View from the Wing

Print this 20% off coupon for in-store purchases at Borders from November 14 - 20.

No miles and points for this, but a text game worth checking out: the Richard Corey Interactive Adventure. This frightens me. (Link via Sasha Volokh.)

Since this website is brought to you in the form of a blog — daily commentary offered with the most recent items first — older items quickly fall off the page. I only display the most recent week’s worth of content at any one time.

I like to think, though, that some of the entries retain their value even after the week has passed. And you can still read them — just click on the Archives link or pick one of the entries labeled “Greatest Hits” at the right (under my picture).

Don’t want to miss a single deal or offer? Just be sure to enter your email address under Subscribe for Updates and each night you’ll receive an email with the day’s content. And I will never use your email for any other purpose.

For all of my new visitors, let me suggest that you take a look at the following posts from the Greatest Hits section:

• Amtrak discounts

• Best mileage earning credit cards

• Discounted travel

• Earning United Miles No Matter Who You Fly
  

• Rental car discounts
  

• Four star hotels on the cheap
  

• Free upgrade certificates
  

• Concentrate all your flying on one airline
  

• Instant Starwood Gold
  

• Spend miles or money?

And, of course, bookmark this page and visit frequently!

If you have any questions you’d like answered about travel or miles and points, drop me a line.

Hooters Air is adding flights to Nassau, Bahamas and Ft. Myers, Florida. I still haven’t been on a Hooters Air flight…

Two weeks ago I said that Northwest Airlines was best positioned not to change its frequent flyer elite program qualification rules, but that they’d face pressure because partners Delta and Continental had already made changes. Looks like they followed their own best interest, ignoring the calls to restructure their program to reward fare basis purchased rather than miles flown.

Sign up for a Hilton HHonors account with this link and enter offer code ACAT. You’ll get instant HHonors Gold status and you’ll earn 25,000 bonus points for four stays.

Northwest Airlines has announced program changes for 2004. The biggest news is no change at all: Northwest won’t go along with partners Delta and Continental on elite qualification — Northwest flights will continue to earn 100% elite mileage even on the lowest fares.

Additional changes:

• Northwest will only award 50% of elite mileage on Continental flights at the lowest fares, so stay on Northwest metal!
  

• Most strikingly, Northwest will award 100% of elite mileage on Delta flights at the lowest fares (effective this Sunday - we don’t have to wait until January 1 for this one!).

  So Delta frequent flyers flying L, U, and T fares will only earn 50% mileage, Northwest frequent flyers will earn 100% elite mileage on the same flights.
  

• Northwest is increasing the number of miles required for First Class awards from the US to Hawaii to 75,000 and the number of miles required for domestic upgrades to 15,000. The upgrade price increase matches United, American, and USAirways.

  The Hawaii price increase matches Delta. Not ideal, but still better than expected — and not nearly as big a devaluation as Delta recently announced.

Transport Blog eulogizes the Boeing 757 as that aircraft is ushered out of production.

The 757 was intended to replace the 727, but for some reason Boeing got its market research wrong. Rather than building a 150 seat replacement for the 150 seat 727, Boeing made the 757 a 200 seater. As it happened, most of the airlines that were replacing their 727s didn’t want a 200 seater, but wanted a 150 seater. Boeing did not immediately have one available, and this provided a market opening that was ultimately taken up by Airbus, who built the A320, and by McDonnell Douglas, who built a stretched version of the DC-9 called the MD-80. This was the market opening that allowed Airbus to move from a niche player in the airliner world to being clear number two in the 1990s, and to perhaps even be number one today. Boeing eventually filled this gap with a new 150 seat version of the 737, but a few years later.



Although it missed its intended market, the 757 was not a failure. This was largely because the engineers did a really good job, and the aircraft ended up having much longer range than it would have needed for the 727 replacement role.

A week or so ago, I noted that Andrew Sullivan was complaining about his Priceline hotel experience. Turns out that Priceline gave him a refund. (Link via Spot On.)

Patrice Miles, Vice President of Consumer Marketing for Delta Air Lines, defends changes to the Delta Skymiles program in USA Today. Her piece is pretty weak.

Elliott’s commentary [criticizing Delta's frequent flyer program changes], in our view, fails to recognize the fundamental nature of recent Delta Air Lines’ SkyMiles program changes. They do not severely cut back customer benefits but rather reallocate them to passengers based on miles flown and revenue spent.

Delta’s changes have two parts. First, they change who qualifies for elite status (in a crude way realigning status with revenue). Second, the benefits of status have changed. Patrice Miles says part one has changed but not part two. That is patently false. Delta’s top spenders under the new plan lose their unlimited upgrade benefit and ability to confirm upgrades at booking on several fares. That’s a severe cutback.

However, dynamics within our industry led us to change the model from one based on frequency to one based on revenue

A very crude attempt to base things on revenue. Actually, they use the fare class of tickets purchased to modify mileage earning. Some markets have inexpensive fully refundable tickets. Others have expensive tickets in a low fare class. And length of flights are still significant. It’s a Rube Goldberg construct, and a marketing disaster since few flyers know the fare basis code of their ticket and Delta makes it difficult to specify particular fare basis codes when booking.

The article asserts that the modifications to the SkyMiles program were designed to make it harder to achieve Medallion status. However, we anticipate that we will end the year with more Medallion members than originally planned.

That’s a purely self-referential statement, and is completely unverifiable. Had they planned for an increase or a decrease?

Elsewhere Delta has said that the number of elites would rise next year, but that’s a no brainer. As part of the changes, elites will lose a maximum of one level next year. A platinum medallion who didn’t fly at all in 2003 will still be a gold medallion in 2004 instead of dropping off the elite roles. No surprise that elite ranks would temporarily bump up.

Members still earn as many miles as they always have toward award travel. In fact, members may redeem miles to more than 400 destinations worldwide through our expanded SkyTeam partnership.

Delta just increased mileage requirements for award tickets across the board.

According to one reader, India’s Minister of State for Civil Aviation is demanding that state airlines hire more attractive flight attendants.

I haven’t found stories validating the claims in the aforelinked-to article, and the piece in question takes on more of a tone of opinion (criticism) than reporting, but I assume that the quotes are genuine.

Presumably the government believes that more attractive flight attendants will help attract business to the country’s national carriers. And as a passenger I’m not opposed to that — Singapore Air has followed this model quite well — but perhaps the airlines’ troubles can be traced to government policies that demand frequent air service on unprofitable routes and subsidized air travel for officials.

Just fly two roundtrips on America West’s new coast to coast flights for silver elite through February 2005!

Sign up for a free $25.00 off E-certificate for United Airlines.

This is a promotion with Safeway Grocery Stores, so you need to have a Safeway Club card (their free discount card) associated with your United Mileage Plus account - which you want anyway because you’ll get United miles for your grocery purchases.

The e-certificate will be e-mailed in November. Thanks to an alert reader for the pointer.

An article in the Dallas Morning News speculates that Southwest may be considering offering inflight entertainment to compete with lowcost rival JetBlue and the addition of smaller aircraft to grow service to smaller markets. This on top of recent speculation that Southwest may offer assigned seating.

All this speculation comes in recognition of the challenges ahead for the most profitable airline in the industry over the past three decades. As a maturing carrier their costs are rising. New lowcost competitors like JetBlue are offering a superior inflight experience (all leather seating, satellite television, and they’re taking out a row of seats to offer more legroom). And the easy profitable growth routes may already be cherrypicked.

The Atlanta City Council voted to rename Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. It will henceforth be known as “Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport” adding the name of the city’s first black mayor to the name of the city’s longest-serving mayor.

The most over-the-top rhetoric advocating the change:

“For years, Hartsfield-Jackson will symbolically hover over Atlanta like a protective shield and a glorious crown which says to us and the world, in the hometown of Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Mitchell, we are one,” said Johnson.

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, it seems absurd that the airport name issue should take up so much time for the city council. On the other hand, I presume it’s better for them to spend time on things like the name of an airport than their next best alternative which might be genuinely harmful. As a passenger it makes little difference which named airport I land at. The real problem is that if I’m landing in Atlanta it’s most likely because I’m connecting on Delta.

This op-ed deals with the Phoenix area’s proposed transit system, but the arguments are pretty universal.

Light rail projects invariably cost more than projected; cost more than equivalent freeway projects, carry fewer people; don’t help the environment; and pilfer passengers from buses rather than reducing the use of cars.

No wonder city bureaucrats love light rail. (Link via Reason’s Hit and Run.)

As noted both on these pages and elsewhere, the TSA has revised its list of items prohibited through airport security.

Corkscrews and nail clippers are back in. So are knitting needles, cigar cutters and blunt scissors. Pool cues and golf clubs are still banned.

Lifting the ban on nail clippers is long overdue, but the contradictory nature of the list of what is allowed and what isn’t just becomes all the more clear.

It seemed odd when metal butter knives were banned, but metal forks were not. Bending back the thynes seemed at least as effective weapon as a dull knife.

Then it seemed even stranger when the ban on metal knives was lifted onboard (an airline could serve them) but passengers couldn’t take them through security! The whole idea of security was to keep items off the PLANE, but the items were allowed on the plane — just not through security.

And as many observers much smarter about these things than I have observed, a security system is most effectively not when it’s foolproof, but when if fails well.

Get something through security? You still have to get through a reinforced cockpit door. Sneak something on board a plane? The pilot isn’t defenseless — the pilot has a gun. Reminding people to do just as the passengers of the hijacked plane did in Pennsylvania — take out the hijackers at all costs, defend themselves — is probably better deterrence than a security system. A terrorist will die AND fail.

Telling folks that security is out of their hands — that (T)aking (S)cissors (A)way solves their problem is precisely the opposite and less secure approach.

Eugene Volokh addresses this issue today over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Andrew Sullivan had a very bad hotel experience with Priceline. He delayed his trip a day and the hotel wouldn’t let him start his stay when he arrived. He lost all his money. Frustrating, but his analysis of Priceline’s business model is just wrong:

the profit margin is obviously highly correlated with suckers and incompetents like me.

Priceline doesn’t make more or less depending on whether someone shows up for their reservation. Priceline makes money from their booking fee, from a commission charged to the hotel, and from any overbid (the difference between a successful bid and the highest applicable rate that bid allows Priceline to book). (Link via Spot On.)

I love a good steak, but PETA is giving away free stickers that are pretty witty. Just email Education@peta.org with “Veg Stickers” as the subject with your name and address.

Signup. No credit card required. You don’t even have to give your real name…