View from the Wing

All purchase on the Delta American Express earn double miles from June 1 through August 31.

Items that already earn double miles such as restaurant and US Post Office charges do not receive additional miles under this promotion, and the limit on earning additional miles from this offer is 20,000.

Bonus miles should post towards the end of October.

Registration is required by August 31.

British Airways is offering a 30% bonus on miles when transferring points from Marriott Rewards by July 20.

For those who aren’t already British Airways Executive Club members — and membership normally requires booking a full fare coach ticket or more — BA is offering accounts via this promotion as well (apparently without any requirement to transfer points from Marriott, so anyone wanting a BA account this is a good opportunity to get one).

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

(With apologies to Hunter S. Thompson, but it’s the only way to explain the conclusions in this story.)

James Gilden looks at US domestic airline award availability and online booking and gives the highest marks to Continental.

Of course, Mr. Gilden (1) looks only at a single route, different for each airline (2) over a specific set of dates (3) booking only online (4) and choosing a form of redemption that’s generally low value anyway (domestic coach award).

There’s no way that Continental miles are better to have than United’s or American’s currency.

And all airline award websites are fairly limited in their functionality, even with marked improvements over the past few years. It’s still important to call when you don’t see what you want online.

And really it’s rare that you should be redeeming for domestic coach awards anyway. International business class upgrades is generally the most leveraged use of points, followed by international first class awards. Just try redeeming one of either of those with Continental NonePass miles!

Here’s a pretty good reason to join the South African Airways frequent flyer program: double miles on most Star Alliance partners.

Double miles through the end of June on Thai (first flight only), All Nippon Airways, and Singapore.

Double miles through the end of July on TAP Air Portugal, Lufthansa, Swiss, bmi British Midland, Spanair, SAS, Air New Zealand, and USAirways.

Interestingly, United isn’t on the list. First account activity earns 2500 bonus miles. And fair warning, discount economy fares only earn 50% of miles, so earn regular full mileage only under this promo.

If you’re flying on participating carriers within the promotion period, and aren’t flying on deeply discounted coach tickets, crediting your flights to the Voyager program may make good sense.

Flyertalk.com discussion is here.

Travel deals like $51 to Fiji or $61 to Iceland are like dreams come true; impossible fantasies for most people in the world. So who needs a news hook? The Wall Street Journal ran another piece on the Alitalia fare glitch, $33 + tax for business class Toronto to Cyprus, in its weekend edition yesterday.

Stephen Mutkoski, a 37-year-old lawyer at Microsoft near Seattle, was thrilled recently to find a mistaken fare online for flights to Europe — just $33 plus taxes. He quickly booked trips for himself and his wife in July, August and Thanksgiving week. The catch: The flights are to Larnaca, Cyprus. From Toronto.

I love this description of Flyertalk:

The online epicenter of travel-deal discovery is FlyerTalk, a sort of methadone clinic for frequent-flyer and hotel-stay program addicts. In its highly trafficked message forums, users exchange tips, strategies, news of the latest travel promotions, and the best ways to achieve and maintain “elite” status in various programs. They also pass along reports of pricing errors.

Although isn’t methadone supposed to wean you off of the addiction? Flyertalk just feeds it.

Friends and colleagues booked 28 of the Toronto-Cyprus business class tickets and fortunately Alitalia is honoring them and even allowing one-time changes and additions/deletions of stopovers.

But it was sure a rocky road getting there. First Alitalia began unilaterally cancelling itineraries without even informing the booking agencies who processed the tickets. People were being sent paper tickets (since the Italy-Cyprus flights were codeshares with Cyprus Airways) but in many cases didn’t have reservations.

Then Alitalia agreed to honor the tickets, and began reinstating reservations. But they also unilaterally imposed new fare rules that forbid changes and disallowed stopovers, so they started edited folks’ itineraries — once again without telling anyone — in order to delete stopovers. People would have shown up at the airport on the wrong day even.

Finally Alitalia agreed that original itineraries would be honored, and Alitalia had to go back and recreate each and every one of those itineraries. The official word is that there are 509 of them, but this seems extremely low to me given how many I helped to book and how many others I directly know of as well.

Alitalia also agreed to make one-time changes to itineraries. For a short period of time Alitalia was even allowing travelers to drop the Cyprus leg of the trip, after all that means the airline wouldn’t have to pay codeshare partner Cyprus Airways for that set of flights. And folks who had booked Toronto-US City-Italy-Cyprus were being allowed to start flying from the US City as that too would save Alitalia money. But the official word is that travel must commence in Toronto and terminate in Larnaca, Cyprus. The dropping of segments to change departing and destination cities only lasted for about 24 hours before Rome put the clamp down.

Still, I have no complaints (I was in transit back from Bangkok during that generous 24 hour period and didn’t get to take advantage of it.)

I’ve worked with Nicollo in Alitalia’s New York office to change 4 sets of itineraries so far, and he’s the nicest and most helpful guy I could possibly imagine, especially in the face of a difficult challenge. His voicemail even references, “if you’re traveling from Toronto to Cyprus…”

An amazing ride, and I haven’t even taken the trip yet!

Effective this past Saturday, May 20, United Mileage Plus members earn miles on “USAirways West” — USAirways flights operated under the America West flight certificate.

This ends one of the more confusing mileage accrual issues in recent times, where USAirways is a member of Star Alliance and a partner of United’s but a sizable portion of USAirways flights were ineligible for United mileage accrual because they were ‘really’ America West flights operating under the USAirways name — meaning they were old America West flights, operating under the old America West flight certificate, and America West was not a United partner even though the company was merged into one and now called USAirways and the flights were sold as USAirways flights.

Mergers are indeed messy things, and in this case quite customer unfriendly.

That piece of the sage is finally ended. However other tidbits continue, for instance I’ve read that some USAirways elite members are now having success adding their frequent flyer numbers to other peoples’ reservations and accruing miles for those flights, and having those other passengers receive elite status-based upgrades as a result. It’s not even always a nefarious endeavor on the part of colluding flyers. Instead, agents sometimes simply enter the wrong frequent flyer number and that number sticks in spite of the lack of a name match. No doubt this mess will get sorted out eventually.

Randy McNally is offering $10 off with no minimum purchase, as part of a promotion with La Quinta.

This was posted on Flyertalk with a suggestion to buy a map of Cyprus to coincide with all the folks going on the Alitalia fare glitch. Alas, the Cyprus map is temporarily out of stock. But plenty of other possibilities abound.

Update: Link no longer appears to be working.

Both USAirways.com and AmericaWest.com now both direct you to the same, new website.

It looks like a rocky transition, the website was put up before it was ready. Some Flyertalkers are reporting that the merger of their frequent flyer accounts is a mess, with their status being downgraded. Others see miles missing from their accounts. Some attempted ticket purchases either are or are no going through, or in some cases going through without notice to the traveler (so they’ve bought tickets but need to call the airline to find out, and even the airline representatives take awhile to figure out that yes, indeed, a ticket has been purchased).

Developing…

Diners Club is ending the current Restaurant Savings Programs. They used to have their own program, the past few years it’s been outsourced to iDine aka Rewards Network.

In short, the Diners Club card has come with iDine Prime which offered 20% cash rebates on participating restaurans (but for the past year just 10%, and some restaurants only 5%).

The cashback iDine program otherwise comes with a fee, Diners Club covers that, although it also means that you can’t get iDine miles for dining purchases made with the card.

Of course, if you use iDine linked to a mileage program 10 or more times in a year you earn 10 miles per dollar — which isn’t as good as a 20% rebate, but is better than a 10% rebate. And that’s free.

So it may be good riddance to the restaurant savings program. You’ll be able to sign your Diners Club card up for a free mileage earning program. Use the card at restaurants 10 times in a year and you’ll earn 10 miles per dollar (as long as that earning ratio lasts…).

Diners Club is promising some new unspecified new benefit. It would be great if that new benefit was an improvement but with all the recent negative changes to the card I start off skeptical.

Tim Harford explains in Slate why you shouldn’t opt to pay for rental car insurance.

And that’s without even seeming to realize that most credit card products bundle rental car insurance at no marginal cost.

My Diners Club card offers primary insurance. Almost any premium Visa, Mastercard, or American Express will at least cover the costs your insurance company does not, such as the $900 deductible Harford references in the article.

Several cards whose coverage is generally secondary provide primary coverage when the driver is not otherwise insured.

Check the fine print or call your credit card company to find out.

People aren’t just paying too much for something. They’re paying too much to buy something they already have.

(Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.)

Citibank is offering 25,000 American Airlines miles for purchases of $250 or more on a new American Mastercard.

It’s today’s (day 18) American AAdvantage 25th Anniversary offer, though I owe the heads up to the indispensable free MilesLink newsletter.

I still like the 20,000 mile offer better because it comes with fee waived the first year, and a simple $1 gas purchase will trigger the bonus. The 25,000 mile offer’s $85 fee comes immediately, so you’re paying 1.7 cents a mile for the incremental 5000 miles.

Update: the offer mentioned in MilesLink and today’s AAdvantage25 offer are different.

The former is 25,000 miles for $250 in spend and an $85 annual fee. The latter is 25,000 miles for $250 in spend and fee waived the first year.

In theory you have to apply today to get this offer. However, if the Citibank page detailing it is still around later (and experience suggests it will be) you can probably continue to get it in the future. Here’s the direct Citibank link whose terms and conditions specify the fee waiver. Make sure you print it and save it for later, just in case!

A reader wrote to me today, asking whether I’ve changed my focus on this blog. He explained his view as this: that I used to write advice for travelers, and lately I’ve been writing more about my own travel.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but it’s probably a valid concern.

I didn’t used to write about my own travels at all — or at least extremely rarely! I just assumed that no one would be interested in the view I had from XYZ suite.

But I’ve been busy with work and haven’t paid as much attention to systematic treatment of issues as I used to.

At the same time, some of my travel stories have prompted specific questions or requests for advice, and I’ve answered these emails when I could. It probably would have been helpful enough just to post the questions and answers!

This is a labor of love, after all, and I write what interests me at the moment. But if there’s something you’d like me to cover, or specific questions you have, just drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do. And who know, perhaps there are plenty of others out there in the world who were wondering the same thing.

I have an upcoming stay booked at the Bellagio. It’s a real cheapie rate over a long weekend, but it was booked through American Express Fine Hotels & Resorts so in theory I’m entitled to an upgrade of some kind at checkin subject to availability.

I’m used to having a little more juice, but the places I have status don’t give me many options on the Strip.

So I’ll be walking into the Bellagio, I’m not a high roller, and I’ve booked the lowest category room. I can try my schmooze at checkin or I can try the $20 trick (though at the Bellagio perhaps it’s the $50 trick — or more).

The morals of it are questionable. Most of us wouldn’t agree if a grocery store clerk offered not to charge us for groceries in exchange for a tip. But hotel clerks are generally given some leeway to upgrade guests, and hotels are a place where tipping is the norm.

So questionable, perhaps, but the squeaky wheel sometimes gets the suite. I suppose one can be high-moraled and sitting in a ‘garden view’ room on the second floor…

Flyertalk’s skofarrel summarized the technique as follows:

Walk up to the counter. Hand over your card and id (if required). Look the clerk in the eye while leaving the $20/50/100 in plain sight on the counter. “I was wondering if I could possibly get an upgrade into a mega luxury fantastico suite?”. The clerk will do one of three things:



1. Eye the bill, and get you your upgrade (if this happens, you press the bill into your hand, shake the clerks hand while passing the bill. Mission accomplished.



2. Look in the computer and say, I can upgrade you for $X per night. You the realize that you’ve lost the bribe game and scored a clerk that does not know how to supplement their income. You than have to decide if the up charge is worth it.



3. Sorry no upgrades tonight, we’re full up. You may be in a pickle here. They may really be full, or you may not have offered enough. Move form a $20 to a $50 or $100 if you really want the suite and ask “are you sure”? If they say their sure, see number 2 above. If the $50 or $100 shakes a suite loose, you should be a bit embarrassed for not offering enough the first time, but are back in the game.

There’s also a thread in Flyertalk’s Las Vegas forum on the subject.

And here’s my advice on how to score a hotel upgrade without coming out of pocket.

Comments are open if you’ve tried this at checkin, let me know if you’ve succeeded or failed.

I spent this past weekend at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco in a Terrace Suite.

Concierge.com offers,

Splurge on a Terrace Suite to enjoy the ultimate perch above the city and feel like a railroad tycoon.

The room sells online for $1500 a night, but I received it as a Royal Ambassador upgrade.

The hotel played host to a gathering of Flyertalk moderators, so I figured I might as well stay there. I have a tinge of jealousy over the Flyertalkers upgraded to Astor Suites at the St. Regis San Francisco, but my upgrade was secured at booking and not having to play the upgrade lottery was reason enough to choose this hotel.

I queried the hotel about what room I’d receive if I booked their lowest category offering. Their usual policy is that Royal Ambassadors get a choice of a junior suite or a club room. If they choose the suite they can purchase club access at $30 instead of the usual $60 upcharge. (The club includes four presentations daily, complimentary internet, and complimentary pressings.)

So then I asked what I would get if I booked a club room, figuring I’d get a King Suite, and they told me instead that I would receive a Terrace Suite. Sold.

After a quick set of flights over to Oakland (Dulles-Denver in business on a United 777 and Denver-Oakland in ‘first’ on an ex-Shuttle 737), I took the $50 cab ride to the hotel. Sure, the shuttle to the Coliseum to the Bart to a cheaper cab ride would have saved some money…

Checkin was a breeze. I walked up to the front desk and they immediately escorted me to the lounge. They processed my paperwork and sent me on my way. No escort, though, and bags took about twenty minutes to arrive.

Still, the room was fabulous.

Oddly enough, at about 900 square feet this is my smallest of three Intercontinental suites over the past month. I had the 1600 square foot Diplomatic Suite at the Intercontinental Bangkok and a 1300 square foot Executive Suite at the Willard before that.

Still, the terrace absolutely makes the room. Others have commented on the tacky wicker furniture, but it seems to have been upgraded slightly. The floor is marble and it has a separate a/c and heater unit which is remote controlled.

Enclosed Terrace

Here’s the view from the terrace in one direction

The bedroom was nice, but the television was small and in an awkward position. No flat panel here. And the bathroom door opens into the bedroom and hits the bed.

The living room was fine, though the furnishings not really to my taste.

This is a fine old hotel and the renovations have maintained its old charm while upgrading functionality. But make no mistake, this is an old hotel. The elevators are small. Internet is both wired and wireless, but I found it extremely spotty. Connectivity kept going in and out, one of my great frustrations of the weekend.

Service on the whole was also spotty. There were some bright spots. Ulysses and Lauren in Guest Relations were excellent. There was one tall, dark haired man whose name escapes me that was as condescending as I’ve ever experienced, and I’m no stranger to far higher-end properties than this.

Some brief examples of their shortcomings and inconsistencies:

• Turndown service: not offered first night, included water bottles the next night, no water the third but for the first time we got the next day’s weather forecast.
  

  
  

• Housekeeping didn’t replace toileteries after the first day, left bathmats on the floor second day, and took the trash can out of the bathroom cabinet the third day and left it out (which was the only way I realized there was even a trash can in the bathroom).
  

• The Ambassador amenity of fruit and chocolates took 6 hours to arrive. Some hotels refresh the amenity daily (such as in Bangkok but not on Tahiti) but this one didn’t. Housekeeping didn’t remove the fruit when it went rotten (though they took away the plates but not the flatware).

• No Ambassador gift (which is required, in Bangkok I got a leather business card holder) was given.
  

• While they told me by email that as a Royal Ambassador booking a club room I’d be upgraded to a terrace suite (I had this in writing before booking), another Royal Ambassador booking the same room and rate received only a corner suite despite availability of the better room.

All in all, a great room - a great upgrade - from a solid, classic hotel that could be much better if only they’d make the effort.

More photos of the view from the terrace after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

At the moderator gathering in San Francisco I sat with Randy Petersen at dinner Saturday night. He raised some real alarm bells for me.

Up until now I haven’t made mention of the new United Choices program. United has introduced new award redemption options for Mileage Plus Visa cardholders. It’s a complex Rube Goldberg scheme where you can only redeem miles earned from the credit card for specific awards on offer through the program. It will probably, eventually, be rolled out more broadly.

United already reduced the value of its regular award chart. Now they’ve introduced new awards that have a rough value of 1 cent a mile or less, though of course not subject to capacity controls.

I hadn’t mentioned the program because, to me, it wasn’t worth mention. I have a hard time imagining a scenario where I’d recommend anyone use the new awards.

But Randy said he saw United — and the rest of the industry — moving towards fixed value awards without capacity controls as a replacement for (rather than a supplement to) their award chart. In other words, he sees award charts eventually going away.

This is a scary and disappointing proposition for me. It’s just a prognostication at this point, though certainly an informed one. I enjoy using my miles for international business and first class travel, which values each mile at 8 to 10 cents. If that possibility disappears (or requires 8 to 10 times as many miles, as under this new scheme) then the gravy train, and my relationship with miles, will be over.

At the point where a 1% rebate or 1 cent per mile value becomes the standard there will be many far more competitive rewards options out there. I’d rather use a 1.5% cash back card than a 1% mileage rebate card. The cash back value is higher, and not restricted in how I can spend it (plus I trust the Federal Reserve more than mileage programs not to devalue their currency even further).

While attractive on many levels for programs, no doubt, because it fixes their liability and eases redemption concerns, I project that it will also make them uncompetitive with other rebate and rewards offers.

Miles hold sway now not just because they offer something back. Plenty of other programs do that too. They hold sway because of the romanticism associated with free vacations and aspirational awards.

I wouldn’t even spend money to fly international first class on an Asian carrier, but I can spend miles to do it. Each time, it’s a dream come true. Domestic coach tickets sans capacity controls, or miles for merchandise, just don’t capture the imagination in the same way.

If United expands this program, replaces traditional awards, and if other airlines follow suit they’ll be killing the goose that lays the golden egg - both of loyalty feeding the airline and of the dreams of their members that fuel truly valuable and profitable loyalty programs.

Still, I’m skeptical of Randy’s (admittedly off-the-cuff) prediction of the end of award charts. They’re not just lucrative for members, they’re also lucrative for programs. Capacity controls mean that an airline — at least in theory — only makes mileage awards available for seats that would otherwise go unsold. In the roughest of terms, this means they only have to book the marginal cost of transporting a passenger as the cost to the program of that seat. If they sell 25,000 miles at 1.5 cents apiece they bring in $375. If those 25,000 miles are redeemed for a domestic coach award the program sees an expense of perhaps $25. The $350 spread is tough to walk away from.

If they redeem miles at 1 cent apiece towards the actual cost of travel, they bring in $375 but have expenses of $250. All of a sudden the $350 profit is now only $125.

Now assume that the mileage program is able to negotiate a 50% internal discount with its associated airline. The passenger spends 25,000 miles for a $250 ticket but the program pays the airline only $125. The program’s profit is still down from $350 to $250.

No, I don’t see award charts going away entirely. I expect a hybrid system to last for awhile. And with defined-value programs on the rise, capacity controls for those saver awards in the award chart may tighten up and yield management dragons may become more difficult to slay.

Perhaps the defined-value plans will replace standard awards which offer last seat availability, which is truly unfortunate. But the capacity controlled awards are, I think, going to stick around.

This past weekend I was in San Francisco for a meeting of Flyertalk.com moderators. The event was held at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, and I had a nice stay there. I’ll post photos of my Terrace Suite and a more complete review a bit later.

But just as interesting as the conversations and meetings — which were excellent — was my multi-tasking. Sure, I issued a couple of warnings to new Flyertalk members looking to sell their miles and I had to delete a couple of posts (all while everyone else was being more productive than I). But the real joy came from a reader of this blog who emailed a question about award travel. He was taking his mother on a trip to Bangkok and wanted to use United miles for the trip. He found business class seats on ANA and wanted to know what I thought of their seats, service, etc.

I asked how many miles he had; over 800,000. So I asked, “what about first class awards?” It seemed that United told him nothing was going to be available in first.

So I offered some advice on how to find Star Alliance award seats. Sign up for Air Canada and All Nippon Airways frequent flyer accounts. That lets you use their websites to search for awards, and both airlines allow you to search availability across the Star Alliance. Neither method is perfect, both because they’re just websites and because each member of the Star Alliance can’t always see availability across partners for all flights (so ANA may see availability on a flight that United agents won’t be able to pull up). But the overlap is very very close and it’s a good starting place.

Starting with all potential transpacific flights from all potential gateways I suggested searching for first class availability, and then piecing together other segments from there. Once you have some possible itineraries then call armed with that information.

I found a few flights to start him off, including first class Los Angeles to Seoul on Asiana, and with a bit of work we came up with Asiana and Thai one way and Thai and Singapore the other. First class on Singapore — the holy grail of airline awards!

Truly gratifying.

And seriously, if I can be of help in your travels (especially with premium class international awards) please let me know. I don’t always have time to respond right away, but when I do I’m happy to help.

A week and a half ago I posted that Starwood is apparently considering increasing the number of points required for most awards, roughly speaking a 25% devaluation of its program.

Sure, hotel prices have been rising, and that pushes up Starwood Preferred Guests’ costs since that means the program has to pay each property more for award nights.

But that’s also why Starwood re-evaluates the category that each hotel is in at the end of each year. Starwood award categories aren’t tied to a property’s quality or demand (occupancy rate) but to its average daily room rate in the prior year. And when the rate goes up Starwood bumps it up a category (or two) — requiring more points for a room night and paying the property more for that same night.

So it didn’t seem intuitively reasonable that Starwood could say, “the cost of properties keeps going up, so we have to increase the number of points for each award.” After all, they increase the number of points required already for each property whose rates go up!

It also didn’t help that the survey that Starwood was conducting framed the issue as “Hilton raised their points prices across the board, how should we do it too?” (In reality Hilton recategorized hotels, as Starwood does every year, which is a price increase — but now Starwood is considering two separate increases.)

As I think about it more and more, the issue with Starwood is likely very different from Hilton.

Hilton awards are capacity controlled, except for HHonors Diamond members. In other words, the Hilton program only gives members incremental rooms that in theory are likely not to be occupied otherwise. Starwood offers not just ‘no blackout dates’ but advertises ‘no capacity controls’ — that if there’s a standard room available for purchase you can have it with an award.

This is a huge benefit to members, and something which really sets the program apart.

Something struck me in Starwood’s survey:

Add a seventh tier of hotel with a 30,000 Starpoint redemption level for a free night. All high demand hotels would be added to this level e.g. St. John, Maui, Paris, New York

(Emphasis mine.)

This was an odd choice of properties, as one wouldn’t expect a property to jump from category 4 or 5 to category 7 out of the blue.

But the choice was a telling one.

When Starwood issues an award night at a hotel that reaches 90% or better occupancy on the night, the Preferred Guest program has to pay that hotel something akin to the property’s average daily room rate rather than the reduced, negotiated program rate (which is otherwise something like 4/5ths of a penny to one penny per point).

With not just room rates rising but occupancy levels rising Starwood’s cost for free nights must be going through the roof, as it now likely has to pay, say, a category 3 property $150 for a night instead of $55 (hypothetical numbers only).

Starwood is probably in a bind: it needs to either increase the number of points per award or end its ‘no capacity controls’ feature.

This is just a theory, mind you, but if true then Starwood would do well to explain it clearly and concisely (much more clearly than I’ve done) to members. It would still make the program less attractive to members than it is now, and some might view other hotel programs as more lucrative, but a little candor and honesty might make the pill go down a bit more easily.

Today in the Sky notes that Greyhound has introduced a loyalty program, Road Rewards. I haven’t looked over the particulars, but Ben Mutzabaugh says that 16 segments equals a free roundtrip.

I’m not even signing up for the program, even if it turns out to be easy to game.

It would be bad enough to sit through 16 Greyhound segments. But the reward for doing so is more travel on Greyhound?

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, their points even expire.

Just a few hours removed from the shoe carnival myself, I’m uniquely sympathetic to El Al Airlines which wants to do its own baggage screening because it doesn’t trust the TSA.

Starwood’s The Lobby reports that the Sheraton Seattle Hotel & Towers will finally live up to the plurality in its name by building a second (albeit shorter) tower.