Tuesday, March 18, 2008Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch Frankfurt

Lufthansa First Class passengers are entitled to a complimentary day room at the Kempinski hotel. I found the details on the Lufthansa website. I emailed the hotel when making arrangements for the trip, mentioned I was a Lufthansa first class passenger (but didn’t mention the free room benefit) and they replied with a discount rate of 79 euros. Well, if I was going to pay for the room I’d just book the airport Sheraton! A quick email back with a link to the LH website, and they replied with apologies –

Nice, a free dayroom with complimentary airport pickup and dropoff.

They pick up from Terminal 1 Exit A1 and C8 and Terminal 2, between Exit D and E. You have to ring them, though, using the hotel call stand, and they dispatch someone to the airport. Traffic was especially bad and it took a full 40 minutes for them to arrive; not especially enjoyable in the early morning cold with just a sport jacket.

Check-in was a breeze, they didn’t even ask for a credit card against room charges. They gave us our key, and it was off to bed immediately. Having both worked a full day before (and several really crazy weeks) we were too tired to do anything but crash. We both slept a solid 5 hours, got up and freshened up, and let the hotel know we’d be returning to the airport at 4pm.

They had the hotel van ready to take us, asked us which terminal we’d be going to, and when I told them “First Class Terminal” they changed their mind and put us into a waiting BMW instead.

This is the second post of my trip report, since the posts start from the beginning of the trip you’ll need to scroll down and read posts in reverse order.  Or just take the post-modern approach and just dive into the middle!

At check-in we had been given an invitation to the Virgin Clubhouse across from gate B-32. We were welcomed right in and I immediately decided that this small lounge (so small that the attendants really try to persuade you to leave your carryones in the closet area so as not to crowd the seating space) was the very best at Dulles. I chided myself for not finding an excuse to have visited it in the past. It’s not opulent, really. There’s a shower but not a fancy one, and there are admonitions about low water pressure for the toilets. Still, there’s a proper menu to order off of and the staff bring you your drinks, your food, and are genuinely pleasant as they assist you. What a world away from my usual UA Red Carpet Club experiences here!

It’s a very stylish lounge, at least for DC. It lacks the architectural grandeur of the London-Heathrow Clubhouse, but then DC has at times been known as “Hollywood for Ugly People.”

Internet is available, they’ll hand you an instruction sheet which includes the password.

Virgin Clubhouse Menu: Dinner

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While they said they’d announce boarding for our flight, after some quick snacks we really did feel like walking around so we left the lounge early and walked over to the gate.

We found only one other couple in F, and they hadn’t been in the lounge with us. The flight had only 4 of 16 seats filled. A nice sign indeed

Now, it must be said that the Lufthansa First Class product is outdated, especially on the 747s with 2×2 seating. No suites, just old style lay flat seats. But traveling with my wife I really don’t mind it at all, in fact we both rather prefer it. We’ve only been married for nearly 3 years, after all!

We settled into seats 81A and 81C. I know this isn’t a popular viewpoint. Row 83 is the most spacious, but you’ve got the carts in front of you. And for me, I prefer not having a view of the entire cabin. Row 81 just feels a bit more private when you don’t see the other passengers, or the FAs serving everyone else. As far as you can tell for the flight, they’re there serving only you. So my little controversial stance to be sure, but I’m sticking by it.

The seats themselves are comfortable enough for daytime, perhaps not quite enough padding on the back or else they’re a bit worn (though they look fresh). And I will always enjoy the climb up the staircase of a 747, something I really haven’t done in quite awhile since there’s no longer a UA 747 running DC-Los Angeles or DC-San Francisco, and my international flights recently have been on 777s.

There are some things Lufthansa does nicely on board, and some things really missing. The dinner rose, left in a special holder in the seat throughout the flight, is a nice touch. They give you a blanket but don’t make your bed. The pillows aren’t that thick, but with a light load there were plenty of extra pillows on other seats. The amenity kits are nice enough (and the ladies kit is a small handbag!) but don’t contain what for me is a must: a proper roll-on chapstick.

And, of course, there isn’t enough storage space! The overhead bins are tiny, they won’t fit a standard roll-aboard. You can leave them at your feet, at least the FAs were comfortable with this, but that would detract from unobstructed foot space. You could put them behind your seat, but then your seat won’t fully recline. So that leaves either (1) the closet, leaving them a bit harder to get to during flight or (2) in the case of a flight with a pretty empty cabin, beside an empty seat (or row).

Dinner service was nice but the first notable piece missing – caviar but no caviar spoons! Am I expected to spread caviar with a metal knife? What am I, one of GEICO’s cavemen?

Sean Hardy of Belvedere at the Peninsula Beverly Hills was the featured chef.

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The “dreamer’s delight” menu featured seared guinea hen and New Mexico Chili. I won’t reproduce the wine lists here, unless anyone requests to know…

I enjoyed dinner and went to sleep for about 4 hours and woke just in time for breakfast.

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Landing was on time, and we had a gate, no apron arrival which was nice. Thought about stopping by a First Class Lounge on arrival, but decided against it – maybe on the return – we had booked a day room given the extremely long layover.

This post contains a bit of background to the trip report that I’m working on, sitting here in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal in Frankfurt.

It contains 4 long-haul Lufthansa First Class segments, a Singapore business class short-haul segment, Thai Airways in business and First Class, a lovely suite at the Intercontinental Bali Resort, the Westin Beijing, and much, much more.. plus lots of photos of lounges, food, and activities along the way and a bit about award booking techniques.

When thinking about whether this was worth a trip report, it first struck me “I’m not flying Singapore Airlines first class, there’s no Airbus A380 involved, what could be more pedestrian than what I’m about to write up?”

But I also thought, perhaps I can offer some specific suggestions of the hows and whys I chose to do certain things… so that others could either benefit from the experience or know what not to do to make their own trips better.

So here I go, it’s a long one but mostly because I’ve tried to impart enough detail that folks coming across this report might be able to find it useful, or to spark specific questions that I might be able to answer. Drop a reply here and I’ll see what I can do.

Prologue: Booking the Award Tickets

My wife had been telling me for some time that she wouldn’t take more than a long weekend away from home until she finished writing her book. We hadn’t been to Asia since July, and in December the end of the book was close enough in sight that she could commit to a couple of weeks’ vacation by March.

Each year when we vacation in Asia or the South Pacific we book time at a nice South Asian resort, and pair it with a brief stay in another city.

• In 2005 we went to French Polynesia and to Sydney and Melbourne (Air Tahiti Nui First Class, Qantas First Class, Bora Bora Nui Resort).
• In 2006 it was Tokyo, Bangkok, and Pattaya (ANA First Class, Thai First Class, Hilton Tokyo @ $3/night, Iintercontinental Bangkok Diplomatic Suite, and a lovely Deluxe Pavillion room at the Sheraton Pattaya)
• In 2007, Khao Lak and Hong Kong (United “ps” First Class, United International First Class, Asiana First Class, the Ugandan Schillings mistake rate for the 2-bedroom Presidential Oceanfront villa at the Meridien Khao Lak and a lovely stay in the Towers section at the Sheraton Hong Kong)..

This time we agreed on Bali, but where else? I decided to start checking award availability, with a bit of an open mind on where else we’d go. The goal: two first class awards, preferably using United miles (as I didn’t expect my American miles to yield 2 Cathay Pacific First Class award seats easily).

Crossing the pacific in First Class has become a good bit harder using United miles recently, however.

ANA used to be easy with the Super Style first product, but the New Style has fewer seats and awards are very hard to come by outside of waitlisting using Diamond Club miles. I do see first class award seats open up occasionally days before departure, but otherwise have checked across an entire year from each US gateway and come away without spotting a single F award seat.

Singapore is actually not that tough a first class award to find, sticking especially to the old seats in the 747. But Singapore is notorious for almost (?) never opening up more than one award F seat at the time. Sometimes you can book a first class award and a business award on the same flight, and keep checking in hopes that an additional first seat will open up. My own preferred strategy would be try for two different flights (eg different North American gateways) and waiting for a second F seat to open up on either way – this way you’d double your chances. Sometimes, though, you just want to come up with a plan and stick with it, rather than playing a waiting game.

Meanwhile, Asiana seems to be blocked at times on StarNet. Those unfamiliar with Starnet blocking can search the term in the United Mileage Plus forum, but suffice to say that United will tell you that award seats being offered by one of their partners aren’t in fact available (and the unknowing agent will usually blame that partner airline, rather than realizing it’s United while won’t give you the seat). I’ve especially seen JFK-Seoul blocked, which is a shame because award availability isn’t otherwise bad for the route and it already has the new first class most of the time.

(And the thought of Thai’s two-cabin product across the Pacific doesn’t really appeal to me, if I can do better.)

Of course there are some United flights where First can be had quite easily. San Francisco-Osaka isn’t all that hard to get, and San Francisco-Nagoya will most days have several seats a day. That has to be the easiest United transpacific award to come by, actually. But I didn’t want to fly United, at least not without their new seat product (and once the new product is phased in, with fewer seats in the cabin, even it will be harder to get) let alone their improved soft product (whatever that may wind up ultimately being in practice).

But then I had a thought. Since we’re going all the way to Bali, and we’re based in DC, why not cross the Atlantic instead? DC-Frankfurt-Singapore-Bali is actually less than 50 miles longer than DC-Tokyo-Bangkok-Bali.

Off to check availability. The transatlantic flights would be easy, with first class usually easier to find than business and Lufthansa being rather generous at least from their US East Coast gateways. I knew the difficulty would be Europe – Asia, so that’s where I started. Checking out Heathrow-Bangkok and Frankfurt-Bangkok on Thai, I went a little bit crazy and found better than 50 flights with 2 “O” (first class award) seats available over about a month and a half. But I also knew that Thai long-haul premium class seats were perhaps the single most frequently blocked award through Starnet. For some reason, United just doesn’t want to pay Thai for these seats. A call to United found that of the 50+ flights I found availability on through the ANA website, a whopping zero were bookable by United!

Time to try a different tack. New phone call. “Please find me two first class awards between London, Frankfurt, Munich, or Zurich and Singapore or Bangkok. Start with the 15th of March, let’s check each day, and then stop when we find something.”

“On March 18th I have 2 first class seats from Frankfurt to Singapore on Lufthansa.”

“Great, thank you.” I’m sorta wishing they were 2 SQ seats, but at least this will bring us through the First Class Terminal.

“When would you like to return?”

“Let’s find something back from anywhere in Asia, starting 10 days later.”

I wait as this patient fellow keeps checking… and checking… and checking… I’m on the line for half an hour.

“I finally found something, Hong Kong to Frankfurt on April 9th.”

April 9th? There’s no way I can take three weeks away. Ok, I have an outbound that I like. I’ll hold the award and come back to the drawing board later.

“Would you like me to book it for you?”

“Well, I’m going to ask you to hold it. But I’d actually like my departure city to be Washington-Dulles. Can we find a flight from IAD that will connect to the FRA-SIN flight we’ve already found?”

“Ok let me check. We can do Dulles-Heathrow on United, and then Heathrow-Frankfurt on Lufthansa.”

“Nothing non-stop?”

“I’m sorry, nothing is available.”

“Ok, I’ll take the connection you suggest. Let’s find a connection for the return flight also (and I didn’t really care what it was, I just needed to be able to hold the award).”

He holds it at 120,000 miles, the price of North America to South Asia… via the Pacific. The correct price would be 140,000 miles but I won’t complain!

Hang up. A few minutes at the computer and I saw plenty of availability Dulles-Frankfurt non-stop, it just wasn’t being offered by the United rep.

And I found a bunch of flights back from Asia, all sorts of places we could return from (Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore). It was a bit out of the way, but mrs. gleff and I haven’t spent any time in Beijing.

I called back. “I have an award on hold and I’d like to make some changes. My record locator is….”

I asked about flying non-stop, Dulles-Frankfurt.

“I’m sorry, those flights aren’t available.”

“Even LH 419?”

“I don’t see that flight on my screen. I can check it, though. Oh, well, it looks like that’s available.”

Score. An agent willing to manual sell some segments. I’ve hit the jackpot.

“Can we add a flight to the end of my outbound, perhaps Singapore-Bali?”

“That’s available on Singapore, but it’s business class.” (Fine, I know there’s no 3-class offered on this shorthaul route.)

“Great. Let’s look at the return. Can we find anything back from Asia a bit earlier? Let’s have a look at Lufthansa back from Beijing to Frankfurt on March 27.”

“Sir, Lufthansa does not appear to fly that route on March 27.”

“Really? Are you sure LH 721 isn’t operating?”

“I don’t see that flight. Let me request it. Yes, yes, that’s available for two passengers in first class.”

“Great, how about Frankfurt-Dulles?”

“You’ll have to overnight in Frankfurt, but Lufthansa has a flight in first class the next day with availability.”

Ok, back to DC the long way, but to do otherwise would mean crossing two oceans and kick us into RTW award territory. Plus the Beijing-Dulles non-stop on UA wasn’t available anyway, and neither was Tokyo-Dulles. I’d have to double-connect at least if I were returning via the Pacific.

“Great. I see we now have an award with an open jaw, flying from Washington DC to Denpasar, and then flying from Beijing to Washington, DC. Can we see if it’s possible to get from Denpasar to Beijing on March 25?”

She explains that Thai Airways has a flight in Business Class to Bangkok, and connects to a two-cabin overnight flight to Beijing. Well, I like the once-daily Bangkok flight just fine. It leaves after 5pm, giving us a full extra day in Bali. But I don’t really feel like waiting 4+ hours for an uncomfortable Thai business class redeye that’s too short to sleep, and arriving in all likelihood too early to check-in to a hotel. So instead we decide to overnight in Bangkok and take the 11am to Beijing. And that Thai flight is 3-cabin, and first is available.

I put the flights on hold. They re-price it to 135,000 miles, which is curious as it’s still the wrong amount. But they found me flights I liked, and it was fewer miles than it was supposed to be. So who am I to complain?

When I finally called back to ticket, it was re-priced correctly at 140,000. Oh well, you win some, you win some.

Lessons:

• Know the flights you want / that are available by checking the ANA frequent flyer website.
• Successful awards may take more than one call. If you find flights you want, hold them (and be thankful you aren’t trying to use Delta Skymiles which no longer allows holds for awards booked by phone ). Then call back.
• When a flight doesn’t show up as existing on the CSR’s screen, that’s a good hint that availability is being filtered by Starnet. It may take many, many calls to find an agent willing to do a manual sell, but that’s how you get the award to come back confirmed.

Priority Club added a feature to their website (you’ll have to log into your account) that lets you see what promotions you are signed up for and track your progress towards earning the relevant bonuses.

In a shameless search for links from other blogs , Upgrade: Travel Better is again running a contest for best travel blogs in a variety of categories.

So here is my blog obligatory link…

Go nominate your favorite travel blogs!

Continental and Chase are offering 20,000 miles with first purchase and an additional 10,000 miles after $10,000 in spending on the card. It comes with an $85 annual fee.

The following United Visa offer was just shared with me.  The $60 annual fee isn’t waived, it’s 21,000 bonus miles instead of 25,000, but the Morton’s Steak House $200 Gift Card is new. 

On net, then, 4k United miles and $60 buys $200 to be used at Morton’s.

A Morton’s gift certificate with a side order of 21,000 miles   As a valued Mileage Plus® member, you are invited to apply for a Mileage Plus Visa ®1 and soon see your mileage balance grow.As a new cardmember, after you spend $250, you’ll earn 21,000 bonus miles2 and a $200 gift card to use at any of the 78 worldwide locations of Morton’s The Steakhouse3. Enjoy a spectacular dining experience with exceptional hospitality and service.You will also enjoy these Mileage Plus Visa benefits: Earn one mile for every eligible $1 in purchases4 Exclusive cardmember redemption opportunities 5 Earn travel certificates after first purchase 6 No pre-set spending limit 7 Apply by April 30, 2008!

A deal I’ve posted about several times in the past is back — 40% off beds and bedding at the W Hotel Store using discount code 39Y9G.

Thanks to Craig for the heads up.

Update: I believe this code is valid through April 30.

I hope to have a pretty nice and useful trip report coming, with insights into award redemption strategies to boot.

But before I get there, though, I’m enjoying my trip.  Some folks will have a pretty good idea where I’ve been so far.

According to this Flyertalk thread, Expedia coupon code ELITEPLUS50 takes $50 off of Expedia Special Rate hotel stays per night.

Book by March 31 for travel through April 30. The coupon is for “Expedia.com Elite Plus members only” but appears to be working for anyone.

Coupon terms and conditions are here.

Delta will no longer allow Skymiles members (at least those members in the U.S.) to hold awards over the phone. If you book by phone, you have to ticket immediately. And booking over the phone just became more limited, as non-elites can only make telephone award reservations between 8am and 10pm Eastern.

Holding awards for 48 hours is still possible online. Awards on Delta as well as parter airlines Hawaiian, Alaska, Continental, and Northwest are bookable online.. sort of, sometimes, when the website works and prices out awards correctly.

Of course, that means that awards on other partners like Air France, Aeroflot, and Korean cannot be held at all.

This is a really annoying change. Finding awards can be challenging at times. Sometimes it takes humans because the online technology is lacking. You find flights that may work after a long time on the phone. You’ve annoyed the agent, making them do so much digging for you. And you just can’t push them any farther. So you put the award on hold, and then try to improve what you’ve held. No longer possible with Delta.

Several carriers have shortened their hold times in recent years. I remember when United offered 30-day holds on awards, and it was pretty easy to get an agent to extend the hold after that. Then they went to 14-day holds. Then 3-day holds. And then any United award itinerary with a Singapore Airlines segment in it could only be held 24 hours. And then the list was expanded to include Asiana, or so I was told on a reservation this month.

But holds are important, as you coordinate flights with award hotels. Or in my case as I find an acceptable itinerary and try to turn it into a desireable one. I’m currently on a wonderful trip that would never have been possible without several phone agents and award holds.

I mean, come on, bring back the 48 hour hold. This is just punitive, Delta!

Air Astana, the Kazakhstan airline, has published an offer to match existing British Midland Diamond Club status with elite status in their Nomad Club program.

A large number of airlines offer status match programs, but they rarely publish them. They exist as unpublished procedures for how to respond when an elite (and presumably lucrative) customer of another airline offers to switch to a new carrier… but doesn’t want to lose their perks as a result of the switch.

Status matches are very rare outside of the United States. The only program that’s part of a major alliance with a regular match program that I can think of is British Midland (and it’s a great little program, especially for premium class customers who earn boatloads of miles and then can redeem them with a generous cash and points award chart for Star Alliance flights). Mexicana also has (or at least used to have, I haven’t verified this recently) a match program. Other international airlines offer matches on occasion, such as the famous KLM offer to match not just status but miles in a competitor account. But that was a one-off about 5 years ago.

Beyond that very few international programs offer status matches, and ever fewer publish them. So here’s scrappy Air Astana making a play for British Midland elites. This won’t do much for you if you don’t fly Air Astana. But I’m tempted to ask for the status match just for the personalised luggage tags.

What’s more, an Air Astana status match now will last through February 2010.

Tyler Cowen’s advice for dealing with LaGuardia

If you ever fly in or out of LaGuardia, you’ve probably grown to dread the experience; a delay of “only” 60-90 minutes is better than average. But I’ve discovered a new method for enjoying a LaGuardia visit. It’s simple: I leave Manhattan 90 minutes early and I stop in Flushing for a Chinese meal. Flushing has most of the best Chinese food in the city, especially adjusting for price. The trouble has always been getting there and back — but the simple solution is to fly more often. For great Chinese food, no price is too high and otherwise you’re simply not going to go.

United is running a targeted promotion. Some folks have to fly 3 roundtrips to get 15,000 miles. Some have to fly 4 for 20,000 miles. Others have a chance at 25,000 miles.

Here’s the one that I received.

Book and complete your qualifying travel by June 30, 2008
Enjoy earning more bonus miles the more you fly:

• 5,000 bonus miles if you fly 2 qualifying roundtrips

• 10,000 bonus miles if you fly 3 qualifying roundtrips

• 20,000 bonus miles if you fly 4 qualifying roundtrips

Note that registration is required. All the offers, regardless of which one you’re eligible for, seem to have the promo code MPD048 so the same registration link should work for you regardless.  (If you receive an offer with a different promotion code, please so note in the comments.)

Worth checking your email to see what offer you’re getting, and registering in case you’re eligible for something.

Ok, their tech staff won’t exactly be taking the week off. No doubt they’ll be working some overtime, overhauling the back end of their systems. But the upshot is that effective April 14, 2008 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan will be completely unavailable and will come back online no later than April 22, 2008.

During the outage it will not be possible to book or change award tickets, request a mileage upgrade, or any number of other things (fully detailed on this page).

This won’t affect the ability to earn miles, they just won’t appear in your account until the system is back online.

Here’s hoping it goes smoothly! And if you need to request upgrades or book an award ticket, better do it prior to April 14.

A Flyertalker visits the United Red Carpet Club in Los Angeles and finds these as snacks:

Well, at least there were snacks. Last time I went through there neither self-service coffee machine worked.

Aeroflot is pricing out at US$1045 for business class from Dubai to Toronto, with a connection in Moscow in each direction. Stopovers are permitted.

Alas, it doesn’t worth the other way around. Not possible to book this from Toronto or I’d be all over it, even if it means I’d have to endure Aeroflot’s business class product.

Flyertalk discussion is here.

Martin Feldstein says we’re in a recession and it could be very, very bad – perhaps the worst since World War II.

We have a liquidity crisis. No trading even in auction market preferred securities, which were previously thought to be as safe as cash (you get a slightly higher rate than a money market in exchange for tying up your cash for say a week). The securities are still asset-backed and AAA-rated, paying interest, but you can’t redeem them because no one is bidding at auction.  This hasn’t ever happened before, and the securities have been around over twenty years.

The Fed can’t do anything about it with monetary policy. The Fed lowers rates, they’re pumping money into banks but banks won’t lend. The spread between the cost of funds to the US government and the rate at which banks lend to each other is widening.

It looks like a liquidity trap, the classic idea of the Fed pushing a string. The Fed lowers rates but banks don’t, they’re afraid to lend and costs stay high. The flip side of the same coin is tha expected value of investing those funds is low. Traditional monetary policy can’t do anything about it.

And fiscal policy is inept for two reasons, first ‘priming the pump’ is generally seen as temporary, as soon as the crisis would pass it would revert to normal. So expectations adjust. Meanwhile, even tax cutting won’t help for the same reason lowering rates doesn’t help — if the expected rate of return on investments is close to zero, the rate of tax doesn’t affect the investment decision.

So what’s a federal reserve to do? Exactly what the Fed did in extending credit to Bear Stearns.

At first I thought it was crazy, desperation, the world coming to an end. Then I realized it was the classic Milton Friedman prescription, dumping money from a helicopter. When the banks won’t lend you have to go around the banks. The normal barrier to this is that it’s politically difficult, you get opposition from the groups that don’t get the money drop. So instead you need specific situations for intervention, a la the Fed bailing out Bear Stearns, to inject direct liquidity into the markets.

Will this help? This one instance isn’t enough to make a difference in the economy, but the Fed probably does have the theory right at least.

A bit of ironic speculation, though. Since we’re headed into a recession, while a Democrat will be elected President we won’t see higher taxes (and here I’m betting against the prediction markets which are forecasting a tax increase). Democrat believers in countercyclical fiscal policy (a la Keynes) won’t raise taxes during recession. And for all their criticisms of the Bush budget deficits (criticisms which are both fair and on point!) they will themselves run substantial deficits. Why? Because I ascribe enough rationality for them to do so… They won’r raise taxes and rein in deficits while the economy is contracting.

Anyway, that’s my take on the current economy and what it means going forward for policy.

But make no mistake, we are in recession and it could be a bad one.

(Some links above via Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen.)

Via NotiFlyer, and subsequent to my post on taking $50 off a $250 Southwest ticket using Paypal, it seems that Northwest is making a very similar offer.

$50 off $250 with Northwest when you pay with paypal, like the Southwest offer tickets must be purchased by March 27, 2008. This offer limits you to travel between April 1 and June 14, 2008, and Northwest’s change policies include fees so you can’t circumvent the travel period in a worthwhile way.

This one is more flexible with Southwest as I previously noted, but if you’re buying Northwest tickets anyway (and I wish I held had off on some myself, d’oh!) this is useful.

One Mile at a Time points to a Wall Street Journal piece on the coming three-tiered structure of the Delta Skymiles redemption program.

Earlier in the month I wrote that the coming three-tiered structure would be bringing back ‘last seat availability’ to the Skymiles program; that the highest third tier would mean more miles but at least true redemption for any seat, as offered by most other frequent flyer programs. Delta’s earlier removal of this option was a real affront, but the hope was that this was temporary.

The Wall Street Journal piece, though, either misrepresents the coming change or suggests that Delta won’t be bringing back last seat availability.

Delta also plans to increase the number of “tiers” in its SkyMiles plan this spring. Instead of offering domestic tickets for either 25,000 or 50,000 miles — with many more tickets available for 50,000 miles — the airline will offer 50% of its total seat inventory for 40,000 miles, while maintaining the same amount of seats in the 25,000-mile tier. Most remaining seats will fall into the 60,000-mile tier.

Most remaining seats? At 60,000 miles?

American offers true last seat availability for 50,000 miles domestically in coach.

United offers true last seat availability for 45,000 miles domestically in coach.

If (and this remains to be seen) the Delta program’s introduction of a third tier does not include true last seat availability, Jeff Robertson will be frequent flyer program public enemy number one.