View from the Wing

The Delta American Express is offering double miles on all purchases from November 1 through December 31. Maximum bonus is 10,000 miles and registration is required.

Delta is considering dissolving its “low cost carrier-within-a-carrier” called Song.

The wisdom of these operations has always been questionable at best.

Delta used to offer a similar product to and around Florida. They resurrected the idea with Song, and expanded it to cross-country flights.

USAirways used to have Metrojet.

United had “Shuttle by United” on the West Coast. There’s still the occasional 737 in Shuttle by United colors (with less legroom and no ability to serve hot food) disappointing frequent travelers when they’re surprised at the gate. There’s the familiar joke about United’s current attempt, Ted, that it represents “the end of UniTED.”

Continental had Continental Lite.

It’s very hard to market two distinct products under the same brand. It’s hard to offer operational independence. And with different pay scales and work rules (the real appeal to the carriers themselves), they breed resentment within the workforce.

Southwest has a simple business model and it sticks to it. JetBlue, though with some trouble on the horizon, has been successful with its own simple business model.

Major carriers have a hard enough time figuring out how to make a single model work. Two at the same time has proven impossible, time and again.

As part of Northwest’s bankruptcy, they’re trying to reduce labor costs. This creates strained relations with their unions. So far, so good. But to borrow Brad DeLong’s phrase, “why oh why can’t we have a better press corp?”

This Susan Carey piece (originally in the Wall Street Journal offers a rather odd definition of outsourcing:

Those intra-Asia flights are mostly staffed by nearly 700 Asian attendants from bases in Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines and other countries. They operate under different pay and work rules but have language skills for Asian destinations as well as English. The current union contract allows this limited but longstanding outsourcing.

(Emphasis mine.)

According to Susan Carey (and the PR voice of the Northwest flight attendants union), staffing planes flying within Asia with flight attendants from Asia is outsourcing?

Northwest has significant operations in Asia, and operates a mini-hub at Tokyo’s Narita airport. The airline was formerly known as Northwest Orient Airlines. They maintain crew local crew bases for their Asian flights for several reasons, only one minor one is wages. They also save on per diem and hotel costs. But mostly American flight attendants union members don’t possess the language skills that local residents do.

How to choose the best credit card

With this post I intend to outline the major issues that should affect your choice of mileage-earning credit card and to offer some specific suggestions that will work in most circumstances.

Feel free to leave comments if you feel like I’m missing any important issue, or if you’d like specific feedback on your own situation.
Read the rest of this entry »

Amtrak is offering 20% off on service to Philadelphia. In reality, the discount applies to all Northeast Corridor trains, though Metroliner and Acela Express are as usual excluded.

Discount code V735 is valid on tickets purchased through April 22, 2006 for travel through April 25, 2006. Blackout dates are: November 22-29, 2005; Dec 16-Jan 2, 2006; Jan 13-16, 2006; Feb 17-20, 2006; April 13-17, 2006.

On itineraries where V735 is not available, try H542. It’s a 15% discount that seems to work on most trips, including Metroliner and Acela Express. It’s only valid through December 15.

I spent a single night last week in Seattle, before heading out of SeaTac on a 6am flight. Normally that would call for a night at an airport hotel, which in Seattle often means a $35 three-star bid on Priceline.

That wasn’t going to work for me on this trip, and since I had my little dog with me I went looking for a Starwood hotel — domestically they’re incredibly pet friendly.

The Seattle Sheraton and Westin properties were sold out. Bummer, I’d have booked the Sheraton on a cash & points rate if it was available ($45 + 2800 points).

The W wanted about $300 a night, and unlike the Sheraton and Westin they charge a $100 pet fee and an additional $25 a night on top of that. I love the W Seattle, but not for more than $400.

At the risk of seriously “slumming it” I booked the Sheraton Bellevue. I figured it would at least let me say I’ve been to all the area Starwoods! Until the new Westin Bellevue opens next month, anyway.

My choices for the night were a $99 pre-paid internet rate or cash and points at $45 + 2800 Starwood points. Cash and points isn’t nearly as good a deal as at the pricier Sheraton Seattle.

Their club lounge is closed on weekends, so they gave me free breakfast coupons and free appetizer coupons.

The elevator requires room key to go up to 6th or 7th floors, which are designated as club floors. One of the 7th floor suites is the club lounge.

Parking is free (another reason to pick this property and save ~ $28 a night over downtown). Internet in the room is free (via cable, not wireless). You have to go through the motions as though you were going to pay, but they won’t charge any SPG member. This is per the front desk, but also on the hotel’s website.

My club floor room was furnished in dark wood, bed has the purple bedspread rather than white. Some scuff marks on the furniture, carpet a bit worn, but no big deal. Robe in the closet and a couple complimentary bottles of water.

The Mexican restaurant next door isn’t terrible.

This isn’t a luxury property (there wasn’t anybody to assist with luggage at checkin or anything) but it does the trick.

My room faced the 405, but no noise from the freeway. Being up on the 7th floor may help.

I’ve been meaning to go to CityZen, the restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental DC, for awhile. I finally gave it a try Friday evening.

The food was excellent, though there were some missteps.

Valet parking is complimentary. The restaurant validates. They asked for my ticket when I entered, and they returned it to me as I left. The valet walked us the ten feet from the car to the hotel with an umbrella since it was misting. Service was friendly, knowledgeable, and discrete throughout… with one blaring exception.

Little things, like replacing my wife’s napking when she got up to use the restroom, make a big impression.

The dining room was beautifully-designed but loud, making conversations difficult. The restaurant has an open kitchen, but it isn’t silent or perfectly orchestrated like you’d see at Maestro. Of course, it doesn’t really need to be silent, since it’s difficult to hear your dinner companion, let alone the sous chef.

We didn’t want to talk, anyway, we wanted to eat! The first amuse was a mushroom fritter, absolutely delicious. The second was an olive oil custard, a bit too “eggy” for my taste but still good.

My first course was a white truffle risotto. There was one person on staff whose job for the evening seemed to be slicing the white truffles into the risotto at each table that ordered it. He was very nervous. The chef must have given him a lecture about how expensive truffles are. He broke one in half into my plate and removed the two pieces with his hands! (I imagine he’d ultimately fish them out, but would have thought he’d at least take the dish back to the kitchen to do so…) Still, the risotto was absolutely sublime.

The breads were interesting. In addition to standard offerings we were brought a wooden box with mini “tollhouse” rolls — bite sized offerings that absolutely melted in my mouth.

For an entree, the trout was more delicious than any I’ve ever tasted. Though the presentation was more interesting and elaborate at Tetsuya’s, the piece of fish itself was more flavorful at CityZen.

The intermezzo, a quinelle of leechy sorbet in a glass of melted sorbet, was a bit too sweet for its purpose I thought. I had the broken down charlotte for dessert, which was good.

All in all, I’d say CityZen is the best meal inside the District right now.

Tyler Cowen wonders if, instead of United’s new plan involving boarding passengers assigned to window seats first, airlines would save more time charging for carryons (making passengers internalize the costs of lengthy boarding processes) or awarding prizes based on how quickly passengers get into their seats and buckle up.

The latter idea, while novel, would undoubtedly entail pretty substantial technological costs to retrofit aircraft appropriately. How else to know how long each passenger takes from boarding to buckling? And it would probably involve taking aircraft out of service for a time to do the retrofit, not to mention lengthy FAA approvals for the aircraft modificiations. So I’d guess that costs would be way too high relative to any savings from quicker boarding times.

Besides, as passengers compete with each other for quicker boarding, aren’t there bad incentives to trip each other or push to get to ones seat?

I’m skeptical that United will see any real benefit from its revised boarding procedure.

Southwest used to offload passengers from the rear exit of the plane while boarding passengers from the front. Flight attendants did a basic cleanup of the plane while on approach for landing. Heavier cleaning was done overnight but I don’t believe there was a separate cleaning crew boarding the planes in between flights.

In their early years, suffering financial problems, Southwest returned their 4th 737 and operated the same schedule with just 3 planes — pushing their turnaround time down from 20 minutes to 10 minutes (!) made this possible.

The point of short aircraft turnaround times was higher aircraft utilization — keep the planes flying, amortize the significant fixed cost of the airplane asset over more passengers, and in Southwest’s case even reduce the outlay for aircraft. That’s real savings.

It’s not clear to me what reducing boarding times a few minutes per flight gets you unless that allows you to actually squeeze out extra flights from your planes. Perhaps I haven’t read enough on United’s plans, but I don’t see them doing this.

I should look more closely at the company’s regulatory filings, perhaps they think they’re going to save a few minutes of time from each of their pilots and flight attendants? If so it seems like they’re leaving quite a bit on the table, keeping aircraft on the ground for an hour or more between flights and squeezing a few minutes off the actual boarding time. Perhaps a little less cleaning between flights, reduce your costs of having a whole staff of cleaners working throughout the day at major airports, and keep the planes in the air?

Several United Express carriers do just that. When I flew from Pasco, Washington to Denver the plane had no toilet paper! They don’t do any cleaning or supplying in Pasco, and didn’t have time to do any at their Denver hub before departing for Pasco since they were late coming in from Fargo. They got one cleaning and batch of TP before leaving Denver first thing in the morning, and hopefully got some more rolls after we landed again in Denver in the late afternoon!

I first mentioned Pizza Hut’s loyalty program a couple of years ago.

With some time and members under the crust, they’ve concluded that the program increased “incremental orders by 93% from members over a matched control and raised incremental net sales 65 percent.”

They found that, somewhat counterintuitively, charging a fee to their best customers actually worked best. It apparently builds commitment and buy-in to the program and brand.

Priority Club — the frequent guest program for Intercontinental Hotels, Crowne Plazas, Holiday Inns, etc. — frequently offers stay bonuses.

The intention is to target certain members, generally offering 10,000 bonus points for a specific number of stays.

In practice, anyone who signs up for the bonuses gets them, regardless of whether the member is targeted for the bonus or not.

Furthermore, historically you could sign up for several of the bonuses and get all of them — even though the intention is that a member only receive one bonus.

As always with these sort of things your mileage may vary. But if you have several stays coming up between November 1 and December 31 with hotels that are part of this program, you could pick up as many as 60,000 bonus points.

You’ll need to go to the
designated website to register for each promotion and enter the following promotion codes one at a time:

• 3844 (Stay 3 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 1906 (Stay 5 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 8898 (Stay 6 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 5675 (Stay 7 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 4638 (Stay 8 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 8424 (Stay 10 times, earn 10,000 points)

(Thanks to Flyertalk’s “Wonderdude” for compiling this information from posts in that bulletin board’s Priority Club forum.)

In response to United’s similar offer, American now has a bonus of up to 36,000 miles for flying up to 8 roundtrips to California, Oregon, or Washington through February 15, 2006. Registration is required with promo code AAWCB.

Promo code DCMIDWEST will get you 10% off at Midwestairlines.com on tickets purchased through November 30, 2005 for travel through February 17, 2006.

It’s a Diners Club card promo but terms and conditions don’t seem to require use of a Diners Club card (and the Midwest Airlines website probably wouldn’t even know if you were using one anyway, now that Diners Club is just a Mastercard — at most they’d be able to restrict payment to Mastercards but they probably don’t even do that).

Travel from November 23 to 27 and December 22 to January 2, 2006 is blacked out from the discount.

Earn 1000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for signing up for the program with promo code MIDWS and taking a train trip by April 30. (This is an improvement over the standard 500 point offer.)

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

The Wikipedia entry on the Wright Amendment (the law which restricts destinations of flights taking off from Dallas’ Love Field, which serves — and was intended — to protect American Airlines from Southwest) was edited by someone using an American Airlines domain.

Someone using an Internet service provider registered to American edited online encyclopedia Wikipedia last week to describe Southwest Airlines as “a notoriously litigious company constantly seeking to change laws to gain an advantage.”



For a time, the site also said Dallas-based Southwest is “known for its PR machine and litigious nature.”

American dismisses the event as actions by rogue employees that it cannot identify.

In what’s becoming an end of year tradition, United is offering Double Elite Qualifying Miles for sale. Register by December 15th, pay $200, and your flight miles from October 25 through December 15th will count double towards 2006 status.

No reason to register right away, wait until early December to see whether doubling your flight miles during the qualifying period will bump you up to higher status.

Bank of America, which is being replaced by Juniper Bank as issuer of USAirways’ co-branded credit card, is suing the airline for breach of contract.

Bank of America claims it has exclusive rights to offer a co-branded card through December 2008. Juniper Bank has been sold the exclusive right after December 2008… but their deal with USAirways involves a two-year “transition period” in which both banks can issue a card.

My free digital camera takes some outstanding pictures, I’ve been using it to take photos of all the hotel rooms I’ve stayed in over the past six months or so. A couple posts below you can see the view from my deck at Bora Bora Nui.

I’m still working on the free Xbox 360 though.

As long-time readers of this site know, I spent a lot of time figuring out the best ways to go about getting these offers. In general, you have to complete a marketing offer and get several friends (3 to 10, depending on the electronic item you seek) to do the same. If you wait long enough, easy offers will show up — offers that are free or free for a trial period long enough to cancel without getting charged.

Customer service is slow, the company isn’t responsive, but I’ve always gotten my items — the iPod mini, the photo iPod, the desktop computer, Mac Mini, iPod Shuffle, to name a few.

The Xbox 360 (as I understand it) hasn’t even come out yet but is due out in late November. But the one they’ll be sending is even the $399 premium edition, not the stripped down model.

FreePay also has a brand new offer — free iPod Nanos.

I’ve been swamped the past few days, I have an inbox full of great deals, and no time to cull through them. Fortunately FreeFrequentFlyerMiles does much of the work for me.

Gary Steiger points to several worthwhile offers:

• United’s Silver Wings Plus has a promo (promo code SWA16-2904) — join for $264 and get 25,000 bonus miles, (3) $100 travel credits, and double miles on your next 12,500 flown miles. You’ll have to cancel before the first year is up or they’ll auto-renew you for another $264. Silver Wings Plus is United’s senior citizen program. The offer may expire November 4.
  

• United is offering 4,000 miles for signing up for Netflix and paying with a United Visa (2,000 miles otherwise).
  

• United is offering up to 36,000 bonus miles for flights to the West Coast and up to 25,000 bonus miles for flights to and from Washington, DC.

Combine these with 50,000 miles for an Ameniti signup and a free the first year United Visa with 20,000 mile signup bonus and you can have a supersized Mileage Plus account in no time.

Turns out that the long-awaited Ritz-Carlton on Bora Bora is going to be a St. Regis instead.

Louis Wane owns this property along with the Sheraton Tahiti, Sheraton Moorea, and Bora Bora Nui Resort & Spa — all managed by Starwood.

This latest property should be even more over-the-top luxurious than Bora Bora Nui, where I stayed in June.

The Nui is already the most expensive points-redemption property in all of Starwood-dom. Will Starwood have to create a whole new redemption category for the St. Regis? Or will the hotel build a low-end ‘points room’ for SPG guests?

Interestingly, Bora Bora Nui was originally intended to become a St. Regis. Two stories explained why this didn’t happen. One was that Louis Wane visited the St. Regis Monarch Beach and St. Regis Los Angeles and was appalled, he didn’t want his property associated with the brand. Another was that the Nui simply couldn’t meet brand standards, since service wasn’t up to par (and it didn’t offer butler service).

Neither seems plausible anymore — Louis Wane is building his newest, best property as a St. Regis so he couldn’t have detested the brand that much and while service does want at times at the Nui it appears possible to meet brand standards in French Polynesia since there’s going to be one.

In the end perhaps the Nui didn’t become a St. Regis because they were negotiating the branding for this new property.

Are two hotels in Anchorage haunted?