View from the Wing

A three-pack from Smarterliving.com: Ed Perkins outlines credit card chargebacks, Zak Patten offers tips on planning a Hawaiian vacation, and Josh Roberts explains what most of us already know — that a hotel website’s “best rate guarantee” doesn’t actually mean it offers the best rate.

Your favorite frequent flyer program may be recording customer service calls for more than just quality and training purposes. Folks have long been aware that tapes of conversations can be good protection for a company to have later, but it’s interesting the business strategy and analysis that can come out of such recordings.

Would an automated frequent flyer line, providing mileage balances or even upgrade processing, save money? That probably depends on how often flyers call to request balances or upgrades without purchasign tickets. Tracking software can help answer those questions, and even warn managers if there’s an uptick in the frequency of the phrase “cancel my account.”

USAirways plans to deemphasize hubs in favor of more point to point service.

I’m in general a big fan of the currently disfavored hub and spoke system, but USAirways is desperate. They lost $177 million last quarter with post-bankruptcy costs and their Philadelphia hub is being challenged by Southwest.

Besides, USAirways has poorly placed hubs to begin with. With Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, USAirways passengers are constantly overflying USAirways hubs. They aren’t positioned for passenger convenience, but merely duplicate service. And with existing concentration cities in places like Washington, DC, Boston, and LaGuardia, their most lucrative routes bypass their hubs to begin with.

USAirways desperation watch continues…

From the latest update from Colloquy.com…

S&H Greenpoints can now be exchanged for other currencies at Points.com.

iDine Prime — the cashback (and fee-based) version of the free dining for miles programs — is offering a free one-year trial.

And use of Visa debit cards outpaced Visa credit cards in 2003.

USAirways is set to join the Star Alliance on May 4th. And they are running a sweepstakes for Star Alliance tickets.

Diners Club looks to have solved its merchant acceptance problem by creating an alliance with Mastercard that should be in place come year end.

When I analyzed the card last month I suggested that broad acceptance was the only true drawback.

I already carry the card because of the flexibility of its rewards program and the primary rental car insurance. When the partnership is in place I’ll be able to start recommending the card as a broad solution, and it will vie for a place in most mileage junkies’ wallets.

Mobissimo is an airfare search engine worth booking.

Like SideStep, it’s a metasearch tool: you enter your search query and it goes out to various other travel sites and brings back the results. Unlike SideStep, you don’t have to download software.

On the plus side, it searches the various online services (such as Destina, Travelocity, Zuji, Opodo, Onetravel) in addition to the travel providers themselves. On the downside it doesn’t suggest alternate airports and search those automatically.

Searching last minute fares to Los Angeles from Washington National, Mobissimo outperformed SideStep and Orbitz (finding a $311 fare on Northwest with only two days advance purchase and no Saturday stay). SideStep, though, found a $207 fare on Frontier from Dulles to Los Angeles that — even when specifying Dulles as departure airport — Mobissimo didn’t find. So it’s one more tool for the arsenal, and a useful tool, but it isn’t a silver bullet.

Aeroflot signed a deal with Sabre that will allow the airline to offer e-ticketing and online booking.

Going electronic will no doubt also help the airline mine its frequent flyer databases.

The airline estimates that ticketing and distribution costs will fall 20%, saving the airline $10 to $20 million a year.

An airport checkin agent awarded himself miles for flights of passengers he checked in to the tune of five million points.

While working for Air Canada, Singh would check in passengers but instead of crediting them he would add their miles to one of his own 13 air miles accounts, the National Crime Squad (NCS) said.
Singh, who lives in west London, pleaded guilty at Isleworth Crown Court to false accounting, obtaining services by deception and obtaining property by deception.



He will be sentenced on May 21 at the same court, NCS said.



Among the trips Singh arranged through the scheme were business class flights for a family of four from Singapore to New Zealand and flights for a couple from Frankfurt to Mumbai.



Singh and his brother flew first class from Heathrow to Singapore and then on to Auckland - tickets that would normally have cost about 5,000 pounds each, NCS said.

It took two full days for the TSA to permit a woman to leave Orlando by plane. She is fighting cancer and has lost weight as well as her hair, so she looks different than her drivers license photo.

Priceline has a scratch-off game that you can enter every day through May 19th. You can win vacations, airline tickets, and William Shatner bobblehead dolls. And you get extra entries for watching a streaming video of a Priceline commerical.

Travelocity is giving away a Carnival cruise.

VH1 is running a sweepstakes for a luxury trip to New York including a concert at their studio.

Frontier is offering free airline tickets for subscribing to their email list. Usually I caution waiting for a better deal before signing up — but in this case the signup isn’t tied to a frequent flyer account, so you can always sign up again later with a different email address if another offer comes along.

Registration for Northwest’s “Fly Free Faster 4″ promo begins May 15th.

Traditionally the offer is 10,000 bonus miles for one “qualifying activity” (such as a flight, obtaining a Northwest Visa, changing long-distance carriers, or buying miles) and five “partner activities” (such as hotel stays, Northwest mall purchases, dining for miles).

By pairing this promo with a new Worldperks Visa (15,000 mile bonus), signing that card up with iDine, and then going to five different participating bars and ordering a beer at each it should be possible to earn 25,000 miles for about $80.

I mentioned earlier this month that Priceline.com purchases could earn eBay Anything Points.

The offer is now available for booking via eBay’s travel page. The offer is 1500 points for airline tickets or hotel stays (fewer for rental cars and more for vacations).

With the current Points.com bonus for American Airlines transfers, those 1500 points convert to 1570 AAdvantage miles. Not bad for tickets and stays that otherwise wouldn’t earn miles at all! And in most cases a better reward than ebates which rebates only 2%.

Update: Two notes.

First, as of about a week ago ebates no longer rebates 2% on Priceline hotel bookings. One more reason this deal is so great, relative to other options.

Second, it’s only this lucrative until June 30th. After that the points.com transfer bonus goes away. It’ll still be worth doing, but the math won’t be as favorable.

Air Tahiti Nui is offering flights from Los Angeles to Auckland for $690.

Since this is one-stop service via Papeete (Tahiti), you’re allowed a two-day stopover and Air Tahiti will even throw in the couple of nights hotel.

Purchase by April 30th.

SmarterLiving.com keeps a partner database that you can search when buying things online — helping to ensure that you earn the most miles possible for your transactions. The drawback has been that it’s partner listings were fairly limited but it looks like they’ve updated it.

Check it out, and it’ll help you earn miles for the things you were going to buy online anyway.

They’re also offering encouragement that finding award seats over the upcoming long weekend holidays shouldn’t be too difficult.

Just because a hotel — or nearly every hotel in town — is sold out, doesn’t mean there isn’t Priceline availability.

It isn’t often that this winds up being the case, but it’s an important lesson nonetheless.

This week the World Bank is meeting in DC. There are protestors. And there’s a huge pro-choice walk/protest (scheduled around the World Bank, believe it or not… as a way of picking up extra folks to participate who will be in town anyway).

Plus it’s school trip time for DC. There just aren’t hotels available in town. The Best Western downtown wants $667. The Washington Terrace Hotel where I can often call up and get a $99 rate wants $1000.

So I had someone coming into town tonight and couldn’t get anything on Priceline at the 4* level anywhere. Hotwire offered only one hotel for $250. I managed to book the Hotel Rouge via SideStep for $219 when their website said sold out.

Done? Hardly. I found out someone else needed a room for tomorrow night. Again there’s virtually nothing available for less than $300 except outside the City at the quality of a Days Inn. Orbitz had a prepaid rate at the Hilton Washington & Towers for $100, but it was for a “parlor room with sofa bed” .. Not! Hotwire had a room that may have been at the same property for $130, otherwise their best bet was $265.

So I just took a stab in the dark with Priceline, even though there was nothing available for the previous night. I probably overbid, as I hit it on my first shot in my ideal location. The Grand Hyatt for $100.

Now, the Grand Hyatt wanted $399 for a room directly. Expedia said rooms were only available with a 4 night minimum stay. So I tell ya, gotta love Priceline! This is actually my first choice property for this person’s stay.

iDine is offering 20 America West miles per dollar through June 30th, except on Fridays and Saturdays. Registration required.

America West is also offering double FlightFund miles for travel to London on Virgin Atlantic Airways Upper Class between May 1 and July 31, 2004 and 6000 miles for 3 stays at Starwood hotels.

Print out form here. If you don’t smoke, you can trade ‘em for cool stuff on the inside.

While you’re at it, you can get free Reach Access Dental Floss, free dog treats, free Habanero HOT sauce, free Claritin and free Advil Allergy Sinus.

Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?

Via Instapundit, a new Hyatt Regency will be built in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Currently reasonable accomodations are more or less limited to the Hotel Inter-Continental. While it doesn’t look bad, on-line booking is limited to an email query form on the Ariana Afghan Airlines website. Interestingly the Hotel Inter-Continental is not in any way related to InterContinental Hotels & Resorts.

Similarly in Iraq, there’s a Sheraton in Baghdad and Basra. Sort of. (The Basra Sheraton was bombed last year. Here’s a photo of the looting. The Baghdad Sheraton was attacked last month.)

The hotels aren’t part of the Sheraton hotel chain which is owned by Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and you won’t be collecting Starwood Preferred Guest points there.

It turns out that the properties were ITT Sheratons prior to the Gulf War. They continued to use the name even after economic relations were severed. There wasn’t much chance of the new Starwood corporate entity appealing to Saddam Hussein for damages.

Then again Pepsi continued to be sold in Iraq in the 1990s, even without involvement from Pepsico. Iraqis just didn’t get Brittany Spears as part of the package.

Update: Just this week Starwood Hotels & Resorts issued a statement distancing itself from the Baghdad Sheraton.