectively and easily compare. It also further enforces my fears of how much worse it could get if the airlines continue to pull information out of the GDSes and move towards their direct sales model. In this case the direct model ended up saving me a few bucks, but only after quite a bit of digging to find the best price.
It really shouldn’t be this hard.
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Tags: award, Bangkok, British Airways, Chennai, Cochin, Colombo, Continental, EgyptAir, Emirates, frequent flyer, India, Jet Airways, Kochi, Madras, NYE2011, points, Sri Lanka, SriLankan
Posted by Seth on November 4, 2011 under frequent flyer, points |
United Airlines has historically had the rather customer-unfriendly policy of choosing to limit access to partner award inventory when customers try to redeem points for award tickets. Essentially they’ve decided that you shouldn’t have access to award seats that other airlines are willing to make available, simply because your miles are in the Mileage Plus program. Several months ago, around the time of the merger with Continental, that policy appeared to relax, with reports of blocked award inventory significantly reduced.
Apparently it is back.
There have been a number of recent incidents, including a couple I’ve verified myself, where award inventory made available by partner airlines has not been available to members of the Mileage Plus program. In a rather ironic twist, merger partner Continental will be happy to book these same award seats, often times on their website rather than requiring a call to an agent only to discover that the award seat you know exists won’t be made available because someone in United’s accounting department has decided it shouldn’t be.
No, StarNet blocking isn’t new. And United has never claimed that they stopped the practice, but the frequency of incidents was much lower recently, to near zero. Apparently that was just a mistake someone made up in Chicago and they’re working on fixing it. Hopefully it doesn’t survive into the new MileagePlus program, but I’m not holding my breath at this point.
Posted by Seth on September 27, 2011 under Flying, frequent flyer, News, points |
JetBlue has joined the ranks of airlines offering award redemption sales this fall, offering a limited-time 20% off sale for award travel. The deal requires booking by midnight on September 28, 2011 and there are some additional restrictions as well:
- Travel between 10/4 – 12/15/2011
- Travel not discounted on Friday or Sunday
- Blackout Dates: 11/22, 11/23, 11/26, 11/28/2011
More fine print here.
A quick check of redemption costs shows the sale rates valuing points at 1.70-ish cents each while the same route on a non-discount day has them at 1.35-ish cents, matching the 20% discount advertised. There is no indication that you’re getting a sale rate in the booking process but the pricing works out that way.
Not a bad deal at all, especially given the otherwise generally fixed value of the TrueBlue points. I might actually redeem a few myself…
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Posted by Seth on September 19, 2011 under Flying, frequent flyer, News, points |
Singapore Airlines has announced that effective 15 January 2012 the Singapore-Frankfurt-JFK route will change from the Boeing 747-400 to the Airbus A380. This change has been expected for quite some time and the news from the carrier finally puts to rest speculation on the timing of the change.
For the United States, our customers will be able to enjoy the latest cabin products on all routes, in addition to having the A380 serving both east and west coasts. For Germany, it will also mean offering our customers the latest cabin products on both of our daily Frankfurt flights as well as our daily Munich flights.
The change has both positive and negative aspects associated with it. The quality of the hard product on the 747 is pretty mediocre. It was great a decade ago when it was introduced but it has since been surpassed by many other carriers. The product quality on the A380 is significantly better throughout the aircraft so that’s an upgrade to be sure. There are also 25% more seats on the A380 which means potentially lower prices and easier access to award inventory. Sortof.
The main negative of the change is on the award inventory front. Singapore has chosen to outright block redemption of first class seats ("Suites") on their A380s from partners and allows redemption for KrisFlyer members only at incredibly inflated prices. Business class award seats are generally not available to partners either, though some routes are now showing award inventory to some partners so that wall is coming down a bit.
Overall this change is probably a good thing. It certainly is for the folks who are paying the going rate for premium cabin fares as they’ll be getting a much better product for their money. But it sucks for folks like me who tend to only fly in premium cabins on award redemptions. If this route starts to show award seats to partners then I’ll certainly consider it an upgrade overall. I did the JFK-FRA route once a couple years ago in business class and it was nice but not amazing. But given the choice between nice or not available I’ll take nice.
Hat tip to SitInFirst.com for noticing the update.
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Tags: A380, Airbus, award, Boeing, Frankfurt, frequent flyer, Munich, New York, New York City, points, Singapore, Singapore Air
