View from the Wing

SAS is giving out free luggage tags to all SAS Eurobonus members.

Just email eurobonus@sas.no with the subject BagTag and include your EuroBonus number in the email.

The Wall Street Journal reports that mortgage payments by credit card may be on the way — for a fee.

Details are still sketchy, and your financial position/amount of your mortgage payment/choice of rewards program will determine whether it’s worthwhile…

I wouldn’t mind picking up 35,000 Starwood points at a cost of a penny a point in the first year, and no incremental cost in future years, should that be how this shakes out. Developing…

Northwest’s Last Minute Packages (formerly ‘CyberSavers’) are offering a fantastic deal — promo code LMP2007 is taking $300 off a trip of $300 or more.

Per Northwest’s promotional email, it’s only supposed to be taking off $25.

One Flyertalker writes

I just snagged a trip for Fri. night - Sun. night to the Chicago vicinity with two nights at a Radisson for $5.91 all-in.

So if you’re still looking for something to do Memorial Day Weekend (or the following weekend), this may be the deal you’ve been waiting for.

United awards elite flyers (4) 500-mile upgrade certificates for every 10,000 miles flown on United (and United Express and Ted.. rar!.. planes). They also sell ‘em. And they can be used to upgrade domestic flights a few days in advance of travel subject to availability, the specific length of time governed by your particular status with United.

Currently, if those upgrade certificates expire unused, they each convert to 500 frequent flyer miles.

June 1 this practice is no more.

I knew about the change back in January when it was posted on Flyertalk and didn’t see it as an especially big deal. It used to be that the old paper 500s converted just to 250 miles, and you had to mail them in to boot. Then when they went electronic it actually improved to the current 500 miles.

Now, with this new policy I really don’t get the logic of taking a paltry number of miles away from your best customers who really can’t use them. Makes no sense.

This is especially strange because the flyers with the most expriing 500 mile upgrades are those 100,000 mile flyers who do mostly international travel, many of whom are based out of the United States. Since the 500-milers can’t upgrade those transatlantic and transpacific flights, they just expire. It’s nice to have them turn into miles, an extra 20% mileage bonus in effect. Makes good sense, since this is in lieu of a benefit they can’t use. And long-haul travelers based outside the United States in particular would seem customers that are hard enough for United to attract and keep. Why take this away?

American used to offer conversion at 2500 miles apiece! Then it was reduced to 500. But conversion is still an option there as far as I know. And American’s 500-milers don’t expire at all, period.

United would allow ‘early conversion’ for years, if you had a stash of 500-milers they’d cancel ‘em out and deposit miles in your account in exchange. This was never a ‘formal’ option. So United is certainly within its rights to end it without notice. And that’s just what they’ve done — since Flyertalkers were apparently converting their 500-milers like crazy, United sent out a message to its agents saying ‘no mas!’.

Doing so just seems incredibly… petty.

Upgrade: Travel Better has more.

It’s been reported on Flyertalk that when Alaska says “Award Levels to Increase”, what they mean is that the 20,000 mile domestic coach award is going to be available only for online redemption. If you have to call to make the booking it will be 25,000 miles.

No big deal in my view, 20,000 is already better than almost all other competitors (cf. Frontier Early Returns and their 15,000 mile awards). So Alaska’s gone from the model of rewarding website bookings to making off-line bookings more expensive. I’m naturally not a fan of the change, but I can live with it.

But their other change really hits me where it hurts:

Effective August 1, 2007, First Class Mileage Redemptive Upgrade award rules will be changing. Redemptive Upgrades awards booked after this date will be available on H-class fares and above for 15,000 miles each way. Tickets booked in classes of service below H will no longer be eligible for redemptive upgrades.

Currently, Alaska allows mileage upgrades from any fare. In this way, they’re on par with the North American offerings of United and American. The price of that upgrade is 10,000 miles. (It wasn’t that many years ago that a one-way upgrade was only 5000 miles and came out of paid first class, rather than capacity controlled, inventory.)

They’re bumping up the mileage cost of a confirmed one-way upgrade. And they’re requiring customers to buy up to an H fare in order to use it.

My most frequent Alaska Airlines route is Washington-National to Seattle, where the current lowest Alaska fare (before taxes) is $298. The H fare is $688. The premium is $390 + 10,000 additional miles for the roundtrip upgrade.

I understand why Alaska is doing this. They operate more transcon flights now. They have increasing demands for first class seats amongst their elites. Those seats are priced cheaply. A supply-demand imbalance often results in a price increase. So it isn’t surprising. But the one thing I save up Alaska miles for is upgrades, and starting August 1 those will become a whole lot more expensive.

Via Slickdeals.net, the W Hotels Store is offering 40% on their beds and bedding through May 31 with promo code WE4XT.

I got in on a similar offer back in March, and am very pleased with my purchase. My understanding is that W properties use the plush top mattress with a featherbed, rather than the softer pillowtop that’s also on sale here. But preferences will vary.

Thanks to a co-branded offer with Harley Davidson, Best Western is offering new members a 1000 bonus points with your first stay by June 28.

Hat tip to boazs of MileMaven.

TripAdvisor is offering a $50 off Orbitz coupon good on a 3+ night hotel stay or vacation package.

In addition, Orbitz promo code PRIDE100 offers $100 off on a 5 or more night hotel stay or $40 off on a 3-4 night stay.

These presumably work only on ‘OrbitzSaver’ hotel rates, though I haven’t ploughed through the relevant terms and conditions to verify.

The Pride offer is part of their Gay and Lesbian travel deals, but anyone can use the savings (the booking engine lacks appropriate gaydar).

JetBlue is offering $50 off travel between September 5, 2007 and October 31, 2007 after you book a roundtrip by June 1 for travel commencing by June 15. Registration required.

Thanks to reader Sloan for the pointer.

Pair this with $10 off each way when buying your qualifying roundtrip. (Here’s the link via American Express.)

Purchases need to be made with an American Express card by May 31 for travel by June 13, and Friday and Sunday travel are excluded.

While the promo rules say the offer is good on transcontinental flights, that doesn’t appear to be true — the special fare comes up from Dulles to Orlando, for instance, and becomes as low as $39+tax one way.

Would you trust air traffic, or the ground controllers for that matter?

NBC News in Connecticut ran a story on redeeming frequent flyer miles that was notable for how much it got wrong in only 166 words.

Airline industry expert Darryl Jenkins said tough economic times are making airlines stingy with free seats.

I much like Darryl, but this may be the closest to plausible thing he’s quoted as saying in the article. (It’s plausible that every quote was taken out of context and mangled…)

Airlines aren’t being stingy because of ‘tough economic times’. If anything, the reverse is true. Full planes, usually not a sign of tough times, are making the seats harder to come by. Award redemption at the ’saver’ level (i.e. capacity controlled awards, after all many airlines allow you to redeem double - or more - the miles to get any seat on the plane) are intended to be given out of inventory that otherwise wouldn’t sell. The seats that are ‘free’ to the passenger are, in theory at least, also close to free to the frequent flyer program to give out. But there aren’t very many of those marginal seats.

The closest Jenkins comes to reality is that tough economic times for the airlines have encouraged them to print a whole bunch of miles over the past several years… double and triple mile promotions intended to bolster travel while carriers went through bankruptcy (United’s sextuple miles in 2003 was truly classic). And now you have “too many miles chasing too few seats” — airlines are giving away plenty of seats, you just have more consumers looking for them.

He said requesting an upgrade is the easiest way to use frequent flier miles. He said passengers should buy the cheapest coach seats they can and then turn them into business-class or first-class seats.

For transatlantic or transpacific flights only Continental and American will let you upgrade the cheapest fares.. my spending your miles and offering up an additional co-pay.

He recommends always calling the airline when using frequent flier miles and not using the Web site. He said you can negotiate with the ticket agents.



He also said complaining can get you everywhere. Airlines sometimes give seats to valued passengers who complain.

Agreed that it’s worth calling and not just relying on airline websites, since the search technology isn’t across-the-board great with many carrier websites and very few allow you to search frequent flyer availability for partner airlines without calling.

But the advice to call has nothing to do with the ability to complain to a (in many cases outsourced) agent in order to get what you want. There are very few customers with the juice to convince an airline’s yield management to open up seats for redemption as a result of complaining. Don’t try it at home, kids.

Gee, I don’t know why that piece bothered me so much, but I feel better having gotten it off my chest. Thanks! (And sorry, Darryl.)

In April 2005 I posted that the offer to Citibank Chairmans Card holders of complimentary Hilton Gold status was accessible by anyone.

Some folks kept the status after signing up. Others had Hilton take it away. Some had Hilton say they were taking it away, but the status remained…

The Fatwallet discussion of this deal suggests that it still works (by phone only, no longer online). Naturally, your mileage may vary.

Through June 30, Delta is offering 4,000 Skymiles just for enrolling and entering your Starwood Preferred Guest number. Offer may be targeted, so your mileage may vary…

Paul Karl Lukacs is blogging about his trip to North Korea. I find his Air Koryo flight from Beijing especially interesting, having heard plenty of stories before but never having flown the airline myself.

The plane to Pyongyang was an Ilyushin 62-M, built by the Soviet Union in 1979 and kitted like a set from The Spy Who Loved Me. No cool corporate off-white here. The surprisingly comfortable economy seats were covered in puke green cloth upholstery with an indistinct pink pattern. The cabin’s interior shell was cast in a shade of beige which belonged in a Southern California ranch house from the era of earth tones. The plastic window shades were not opaque but a dark translucent brown.

Read the whole thing…

Budget Travel is giving away beer cozies for their new sister magazine Girlfriend Getaways. There aren’t a whole lot of ‘em according to this post, but something about the title of the mag just sounds appealing, yknow?

(I think the magazine is actually about women getting away together, so not applicable to all readers perhaps, but on the other hand . . .)

United has blown it with a decimal point — San Francisco or Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand was supposed to be $10,620+tax for full fare business but got published (fare basis CNZ) as $1062+tax or about $1480 all-in.

The fare works to Christchurch, New Zealand as well.

This is available at Orbitz, Expedia, United.com, and some other places.

You have to fly LA or San Francisco to Sydney on United and then any carrier (Air New Zealand, Qantas, Emirates, Thai, LAN) on to Auckland (for the Auckland fare).

It doesn’t appear to allow stopovers in Sydney — just connections. While the fare says ‘unlimited stopovers’ it is apparently a mileage-based fare, so stopovers cause a “HIP check” aka a check for the highest fare to any stopover and causes the price to jump accordingly (a stopover in Sydney prices the fare at the more expensive Sydney business class roundtrip price).

It’s full fare business class, fully refundable (and in theory changeable, but that may require exchanging for the then-current higher fare). Of course, when searching for this fare you need to specify business class!

Available through the end of the schedule (return flights available up to 330 days from now).

Naturally, UPGRADEABLE TO FIRST with miles (30,000 each way) or systemwide upgrades.

This fare looks to be on the way out, won’t be around much longer, and in truth has been around for at least a day and a half. I learned about it over a day ago and shared it with some people directly, but had to commit to the person passing it along that I wouldn’t post anything about it. (Sorry, folks!) But now it’s been posted on Flyertalk so I feel free to share it here as well.

Read Dan emails to let me know that the Bank of America Choice Privileges Visa is offering 16,000 bonus points with signup by August 16th and $150 in spending on the card within 75 days of opening the account.

Now, I’m not much of a Choice Privileges kinda guy, but this isn’t a bad deal for a no-fee card.

United’s Grocerymiles is offering 1500 bonus miles on $1500 in spending by June 15 at Safeway, Vons, Dominick’s, Genuardi’s or Pavilions.

Good for folks who shop at these places anyway, it amounts to triple the usual miles on $1500 in grocery purchases over a month and a half.

Of course you need to be averaging $1000 a month in groceries — easy to do at stores like Whole Foods and the like, much tougher at Safeway!

And as usual, the following spending doesn’t count…

Liquor, Tobacco, Fuel, US Postage Stamps, Fluid Milk, Bus/Commuter Passes, Fishing/Game Licenses, Ski Tickets, Lottery Tickets, Gift Certificate sales, Pharmacy prescriptions, Safeway Club Savings, Safeway Store Coupons, and Sales Tax.

Free Frequent Flyer Miles points to an an offer of Delta miles for new countertops.

There are always miles for shopping offers, but I point this one out because I hadn’t seen it before and because it’s rather timely — I’m actually pondering new countertops in my kitchen. I don’t yet know the quality of the product offered here or how it compares on price, but pocketing a few thousand miles for something I’m goingt to do anyway always grabs my attention.

Details of the offer:

Delta Sky Miles are awared based on final price of purchase of installed countertops from e-counters.com. Additions to orders for non-installed items do not count towards purchase amount for Sky Miles calculation. Installed Countertop purchase price is subject to change pending on-site measurement by e-counters.com affiliated professionals, and the Sky Miles award amount will be calculated as 1 mile per $1.00 spent on final installed countertop price. Sky Miles are rewarded in denominations of 100 miles. Awarded amounts will be rounded to the nearest-lower multiple of 100 miles. (example: if final installed countertop price is $2,370.00, the Sky Miles award amount will be 2,300).



You must sign and submit to installer or e-counters.com a signed copy of your Install Approval Form prior to Sky Miles awards being issued. Please do not sign and submit your Install Approval Form until such time as your installation is actually complete and satisfactory.

(And yes, spelling mistakes always do raise a flag for me, though I’m looking forward to my miles being “awared” after I’ve made a purchase..)

To butcher Frank Fukuyama, it’s the end of credit card history and I’m the last man (holding onto a Diners Club card).

If there was any doubt at all, the Freddie Awards put an end to it. The card won an amazing 9 straight awards for best loyalty credit card. Last year surprised me, but I imagine there’s often a lag in benefit changes and consumer perception, in other words the card was coasting on its past glory and reputation. This year Diners Club didn’t even garner enough votes (1%) to have their support tallied and reported.

The Freddie Awards are a bit of a strange animal, a product has to clear the 1% threshold in votes — not nothing in a contest with over 400,000 voters, but not a huge hurdle — and then the interpersonally subjective mean “value vote” determines the winner. In the past Diners Club was bolstered by its hard core constituency, the savvy road warror who saw some amazing benefits: an incredibly flexible point transfer program, primary rental car insurance coverage, two full billing cycles to pay (great for folks whose employers take awhile to reimburse travel expenses), and the list goes on.

Over the past couple of years, ever since Diners Club became a Mastercard and became much more widely accepted, benefits have been guttted. Two factors are at play:

• Diners Club Rewards has lost airline transfer partners. Take United and Continental, for instance, both of which have Chase credit part products are their primary credit card partner. When Diners Club was a separate niche product there was really no competition or conflict with Chase. But when Diners Club became a Mastercard, Chase saw a threat and insisted on exercising its exclusivity arrangements.

  
  

• Lower margins per transaction. Processing charges as a Mastercard meant lower margins for Citibank (issuer of Diners Club in North America) on each transaction. These lower margins support lighter benefits. So Diners Club hasn’t just lost transfer partners, they’ve also altered their redemption charts such that transfers out to several hotel programs (and Southwest) are more costly. Meanwhile, other benefits have gone by the wayside…
  
  
  
  • The end of 60 days to pay.
    

  • Increased foreign currency transaction charges, bumping up from 2% to 3%.
    

  • The end of the Restaurant Savings Program. Years ago they had their own dining benefit but more recently had switched to co-branding with iDine (now Rewards Network) and their cash back program. Most airlines and some hotel programs offer free membership and points-earning, but for a fee (”iDine Prime”) you can sign up for cash back without an airline/hotel partner. Diners Club brought you the premium cash back option built-in with the card. Rewards Network reduced their payouts, lessening the benefit. But now it’s gone completely. The ultimate irony is that the Diners Club card no longer has any dining benefit!
    

  • Reduced value in the “tailored travel” program. When Diners started losing transfer partners they emphasized that it didn’t really matter much, you could use your points directly for paid travel. Tailored travel redemption rates have been cut by a third (from the introductory rate of 100 points = $1.50) to 100 points = $1.

That’s just the short version, I’m sure other cardholders have their own take on which other benefit cuts are most important. There used to be an annual 100% transfer bonus with British Airways, that’s been reduced to 50% (although that happened before the card became a Mastercard). But at least the BA transfer option is still alive, I make good use of it. And the primary insurance coverage still exists, although I’ve heard rumblings that the Discover Open Road card offers this as well (although information on the website appears contradictory, and coverage is only up to 25,000 rather than 75,000 in most cases with Diners).

So you have a premium Mastercard at a premium price, $95, rather than the classic, benefits-rich card for the “in-the-know” road warrior. It’s a sad end to the most storied name in credit cards, ending not with a bang but with nary a whisper of its name at the Freddies.

** Note: this all begs the question, “so why did they do it?” In part, I do believe it was an error, the Diners Club folks thought the increased acceptance would more than compensate for reducing benefits in line with lower per-transaction fees. But the overriding reason is that the consumer card wasn’t the driver here, Diners has for years been predominantly a corporate credit card and the increased acceptance means much greater market share for them. Us road warrior types, though crucial to their underground popularity and word-of-mouth, were acceptable losses in the war for corporate deals. We were expendable, and we’ve been expended.