Through May 2, America West is offering 1000 bonus miles that count towards elite status when using the ‘bill me later’ feature for the first time for ticket purchases on their website.
This is in addition to the one bonus mile per dollar spent when using the feature and the 500 mile online booking bonus.
Of course, it’s important to pay prompty as the fees can otherwise be significant.
Northwest Airlines, which operates a hub at Detroit, has been cited for bringing in beer from out of state for service on its flights. Michigan law requires that beer must be purchased from state-licensed wholesalers.
(Northwest serves out of state beer on planes only, not in its clubs which are supplied by local distributors.)
A liquor commission investigator determined that the airline was illegally importing alcohol into Michigan and was breaking the law by purchasing from an unlicensed source.
The action is purely protectionism for local Michigan distributors who want to force Northwest to buy from them. What’s more, they’re lobbying the state to require monopoly distribution for wine in addition to beer.
Currently, only Northwest is targeted. Other airlines fly beer into Detroit and then back out on the same planes.
A pending Supreme Court decision, to be released this spring or summer, will look at whether protectionism for state liquor distributors is an unconstitutional restraint on interstate commerce (whose regulation is the purview solely of the federal government) or whether the constitutional amendment ending prohibition gave states the power to regulate alcohol in any way they want — for whatever reason, including personal financial gain of the distributors lobby.
Three and a half weeks ago I declared that Independence Air had some financial breathing room and that it was safe to make bookings through February.
While they’re running some significant sales to promote their new West Coast service which starts in the next few months, I’m not recommending that folks buy those tickets at this point.
I’m taking a wait and see attitude with the carrier, and wouldn’t suggest significant advance bookings at this time.
One of Independence Air’s 73 planes was repo’d on Sunday. And one of the conditions of their cash infusion from GE was that they successfully renegotiate their aircraft leases. The repossession is a pretty good indication that they weren’t completely successful, and I worry about the carrier’s ability to meet the covenants of its GE loan.
United seems to be doing a good job of (coming close to) matching Independence Air’s fares out of Dulles, so on routes and flight times where they compete I would tend to book United. You’ll get Mileage Plus miles to boot, which are far more valuable than iClub points. United has its own problems, but seems more stable than Independence at this point… which is saying something.
Independence has had problems from the start, two of which were:
(1) They were the largest carrier at Dulles before becoming an independent airline. They had the leases on the planes, the terminal, the gates. They didn’t have the luxury of a startup carrier of slowly building business, starting with a few flights and establishing a presence in a city before expanding. They needed to send those planes somewhere. An unknown carrier can’t simply send more than half a dozen flights a day to Lansing and expect to have enough customers to support the service.
(2) They compounded this problem by remaining an unknown airline in the cities they served. While they had a large advertising budget, it’s difficult to enter into consumer consciousness. Most decisions about what airline to fly are made at the time of ticketing. And Independence Air began by selling tickets only by its own website and reservation number. Southwest can more or less get away with this. People know to check with Southwest (although they participate to a limited degree in certain reservation systems). But Independence Air was an unknown. Customers who would have flown them didn’t know it was an option. While participating in broad distribution networks is costly, Independence Air proves that customers not knowing you exist is even costlier.
They’ve taken steps to address their appearing in global distribution systems. And they’re reducing capacity while giving back some planes. Both of those are positive steps. But it may not be enough. Their best bet is to split their fleet, operating both as a regional feeder for a major airline and, with a smaller operation, building an independent carrier.
Developing….
About ten days ago, Travelocity displayed a business class fare from several European cities to Shanghai for US$671 on Alitalia.
It was an “I” fare, or so the fare rules suggested — special promotional business class fare. Turns out that for the same exact price there was an “L” fare, the least expensive coach fare available. The price was intended for the coach fare, but it displayed with business class fare rules by mistake.
When the fare was purchased, it never said there was a lack of availability in I class or that it was being booked in something other than business. But the tickets were sold in L class, and Alitalia had record of a coach purchase.
Travelocity was initially unhelpful.
Now, this wasn’t a $0 fare. And it wasn’t a $20 fare, like British Airways had in World Traveler Plus to anywhere in Europe a couple years ago. It was cheap for business class, to be sure, but transatlantic business class regularly drops from five or eight grant to twelve hundred dollars in winter. And the fare was labeled as a special promotional fare.
Eventually, after lots of stonewalling and several powerless reps telling customers more or less to suck rocks, Travelocity came through. And I understand that Chris Elliott was helpful in making this happen.
While I’ve criticized a few of Chris’ columns, I’ve also given him props for his ‘fix my trip’ ombudsman pieces. He’s fair, willing to tell a traveler when they’re wrong, but also willing to help. And goodness knows that customers sometimes need help dealing with large faceless bureaucracies with disempowered employees. Mad props to Chris for helping out on this!
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) covered Amtrak’s abrupt end to transferring Guest Rewards points into United Mileage Plus miles.
For several years, in the tight-knit community of frequent travelers, Amtrak’s Guest Rewards program developed a cult-like following. Reason: The program could be used as a clearinghouse for unwanted frequent-flier miles from Continental Airlines, which has developed a reputation for being stingy with the free seats on its airplanes. Using a three-way swap that is rare among loyalty programs, Amtrak members would transfer Continental miles into Amtrak points — then take the points and turn them into United miles. They did this because they believed it would be easier to redeem United Airlines miles for free tickets than cashing in their Continental miles. Continental officials declined to comment.
The program became popular with deal seekers looking to milk every last drop of value out of loyalty programs with generous terms.
All that ended Jan. 1, when, without warning and without posting a notice, Amtrak removed United from its list of partners on its Web site.
The article observes that this isn’t the first time Amtrak has made unannounced changes to these transfers:
And the piece provides Amtrak’s lame excuse for their failure to provide notice to Guest Rewards members, ” the number of people who redeemed its points for United miles was so small, far less than 1% of its 860,000 or so members, that it didn’t think it was necessary.”
Of course, the vast majority of its members aren’t active or don’t yet have enough points to claim the rewards they want anyway, so using the total number of members that have ever signed up for the program is a poor basis for comparison. Besides, 1% of that figure is still 8600 and that’s 8600 of the members with meaningful point balances.
Amtrak’s response basically says that things of interest to less than 10,000 of their members aren’t important enough to warrant basic courtesy of notice (a simple email) or advance warning.
Some programs can be trusted more than others, at least based on their past behavior. Amtrak’s behavior indicates that it isn’t to be trusted, and its public statements back up that judgment.
The two best offers I’m currently aware of are 30 Northwest miles per dollar spent at FTD and 30 United miles per dollar spent at FTD.
The Northwest offer is new. The United one has been around a long time. Though the latter says it is for United’s top-tier elites, it works for anyone.
Tomorrow is their fifth anniversary and they’re giving away 500 roundtrip tickets to the first one hundred people who show up at each of their five New York City borough locations dressed as one of the destinations they fly to (along with a canned food item for City Harvest).
Refer up to four friends to Mileage Plus. Each one that flies a roundtrip (as long as it isn’t booked as an S, T, or L fare) before June 30 will earn 3000 bonus miles plus 2000 miles for you.
Update: This appears to be targeted, though a majority of reports to me so far are from folks who were targeted. Your mileage may vary.
In a move that matches United, American is offering double miles on all flights booked by February 18 for travel through May 25. Registration required.
When India’s Minister for Civil Aviation can say with a straight face that India’s airports are more secure than US airports, I view that as a strong indictment of US security policy.
Anyone who has traveled through a major Indian airport must shake their head, though more at the chaos than the security. And it’s true that there haven’t been major recent security incidents there that I’m aware of.
But the US should be looking pretty hard at itself when claims like these are made openly.
(Comments are open, feel free to flame away.)
Lara Flynn Boyle flashed her breasts and tried to climb into bed with a male stranger on board a British Airways flight in first class from Los Angeles to London.
The cabin crew gave the actress a blanket to cover herself. But the show continued as she ripped out a reading light from her seat, thrust it at a steward and demanded:
“Get rid of this and get it out of my sight for ever and ever.’
She then walked to the lavatory, flashing her breasts at airline staff, before falling asleep in her seat.
(Hat tip to Today in the Sky.)
Andy Bowers writes that online checkin is a security threat. I always thought it was a great way to meet friends and family at their gate and use airline clubs as a free pub on days I’m not traveling.
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Through February 11, USAirways is offering 10,000 Dividend Miles for signing up for a lounge membership with promo code CLB10.
That’s a pretty good bonus offer, but while USAirways has some breathing room to operate I’m not sure I’d be investing in anything that last’s a full year with them. They may well be around, but I’d rather fly to Vegas and put the money on black. Better return that way.
Besides, it still offends me that USAirways charges extra for accessing partner lounges. If I just wanted access to the club on the carrier that I was flying on the day that I was flying with them, I’d probably buy an Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge membership.
