View from the Wing

Via Benet Wilson, Snoop Dogg will again be permitted into Britain. Wikipedia explains the history

On April 26, 2006, Snoop Dogg and members of his entourage were arrested being turned away from British Airways’ first class lounge. Snoop and his party were not allowed to enter the lounge because some of the entourage were flying first class, other members of the party were flying economy class. After the group was escorted outside, they vandalized a duty-free shop by throwing whiskey bottles. Seven police officers were injured in the fracas. After a night in prison, Snoop Dogg and the other men were released on bail ..On May 15, the Home Office decided that Snoop Dogg should be denied entry to the UK for the foreseeable future due to the fracas at Heathrow as well as his previous convictions in the United States for drugs and firearms offenses.

Lesson: the lounge dragons can deny you access to their facilities and the country. Or… know your lounge access rights, bring a printout if necessary, but don’t attack the police just because you aren’t entitled to lounge access.

I received a marketing email this morning for the Starwood Preferred Guest small business American Express card. I’ve written about offers for it in the past, 10,000 points with first purchase and another 15,000 points for spending $15,000 on the card during the first six months (plus fee waived the first year).

This morning’s email offered the usual 10,000 points with first purchase and 1,000 points for each additional card ordered for the account up to 5,000 points. So fewer total points, but no spending requirement for the extra bonus points. Planned on blogging it, as low spend readers might easily benefit.

The link in the offer, though, didn’t mention the 5,000 points for additional cardholders — the link offered instead the usual offer of 10,000 points + 15,000 more based on spending in the first six months.

Now, it might be that using the link will give you both the points based on spending and the points for additional cardholders. Or it might not. Or you might have to fight for one of the other. But someone who is in the mood might try and then push to receive both bonuses — by printing a copy of the website offer and getting a forwarded copy of the email offer that contained the link (just shoot me an email asking for it, but be sure to follow up with me to let me know how it turned out for you).

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, the new Delta iDine (Rewards Network/Dining for Miles) bonus is a pretty good one, registration required:

Earn 1,000 bonus miles when you spend $50, plus 1,000 more miles for every additional $100 you spend cumulatively (including tax and tip) at participating restaurants between 4/28/08 and 6/30/08 - up to 5,000 bonus miles.

That’ll make me switch my dines from the credit cards I have registered with United and American over to the one I have registered with the Delta program until I’ve spent $450 at participating restaurants.

The Phoenician is a lovely property, and in short worth of both its Starwood “Luxury Collection” branding and its recent fifth diamond. The facilities are beautiful and well-maintained. The service is prompt and courteous. And, for a property of this caliber, I didn’t even find the food offerings to be especially overpriced. Not cheap, mind you, but not really more expensive than better Westin properties.

If there was a short-coming, it was in this property’s understanding and recognition of Starwood Preferred Guest program benefits.

My status didn’t appear to be properly reflected in my reservation, and I asked the hotel to correct that which they told me they did.

In advance of my arrival, I received a concierge email that contained someone else’s reservation — but that showed my Starwood Preferred Guest number with the incorrect status. (I then received a copy of my own reservation, again with the wrong status showing.) I replied to the email asking that the reservation be updated with my correct status, but didn’t get a reply.

When I checked into the hotel, I appeared to them as a Gold. I handed them my Platinum card. Since I was pre-blocked into a room based on how they perceived my status, I asked whether a further room upgrade might be available as a Platinum.

The check-in agent told me that “Gold and Platinum benefits are the same here at the Phoenician” so he didn’t look for other room options. Whether or not better rooms would have been available, he didn’t decline a Platinum upgrade as a result of lack of availability — but rather because a Platinum wasn’t entitled to a better upgrade than a Gold.

I asked him whether the same benefits for Golds and Platinums applied to the program’s welcome amenity as well, and he said that it did — Platinums did not receive a separate amenity, and there was already something in my room that the hotel provides to all guests (4 pieces of fruit).

I asked if there were any differences between Platinums and Golds, and he said that “As a Platinum you earn more points than Golds for your spending here at the hotel.” That is, of course, incorrect (both Platinums and Golds earn a 50% bonus on in-hotel spend).

Now, this is an absolutely lovely hotel. We had a nice, spacious room overlooking the pool and the city with a large blacony. The grounds are beautiful, the staff is friendly, and the bath amenities are top-notch. Both a shower and a tub, with a separate toilet cabin, dual sinks, and full-sized spa-style bath amenities made me a happy guest.

Room service was prompt and of consistently high quality. I ordered coffee in the morning, and for a small additional cost there’s an option for a french press. The coffee was just outstanding. I ordered a cheeseburger, and they let me know I could have almost any cheese I could think of. I picked provolone. And they always managed to be clear about how long it would take them to deliver, and they managed to bring my order within the promised time, Sure, it wasn’t inexpensive. A cheeseburger with fries was $15 plus service, tax and delivery charge. If you’re looking to scrimp on room service costs, try the children’s cheese pizza for $9++ — it’s the size of a large personal pizza.

The lobby, the lobby terrace, the pool, and the 5th floor terrace restaurant are all beautiful spaces. The only thing that struck me about the pool is that it seemed small for a resort of this size. But the limited number of pool chairs weren’t fully occupied whenever I looked off my balcony. Others who have stayed in the past will be able to report whether this is a problem at other times. (One of my pet peeves is hotels where guests get up at 6 or 8am to reserve chairs.)

Despite the lack of clarity on Platinum benefits, I’ve decided that I prefer this property overwhelmingly compared to the Westin Kierland where I stayed in November — even though the Kierland provided me with a Casita Suite and has a lounge which Platinums can access for breakfast and other snacks.

Undoubtedly I will return to the Phoenician as my preferred property in Phoenix. But on a weekend where the top executives of Starwood Preferred Guest were actually all staying at the hotel, I would have expected the staff to be more familiar with the SPG program! Naturally, I’ve sent a note to Starwood to let them know about the training opportunities that exist here.

Eos files for bankruptcy and ceases operations.

Eos Airlines, an all-business-class carrier that flies between Kennedy International Airport and London, said that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and would cease operations by Monday.

The airline, which was founded in 2005, is planning to operate its final flights between London’s Stansted airport and Kennedy on Sunday.

Silverjet has been promoting their in-flight wine expertise as part of projecting an overall luxurious inflight experience.  The PR folks are sharing the following thoughts on wine. 

First, that the taste of wine onboard is influenced by

the atmospheric pressure, low humidity and vibration of the cabin, all affecting how efficiently our taste buds work.

This concluded that while

[t]here has been very little scientific research into this area… we have found is that wines tend to ‘thin out’ in the air, with both tannins and acidity being accentuated. As a result, tart, angular wines make a bad choice, whereas ripe, fruit-driven wines tend to show much better.

In practice this means that

Passengers often demand quite classic wine styles on the ground, such as white Burgundies; red Bordeaux; lean, mineral Chablis; and structured Clarets. They ere received favorably during this tasting as well. However, in the air, the wine tyles showed very badly: the minerality in the Chablis being replaced by a much thinner, more acidic perception; the tannins in the Bordeaux completely dominated the fruit in the air, making it far too angular a wine to enjoy without food. Conversely the star wine of the tasting in the air was a ripe, tropical cented Sauvignon Blanc, which on the ground had almost been discounted due to an almost unlikable strong perception of sweetness.

The fruit-driven requirement means that New World wines are generally better suited to in-flight drinking.

I’ve given some thought to what wines work best in the air. Certainly some of the better bottles don’t perform so well in the air, and at the same time the answer can’t be to simply serve swill. Still, I haven’t developed an overall theory of what wines work.

I’m interested in hearing feedback here from folks about what bottles have tasted especially well, which airlines offer good wines turned bad at 35,000 feet, and whether there’s a good approach to picking a wine that will stand up to the stresses of air travel.

Just a few brief thoughts on last night’s Freddie Awards.

Marriott did exceptionally well this year.  I’m not sure why.  There haven’t been any real improvements to their program that I can point to.  I can only figure that it’s their get out the vote efforts (of which they did quite a lot) rather than a reflection of substantive improvements.

Starwood did well in Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East, Africa. But they really didn’t excel in the Americas. I’m not really sure why the split. Starwood didn’t even win for best award redemption in the Americas, which is just bizarre since they really do structurally offer the best award redemption. Hilton has introduced a system to match Starwood, but presumably too late to influence this year’s Freddie Awards. If the voting public is paying attention then Hilton should do well next year. 

With Starwood no longer the only one offering real redemption without blackouts or capacity controls, they’re going to have to innovate over the next year or fall behind.  I’m hopeful they still have it in them to offer a unique value proposition to members.

Sometimes the results in a given category just make no sense.  The best hotel elite level in the America’s was awarded to Priority Club.  And while their sub-program elite level, Intercontinental Royal Ambassador, is quite possibly the best elite level (if only there were more Intercontinental hotel properties), Priority Club’s elite levels offer almost no real benefits besides bonus points.  (And along the lines of what world do some of the voters live in, Starwood won a website award as well…

The U.S. legacy carriers didn’t win many Freddies, but they showed up much more frequently in the top 5 than they have in any of the last 5 years that I can recall.  I’m not sure what that says about their value proposition, or about the value offered by their competitors.  Is it possible that they’re getting better, or just getting better at pushing their members to vote?

The Middle Eastern and Indian airlines are cleaning up.  Qatar, Etihad, Jet Airways, I really need to give these programs a closer look.  Asian competitors like Singapore, ANA, Asiana, and Thai are almost nowhere to be found.

Two moments that struck me funny — when Southwest won best bonus for an award which included Hawaii travel, and Randy Petersen asked them how they were fulfilling their offer post-ATA’s bankruptcy (choke, chortle) and when the Virgin Atlantic representative was asked to collect the Freddie Awards for Australia’s Virgin Blue, which wasn’t in attendance… and she came up and explained that she really couldn’t, her boss wouldn’t let her, for legal reasons they couldn’t allow themselves to be perceived as the same company, and couldn’t the award just be shipped to her friends Down Under?

North Korea Economy Watch has a photo of the new Air Koryo Tupolov parking in Pyongyang. It apparently goes into scheduled service May 1.

Elsewhere, the blog points out that Air Koryo acquired the plane in order to continue being permitted to fly to Beijing — China is playing safety regulator, taking on the role of ensuring that planes landing at its airports are airworthy (contra this recent this recent AP piece which suggests that Air Koryo’s acquisition of a new plane points to its success as an airline).

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Juniper Bank’s co-branded USAirways credit card options now include a business card offering 20,000 bonus miles with first purchase along with a $79 annual fee. The card comes with a free day pass to the USAirways club and the ability to earn elite qualifying miles based on spending.

Small business cards are generally open to pretty much anyone (”Your Name & Associates” - everyone has a business).

Economic growth in general and deregulation in particular have brought about lower real airline ticket prices and substantial increases in passenger traffic. Infrastructure hasn’t kept pace and air traffic control hasn’t kept pace. And so we face congested airports and airspace. This frustrates travelers, who live in a world of tradeoffs but take what they have as given and long for what they’ve given up. Richard Posner is one such business traveler.

And the usually sober, sometimes brilliant, and certainly prolific judge and scholar offers up an unusually misguided rant on why he believes “airline service is so bad” over at the Becker-Posner Blog, Becker rebuts.

Posner lays out a myriad of unsupported gripes and mixes in blatantly incorrect facts, leading him to circle around some rather silly notions about re-regulating the aviation industry. Becker does a nice job offering an alternative theory of the world. I bring you the alternate set of facts. Hopefully together we can reconstruct a bit of sense about what’s wrong with the industry and how to correct it.

Here are Posner’s grips:

Airline delay has increased in the last five years, and the statistics understate the amount of delay because airlines have increased scheduled flight times–the flight from Chicago to Washington used to be scheduled for an hour and a half; now it is scheduled for two hours. Flights are horribly crowded, food and beverage service has deteriorated in first class and virtually disappeared in coach, and the incidence of mislaid baggage has increased.

Now, I’m not unsympathetic to rants about air travel. I write this as I sit waiting for a delayed flight to Phoenix. And I’m flying USAirways so I certainly empathize with complaints about degraded service levels. But my woes this evening don’t substitute for a more robust understanding of aviation when setting policy.

Delays are a real problem, if they can be alleviated at an acceptable cost there’s presumably real economic productivity to be captured here at least if you attribute airport wait times as dead times. Although with wireless internet, handheld devices, and a bit of strategy I find that airport transit times can be among my most productive. Still, I wouldn’t choose a delay unless I’m flying first class on Thai Airways out of Bangkok and can enjoy my delay in the spa. Delays are the problem worth focusing on.

Posner’s complaint about lack of food rings a bit hollow. True, airlines no longer advertise cooked to order steaks onboard domestic flights, but that was an artifact of a bygone era in which airlines couldn’t compete on price so they were forced to compete on amenities. Air travel has simply become mass transportation in a way that it wasn’t during the regulated era. Posner complains prices are too low, and if you regulated higher prices the competitive market would - judging from history - respond with food. But that’s hardly a tradeoff worth defending.

Airports contain ever more convenient to-go meal options, and airlines have replaced complimentary food with “buy on board” in many cases. Continental remains a leader in providing complimentary meals on domestic flights, but this is no longer the rule — United doesn’t even offer a complimentary meal in coach for its Chicago - Honolulu service! But that doesn’t mean there’s no food available, it just isn’t included in the price of your ticket. Virgin America has gotten quite a bit of mileage out of its innovation offering passengers the ability to ‘place their order’ through the onboard entertainment system. Plus the market has responded in many airports with an increasingly array of takeaway meals for a wide variety of tastes.

As Posner narrows his focus to delays, he offers that ‘others’ have claimed a variety of causes:

high fuel costs that have contributed to deferred maintenance that results in cancellations, the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration to upgrade the air traffic control system so that it can handle more traffic with less spacing between aircraft, more turbulent weather perhaps due to global warming, and crowded aircraft that result in delays in boarding and hence in departure.

The deferred maintenance piece is silly, there’s no evidence at all that maintenance necessary for aircraft operations has been systematically delayed and also no evidence that an increase in delays is in any way attributable to such practices. There have been many carriers deferring updates to their aircraft interiors (so you get fewer cleanings and pen marks on seats) but this is not due to fuel costs, but rather the overall economic environment which led to a rash of bankruptcies throughout the decade (United’s 2002 bankruptcy certainly predated current fuel price levels, as did USAirways’ two bankruptcies). And deferring optional maintenance prior to departure actually contributes to overall on-time performance…

Posner explains marginal cost pricing and then concludes that it is the cause of airline delay:

Prices tend to be pushed down to a level at which the airlines find it difficult to finance the purchase of new planes. As the existing planes age, equipment failures become more frequent, contributing to delays and cancellations. Airlines prefer delays to cancellations, because they get to keep the fares, and they resist raising prices to reduce congestion because that will make it more difficult to fill the planes, and an empty seat is, as explained, very costly in revenue forgone. Furthermore, airline service is quite uniform across airlines, which makes travelers more sensitive to airline prices than, say, to hotel prices, since hotels compete in many other dimensions besides price.

There are several mistakes here.

First, the idea that higher fares would mean newer planes, and that new planes would mean fewer delays (tell that to Singapore, the launch customer for the A380). Northwest, which operates the oldest fleet of the major US airlines, doesn’t have appreciably more delays than other carriers with younger fleets. Most delays aren’t mechanical in any case.

And to say that airlines don’t compete in areas other than price is silly. Obviously they compete on schedule (frequency of flights, total travel time to destination). Continental still offers meals. United offers “economy plus” with extra legroom. JetBlue pioneered inflight TV, and Airtran inflight XM Radio. United lets you listen to air traffic control. Virgin America has mood lighting and a minibar, not to mention a relatively affordable first-class cabin with pretty good food and decent seats for a domestic flights (and now access to the lovely Virgin Clubhouses for an added charge). Airlines have varying reliability, and this has little to do with maintenance. I’ve long done my best to avoid Delta’s express carrier Atlantic Southeast, other airlines outcompete them on the ability to deliver me to my destination on-time.

Deregulation has brought 11-figure annual savings, with ticket prices perhaps 40% lower in real terms than before deregulation. The real culprit to Posner is too many people flying, and he seems to attribute zero value to such incremental flying as a discretionary trip to visit family.

The cost of delay is a deadweight loss, whereas a higher price would be merely a wealth transfer to the sellers and would finance an increase in supply.

Empirically we know that higher prices reduce the total number of trips. Posner may hypothesize a world in which every seat on every plane is taken, with more people waiting to board who can’t, and so a higher price leaves us with the same number of trips. But that’s not the world we live in.

And thus he argues for higher prices (to promote efficiency from lower delays, ignoring the economic losses of the passengers shut out of frequent air travel. Of course he somehow seems to think that he - or a government regulator - can objectively determine what the ‘right’ price (which isn’t the profit-maximizing price, but the one which offers the optimum load factor and airport congestion).

Another aspect of lumpiness that should be noted is the difficulty of adjusting prices to different passenger time costs. Business travelers have higher time costs than leisure travelers, but there are not enough business travelers to fill a plane of efficient size, and even if there were, no one airline could significantly reduce the problem of delay, just as no one driver can affect traffic congestion by reducing the number of his trips.

But airlines do discriminate based on time costs. They offer both non-stop and connecting flights, with lower yield inventory at times only available on the connections (and varying these sorts of decisions nearly real-time based on demand). Airlines offer priority routes. They choose when to substitute an aircraft, pulling a plane off a leisure destination and substituting it for a mechanically delayed aircraft flying a route with a heavier concentration of high-paying time-sensitive business travelers. Airlines even have a say with Air Traffic Control over which of their delayed flights to give priority to, and which to cancel.

Meanwhile, the solutions that Posner offers don’t point towards price discriminating across different time preferences. Rather, his solutions use government policy to institutionalize his own time preferences into airfares.

Here Posner shows he’s calculating only one side of the equation:

I am not aware that the delay costs of airline service, and the costs of the other disamenities (the very crowded airplanes and slow boarding and deplaning in coach) in the current market, have been quantified, but assuming that they are, as I suspect, very substantial, the question arises what if anything should be done to alleviate the problem.

So if the costs are high, we should consider action. But the benefits are high, too, in the form of greater access to air travel. Skybus may have ceased operations, but if airlines are more like public buses than ever before the utility of all the riders on the bus need to be counted.

The first Posner solution is allowing price collusion on the part of the airlines, but he rejects that because prices might go up too much (the baby bear ‘just right’ price increase is the amount necessary to keep other people off planes so Posner can fly with elbow room, but not so much that airlines earn too much money from passengers with inelastic demand).

His next solution is re-regulation.

Another possibility would be to return to the regulatory system administered by the Civil Aeronautics Board before the deregulation of the airline industry in 1978. The CAB did not regulate rates, but it controlled entry into city pairs and used that control to limit entry to the point that flights were frequent and uncrowded.

Of course here Posner just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The Civil Aeronautics Board absolutely did regulate prices as well as routes. Meanwhile, there are certainly more flights today than there were in 1978. The analysis in this section flows entirely from economic theorizing about a market in which entry is limited but prices aren’t regulated, which doesn’t describe reality at all.

In 1976, CAB Chairman John Robson pushed to “experiment” with price competition, and Continental was allowed to lower its intra-Texas fares to match and even undercut Southwest’s. Incidentally, Southwest introduced a two-tiered pricing structure… $13 each way fares matching Continental and $26 business fares which included a free fifth of alcohol. I vaguely recall Southwest becoming the largest liquor distributor in the state of Texas in 1977. (Folks whose employers were paying naturally selected the higher priced fare with the personal benefit to them. Heh. Southwest was also creative in pushing bookings to their airline by rewarding the secretaries who booked travel for their bosses with the equivalent of frequent flyer credits.)

But the idea that even when the CAB didn’t permit airlines to compete on the basis of price (and for many routes, didn’t allow them to compete at all) the notion that airlines didn’t compete in other areas is silly. Rather than driving down price, they drove up costs. There was even a time when the CAB got into the business of regulating the thickness of onboard sandwiches to try to clamp down on the myriad ways in which airlines tried to compete against each other in a world where they couldn’t adjust their prices.

When the CAB recommended deregulation, it did so unanimously. Ralph Nader favored it, and Ted Kennedy sponsored it. His committee chief counsel was Stephen Breyer. It was a consumer issue, not a free markets issue. And we got democracy in the skies. In a world of tradeoffs, not everyone likes it.

Penultimately, Posner postulates encouraging mergers as a solution. But that will lead to reductions in capacity, so while fares may rise they won’t solve his crowded planes a bit. And he acknowledges new entrants will keep the skies just as crowded.

After all that, his final punchline - which he doesn’t much analyze - is congestion pricing. Hardly a panacea, one the whole a reasonable part of an overall toolkit. It would help congestion by encouraging airlines to operate fewer flights with larger aircraft at peaks times across to and from the busiest airports. (Fewer flights on larger planes means less accommodation of the time preference of business travelers Posner wants…)

But even increased average fares (which, depending on how airline scheduling adapts, isn’t a foregone conclusion) wouldn’t generate the investment in new aircraft Posner wants to see or bring back meals to coach. The revenue would go to airport authorities. And economic expansion might well bring us back to congested airports in short order. It’s a modest solution hardly befitting the apocalyptic rant in the post.

So what are the real problems?

The existing array of airports serving US cities couldn’t possibly be built as-is today. With far greater environmental scrutiny and NIMBY opposition, it’s incredibly difficult to expand airport infrastructure. Similar to the US experience, the London-Heathrow terminal 5 project spent more time in its public comment phase than the entire much-larger Beijing terminal 3 took to go from proposal to completion. I’m not saying I prefer the Chinese model, but the difference illustrates how cumbersome infrastructure issues are in the modern Western political context.

Bob Poole does much good work on what could be accomplished through reform of the air traffic control system. He also includes congestion pricing among his solutions along with certain capital improvement projects and a variety of specific reform measures that hold a good deal more promise than re-regulating the airline industry. I prefer re-conceptualizing our whole approach to air traffic control, making flying planes more like driving cars aided by the kinds of technology for navigation and automated collision avoidance which couldn’t even be dreamt of decades ago when our current approach was put into place. My proposal won’t happen, of course, because the air traffic controllers stand to lose and they have both a keen interest in the outcome, financial resources through current dues, and the narrative of safety to bludgeon home their point.

So in the end we’re left with piecemeal tinkering, and a recognition that in a politically constrained world we have tradeoffs — and the current world is better than the one of thirty years ago.
Becker explains

I am arguing that many passengers prefer the combination of low fares and greater delays on average to higher fares and fewer delays

In fact, entire airlines such as Airtran have built their business model of “people waiting on planes” rather than “planes waiting on people” through longer connecting times in Atlanta to spread traffic out across the day and utilizing their labor more effectively as a result (this is in contrast to the standard hub-based model involves staffing for high periods of activity and paying those same staff to wait around during low periods for the hub’s next “bank” of flights).

Personally I might accept the current bargain more happily if airlines could improve the service provided by the same number of flight attendants at the same pay. Union contracts, labor laws, and culture all play a factor here. The highest average fares in the world won’t cause United or American to offer the same levels of service as Asian carriers such as Singapore, Cathay Pacific, ANA, and Asiana.

United is offering double elite qualifying miles for travel through June 15. Registration is required and only flights taken after registration earn the double EQMs. You don’t get double redeemable miles, your flown miles just count double towards elite qualification.

American Express is offering 25,000 miles for picking up an American Express Business Gold Rewards Card. Fee waived the first year, 5,000 Membership Rewards points with first purchase and another 20,000 Membership Rewards points for spending $1000 on the card by the end of October.

Any U.S. person can have a small business credit card, “Your Name & Associates” and your social security number as tax ID number.

The morning after dinner at El Bulli we took a cab to the Figueres train station, had our return ticket stamped for the Catalunya Express to Barcelona, and boarded the train. Uneventful ride back, grabbed a cab to the Meridien, and checked in.

This time they had us assigned to a junior suite on the 7th floor corner, facing a side street. I asked if we could do any better, and they offered a similar room overlooking Las Ramblas with a fairly panoramic view.

I asked whether any renovated suites were open, and they told me this was it… they also mentioned that they hadn’t yet decided to renovate some of the remaining suites on the upper floors, “some customers prefer the older style.” I don’t know whether this was guesswork on the checkin agent’s part, of if he’s correct.

While I appreciate the extra space, I really do love the redesign of the rooms and might even take a large renovated standard room (as long as it’s not two beds joined together as king ) over the unrenovated suite. Just my personal aesthetic preference, and it was good to compare.

Unlike our first visit a couple days earlier, a single bottle of water was delivered, along with 2 glasses. Since this was Sunday, the Carrefour next door was closed. So I was glad to have stocked up earlier with several bottles.

At check-in they did present me with a brochure offering an extensive array of Instant Awards, something they hadn’t offered on my previous check-in. It was customized with my name and then-current point balance. They didn’t quite hit my value meter, but I admit they represent a better return on Starpoints than I’m used to seeing from Instant Awards.

Northwest and US Bank are offering 20,000 mile enrollment bonuses with no fee the first year for the Visa Signature and Business card products.

US Bank cards have had mixed results with churning at best, most customers will only be able to earn the bonus once for each card type (at least based on my rather dated understanding of the issue). But it’s a good deal for folks who haven’t had either card before.

It’s worth noting that if the Northwest-Delta merger closes, there’s a pretty good likelihood that the US Bank relationship with the airline will eventually end. That’s quite a ways off, and doesn’t really effect the decision to take this card now, but worth noting. The American Express relationship with Delta is a stronger one, and represents a better card in any case for actual long-term use.

Ripped from Free Frequent Flyer Miles:

Many of Continental’s non-U.S. websites offer 5,000 miles for signing up for the program and taking your first flight. Language change can be made in the upper right corner. These sites say nothing about where you must live to get the bonus, and links to a signup website that permits registration by people living most anywhere in the world. I wonder what happens if a U.S. resident signs up via a non U.S. website. Worth a shot. (Thanks to Frequent Flyer Bonuses for these links.)

• United Kingdom
• Ireland
• France
• Spain and Canary Islands
• Japan
• Hong Kong
• Israel

Southwest is offer a 15% discount on tickets purchased by April 21 for travel through October 30 using promo code DING15.

The terms and conditions aren’t onerous.  Discount applies to roundtrip tickets booked at Southwest.com.  August 29, 2008 through September 1, 2008 are blacked out for travel with this discount.   The discount doesn’t apply to Business Select, Business, or Senior Fares, and doesn’t take money off of taxes.

Sometime last night United began loading new fare rules with $150 change fees for domestic tickets, up from in most cases $100 (some specific markets had and still have lower fees, but this applies to better than 90% of fares).

I don’t see any announcements or news stories on this yet, but here’s the thread on Flyertalk.

A dozen years ago the change fee was $25, ten years ago it was $50, eight years ago $75…

Now most airlines charge $100, although as with baggage fees etc. the low-cost ‘no frills’ carriers frequently charge lower change fees. JetBlue charges $50 (or $40 if the change is made online). Southwest has no change fee, they apply the full value of a ticket towards new ticket purchases, but a same-day change involves buying up to full fare.

United is the first to cross the $100 barrier. We’ll see whether other airlines match, as that’ll determine whether or not this lasts. But it sure made my eyes pop a bit.

I had considered renting a car, and in the end that would have been the easiest. It’s just not that difficult a drive from Barcelona to Roses. Instead, though, we took the Catalunya Express train to Figueres. Cost was ~ 10 euros apiece each way. A car wouldn’t have been more expensive overall, though, because of the cost of cabs – a good 40 euros each way to and from the train station into Roses. (I’d still take a cab to and from the restaurant, though, for reasons I’ll explain).

At the train station you stick your ticket in the machine to enter the area of the station with the tracks, but presumably any train ticket would work, no tickets were ever checked onboard in either direction, so why not buy the cheapest ticket and board whichever train you wish? On the return from Figueres there was no process to check for tickets at all, even entering the station to the tracks, and yet people buy them anyway. It’s not clear to me what sort of social norm enforces this. And yet I assume that most people actually bought their tickets as I did.

After checking into a non-descript hotel in Roses where we’d be staying for the night (I admit I underinvested in hotel choice research, but then I was really looking to scrimp a little), we changed for dinner and took a cab to the restaurant.

The drama of the approach is impressive – through the town of Roses and then up a long cliff with ocean on either side. Now I know what folks mean when they say they recommend against driving back from the restaurant late at night after the meal (and drinks). It’ll be dark, poorly lit, winding roads, and very dangerous. We had to take care to avoid two head-on collisions driving up in the daylight.

We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation which was perfect to take in the setting of the restaurant, right on the water. I highly recommend not turning up rushed, it doesn’t require a long time, but just wander around for a few minutes.

Our assigned arrival time was 8:30pm. It appears that each table has only one set of guests during the evening but they stagger arrival times.

Two women walked in ahead of us, they had been meandering around the grounds and then presented themselves (in sweatshirts and tennis shoes) and asked to be seated for dinner… without reservations. They were turned away in an exceptionally polite way.

We were greeted warmly, of course, and then offered a visit to the kitchen. The chef came over and took photos with us while he clearly managed to continue to oversee the kitchen staff while visiting and greeting us. Kitchen had several rooms and we noticed perhaps three dozen cooks.

On the whole El Bulli is much less formal than what one would expect from a Michelin 3* restaurant of any sort, let alone one as famous as this. Service is incredibly busy, the wait staff have a large role in presentation of dishes, they’re running around the whole time rather frenetically. Service is still good of course – there’s someone there to help you with your chair when you return from the restroom (and your napkin has been discretely replaced while you’re gone). But given the rush silverware isn’t placed perfectly and symmetrically. But then silverware is changed at least a dozen times during service.

Whenever food arrived at a table, everyone would go silent – awaiting instructions on how to eat the course just presented. Each dish is presented and then explained. In most cases all the ingredients are detailed, although in one case (the gorgonzola shell) things were left a bit of a mystery as we weren’t told what was underneath and left to discover the surprise. Roughly half the dishes also have a distinct order in which you’re supposed to eat each piece. Some might find this pretentious … but it’s executed in a fairly down-to-earth way, it’s hard to describe. It’s not “you must follow our instructions” rather it’s a description of how the chef believes, after much scientific testing, that the combination and ordering of flavors will be most interesting or fulfilling or demonstrate something about the ingredients that you might not have thought of before.

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a meal where pieces of asparagus on my plate were purposely cooked to different degrees of finish in order to accentuate the texture and flavor in combination with different accompanying sauces.

Each set of courses appears to end with a very salty dish, with the salt feeling of your mouth serving as a clear demarcation (I can’t really call it a pallet cleanser but it did function as one).

We didn’t receive any meat courses (except bone marrow) which was rather interesting. No foie gras either. Lots of truffles and lots of sesame seeds and sesame seed oil. I was actually rather surprised that even a restaurant of this caliber could experiment with truffles the way that they do. A couple years ago at CityZen (the best restaurant in DC IMHO, at the Mandarin Oriental) I had risotto with shaved white truffles (this was an upcharge from the regular tasting menu)… the waiter snapped the truffle in half and dropped it in my risotto. More afraid of what the chef would do to him than anything else, he reached right in and pulled the truffles out of my food with his hands, right in front of me. Here they don’t seem nearly as concerned with the cost of truffles.

There were a whole bunch of cameras flashing throughout dinner. Usually we’re the only ones taking pictures of our dinner (we’re sorta geeky that way), although we never use flash. And in this case the dining room was more than sufficiently lit so a flash wasn’t necessary. But it was telling – about half the guests were sufficiently in awe of being there that they wanted to capture each moment on film. Usually my photo taking gets the occasional odd look. Here it was normal.

Also interesting was that we were the youngest there, except a couple of approximately the same age who were dining there with their parents.

My favorites on the evening were the oyster shot glass with tempura raisin wine, and also the crab sandwich on foccacia. Rabbit ears were displayed as though they were still on the head of a bunny, so I was a bit uncomfortable with that.

We had their welcome cocktail and we drank cava, but as heretical as this sounds we didn’t really drink beyond that. It’s so difficult to pair each bite of food together in the right order for best effect, to combine this with just the right glass of wine to enhance the taste rather than merely provide refreshment would seem impossible. So we enjoyed the food for its own sake, without pairing or a bottle of wine. The Spanish cava, though… mrs. gleff says she preferred it over vintage dom (though not over krug or bolliner). Really lovely.

Here’s our menu for the evening, with photos. The menu is going to be slightly different for each table, since they ask for preferences, allergies, and avoidances. There’s a somewhat larger menu off of which the kitchen chooses your dishes. So these are simply what was prepared for us. If you want to see the list of items we didn’t have, let me know and I can dig that up (as they gave us a copy both of our menu and their working copy for the evening, presented in a nice small folder).

El Bulli Menu

tangerine
spherical Olives
non-trias
pine kernel and chocolate bombons
tomato cookie
beetroot and yoghurt meringue
rabbit ear crunchy
“coquito” 2008
sisho flexia caramel with its own soft candy
black sesame sponge cake with miso
flowers paper
fried brioche Shangai
“horchata” – truffle
oysters yoghurt with px in tempura
haricot bean with Joselito’s iberian pork fat
tangerine flower/pumpkin oil with mandarin seeds
almonds jelly with cocktail of fresh almonds “Umeboshi”
tomate soup with virtual iberian ham
grape fruit Thai risotto
asparagus in different cooking times
peeled pea / sphericals pea
gnocchi of polenta with coffee and saffron yuba
razor clam with seaweed
abalone
capuchina leaf with eel and veal marrow
hare juise with apple jelly-cru with black currant marinated
gorgonzola shell
truffle ice cream
charcoal
Morphings…

Alas, after an obscene number of courses and more than four hours, it was time to say goodbye. Much of the restaurant had already departed, but there was no sense in which we were being rushed. We wanted to buy a cookbook, they have Ferran Adria’s books on display, but it only occurred to us to mention this at the end of the meal and we wanted the book signed. Alas, the chef had left for the evening, but they told we could make the purchase online and ask for him to sign it and they’d take care of it. So we will.

There was no problem having the restaurant call us a cab at the end of the meal. Others have posted on food discussion forums that they needed to arrange for a car to return in advance, but that wasn’t our experience.

Overall this was an amazing experience. I’ve been to minibar in DC, which is derivative of what El Bulli offers, and that’s a fun meal and interesting and different. But it isn’t the extreme explosion of tastes with every bite. There, some dishes are surprising but fail as cuisine. Here everything I tasted made me think and delight. The service is good, not perfect, everything is about the food and the staff rushing to ensure that the food is perfectly presented. Thus it’s not an evening to mellow and enter deep conversations. The conversations become secondary in importance to the food. So don’t go expecting a typical French michelin experience. And don’t expect to find your favorite comfortable restaurant that you’ll return to year after year. You probably couldn’t get reservations that often, anyway. (Although the restaurant says they hold back 50% of their tables for returning guests so they can see how the experience has progressed after a few years.) The meal cost 500 euros for two (again, very limited alcohol). The basic dinner was 218 euros per person, though I think it’s somewhat less on other nights of the week. If it weren’t for the weakness of the dollar, I’d have regarded this as a real value — I’ve spent US$500 for two on far inferior dinners here in the states. Alas, at current exchange rates this was an $800 dinner… leaving aside the transportation costs. Nonetheless, my bottom-line: Go.

Le Meridien Barcelona

Just under 30 euro cab ride from the airport, and I walk into the hotel and up to the checkin desk. Relatively quick and painless, but not suite available. In fact, no upgrade available. “It is a very nice room, it is an upgrade, trust me you will like it.” It’s the smallest room I’ve ever seen in Europe, and it faces a side street.

Back down to the desk to renegotiate, they give me a somewhat larger standard room – this time facing Las Ramblas with a little standup balcony to walk out on. The only downside is that it’s two beds joined together rather than a true King. Ah, Europe. This is an improvement, at least.

Service isn’t great here, no one helped me with my bags. And my first impression on checkin of being told how wonderful the room I was being given was when it so obviously wasn’t clearly didn’t engender any love from me. But the hotel was legitimately pretty booked up. And I know that they don’t avoid upgrades here by matter of policy. So I let it go and actually came to really enjoy the property.

I really like the renovated rooms. Very stylish. The floors in the entryway and bathrooms are rather neat, there’s a big LCD TV in the room, the bathroom isn’t large but it’s perfectly functional. The shower has dual showerheads – a rainshower from above and a wall-mounted head as well. There’s an LCD TV in the bathroom to boot. Even the nightlight is rather high-tech, when you get out of bed it goes on – it’s floor-level and blue.

There was no problem with the Platinum amenity, or so I assumed – the card was offered at checkin although points for the stay still haven’t posted. I’ll have to followup.

The second room we were given wasn’t on an SPG floor, so no complimentary waters were ever provided. We did get the Meridien teddy bear with a note about ongoing work at the hotel (which I never noticed).

There are two elevators off the lobby. One goes up to floor 5 (the lobby is floor zero and the business center floor -1) and the other skips some middle floors but serves 6-9. Internet cost 17.50 euros for 24 hours, but is free in the business center with free printing as well.

The hotel is right next door to a grocery, where I bought pates and sandwiches and some drinks. It’s right on Las Ramblas so tons of shopping and dining options, most of the latter are of course bad. Just across from the hotel is a little café called Mako where we went for cappuccinos in the morning and after purchasing them at the counter (~ 2.10 euros apiece) sat outside. Starbucks is right across the street from the front of the hotel, which was useful for a to-go cup of coffee on the way to the airport.

Just a few blocks down from the hotel on Las Ramblas is a lovely outdoor market.

Make no mistake, though, the area has a bit of an ‘international’ flair to it.

(notice the young boys peering in)

And then there’s the obligatory…

Fortunately we did leave Las Ramblas to eat!

Next up in the trip report: Dinner at El Bulli!

The Columbus Dispatch was told by Skybus that the airline would be shutting down. And instead of reporting the story, they sent a reporter to fly the last flight and cover the story. The reporter traveled alongside all the passengers who would soon learn that they had no return ticket to Columbus, instead of letting folks know they might not want to get onto the plane.

The paper explains that they honor news embargoes — they were given the information on the condition they not use it until 9:30pm. They’re proud of themselves for actually sharing the information earlier… when another news organization already broke the story, they didn’t wait to post it either! Well, bully for them.

We discovered that the local ABC/Fox television stations were telling people at the airport about the shutdown and had posted a story on their Web sites. Before we published anything or told anyone, we contacted our source, who released us from the agreement.

But… they only posted the story because Skybus told them it was ok! “[H]ad the source not waived the embargo, we would have waited until 9:30 p.m. to post the story on Dispatch.com.” That’s just stupid. Once another news organization reports it, it’s out there and it’s news and there’s no longer any meaningful embargo.

I get embargoes, and this is just a case where the paper looks bad because passengers were put out as a result of their honoring it. The paper says the consequences would have to be really bad and not just bad in order to violate their promise. Ok, fair enough, consumers have to evaluate whether they trust the judgment of this particular news outlet in deciding whether to get their news from them.

But they go on to justify the embargo as somehow noble, and that’s just silly.

In this case, Skybus wasn’t looking to make a splash; it just wanted to break the news to its employees before they read it on a Web site or heard it on radio or television. And Skybus probably didn’t want to upset pilots (or passengers) before or during their flights.

Well, Skybus could have broken the news to its employees before they read it on a web site very easily by telling their employees before calling up reporters.

And I’m not sure you can call it noble to not upset passengers before their flights, and instead upset them after they’ve flown away from home and caused them to incur new expenses in order to get back. That’s just silly, and disingenous on the part of the Columbus Dispatch.

(Hat tip to Online Travel Review.)