Posted by Seth on March 16, 2010 under frequent flyer, points | 
You never know when frequent flyer miles are going to take center stage in a conversation. I’m sure that it is more often than it should when I’m around, though I have been better lately about trying not to always talk about travel. Still, when I sat down at the dentist a few months back and started chatting with my new hygienist the conversation turned to travel. She mentioned her recent engagement and honeymoon planning and my brain went into overdrive. I couldn’t resist.
We started talking about all the options available, which programs made sense (she was already pretty tied to Continental’s OnePass program and Hilton’s HHonors program) and which destinations offered the best bang for the spend. I don’t actually remember the cleaning that day so much or even if it happened (though I have the bill to suggest that it did). We talked about sign-up bonuses for credit cards and bank accounts. We talked about buying points through the US Mint dollar coin program. So much fun for me because she actually wanted to hear it all as opposed to my of my victims.
Six or so months later and I’m back in the office for another cleaning. The first thing out of her mouth was a huge thanks for all the help I provided. We spent the next ten minutes or so going through the itinerary (Hawaii and Fiji) and discussing how they got to use all the points that they earned from the last round of promotions (upgrades all the way through the trip). We chatted about hotels on Waikiki beach (Hyatt being MUCH better than the Hilton Hawaiian Village), a few of my favorite off-the-beach restaurants and things to do other than sitting on the fake beach there.
Finally, when scheduling my next appointment the receptionist mentioned that it will be just after the hygienist returns from the honeymoon, meaning I’ll get the follow-up report, too. It is always fun to have the conversation when the other person in them actually is interested in the information being shared, and hearing about the successful bookings makes it even better. I’m looking forward to hearing about the trip in a few months.
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Posted by Seth on February 21, 2010 under frequent flyer |
I’ve not spent very much money to maintain hotel status over the past several years. Since I switched my travel to all personal from a mix of personal and business my total hotel spend has decreased significantly while the number of nights I’m in hotels has stayed the same or increased. That raises a tough issue: Is it worthwhile to pay extra to have the status that loyalty programs bring?
The question has been brought to the forefront for me this week with an email I received from Marriott. They are offering the opportunity to buy back elite status for their Marriott Rewards members and they’re discounting the number of points required for that renewal right now. As Gary has reported, Gold buy-back can be had for 25,000 points, a discount of 15,000 points off the regular price. In my case, the offer is to buy back Silver status for 7,500 points, a 12,500-point savings.
And I still think that both offers are a pretty cruddy deal. The 7,500 points for Silver is the equivalent of one night in a Category 1 level hotel. That’s not all that much money in spend but the value for the spend is pretty much nothing. The value for Gold status is somewhat higher but it still doesn’t make much sense to me. If you’re not actually staying enough to use the benefits why pay extra to have them? Maybe if the interruption in travel was a one-time thing due to a change in travel patterns or something like that, but for me it makes no sense at all. I’m not going to get the value and I know it. No need to spend extra for it.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Four flights covering 7,400 miles is not really all that much for a weekend of travel. Nothing to sneer at, to be sure, but not a ton of miles covered. The fact that I’m earning 150% credit thanks to the booking class helps to justify the trip, as does the rather great sale fare that I got the tickets at. Plus, there is the fun of flying on Copa Air, a/k/a bizarro-world Continental.
Continental and Copa share a lot of similarities in their operations. That makes sense considering that Continental used to own a decent chunk of the Panamanian carrier. And even now that Continental has divested their ownership share Copa still seems to behave a lot like Continental. They share a frequent flyer program – OnePass – and the Copa flight attendant uniforms strongly represent the last generation of Continental’s, for example. And then there is the fact that their logos are significantly similar and that the two carriers operate with immunity from the United States to Panama and connections beyond. Looking around in the galley on one of the flights I noticed that a couple of the bins are labeled as Continental rather than Copa. Yeah, they are very tight.
But not everything is exactly the same. There are just enough differences to make flying on Copa a somewhat jarring experience. Sure, the upgrades still come through generally (I got all 4 this weekend) but Copa serves real meals on all their flights and serves booze from real bottles rather than minis. As it would be described in India, “Same same, but different.”
I was conscious for three of the four flights this weekend. The first – a 5:07am departure from New York City – I slept through entirely. The others, however, were rather pleasant experiences. We had printed menus on one of the three and the meals were consistent enough that I got to try one of everything that they are serving these days, I think. There were ice cream sundaes at the end of each meal, and that goes a long way towards making a flight a success. Of course, unlike Continental Copa doesn’t serve Grand Marnier on their flights. Instead they offer a “Rum of the Month” program in Classe Ejecutiva and I took full advantage of that. Sortof.
It turns out that this month the catering folks only put the good rum in the carts in the back of the plane. So the first two times I ordered the ron especial I was actually drinking Bacardi. I knew that it wasn’t that good but I just assumed I didn’t like the special rum. It was only on my last fight, flight from Panama City back to New York, that I was able to have the conversation with the flight attendant and understand what was being served and solve that problem. Thank goodness, as the special this month – Abuelo Añejo 12 year – was much, much, much better than the Bacardi. I’m no longer wondering why I have to use so much ginger ale to cut it to provide decent flavor, for example.
Beyond the rum there are a number of other nice things about the Copa experience. Full meals on all the flights, for example. It isn’t gourmet by any stretch but the food is pretty decent. I had steak, chicken and different chicken as my three meals and all were completely tolerable. Sure, there was a strange double salad first course on one of the flights but, well, it didn’t kill me.
Oh, and they serve ice cream sundaes on all the lunch and dinner flights. Yummy!
The food service was also much slower than I’m used to. On one of the flights it was 45 minutes before the flight attendant showed up to ask what we wanted and another 30 minutes before drinks showed up. Certainly not the end of the world, but less attentive than I would expect from most airlines in the forward cabin. There’s a decent enough explanation for the slow service. There is only one flight attendant working in the front cabin, expected to serve 14-16 passengers. It simply isn’t possible for that to play out well. But that’s the way they roll. Maybe they have to since they serve a full meal in coach to the 150+ folks back there and that needs the extra body but it does diminish the service up front a bit.
Beyond the food and booze the flights were a great opportunity to meet people. I was wearing my jetBlue shirt on the outbound flights and that was enough for the guy across the aisle on the JFK-Panama segment to start up a conversation. Turns out that he used to work for jetBlue and now works for Copa in their airport operations group. He commutes between Panama and New York most weekends. We had an interesting conversation about impending expansion of the terminal in Panama City, the needs of the terminal (showers in the Presidents Club!) and how incredibly convenient it is as a connection point heading to Central or South America.
I met Tony, a guy who works in the elevator business. We talked about our shared inability to speak Spanish, random visits to various Central American cities and how to better take advantage of the miles he’s been earning all these years. I truly hope he does better than he has with them because he has never redeemed any and, quite frankly, that is a shame. On the plus side, I think I’ve started the education process for him and explained some of the better options he has with all those points.
And then, sitting in the Presidents Club in Panama City, I saw a guy who was obviously from New York (the Duane Reade bags give it away) and who looked pretty familiar. I introduced myself and it turns out that we had met a while back at a FlyerTalk event. We chatted for a bit in the lounge and then ended up sitting next to each other on the flight back to New York. He was wrapping up a weekend in Buenos Aires and me from Mexico City. Similar stories and adventures though also completely different.
Such is the life of the frequent fliers.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
Given a total of 14 hours on the ground in Mexico City, of which the majority was during sleeping hours, there wasn’t a whole lot of opportunity for grand adventures or expeditions. Things got even worse when my phone lost data service on arrival and I couldn’t find the address of the hotel to tell the cab driver. A quick phone call back to a buddy in Los Angeles solved that problem (Thanks, Damien!) but I was still left with a few hours on a Monday morning that I had to fill. I wasn’t willing to just sit in the hotel room until I had to head back to the airport – what fun is that?!?! – so I set out on a very limited exploration of a very small part of Mexico City.
My hotel, the Wyndham Garden Inn, is in the Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City. About 30 minutes from the airport, the area is very accessible and also happens to be a reasonably nice neighborhood to wander about. Even putting aside the significant number of points I earned for the hotel stay I think that the property is a winner. Free internet that is a pretty decent connection, great towels (very soft) and a pretty good location make the property a winner to me.
I got some great tips from a friend in terms of what I should try to see and I managed to do pretty well overall, I think. I still need to get to El Moro, the churros shop that was recommended, but I did get to see El Angel de Independencia and a couple other sites while wandering around the neighborhood for the couple hours I had that morning. Plus, I’ll be back in six weeks and should be able to get that bit of fun in on that visit.
But on this visit I simply walked up one of the main streets of town for a bit and was exposed to an enjoyable snippet of the city. Plenty of folks out on the street and I watched their completely crazy means of dealing with traffic circles (they just go on whichever side gets them to the destination faster rather than in a circle!). Overall, it was a rather enjoyable way to spend a bit of time in the morning getting acclimated to town.
Plus, I had a ridiculously delicious breakfast on the street. As I walked past the guy on the way out for my rambles I had a very good feeling about the situation. He had several meats, each kept in a very neat pile on the griddle. Plus the whole rig looked to be very clean. Still, there was no one else out eating so I was a bit apprehensive. I got over that when I returned from my excursion and saw a couple others around the stall eating off of plates that were covered in a disposable wrap. So he runs a very clean shop. That’s a good sign.
My initial order – in my version of very broken Spanish and his much better English – was for carne y queso; steak and cheese. Served on a couple tortillas and then topped with onions, salsa and a squeeze of lime juice from the condiment bar that he had on the cart. Half way through consuming that delicious I managed to order a second round, this time with chorizo rather than carne. It also had a different cheese though I really couldn’t describe the difference with any reasonable accuracy.
The two tortillas overfilled with meat plus a soda were about 30 pesos. That’s just over two US dollars. The food was great and at the price there was really nothing better out there. At least not that I could figure out how to order anywhere. After all, I barely speak Spanish.
And then it was back to the airport and then onto the circuitous routing back to New York City. Having the same flight crew for the Mexico City – Panama City flight as the night before into Mexico was fun. So was meeting a guy in the lounge in Panama that I vaguely knew from a previous trip. But that’s all a different story.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2010 under Trip Reports |
And this time I didn’t even leave my apartment.
A couple weeks ago I scheduled a meeting in Toronto. Given that all the flights were basically the same price and that the meeting was going to be in downtown I made the quite easy decision to fly Porter Air for the trip. Yes, I’d be giving up some points in my normal loyalty programs but the experience flying with them is great and the fact that they operate from the City Airport right downtown is a huge benefit. So I made my booking online and went along on my merry way.
Fast forward a couple weeks to this morning. I no longer actually had a meeting to attend in Toronto and figured I’d be out the cash for the ticket. It isn’t the most expensive ticket I’ve had to throw away but it is still annoying to lose out, even though I paid a third of the refundable price for my limited ticket. And it is snowing. Not heavily and certainly not as bad as last week’s storm, but it is definitely coming down. Newark airport can barely operate on a decent schedule when there is no weather. When snow comes into play all bets are off. That means weather waivers come out.
Porter has issued a waiver for travel in and out of Newark today. My scheduled flight actually looks like it is going to be on time but there are a few others that have been canceled. And I don’t have any reason to go to Toronto today nor a return ticket. So I tried my luck with their call center to see what my options were.
After choosing between English and French on the IVR system the call was answered on the first ring. That alone is a big win, but it got better from there. As I explained that the weather was precluding me from getting to the airport to get to my meeting the agent quickly offered up the option of rebooking for another day. Generally a great thing but I don’t know when I’ll be back up that way so I just wanted the value of the ticket as a credit. This is where the agent went above and beyond to help me out. He really tried to stop me from just getting the value back in a credit, with very good reason.
The weather waiver permits him to move my booking to pretty much any day and any flight. But the credit is just the value amount and it is generally not enough for a last-minute purchase. He explained the fare structures and advance purchase concepts to me to make sure that I realized I’d be potentially losing out with my decision. I’m a big fan of customer service agents that are well informed about their own product and look out for their customers in this way.
In the end I got the credit as I desired and made sure that he knew that I understood the risks of such a move. And I continue to be impressed by Porter Air.
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Posted by Seth on February 14, 2010 under Trip Reports |
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I swear. Well, at least sortof.
The price was right and the routing – from JFK to Mexico City, via Panama – was plenty fun, with a decent amount of time in both Panama and Mexico. Plus, the flights earn 150% credit in Continental’s OnePass program, bringing me that much closer to requalification for next year, the 100K EQMs I need for the SWUs and to finally hitting my lifetime million miles status.
Yet, as I left my apartment at 1am to head over to the E train and make my way to the airport I was most definitely questioning my sanity. Sitting on the floor outside the lounge – it is closed until 4am – that questioning is getting stronger. The flight is scheduled to depart at 5:07 am. That would mean a 3:30ish cab at the latest or a 3am subway ride. That’s not much time to sleep which meant that pushing up my departure from home a couple hours didn’t seem all that crazy, even though it did mean no sleep tonight.
Sure, I should get the upgrade so I’ll have a comfortable sleep to curl up in when I get on the plane. And the flight is pretty long so I have an opportunity for several consecutive hours of sleep. That should be nice. And I will be plenty exhausted by the time I get on board so falling asleep shouldn’t be a problem.
But planning a trip that requires heading to the airport at 1am seems quite foolish in retrospect. Of course, I have another trip on the same flight scheduled for the end of March. At least that one will be with a bunch of friends but it is still crazy.
Posted by Seth on February 5, 2010 under Trip Reports, points |
For a guy who doesn’t really love Hawai’i I seem to go there an awful lot. It is hard to complain too much when the airlines offer up a $250ish fare from the New York City area as it is a trip worth a bunch of miles, but I generally don’t really enjoy being there. Of course, I blame that on having stayed in Oahu, specifically in Waikiki Beach, when I get there. I know that there are supposed to be better bits to see and this time around I’m finally going to give that a try. I’m headed to the Big Island.
Today’s trip is a four flight affair, starting with a departure from Newark at 6am and finishing with a puddle-jumper flight from Honolulu to Hilo scheduled to arrive at 8:30pm tonight. Just enough time at each connection to hop into a lounge or two for a snack and then on to the next flight. Assuming everything connects OK (which seems pretty likely so far) I shouldn’t have any troubles other than the fact that it is about 20 hours in transit from my apartment to the bed at the other end.
Map from the totaly awesome Great Circle Mapper tool
Perhaps the best part about the first flight today (EWR-SFO) is that the plane is mostly empty. Normally when flying on United Airlines I’d perform some sort of “upgrade flirt” at the counter or in the lounge to try to get a seat in the Economy Plus section for free (I know it is coming soon enough with Continental OnePass reciprocity but I’m impatient) but this morning I didn’t even bother. The First Class cabin may be booked full on this A319 but the back is wide open. There are at least 10 half rows that have one or zero customers seated there. I traded my seat up near the exit row for 22E, a middle seat in the back.
Just after takeoff I was happily asleep in my lie-flat coach seat, trying to imagine if it would really work with a second passenger cuddled up next to me as Air New Zealand thinks they’ll be able to sell with their new SkyCouch seats. And I still don’t see it working, at least not for customers over 5’ 6” tall.
I awoke from my 3+ hour snooze to one of the more disgusting views I’ve seen on a plane. This:
Seriously, it isn’t your house. I know that it isn’t particularly crowded on board this morning but keep your feet down. Yuck!
Only 15 hours yet to go on this trip. Plenty more nap time and writing time to come.
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Posted by Seth on February 3, 2010 under News, media coverage |
It turns out that the folks who love flying so much don’t only enjoy those experiences in the air. Folks fly to hang out and party together on the ground, too.
As a follow-up to the article in the February issue of Conde Nast Traveler, the magazine, Lufthansa and Boarding Area sponsored a reception in New York City earlier this week. More than 50 folks showed up, many of them coming in from across the country for a quick evening of revelry before heading back to the real world, work and other obligations. It was a lot of fun.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a frequent flyer event without plenty of discussion of travel and deals. That was magnified in this case by the fact that there were a couple great deals on offer briefly Monday evening. The number of flights booked to Mexico City via Panama in the bar that night was rather significant. Good times!
More on the party here.
Posted by Seth on February 3, 2010 under News, frequent flyer, points |
Frequent traveler loyalty programs often like to subtly point out their advantages over competitors. Whether it was bragging about no blackout dates back in the day (most programs offer that these days) or pointing out variations in upgrade policies, raising the differences help the programs differentiate themselves and attract customers. The comparisons are generally rather passive; no need to outright attack the other programs.
Priority Club, the frequent guest program for Holiday Inn, Intercontinental and several other brands, has decided to skip the subtlety with their latest promotion. They’re attacking Hilton’s HHonors program with a full frontal assault and they aren’t shy about it at all. The promo is titled “The Luckiest Loser.” It goes after Hilton’s recent rewriting of their reward charts where, on average, the value of HHonors points dropped about 20%. Priority Club is offering folks who are feeling a bit jilted by the devaluation an opportunity to get some of those points back in the form of Priority Club points. Here’s how the promo works:
- We’ll automatically "give you back" 1,000 Priority Club points
- If you’re one of the top 20,000 "Lucky Losers," you will gain back up to 20% of your current HHonors balance in Priority Club points (up to 20,000 points)
- If you’re "The Luckiest Loser," you’ll win 2 million Priority Club points
It is a pretty smart promo in terms of what they are offering and generating some buzz. And the way they are going after HHonors directly is definitely more aggressive than programs have been in the past. It will be interesting to see if this sort of aggressiveness carries over to other programs.
Read more on the Priority Club promo here.
Posted by Seth on January 29, 2010 under frequent flyer |
Nearly a year ago American Airlines sent a letter to the IRS defining about 40 different “services” that the carrier offers to its customers. They asked for specific rulings on each of the 40 with respect to § 4261 of the IRS code, the section that covers the specific activities for which the airlines are required to collect and remit taxes. In general such a document wouldn’t be all that interesting, but there are a couple things that this particular one has in it that are worth noting. The impact on taxes for baggage fees has already been covered, and that is reasonably interesting, but there are two specific entries in the services list that describe potential future offerings. These are the two bits that piqued my interests most.
- Service P allows Members to purchase “bonus” Miles (i.e., double or triple miles) on certain flights to be credited to the Member’s Account. Currently, this service is occasionally offered to members free of charge on a limited-time basis. However, Taxpayer is preparing to offer Service P for a fee.
United Airlines currently offers a program similar to that identified as “Service P” above. They call it their Award Accelerator and it is generally a pretty bad deal; the points are too expensive. Continental also offfers something similar with their “Extra Mile” promo every year. So American wouldn’t be breaking new ground with such a more. Still, it would be an interesting move to see American attempt to further monetize their frequent flyer program and cash in on the obsession with points.
- Service CC allows Members to redeem Miles for the purchase of air transportation on Taxpayer’s website. At the time this letter ruling request was issued, Taxpayer was not charging a fee for Service CC. Taxpayer is, however, contemplating implementation of a fee for this service. The fee would be charged at the time of ticketing.
This one is a bit more worrisome from the consumer perspective. It suggests that AA is considering adding a booking fee for reward ticket reservations made through the website. Currently most airlines charge for such reservations when they are booked through the call center. Extending that out to bookings made online would be quite a leap. Currently there are a couple airlines that have such “convenience fees” for bookings but it would be quite a shock for a legacy carrier to start down that route. The verbiage is sufficiently different – “contemplating implementation” versus “preparing to offer” – that it doesn’t seem likely such charges are imminent, but it is out there now and intriguing enough to raise an eyebrow or two.
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Posted by Seth on January 27, 2010 under News, Trip Reports, frequent flyer, media coverage |
Back in November when me and 220 other aerophiles were jetting around in a chartered Boeing 757-300 there were a couple reporters along for the ride. They each focused on different aspects of why all all of us were there and what motivates us to travel as much as we do. Some of them got it and some of them most certainly did not. But none of them managed to relay the story quite as eloquently as Greg Lindsay, writing in the February 2010 issue of Condé Nast Traveler magazine.
His article, Triumph of the Air Warriors captures the spirit of that specific trip as well as the joy that many frequent flyers find in hunting down deals, identifying loopholes and otherwise fighting back just a little bit against a system that is decidedly stacked against the customer.
"I call it Airworld," Bingham says in the novel by Walter Kirn on which [Up in the Air] is based. "The scene, the place, the style. . . . Airworld is a nation within a nation, with its own language, architecture, mood, and even its own currency—the token economy of airline bonus miles that I’ve come to value more than dollars. Inflation doesn’t degrade them. They’re not taxed. They’re private property in its purest form."
For you, Airworld is the nowhere you pass through on your way to a meeting or a vacation. It’s the series of tubes from security to your gate, and to the rental car lots, chain hotels, and fast-casual restaurants. At every stop, if you’re savvy, you earn precious miles. American Airlines launched the first frequent-flier program almost 30 years ago on a lark; United followed suit a week later. Therein lies the tale—and many free trips to Hawaii. These led to real-life Clooneys endlessly chasing miles—and who knows what else.
And that’s what it is for me. The chase of the miles. The hunt for bargains. The chase for new cities, airlines, aircraft or just random trips that I’m just crazy enough to take. Lindsay spoke with a couple dozen “Air Warriors” – residents of AirWorld – about their adventures. And the stories we tell are full of frivolity, challenges and conquests. From one guy’s tale of his earliest memory – falling down the stairs of a 747 as a three year old – to a story of a mass revolution against an airline’s declining product quality, the stories are great reads.
Plus, I’m quoted a few times in the article; I’m sure that contributes to my appreciation of it.
You can read it here (http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/502250) or pick up a copy on the newsstands. The print version has a pretty awesome photo, too.
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