Promo code DFHOLLYWDGO is valid for 15% off American Airlines one-way or roundtrip flights to Los Angeles, Burbank, Orange County, and Ontario.
Book by January 22 for travel between February 26, 2008 and April 30, 2008 (excluding March 14-16, March 21-25, or March 28-31). Valid for coach only, up to six passengers on one reservation.
Currently on the main bmi Diamond Club page is an offer to join the program (promotion code FF19KD) and receive 9,000 miles straight away.
Terms and conditions of the offer are pretty much as you’d expect: you get 9,000 miles added to your account within 3 business days of signup, and don’t you dare open up a second account for the purpose of taking advantage of this offer!
I’d save up my miles rather than just grabbing the free redemption this offers, however:
9,000 destinations miles is sufficient for 1 return direct flight with bmi or our Star Alliance partners in the UK, or between the UK and Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Switzerland. All flights are strictly subject to availability.
The real value in the bmi program is cash and points awards. See the award chart for details. Premium economy is just a 25% increase in mileage and cash if applicable, business just 50% more, and first can always be had for double the miles (and cash).
Be patient with the website, it’s been known to be slow or glitchy, but it’s a pretty good program and 9000 free miles is certainly worth it. By the way, they’re a Star Alliance carrier and are the only non-US based member which regularly offers status matches. So possibly time to take a look!
MileMaven for the pointer.)
Alitalia is offering a 2000 mile signup bonus which will credit to new accounts if you take an Alitalia flight or credit an airline partner flight to your account within 3 months of enrollment.
(Thanks for Free Frequent Flyer MIles for the pointer.)
Priority Club has a short survey about their program for 250 points. Survey runs through February 29, 2008. Every bit helps!
The Arizona Republic covers improvements in USAirways’ wine offerings.
After several years of settling for whatever was cheapest, US Airways is upgrading its wine list, especially in first and business class, where it’s a free perk.
Travelers in coach, where wine costs $5 a pop, won’t be totally left out. US Airways is replacing its current no-name wine in coach with a Beringer brand and plans to offer a second, more expensive ($8) choice, too.
[Snip]
“Everyone has tried to raise the bar,” she said. “Everybody has kind of said, “Oh my gosh, we have a teeny bit more money, we can offer our consumers a great glass of wine instead of a crap class of wine.’ “
Somehow there’s a real honesty here, even as the piece massively exaggerates the improvements in USAirways’ soft product.
I would hardly say that USAirways is going to be offering a great glass of wine. But it will be nice when they stop pouring from a box!(though they may not be able to serve anything in New Mexico for awhile…).
Here’s an idea for what to do during a layover at LAX… take a free off-airport parking shuttle to the In-N-Out Burger on Sepulveda.
An In-N-Out is located on nearby Sepulveda Boulevard right next to the Parking Spot–a parking structure that conveniently provides free shuttle service. All you have to do is wait under the red “Hotel and Courtesy Shuttle” sign outside of any airport terminal, and when the yellow and black polka-dotted Parking Spot shuttle swings by, jump on board. It will take you literally next door to In-N-Out. Follow your nose through the back door, across the parking lot, and right inside where you need to order a double-double and fries to enjoy the best layover of your life.
There are a few things to be very careful about, however.
First off, you need to make sure that you get on the Sepulveda Parking Spot shuttle; otherwise you will end up at the Parking Spot’s Century location. Additionally, you should allow yourself at least two hours to be extra safe. The shuttles come pretty regularly and the drive is only five to ten minutes, but the line at In-N-Out can be as long as 20-30 minutes during peak hours. And then you’ve got to get back to the airport and through security once again.
I’ve seen several New Year’s Resolution stories, most of them are silly, and none are worse than the median piece on New Year’s resolutions for managing your miles, points, and travel — because anyone who would actually use the advice likely knows far more than the person writing the piece.
So here’s my brief attempt at a set of New Year’s Resolutions. As always, your mileage may vary… And for many of my readers, even these will seem utterly pedantic.
Most hotel chain ‘best rate guarantees’ are bogus marketing gimmicks, designed to give you confidence that you’ll get the best prices on their own websites whether this is accurate or not. The promised benefits to finding a lower rate elsewhere are often elusive, with complex and arcane rules and sometimes incompetent claims staff who deny otherwise valid submission.
The one real exception to this is the TripRewards program, which regularly honors its one night free policy when you submit a competing lower price elsewhere. There’s an extensive Flyertalk post on the subject with nearly 500 replies.
There’s also now a Best Rate Guarantee Blog dedicated to identifying hotels where lower prices are found on websites other than the Triprewards site, with the goal of allowing you to claim a free hotel night there.
As a brand new blog it remains to be seen how frequently updated or long living it will be. But it’s an interesting project nonetheless.
Not really for me, as I recently mentioned I don’t often stay at participating TripRewards sorts of properties, but folks have been known to hop from property to property staying for free through this program.
The first post on that new blog outlines the basics. But for the really cautious, check out the full Flyertalk discussion.
Personally I’d love it if the Best Rate Guarantee Blog covered not just TripRewards but details of best rate guarantees more generally, it would be great to hold other hotel programs’ feet to the fire — not that I am especially inclined towards seeking out free nights night after night a la the TripRewards program, but that I do think hotel programs ought to be held to their word. (Change the marketing languag if they don’t want to live up to their promises…)
In an otherwise not-funny news spoof (not even worth clicking on, really), I did enjoy the frequent flyer miles approach to parodying presidential candidates, with Ron Paul’s conspiracy theory and John Edwards’ class warfare approaches below.
Paris, France – The Paris Hilton admitted today that it had screwed Congressman Ron Paul out of double-dipper frequent flyer miles by neglecting to properly process the bonus points to the congressman’s credit card.
[Snip...}
John Edwards had some comments for MSNBC about the recent Hilton, Ron Paul flap…”It seems a pity that those valuable miles will be wasted when there are so many homeless in America that would love to visit Paris.”
TripRewards is offering double points or double miles (registration required) for your first four stays booked by May 15 and complete by June 15. (The registration page suggests that the offer is valid through May 15, but the terms and conditions clarify that stays must simply be booked by that date and can be consumed up until a month later.)
I might use this at a Wyndham property, but beyond that it’s of little use to me as I really don’t frequent Baymont Inn, Days Inn, Ramada, Super 8, or HoJo properties…
Here’s a pretty intriguing idea on Flyertalk, it’s really not for everyone and likely not for me — too much effort involved! — but it’s one person’s story of how they’re earning over 100,000 frequent flyer miles through rental car bonuses.
The best thing about the thread is that it pointed out to me a bonus I hadn’t realized was out there, 1700 bmi miles per rental at Hertz. bmi mileage isn’t the easiest to earn, and it’s really quite valuable. Several of the other promos have been mentioned here at View from the Wing in the past, but never with the idea of spending 45 days renting cars just for the miles!
Now this is just downright silly.
American Airlines has been named Best International Airline for 2007 by readers of Travel Weekly in its annual Readers Choice Awards competition.
Travel Weekly announced the award at a recent ceremony and will publish the results in its Jan. 21 issue. American was chosen from a list of five finalists that also included British Airways, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic.
American offers a better experience than Singapore Airlines. Someone said that with a straight face.
American is offering progressive bonuses for London flights — each successive roundtrip of the same fare type earns more bonus miles than the last. Registration required.
|
First/Business Class |
Economy Class |
Discounted Economy Class |
|
| First Round Trip | 10,000 miles | 5,000 miles | 2,500 miles |
| Second Round Trip | 20,000 more miles | 10,000 more miles | 5,000 more miles |
| Third Round Trip | 30,000 more miles | 15,000 more miles | 7,500 more miles |
Three business class roundtrips earn 60,000 bonus miles. Three lowest coach fare roundtrips earn 7500 bonus miles. One business class roundtrip and one discount coach roundtrip earns 12,500 miles (10,000 + 2500).
Tickets must be purchased and flown between January 11, 2008, and May 15, 2008.
Delta just brought back 25,000 bonus miles for 25 partners as well as lower threshold bonuses for members who find that many partner activities a stretch. (Registration required.)
| Unique Partner Activity | Bonus Miles Awarded |
|---|---|
| 3 | 3,000 |
| 6 | 6,000 |
| 12 | 12,000 |
| 20 | 20,000 |
| 25 | 25,000 |
Partner credits need to be earned between January 15 and March 15. Only one activity per partner is allowed (and for hotels, that means one activity per chain not per individual hotel, you can’t go from Hilton to Hilton or Hilton to Doubletree to earn more than one partner), only one Buy Miles activity is allowed, only one SkyRewards partner (e.g., SkyMall, LATHER, Organic Bouquet, Vinesse, Great American Days, Samsonite and Java City) activity is allowed, and only one SkyMiles Credit Card activity is allowed.
Partner airlines don’t count as a partner. And you can’t use a stay at a hotel chain and also transfer points from the hotel program into Delta, that would still count only as a single partner. A complete list of partners is available in the promotion’s terms and conditions.
There are certainly plenty of rules with this one, but if you play by the rules the reward is 25,000 miles!
Delta is offering double miles on the transatlantic flight portion of itineraries to several cities in Europe, for travel through March 15. (Triple miles for paid business class.) Registration required.
From Atlanta (ATL), the following routes earn bonus miles:
From New York-JFK, the following routes earn bonus miles:
Just to underscore, though, flights to Delta’s New York and Atlanta gateways don’t earn the bonus, and neither do any onward flights beyond the cities mentioned above.
Still, worth mentioning nonetheless.
Via Online Travel Review, an example of how the loss of civil liberties through airport security led one writer to drink.
It was pretty good port. At least, for 11 a.m. on a Saturday in an airport baggage claim. Dark, fruity, sticky and chocolatey and thick like murky dreams. After about the fifth sip, I had the profound insight that I was sharing this surreal moment with roughly one million other travelers worldwide who had equally (or rather, likely far more) obnoxious, annoying, unusual airport security tales to tell, from the profound to the silly to the stupid.
Don’t try this yourself, kids. Because not only can’t you take that bottle of port through security, drinking it in public is also frequently illegal … a TSA Officer’s advice notwithstanding.
Here’s a very nice offer for the free Hilton American Express:
Interestingly, cardmembers who receive instant approval also get an account number right away, but until you receive the card itself the account can only be used on Hilton websites. A very strange innovation.
I’m not a huge fan of USAirways as an airline to fly. And I have my frustrations with their frequent flyer program as well. They really irked me when they changed their award chart without any notice and raised the price of my favorite award.
But they don’t seem to filter out otherwise-available award seats their partners are offering, the way that fellow Star Alliance member United does. That means that it can be easier to use USAirways miles to redeem awards on Star Alliance carriers than it is to use United miles for the same flights. (My own hunch is that USAirways is more generous here purely out of their own technological limitations, but still.)
Now USAirways has come up with something new that’s actually a real additional benefit — you can mix Star Alliance partners with non-Star partners (such as Virgin Atlantic for coach travel and Hawaiian for South Pacific and intra-Hawaii flying), on a single award ticket. That’s truly something new!
Delta recently offered both redeemable and qualifying miles for activity with Rewards Network (which I usually still insist on calling iDine).
The promo was offered towards the end of the year, the miles took awhile to post (although not more time than specified in the original offer), and it was never clear in which year the qualifying miles would be applied.
A Delta Gold Medallion member, on the cusp of making Platinum, writes:
As the year was ending I was about 2500 miles short of [Platinum Medallion] status and was thinking about doing a mileage run. The 1000 MQMs [elite qualifying miles] from the dining program would’ve made it only 1500, a pretty manageable trip at the end of the year. But as the year wound down, it didn’t look like they were going to post the dining MQMs until 2008 so I decided not to do the run. And sure enough 2008 comes along and they’re not there. So I think “ok–they’ll help me make status in 2008.” Finally they post the 1000 MQMs on 1/03/08. But get this…they’re counting toward 2007 not 2008. See beaucratic answer below. So the bottom line is I added a worthless 1000 MQMs to 2007 and could’ve used them to make PM (with the help of a mileage run) if I’d known.
Now, if it were me and I was unsure whether the miles would post, I would have made a larger mileage run. Close enough to top tier elite status that it would have been worth it for sure.
And what this reader didn’t realize is that they were even closer than they had imagined, I understand that anyone within 1000 miles of an elite level is being given the higher level this year by Delta. (Though I haven’t paied particularly close attention to this issue.)
Finally, the way these promotions usually work is that points take a defined period of time to post (one hopes!) but that they post with a date signifying when the miles were earned. So naturally the promotion ended in November, the miles posted with a November date.
Still, there was apparently a great deal of confusion on this issue, as it’s being discussed in excruciating detail over on Flyertalk. Several unhappy campers who feel completely befuddled by the promo.
Personally I would have handled things differently than this member. But they were on the cusp of achieving Delta’s next elite level – something Delta loves to see – but they didn’t because of confusion over a Delta promotion. Hoping for a consolation prize, they at least figured they’d get a small 1000 qualifying mile head start on 2008, they would apparently have been happy with that. But no dice.
So a promotion’s rules have instead soured an elite customer — the promotion was offered, the member participated, and they wind up essentially with nothing but a bad taste in their mouth.
Message to all marketing managers out there: this is the opposite of the result you’re looking for. And when such a member writes in to your customer relations department, that the message seriously. A measly 1000 qualifying miles for 2008 would probably do the trick here, instead of just explaining tha tthe member gets nothing.
United, having started the rollout of its new first and business class seats, has a long way to go before becoming a true preimum class airline.
Over the next year the ‘soft product’ will be enhanced to follow on improvements in the hard product (seat). New meals, better amenity kits, and even pajamas are supposed to come to international first class in August. Plenty will be invested, things will be better than ever, however every indication is that service will be drawn from the same pool of flight attendants, thus will remain hit or miss at best.
And like the introduction of p.s. service on the New York-JFK to Los Angeles and San Francisco routes, my guess is that after an initial boosted investment little cuts will begin to accumulate. My fundamental belief is that United will not be able to sustain a true premium product for more than a year, incremental cost savings will be too tempting and each one individually will be seen as having little effect on the customer experience (but that in total the experience will be greatly diminished).
United is retrofitting 767′s first, 747s are to be completed next, and completion of the 777 fleet is scheduled last. Planned completion is end of 2009, and there will remain a short honeymoon period where United’s international business and first class product will be truly premium at least in comparison to U.S. airlines (perhaps equivelant though not superior to business class on Air Canada, Virgin, and Air New Zealand, and still legions below the business and first class offerings of Singapore, Cathay Pacific, and ANA).
But none of this is new thinking.
What’s noteworthy is that this week United took one small baby step in the direction of improving its first class soft product. Since Monday United’s policy is that international first class passengers may dine when they wish, rather than requiring those passengers to eat at the convenience of flight attendants.
This is an obvious improvement, as it is of course the international standard. On many carriers you not only may have what you wish, but you may mix and match items throughout the flight in your own chosen quantities. United will still only board food such that first class passengers can have a single appetizer and entree.
Still, it represents a culture shift – the idea that service in first class is for the convenience of the customer — that should test the flight attendant waters in advance of hoped-for larger changes to come.
