Posted by Seth on April 6, 2012 under frequent flyer, News, points | 
Now that the necessary government approvals have been received for the absorption of bmi into IAG, parent of British Airways, the company is confirming its exit date from Star Alliance. In just two weeks’ time – April 20th is the target date – bmi will withdraw from the global alliance group as it transitions into the IAG fold and the sale is completed. The company released a FAQ on its Facebook page with some information.
Nothing particularly surprising in the FAQ, really. They note that existing award reservations will be honored, which is only appropriate. They have also stated that they are working to extend some alliance benefits for members, even after they leave the group:
Q. After completion will I still be able to use my benefits on other Star Alliance carriers?
bmi is working with Star Alliance member carriers to ensure that once bmi begins to withdraw from Star Alliance there are opportunities for Diamond Club members to continue to receive certain benefits on the Star Alliance network for an agreed period of time. We will update you as soon as more information becomes available.
This would likely apply to lounge and baggage benefits for top-tier elites, a useful set of benefits to keep as existing tickets are cycled out of the system. Cutting those benefits when they existed at the time of ticketing would be most unfortunate for passengers.
Oh, and Virgin Atlantic is still considering an appeal of the approval, though it seems unlikely to have any impact.
Anyone have a suggestion for what to do with 58K Diamond Club points??
Posted by Seth on March 27, 2012 under News |
Panama‘s Copa Airlines is moving closer towards full membership in the Star Alliance; they’ve got a plane painted now:
(Image from Joe Walker/Aviation Week)
The carrier has previously announced a target of April 2012 for their join date and with the aircraft painted they seem to be progressing nicely towards that target.
Copa’s membership in Star Alliance will open up a number of additional routes and destinations for the group, They operate a fleet of 737s and E190s and don’t have a "real" premium cabin product but the majority of the routes they fly are also reasonably short, so the "domestic" first experience generally isn’t too bad.
Posted by Seth on February 29, 2012 under frequent flyer, Hotel, points |
It would seem that, despite my best efforts, I’ve managed to maintain hotel status through my own actions. I don’t really believe much in the value of hotel status for personally paid stays, mostly because I couldn’t care less about the "free" lounge, the "free" breakfast or the "free" internet service that the status affords. Ditto for suite upgrades. Plus, I like the character and charm of independent hotels in foreign countries way more than the western-branded ones as a general rule. Yes, I have SPG gold via my AmEx Platinum card, but even that barely gets used.
So imagine my surprise when I received an email this week congratulating me on getting status with a hotel program.
FIVESTAR is the program for hotels.com users, and I’ve been a pretty heavy user for a while now. I suppose that if I knew about the program I probably would have been surprised that I hadn’t qualified earlier (it only takes 10 nights annually) but I never knew about it so I never cared. Still, now that I’ve got this status I should figure out what the benefits are, right?
So I click the link lower down in the email and I start reading. There is a PDF file for both the FIVESTAR and FIVESTAR Plus (25+ nights) on their site and I tried to figure out what’s special about the programs. I still haven’t figured it out. There is this one section that purports to be part of the benefits:
Plans change. Now, so can your reservations–with the Hassle-Free Travel Guarantee. If you need to change your reservations for any reason – weather, schedule change, or even personal preference–our FIVESTAR Plus agents will do their best to help you make new travel plans right away, without any Hotels.com change or cancellation fees.
With Hassle-Free Dispute Resolution, we will work to fix any problem that you may have during your hotel stay. Just call your members-only phone number or email us at FIVESTAR@hotels.com.
Here’s the thing about these benefits…they’re not actually unique to the "status" level. Hotels.com has a no-fee cancelation policy for all their reservations. They advertise it really big on their home page:
So that’s nothing special. And their promise to "fix any problem" is also something that seems to be available to all customers. I know that they took care of several successive fiascos with reservations in Kochi, India well before I had the special status.
They also promise a price match guarantee for FIVESTAR members, but that’s also advertised to all customers really big on the homepage. Maybe there is something to be said for the special deals that they supposedly offer for members, but I haven’t seen any of those yet. I’m not holding my breath.
I get that they want to make their most frequent customers feel special by providing them extra value for their loyalty. After all, that’s what these programs are all about. But it doesn’t really work so well when you’re not offering any tangible benefits as part of the program. I’m certainly not going to call up and complain that they gave me a worthless "status" but it is also not going to change my booking patterns, which is what these sorts of programs are supposed to do.
I’m a big fan of their Welcome Rewards program in general (even with the devaluation not too long ago), but this FIVESTAR program is pretty much worthless from what I can see.
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Posted by Seth on February 3, 2012 under frequent flyer, News |
Kingfisher was dealt a potential death blow yesterday when the airline was suspended from IATA’s ticketing clearinghouse due to reported non-payment. The clearinghouse is used by hundreds of airlines to process payments for interline tickets and other multi-carrier transactions. Roughly 80% of interline transactions worldwide are settled through the system so being suspended is a huge blow to the carrier.
The company claims the suspension was triggered automatically by the IATA systems when a technical glitch prevented their scheduled payment from reaching the clearinghouse:
As a result of a recent internal system failure, certain credits did not hit our ICH account in time, triggering an automatic suspension. Kingfisher would like to confirm that all its dues via ICH have been settled in full and it has absolutely no outstanding due as of date,
Despite claiming to be current it appears that IATA has not yet commented or reinstated the carrier to the systems.
Adding fuel to the fire is the announcement today that the planned February 10, 2012 ascension of Kingfisher into oneworld is being delayed, with no revised date yet announced. FlightGlobal is carrying the story, with quotes from both oneworld and Kingfisher executives on this latest development. Said oneworld CEO Bruce Ashby:
These are turbulent times for the airline industry in India and many other parts of the world. We have been working closely with Kingfisher Airlines over the past months and it has become increasingly clear recently that the airline needs more time to resolve the financial issues it is confronting before it can be welcomed into Oneworld. Will work with Kingfisher Airlines with the aim of setting a new joining date once it is through this current period of turbulence.
This delay is somewhat reminiscent of the frequent delays that Air India suffered in their attempts to join Star Alliance over the past few years. Those efforts were eventually scuttled after multiple delays.
Without access to interline booking revenue is seems unlikely that Kingfisher will be able to realize the revenue needed to pull themselves out of their financial morass. With many unpaid or severely delayed bills the future of the carrier is very much in question. It is not surprising that the alliance is not interested in bringing the carrier on board as their liabilities for interline travel could be significant.
This is a serious blow for oneworld, as another member carrier, Malev, ceased operations today, also under financial pressures they could not overcome.
Not a good day in the aviation world at all.
Hat tip to Flying With Fish for the head’s up on this one.
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Posted by Seth on January 27, 2012 under News |
Spanish regional airline Spanair is apparently ceasing operations effective immediately, shutting down their network of flights with virtually zero notice. The move comes as Qatar Airways has cut off talks with the carrier about becoming an investor and infusing cash to help keep the airline afloat. Additionally, the Catalan government has decided to cease providing additional loan funds to the carrier. Most reports from Spain suggest that the company will not be flying any more at all, though there are also a few updates trickling out which suggest there might be additional flights tomorrow. Most of the reports are in Spanish and I’m depending on Google Translate to get the gist of the situation but I’m guessing I’m not getting everything completely correct.
This move also cuts out a chunk of service for Spanair’s partners in Star Alliance. The carrier often had good inventory for awards and also generally a good regional network for connecting passengers on the Iberian peninsula. Then again, this is the same company which repeatedly sold codeshare inventory on US Airways metal at ridiculous discounts (or errors) to the point that US Airways cut off their codeshare agreement not too long ago.
Sad to see an airline fail and so many folks newly unemployed (estimates suggest ~4,000). Good luck with accommodation if you’ve got Spanair flights booked.
Posted by Seth on January 25, 2012 under Dining, Flying, Review, Trip Reports |
A trip from Stockholm to Istanbul shouldn’t take 4 days. That said, it can if you want it to thanks to the joys of airline scheduling and the rather impressive route network of Star Alliance within Europe, I managed to schedule just such a trip, with stops along to way to see friends and also three new (to me) cities. First on that list was Berlin and the flight down was on SAS.
The flight was relatively quick and uneventful. I actually remember very little of it thanks, in part, to a rocking hangover. But nothing really happened that was at all special. I was hungry so I bought the chicken salad snack box during the flight (all food AND beverages were BoB only!). The Swedish version of pasta salad isn’t really my thing, but it wasn’t bad. The chicken and the lettuce part of the salad were pretty good. I’d call it overpriced in general, though not really so bad once you figure in both the Scandinavia and airplane markups.
The most memorable bit of the flight for me was the final approach into Berlin’s Tegel airport. It was right a sunset and that let to some great views of the suburbs, Tegel airport and the general area as we made our way down.
Like most flights, this one wasn’t really all that special, either good or bad. That’s just the way I like them.
Tags: Berlin, Dining, EuroHopping, Flying, in flight, Photos, review, Star Alliance, Stockholm, Sweden, Trip Report
Posted by Seth on December 18, 2011 under News |
Star Alliance and the Global Hotel Alliance have teamed up to give away a pretty awesome RTW award to one lucky winner. The prize is a pair of business class RTW tickets and 30 nights worth of hotel accommodations in member hotels. Yeah, I’d enjoy winning that.
The contest is pretty simple. They release one clue per day via Facebook and you pick the correct city the clue refers to for that entry. Get all 11 correct and you get entered into the random draw to win the prize. So, yeah, you need to have a Facebook account and authorize the app to win, but it is worth a try. Entries must be submitted by 9am GMT on 21 December 2011.
If you don’t want to go through the effort of looking up the answers (or guessing) I’ve got my responses listed out below. I put them in white text just in case someone doesn’t want the spoiler so just highlight the list below to see the answers I’m using.
Good luck!
Start here: https://apps.facebook.com/global-pursuit/
Suggested answers:
- Washington DC
- Rome
- Stockholm
- Cairo
- Delhi
- Bangkok
- Singapore
- Hong Kong
- Sydney
- São Paulo
- Los Angeles
Good luck!
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 November 22, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
April 2012 is going to be a busy month for Star Alliance. That’s when Copa and Avianca-Taca are expected to become full members of the global alliance, culminating a process that has been ongoing for many months now. The official invitation to join was extended just earlier this month and it seems that the integration process will be completed incredibly quickly by global alliance standards. Normally the integration takes 12-18 months (or even longer if you’re Air India) but these carriers plan to do it much faster.
For Copa the process shouldn’t be too hard. They already use the same OnePass loyalty program as Continental and that will merge into the new MileagePlus program from United. There will still need to be bilateral agreements drawn up with the other alliance members and some adjustments on the inventory and computer systems side of things but they are pretty far ahead in the game.
For Avianca-Taca there is definitely some more work involved. Although the carrier has frequent flyer relationships with Star Alliance members United and Lufthansa there are still more steps required to get fully integrated. Still, Copa CEO Pedro Heilbronn confirmed that join date for both programs so it looks pretty good, at least for now.
One interesting bit about Copa joining the program is that, as of today, there are no long-haul flights into the Panama City hub from overseas. There are connection options from Dulles, O’Hare, Los Angeles, Houston and Newark, giving great integration to the United Airlines network, but not much beyond that. It will be interesting to see if joining into Star Alliance can bring some more long-haul traffic into that hub.
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Tags: Avianca, Chicago, Continental, Copa, frequent flyer, houston, Los Angeles, Lufthansa, Newark, Panama, points, Star Alliance, Taca, United, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on November 3, 2011 under Flying, Review, Trip Reports |
It was day three of scheduled commercial service for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, operated by ANA, and I was on board. No, it was not the actual inaugural flight, but I still managed to get there within the first week of operations and I could not be more excited about the experience. It was awesome. That’s not to say that everything about the aircraft is perfect, but the experience certainly was.
My flight on the Dreamliner was from Hiroshima to Tokyo‘s Haneda airport. The trip is only about 400 miles and the total time in the air was just over one hour so it wasn’t really sufficient to try out everything on board, especially the effects of the higher pressurization (though I don’t recall my ears popping like usual, but I’m also not great at noticing that because it happens so often) and the more moist cabin air, but I still managed to put it through the paces as best I could.
Boarding was quick and efficient, as expected from the Japanese. Still, they allotted an extra 5 minutes to the process as they knew this was a special experience. There was something of a crush of gate lice to the self-boarding gates as they announced that boarding was available. Fortunately my Star Alliance Gold status (and being the big, ugly American) got me towards the front of the crush and on reasonably early in the process.
Business Class Cabin
Nothing really to say here; looks pretty comfy but this also is not their premium long-haul configuration so I’m not too worried about it.
Economy Cabin
There has been a bit of concern since Seat Guru published their guide to the seat map of the aircraft about the seat width in coach. The 2-4-2 layout (which really is more like 2-2-2-2 without an aisle in the middle) lends itself to a very generous seat width yet the reports on the site show the width as a hip-crushing 16.5". Good news, folks. That data is just plain wrong. The bulkhead rows, where the tray tables are in the arm rest, have the narrower width but the rest of the aircraft has a quite generous 18.5" or more width. The seats are quite roomy.
Seat recline is an interesting change from a typical airplane configuration. The seat back doesn’t actually move. Instead the seat-bottom slides forward about three inches and the back slides down a bit, creating the same effect as reclining. But it does so without imposing the seat on the passenger behind you. This sucks if you have long legs and also want to recline as you’re basically stuck but it is great for folks (like me) who hate having someone reclined into you.
The AVOD system is pretty nice, with 9" screens in coach. That’s about as big as you can get being so close to the screen and still be able to watch comfortably. There is a seat-to-seat messaging system and the screens can be used either as touch screens or with the controller. I was rather unimpressed with the music and video selections; no movies (though maybe because the flight was too short) and only a couple dozen short video programs plus maybe a dozen CDs for music. I hope that’s just because they don’t have the content fully loaded and not because it is going to be such a paltry offering going forward.
I’m also a big fan of the built-in cup holder in the tray table. They have two, one if it is open and one if it is closed, meaning that you can use the tray table for a laptop or other purposes and still have somewhere to stow a drink. Definitely a nice touch.
And then there is the mood lighting. Lots of fun there. The flight attendants were playing with this feature a bit, particularly during boarding and de-planing. It is fun, but I’m not sure it adds much value to the in-flight experience. It does demonstrate the ability to control the lighting levels to a very granular level, which I suppose is a very useful thing.
The windows are HUGE. It was a night flight so I’m not sure how much this really matters, but they were noticeably larger than on older aircraft. We’ll have to see what the net effects of this are in the long term but it certainly was nice. The electronic dimmers on the windows were a bit sluggish to react but they behaved exactly as advertised in the end. Again, a night flight made it hard to really evaluate the impact of this but it was certainly neat.
In the lav
The Japanese and their toilets. Touchless flushing (it puts down the seat, too!) and bidet functions (designed by Toto) are built in to the toilets. There’s also a window in the lav by 3L (though not at 3R). I do like a lav window.
It isn’t perfect
OK, maybe my expectations are just too high. Still, like one of the notes in a review offered up by Kerwin I noticed a few quirks in the flight. It was VERY quiet at cruise, and I was sitting just aft of the wing so I should’ve had engine noise to some extent if there was much. During the flight there wasn’t. That said, the mechanical noises surrounding the operation of the flaps and other wing control surfaces were pretty loud. Again, maybe just because I was sitting basically on top of them, but Kerwin noticed it, too.
There was also a strange "whine" going on throughout the flight. It was very high pitched – like an old tube TV going bad – and I have no idea if others noticed it or not. It kept going even after the engines were shut down upon arrival so I’m guessing it has to do with the electrical power plant on board. No matter what, it was pretty annoying. Not enough to ruin the experience, but if it really is like that going forward I can see it being a problem for me flying on this aircraft.
Finally, the new overhead bins, while well designed for baggage, are not particularly well configured for an adult to climb in. I’m thoroughly disappointed in that development.
It was a great day and a great trip. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back on board soon.
Oh, and if you want to check out the pre-flight safety video it is here:
Read more from this Trip Report under the Dream2011 tag here.
Tags: 787, ANA, Boeing, Dream2011, Dreamliner, Hiroshima, Japan, Photos, review, Star Alliance, Tokyo, video
Posted by Seth on November 3, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Continental and Amtrak have been partners for many years, offering the ability to earn OnePass miles on certain routes in the Northeast Corridor as well as the ability to move points between both programs at a 1:1 rate. There are a number of incredibly attractive awards in the Amtrak Guest Rewards program and the fungibility of points between the two programs was a great benefit for members of both. That relationship is coming to an end at the end of the year.
The move is tied to the expiry of the OnePass program as the new United Airlines moves to their new MileagePlus program. Not too much of a surprise there as the partnership is with a program that will be dying. According to Amtrak, they are trying to keep the relationship alive with the new MileagePlus, but that deal has not yet been finalized so they are warning members now of the impending change according to UnRoadWarrior.
This announcement opens as many new questions as it provides answers.
Currently there is reciprocity between the Amtrak and Continental lounge memberships. But that is ending in February and there is not yet a finalized agreement to continue it. Amtrak’s top tier elites also get the lounge benefit and there have been many issues getting it honored in the newly re-branded United Clubs.
There’s also the relationship between Continental and Virgin Atlantic. Back when they didn’t have access to Heathrow the partnership was great for Continental. Now that they do have access to Heathrow – and flights from 6 US gateways – the value of that relationship is certainly lessened. And United has never had that partnership as they had the Heathrow slots. The two carriers both had arrangements with Emirates but both killed them. There’s also Eva on the Continental side (though they’ve applied to become a Star Alliance member) and Qatar on the United side.
Lots of open questions that still need answers. Perhaps this move with Amtrak is a hint. Or not. Nothing like the joys of speculation with minimal data to support a claim.
