Goldpoints is offering double points through December 15. Registration required to earn double points at Radisson, Country Inns and Suites, Park Inn, Park Plaza, and Regent Hotels.

The Westin Charlotte is offering 500 Starpoints for becoming a fan of its Facebook page and emailing them to let them know (include your Starwood number) at 01383Reservations@westin.com.

(Hat tip to this Flyertalk thread.)

Wing and a Prayer Blog began a post thusly:

We here at WAAP love blogger Gary Leff, writer of View From the Wing, mostly because of his unapologetic commitment to the tony lifestyle, luxe hotel rooms, and the numerous shout-outs to the W Hotel line of bedding products couched as subtle reminders that, well, your bed is not as nice as his.

Of course, as Keri so astutely observed, the point is not that my bed (or anything else) is nicer than your, but precisely that with a bit of attention paid your travels and other accoutriments can be easily as nice with little cost.

I’ve said it before, and will keep reminding everyone until the world stops saying ‘frequent flyer programs are going to end’ and ‘airlines need to cut costs by chopping from their frequent flyer programs.’

It’s important to understand the frequent flyer programs are the most profitable part of airlines.

Airlines aren’t just about transportation. In some cases they aren’t even primarily about transportation.

Their loyalty programs in particular were huge innovations. And I’ve written in the past about how United Airliens continued to fly through bankruptcy, that it needed to stay in operation, so support the underlying credit card business(!). That’s why the issuer of the co-branded United Visa provided its debtor-in-possession financing, and also provided its exit financing, not to mention prepurchased blocks of miles to provide additional liquidity.

I’ve given examples of this last notion — the prepurchase of large chunks of miles — with Delta in the past. One more than one occasion American Express has ponied up as much as half a billion dollars at a time to prepurchase miles. They’re determined to keep Delta going and liquid, and are confident enough to put real money on the line.

Alaska Air’s profitability is in large measure driven by Bank of America’s purchase of miles, the volume of which tends to be tens times as great as the airline’s annual profit or loss.

And US Airways’ acquisiton by America West was made possible in large measure by funding from Juniper Bank — which in turn acquired the right to issue a US Airways Mastercard.

Meanwhile, Air Canada’s Aeroplan managed to spin off its frequent flyer program as a separately traded entity, raising much cash. And it has further managed to obtain ongoing fnancing from this separate company.

So it should come as no surprise that American — in announcing $2.9 billion in new liquidity — generated a full $1 billion of that from the advance sale of miles to Citibank, which issues American Airlines co-branded credit cards.

Airlines sell their miles. They have a model where they offer seats that in large measure might otherwise go empty so the programs purchase those seats from the airlines at a discount. They spend less on redemptions than the revenue they raise per mile. They make a profit. And they’re totally in control of their cost structures and inventory.

As long as they don’t mess with the consumer perception of value in their programs, they’re a perpetual money making machine. And the engine that drives their businesses.

That’s why I constantly remind proprietors of these loyalty programs not to kill the golden goose. It’s often tempting to try to ‘reduce costs’ by either limiting the availability of awards or raising the price of those awards. But the long-run effect is to turn off consumers to the programs, undermining their profitability.

Of course, some dimunition in value is inevitable. These are proprietary currencies with no central bank. And as they print more ‘money’ without corresponding increases in the total award seats available, the price of those seats will rise or else severe shortages will occur. Basic monetarism.

Which is why you should always redeem your miles now, they’ll never be worth as much in the future as they are today. But keep earning miles, just burn them in roughly the same period or under the same award chart as they were earned…

The Intercontinental Hotels Group Friends and Family Rate, open to everyone, has been extended.

Through December 31 you can book the Friends and Family Rate at Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and affiliated brand hotels. The rates are prepaid, nonrefundable and technically shouldn’t earn points or stay credit but in practice usually do.

You need to print and fill out the friends and family rate voucher, but it doesn’t need any aprovals or verifications. The hotel doesn’t always ask for it, but be sure to have it ready.

Here’s an ongoing Flyertalk thread on the subject, now nearly 375 posts long.

The offer was set to expire September 30, and I was on the verge of having to book a whole bunch of non-refundable reservations through next year to lock in the savings. Glad to see this extended, I can put off my bookings.

Via Frugal Travel Guy, joining American AAdvantage using promo code LATJA by October 31 will earn 1000 bonus miles.

JetBlue is offering 15% off of tickets purchased by September 20 for travel through December 15 when you pay with American Express and use promo code AE15OFF.

Travel must originate in New York (JFK), Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Long Beach, Orlando, Washington-Dulles, San Juan, Oakland, or Austin. And roundtrips are required, no one-ways. Travel from November 20 through November 30 are blacked out for the discount.

Priority Club is apparently offering 500 free points for answering four basic easy questions about its program. They’re multiple choice and if you get them wrong you get another chance. But you won’t get them wrong. Hint: it doesn’t take much to get benefits, all good benefits they list of course you get, they’re a big program.

The offer was mentioned in this Flyertalk thread and says it was “posted on the PC Visa Chase community forum” — I don’t see any refernece to the offer being targeted, and when I took the ‘quiz’ I was then promised my 500 points.

We’ll see if they post, but in my experience with Priority Club they usually do.

Delta is offering 1000 miles for new members signing up for the Skymiles program.

A good reason to sign up for an account if you don’t have one. And if you’re a Northwest Worldperks member without a Delta Skymiles account, sign up for one now and then your current Northwest miles will be merged with this new Delta account — and you’re 1000 miles richer.

Cranky Flier has the details on the new planned US Airways business class seat. It’s not best in class, but is certainly appears to be a huge improvement.

It’ll be installed on the A330-200s over the next year (we’ll see if they keep to that schedule). The 767s will never get a retrofit, we’ll see when those get retired. And the A330-300s will get a slightly different seat, at some point, when they figure out what that means they’ll tell us. And the seat on the A330-200 will apparently not even be quite unform

Now that picture above doesn’t look completely flat to me, but according to US Airways, the seat will go down into a 6′4″ or 6′8″ 180 degree flat bed depending upon which seat you have in the cabin. The seat width is 20.5″ with the armrests up, but when they go down, the width is 25″ for sleeping.

So much for commonality.

But even a 10-year old angled-flat seat would be better than what they have now, so can’t complain.

They’ll do fewer seats in the cabin, which means greater difficultiy with upgrades and awards. But I currently would avoid US Airways transatlantic anyway, whereas I can imagine taking them in a pinch once the retrofit is widespread enough that I’d be comfortable getting this seat rather than their old one…

After United, American, and Continental all got on the double elite qualifying miles bandwagon, US Airways has come up with their own slightly different elite fast track. And it’s a fast track.

Instead of doubling the miles you earn for the rest of the year and adding those to the miles you’ve already flown to determine elite status, they are just counting the miles you fly during the promotion period of October 1 through December 25.

You can either earn status the ‘normal’ way based on total miles flown for the year, or based on flying a lower number of miles during the last quarter.

It’s a fast track or challenge for everyone, and no registration is required. Here’s the reduced requirement:

Fly 7,500 miles or 10 segments and earn Silver Preferred status
Fly 15,000 miles or 20 segments and earn Gold Preferred status
Fly 22,500 miles or 30 segments and earn Platinum Preferred status
Fly 30,000 miles or 40 segments and earn Chairman’s Preferred status

)Via Frugal Travel Guy.)

In the new issue of Conde Nast Traveler there’s a list of 21 Twitterers to Follow.

Of course, the author @WendyPerrin, doesn’t list herself…

Among the best suggestions is to follow RickSeany’s airport-specific tweets, @FlyFrom___ where ___ is your 3-letter airport code — for best fares out of your home airport. And of course it’s definitely worth following @globetrav, whom Flyertalkers know as Kiwi Flyer.

Naturally I’m falttered to be included myself, @garyleff. The article describes me thusly

Frequent-flier mileage and points advice, “mistake fares,” and assistance with creative ways of redeeming miles for free trips

Hope you’ll follow me on Twitter!

Here I just have to turn the microphone over to Lucky, and just quote verbatim, because this offer is just too good for anyone with a few Amex points who miay be flying to Japan.

Through the end of the year, ANA is reducing the number of miles required to upgrade from coach to business class. From New York to Tokyo one-way, for example, an upgrade will only be 14,000 miles instead of the usual 28,000 miles. Furthermore, the upgradeable fare classes are quite reasonable. I see $1,300 “S” class fares that can be upgraded under this promotion.

Amex Membership Rewards points transfer to ANA, so $1300 and 28,000 Amex points should be enough for a roundtrip business class ticket from the US to Tokyo on ANA. Not bad!

Busy day yesterday and Lucky beat me to the punch on this one — United has a new promotion, stackable with double elite qualifying miles (not to mention threshold bonuses), that will give you a progressively larger discount on a future flight based on the number of flights you take through the end of year. (Ticketing and travel must be between September 14 and December 31.)

Registration requited.

The Washington Post carries a story on reimbursable expense policies of firms receiving govenrment bailouts.

Firms receiving government bailout funds are required to publicly post their ‘luxury’ expense policies — which include travel expenses — by Monday. The Post piece goes into the greatest detail on the 15-page policy adopted by Chrysler.

On the one hand, incredible specificity in expense policies can work against the interests of a company. There are times when it makes sense to pay for first class (say, coach is sold out on a non-stop, connecting flight kills an extra day of an employee’s time).

On the other hand, the cultures of these companies seem to have been that expenses were incurred for the benefit of employees (non-taxable extra compensation) rather than towards the profitability of the company.

And the policies being adopted are far from draconian.

Chrysler Financial employees traveling on business can no longer be reimbursed for lunch on trips that don’t require an overnight stay. If flying on business, they must travel coach if the flight is less than four hours. Tips to baggage handlers shouldn’t exceed $2 per bag. The $4 paid for the in-flight movie? Not reimbursable.

As Joe Sharkey observes, the point of the story should have been “Chrysler employees still allowed to fly first class on coast-to-coast flights.”

And what airlines charge $4 for an in-flight movie? (Some will sell you $2 throwaway headphones, of course.)

Chrysler Financial details what type of rental car employees should drive while on business trips (mid-size), how to calculate reimbursable gas mileage on trips combining business and personal purposes, and the circumstances under which it is permissible to use the phone in your hotel room. The 15-page policy comes with two appendixes, one listing “unallowable” expenses (country club fees, hotel frequent-guest programs, birthday cakes and cards, shoeshines) and limits on tips (up to 20 percent of total bill, excluding tax, for room service, up to $2 for buffet dining, $5 for doorman, no tip for concierge).

Spending pages thinking about when an employee may use a phone in their hotel room? Who still makes calls on that phone? Chrysler truly is a dinosaur.

An I’m shocked that Chrysler won’t pay membership fees to hotel loyalty programs. True, there are such programs still out there, few and far between.

Yet Chrysler will pay for 20% tips on room service. So they will (a) pay for room service, (b) including service charges and delivery fees, and (c) tell employees to add 20% to their room service bills (‘but only on the pre-tax amount!) on top of those service charges, and they’ll reimburse those employees for it. Seriously?

A 15-page bureaucratic document lays out the rules that become floors as much as ceilings, and are about what employees can get away with rather about how they’re empowered to invest company resources in pursuit of profits. Of course this is why they needed a bailout in the first place, and is precisely the sort of policy propogated by a government-owned enterprise.

AirCell is seeking stimulus money.

A portion of the funding that has been set aside by the US government to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities is being sought by Aircell.

The company has applied for a $65 million Broadband Technology Opportunities Programme (BTOP) grant through the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

BTOP provides grants to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, to enhance broadband capacity at public computer centres, and to encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service.

Well, yeah, I guess airplanes are historically underserved by broadband…

As mentioned previously, this may be just about your last opportunity to create your own luggage tag for 1000 Northwest miles before the Northwest program goes away, folded into the lesser Skymiles offering.

It’s a great chance to use a stray 1000 miles, or to generate your own keepsake of Northwest while the brand is still out there.

The frightening thing, and I’m ashamed to admit this, is that I’ve done the elite card throwdown..

Registration required.

American started it last week, and then United quickly followed.

Delta and US Airways are still out in the cold on this one.

Lucky points to this offer from Hyatt — 5000 United miles per Hyatt stay through October 31.

For stays between September 1 and October 31, United 1K members can earn 5,000 miles per Hyatt stay (registration is required), and as far as I can tell there’s no limit. That means 5,000 miles for a $75 stay at a Hyatt Place hotel. That’s a deal in and of itself, but combine that with Faster Free nights, which will almost definitely be back, and I think we’re looking at quite a deal….

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this is combinable with any other bonus points opportunities, right?

While this offer is targeted to United 1Ks (The offer page says “United Airlines® Mileage Plus 1K members are invited…”), I wonder whether anyone can actually make use of it — you register, and Hyatt sends the miles over to United, I imagine there’s no actual check that you’re a 1K in order to get the bonus. The terms and conditions of the offer do not say that you need to be a 1K in order to earn the bonus — just that you have to sign up for the offer on the web page that ‘welcomes 1Ks’.