View from the Wing

The Bay Area’s ABC TV station ran a piece on getting hotel upgrades. The sum total of their advice: ask.

That’s actually good advice as far as it goes. More than anything else, style and mojo matter. I’ll usually say something at checkin like, “I’ve heard really great things about this hotel, so I’m pretty excited. I was hoping you might have a room with one of your special views?” More often than not the person at the desk will try to comply. It really doesn’t cost them anything. It makes me happy. And it avoids putting them in the position of either disappointing me in person or getting an earful (I’m not rude, but many guests are).

If I have a reason to explain that a particular stay is ’special’ I might send a fax to the hotel’s reservations manager a few days before my stay. I’ll write something about how I understand I may not be entitled to it, but it’s my anniversary/wife’s birthday/Arbor Day and I was hoping for a nice room as part of the celebration. A fax is better than a call because a call depends on who you get on the phone, whether they have time to deal with you, and whether they even remember to do something after the call. A fax will go to the right person’s desk and serve as a reminder. It’s not a silver bullet, but at nice properties seems to work more often than not. And it’s one step in the process.

I’ll likely also have mentioned my upgrade request with my reservation. So combined with the fax and the checkin ask one is likely to hit.

Being entitled to an upgrade of some kind helps as well. If you travel alot, focus your loyalty on a single chain and earn elite status. (Know the details of what the chain offers to elites when selecting a program.)

Even if you don’t travel enough to earn status, many hotel programs offer a low tier of status just for getting their co-branded credit card. The Marriott Visa comes with Silver status. The Hilton Visa and America Express come with Silver status. If you spend $20,000 on the Hilton Amex in a year you get Gold status. The Starwood American Express comes with ‘preferred plus’ status, which is basically Gold without the bonus points. The Priority Club program doesn’t offer status with their credit card, but their even their top tier can be had without staying a single night — just earn 60,000 points in a year (12,000 can be earned opening a checking account, points can be purchased, bonus points count, points can be transferred in from other programs).

Comments are open: how do you secure the best rooms at a hotel?

Via Tripso.com, Hilton is introducing alarm clocks with an iPod plugin and related sweepstakes.

The clocks are supposed to be especially easy to set. Unfortunately this probably won’t solve the need to make sure the alarm clock isn’t already set when you check in — there’s little worse than being woken up in the middle of the night because the last guest thought it would be funny to boobytrap you by setting the alarm to go off at 3am.

The IRS is apparently seeking to tax Latin American airlines for wages paid to flight attendants and pilots during the time they spend working over US airspace. (Link via Today in the Sky.)

Critics of the move point out that other countries might respond by doing the same to U.S. airlines.

Anyone with thoughts on why the IRS is focused on Latin American carriers — and not European or Asian carriers — feel free to offer them in them in the comments.

One of the more amusingly named mileage offers (via Free Frequent Flyer Miles) has to be The Danny Schurman Homeselling System:

This written guarantee will give you the assurance that if your home doesn’t sell within 120 days, we will give you up to 2500 Airmiles.

Gary Steiger says these are Alaska miles and wonders what the phrase up to is doing there.

This may be of limited interest to those readers in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

I just an an really interesting piece to be published in the Georgetown Law Journal (shocking itself, it’s also a good read) that argues there’s a 50 square mile area in the U.S. where felonies can’t be prosecuted: the portion of Yellowstone National Park which is in the state of Idaho.

The Constitution’s 6th Amendment requires that juries be picked from the same district and state in which a crime is committed. Federal law sets the district governing all of Yellowstone as Wyoming — logical, as the park is 91% in the state of Wyoming. The districts of Montana and Idaho exclude the park.

So juries must be chosen from the District of Wyoming to prosecute crimes committed in the park. However, if the crime is committed in that part of the park that is in Idaho, juries must be chosen from the state of Idaho. And only that 50 square mile area of the park overlaps both requirements. The problem is that no one lives there so it is impossible to form a jury.

Naturally the article deals with potential objections, and points out that some crimes may have federal (firearms violations) or multistate (conspiracy) elements so it’s not a certainty that legal violations would go unpunished. And crimes with a penalty of less than six months’ imprisonment do not require jury trials and so would be unaffected.

But an interesting constitutional challenge nonetheless, and one that may warrant a change to federal law.

(Hat tip to the Volokh Conspiracy.)

Northwest has new offers up for their co-branded credit cards issued by US Bank.

I’ve previously mentioned that US Bank is one of the biggest sticklers for one signup bonus per customer. However, a recent exchange with Gary Steiger (of Free Frequent Flyer Miles, where I came across this offer) made me realize that their limit is per card type.

I first signed up for the Platinum Visa a few years ago when the offer was for 25,000 bonus miles over 2 years, requiring $500 in spending with Northwest for part of those miles. That signup qualified me for the 2002 Fly Free Faster promotion that netted another 10,000 miles.

In 2003 I signed up for the Northwest Business Visa for 10,000 miles to qualify for that summer’s Fly Free Faster promotion. That was a different Visa type and I earned the bonus miles no problem. I assumed that I was done, though.

The current terms and conditions make clear that the Visa Signature is a different product, and so I should be able to earn bonus miles again. The offer for that card is 15,000 miles with first use and the annual fee is $90. I’ll likely use the offer in June, provided that Northwest reintroduces its Fly Free Faster promotion — 15,000 miles for the card, 10,000 miles from that promotion (along with a couple of small mile transfers into my Northwest account and/or purchases from the Northwest mall) will make for a pretty good deal.

ING Direct is offering 2.8% on their FDIC-insured online savings account.

That’s a pretty good rate for a savings account (my local bank is offering a similar rate on 12-month CDs).

What’s more, ING Direct offers new customers $25 just for opening the account when referred by an existing customer (the referrer gets $10). There are no account minimums and no fees. You can open the account with $1 and get credited an additional $25. They’ll make you wait some time, I think a month, before you can withdraw their $25. Other than that, no restrictions.

There was once a $50 referral offer, I haven’t seen that in a couple of years though. I signed up at $25, pulled my money out, but then a couple years later realized I still had the account (with 17 cents in it) and started to use it. It’s actually quite useful.

If you’re interested in signing up with a $25 credit to your account, email me. Full disclosure, as mentioned above I’ll get $10 as well.

Flyertalk’s ScottC has reactivated his free travel deal alert email service. He says that all of the subscribers to the old email have been imported into the new system.

This isn’t a ‘TravelZoo Top 20′ or airline weekly e-fare list — it’s a low-volume alert list to let you know about breaking deals and fare glitches, such as the famous $61 roundtrip to Iceland, $20 British Airways fare to anywhere in Europe in World Traveler Plus, and $55 business class deal to Puerta Vallarta.

Definitely worth signing up.

Independence Air’s 20% discount which had been set to expire March 31 is now valid through July 31. You have to answer a short questionnaire about your company and you’ll be emailed a unique link that generates fares 20% off what would otherwise be the lowest price for an itinerary.

There’s also a 20% off link from Business Week that’s valid through June 30, no questionnaire required.

Randy Petersen points out that airlines are booking balance sheet adjustments to increase their expected liability for their frequent flyer programs.

When an award is redeemed, frequent flyer programs recognize revenue from mileage they’ve sold and they have to pay for the awards that are claimed. A domestic saver award might entail a frequent flyer program ‘buying’ a seat from the airline for $25. A partner award is more expense, and an ‘anytime’ award (that generally requires about twice the number of miles to redeems) is more expensive still.

Frequent flyer programs are apparently seeing greater redemption of anytime and partner awards than past experience would predict, so they have to acknowledge an increased future liability.

Randy believes this phenomenon is good for members of frequent flyer programs, because it illustrates the value of partner awards. I’m not convinced.

Randy acknowledges

It could be that there are additional destinations not served by the parent program members are redeeming to. More likely it’s members using partner airlines to get free awards that were not available on their parent program.

Airlines have printed more mileage currency without increasing the pool of available redemption seats, so there’s more competition for ’saver’ awards and they’re more difficult to get — hence more anytime awards and partner awards redeemed than ever before.

Partner options are certainly good for members, and the existence of options is better than simply not being able to redeem awards at all. But a world in which standard awards are hard to come by doesn’t seem all that great for members.

Ultimately what the greater financial liability that programs are having to book means that there are diminishing marginal returns to selling frequent flyer miles.

If a program sells 25,000 frequent flyer miles to partners at 2.5 cents per mile, they’ve garnered $625 in revenue. If a flyer then redeems those miles for a domestic coach saver ticket and the program pays the airline $25, the program has made a $600 profit.

But when those coach saver awards run out, the program has to go out and spend money on more expensive awards. If they don’t, they’ll have frustrated members and the revenue stream will eventually start to dry up. But their margins get squeezed. I think that’s what we’re seeing.

Bob Poole wants to mend the TSA, Jim Harper wants to end it in a debate on transportation security.

Some important points from Poole, the defender of government’s role in aviation security in this debate:

Against a comprehensive terrorist threat whose true dimensions are necessarily unknown, a free and open society has endless points of vulnerability. Attempting to “harden” all likely targets is a losing strategy—and a recipe for bankruptcy.

…

The single most effective thing that’s been done in this regard is to retrofit much stronger cockpit doors, to deny terrorists access to pilots and controls should they manage to get on board. But the rest of aviation security policy is an inconsistent mix of overkill and underprotection. Mandating 100 percent inspection of checked bags for explosives, but not of carry-on bags, makes no sense. Neither does inspecting 100 percent of passengers for metal but not for explosives. Likewise, why inspect 100 percent of bags but not the cargo that flies alongside them?



Current security policy toward passengers and their bags operates as if every person and every bag were equally likely to pose a threat. The costs imposed—both wasted time from showing up an hour early and the hassles and indignities of screening—are very large. But the only alternative (short of doing nothing, which would make planes too attractive as targets) is to base airport security policy on known or expected risk, targeting inspection resources where they are most likely to make a difference.

…

We also need to fundamentally rethink the function of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Although the TSA is charged with protecting all forms of transportation, it devotes the vast majority of its staff and budget to airlines, presumably because Congress overreacted to 9/11. Yet cargo containers entering our ports and crossing our borders are also potential threat vectors, and railroads carrying hazardous chemicals are also vulnerable targets. So TSA ought to do a serious analysis of where America could get the most bang for our bucks in transportation security, and recommend changes to Congress accordingly. That would likely mean much less emphasis on airlines and somewhat more emphasis on other modes.


The other major problem with the TSA is its built-in conflict of interest. As created by Congress, TSA is both the security policy maker/regulator and a major provider of security screening services.

Via Tripso.com, Mariah Carey is a pretty demanding hotel guest.

When the singer’s aides arrived at a London hotel at 2am yesterday to check preparations for her imminent arrival, they were dismayed to find the red carpet had not been rolled out.



They explained that, whatever time of day or night she arrives, Miss Carey is always welcomed by a thick-pile red carpet illuminated by large white candles.

Her limo circled the block while the hotel prepared for her arrival.

The American Airlines Mastercard is again offering no fee for the first year and 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase.

Citibank has been known to award the bonus miles even to people that have had the card in the past, despite terms that specify that the bonus can only be earned once.

Best practice is to print out the application page which mentions the 15,000 bonus miles and also to print out the terms and conditions which mentions no annual fee for twelve months.

Starting April 1st 2500 Diners Club points will yield only 1500 Priority Club points, down from the current 2000. It will also take 3000 Diners Club points for 1 Southwest Rapid Rewards credit, up from 2000.

Club Rewards members have until March 31 to redeem at the current rates.

Meanwhile, transfers of Club Rewards points between May 1 and August 31 will receive a 50% transfer bonus just like last year. This is something of a disappointment because previous years had seen a 100% summer bonus.

Between March 1 and May 31, transfers to USAirways earn a 25% bonus. (Registration required.)

The Denver Post carries a piece in what seems like a neverending stream of stories on how difficult it is to use miles, and how miles are worth less today than ever before. (Hat tip to Today in the Sky.)

The article makes the correct point that major airlines are on financially shaky ground. After two years in bankruptcy, United still lost over $300 million in January. But while the future of USAirways is up in the air, most flyers have little to fear in the immediate term over losing their miles. To name just one data point, American Express prepaid half a billion dollars for miles, they seem pretty confident about the future of the Skymiles program.

Still, the article is correct that the number of miles required to redeem many awards has gone up, and increased demand for seats from an ever-growing stash of unclaimed miles has made award redemption at times quite difficult.

The flip side of that equation is that it’s easier than ever to earn miles. Where once you could earn miles by flying, or staying at a hotel, or maybe renting a car, nearly half of all miles are earned from credit card spending. You can now earn miles by refinancing a house, switching long-distance companies, clicking on emails, and shopping online. So the higher prices are, to my mind, balanced out by the ease of acquiring those miles.

Furthermore, most programs now offer robust partnerships that allow award redemption across multiple international and domestic partners. That increases the range of award options and carriers offering seats. That upside has to be factored into the equation as well.

That’s why the simple formulation of ‘the sky is falling’ doesn’t quite ring true. Award prices will go up tomorrow and the day after that. I’ve written extensively on this in the past. Furthermore, there is some risk to holding miles in simply betting that the sponsoring carrier will exist in the future or that their miles will be honored by another carrier. But the programs are still highly valuable.

The real answer is to ‘burn as you earn’. Walking away from the programs makes no sense. Awards are valuable, and miles are easy to earn. But any given mile will never be worth as much as it is the day that you earn it. So earning and spending activity need to be matched, and the concept of saving up large quantities of miles needs to be discarded.

I’ve written here in the past about the importance of frequent flyer miles to airline bottom lines, and in particular the importance of co-branded credit cards which are the single largest source of non-flight miles.

When United entered bankruptcy, BankOne (since acquired by JP Morgan Chase) provided $500 million in debtor-in-possession financing. The bank needed the airline to survive because their most profitable credit card product is the United Visa. Now the bank is talking about loosening restrictions on loan covenants in order to allow the airline room to operate.

American Express pre-paid the purchase of $500 million worth of Skymiles in order to keep Delta out of bankruptcy. Again, an airline is kept afloat because it’s needed to sustain a credit card business.

Credit card miles are big business, and not just for the nation’s largest carriers.

The Alaska Airlines Visa from Bank of America will be good for $225 million in annual revenue to the airline in 2005. It’s growing at 28% a year. That’s an incredible figure for an airline that lost $15.3 million in 2004 and made $13.5 million in 2003. The sale of Mileage Plan miles to Bank of America dwarf both figures.

It’s no wonder that Alaska encourages its employees to push the card with contests. In my personal experience they’re more aggressive than any other carrier in encouraging passengers to apply onboard — but they’re far from the only carrier aggressively pushing their co-branded credit card. You can hardly move a hundred feet in Airtran’s Atlanta terminal without passing by a table promoting their Visa issued by Juniper bank.

I received my Mac Mini last week (from the free iPods folks). It seemed cool, it was really small, but what in the world was I going to do with it? I just decided to sell it on eBay. Someone bought it for $600, which is about $100 more than retail. Frankly I don’t understand people sometimes.

I’m still working on getting the free Playstation Portable and the free digital camera.

I’m really enjoying the free iPod Shuffle. I have the photo iPod, which is great for transferring pictures onto, but for daily use nothing can beat the little Shuffle which is the size of a stick of gum. It’s still new enough that I get looks on the metro as people try to figure out what it is. It’s the easiest of the free electronics items to get, requiring only three friend referrals, but that’s because it retails for only $100. Quite a deal I think.

A state representative in Texas wants to ban sexy cheerleading.

Legislation filed by Rep. Al Edwards would put an end to “sexually suggestive” performances at athletic events and other extracurricular competitions.



“It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down,” said Edwards, a 26-year veteran of the Texas House.

About the only redeeming thing in this idea is a middle-aged state legislator talking about young girls “shaking their behinds, breaking it down.”

Travelocity is offering $50 off flight and hotel packages to the Caribbean, Hawaii, or Mexico through April 15. Promo code is BEACHNOW.

Joel Widzer’’s new column up at Tripso.com is about spending more on travel and getting value for money spent. His basic message is right on the money: the rock-bottom lowest price isn”t always the best deal, and it can be worthwhile to spend a little more when traveling.

That doesn”t mean, as Joel says, “you get what you pay for.” I don’t think he means to imply that paying more is always worthwhile. Just this past weekend I helped a colleague get a room at the Jersey City Hyatt for $55 when they were looking for an inexpensive stay in New York. There wasn’t anything available inexpensively in Midtown. It’s certainly not the case that they would have been better off picking a $100 or $150 room (though if they were full price patrons at the Hyatt they might have gotten a more desireable room there, to be sure, but that wouldn’t have been worth the extra $150 a night to them).

But Joel’s point is certainly correct: paying a little more can often yield comfort, enjoyment, and even net savings.

MVP Gold members on Alaska Airlines receive complimentary upgrades, space available, 72 hours before departure. But there are tons of MVP Gold members (which is why Alaska is likely to introduce a new Platinum level next year) and upgrades on some routes (such as Seattle-Newark or Seattle-Washington Reagan National) are a crapshoot at best. Another benefit of Alaska’’s Gold status is that purchasing a “Q fare” or higher entitles the member to confirm an upgrade any time from ticketing to checkin, whenever an upgrade seat is available. That fare might be $100 more roundtrip flying Seattle-Los Angeles, or $200 more than the lowest fare for a Washington, DC - Seattle roundtrip. I”ll pay $20 per hour of first class time to guarantee my seat at booking and not play the upgrade lottery; money well spent.

Similarly, an upgrade to a hotel’s club level is often worthwhile - especially for families. Hardly a luxury property, the Sheraton Seattle will often offer $30 upgrades to a club level room. Theirs is (relatively speaking) at the low end but it includes breakfast and even snacks. Ritz-Carlton may charge an extra $100 for a club level room, but the displays of caviar along with champagne may be well worth the money — not to mention access to a butler/concierge whose assistance may prove invaluable.

Widzer makes another good point: let your travel provider (or more generally, whomever you do business with) know when you’re displeased. I’m not suggesting you complain to an airline that doesn’t carry your favorite soft drink and expect to get something in return. But if there were major inconveniences during a hotel stay, try to get them resolved on the spot and let the manager know what happened. Diligent management will often appreciate the information so that they can improve their product, and will try to make it up to you — perhaps a future free stay, waived charges on your existing stay, or at least a complimentary upgrade on your next visit.

Of course it’s important that the inconveniences are real if you’re going to complain. But when they are there’s usually not a reason to keep silent.