The All Nippon Airways award booking engine is the best way to search Star Alliance award inventory.

Get yourself an ANA Mileage Club account and you have a pretty darn good gauge of what’s available as an award to Star Alliance partners.

It pretty much never shows Singapore Airlines business and first class availability (what few seats may exist) from the US to Asia. But otherwise it’s pretty much a match for what everyone has access to, other than United Mileage Plus (because United often ‘blocks’ award seats being offered by their partners when United doesn’t want to pay for the seats; you could book the same flights with Continental or US Airways miles for instance that United claims are unavailable).

There are really only two drawbacks to the tool, and one of them has just been improved.

First, you won’t find all possible routings and you’ll only find one-stop itineraries. If you type in an origin and destination, it’ll come up with only what it thinks are the most logical connections. There may be plenty of ways to get between two cities, it doesn’t automatically search them all. That’s why you need to search segment by segment, beginning with the toughest flights first. Search every transatlantic or transpacific gateway and then figure out how to get there, don’t just assume you can type in Buffalo and Venice and have the system tell you what awards you can book (you’ll need to find transatlantic flights out of Washington DC or Newark or Charlotte to Frankfurt or Munich, etc instead).

Second, the ANA site was not 100% comprehensive. It searched almost the entire Star Alliance. Notably absent were Swiss and Air China as well as Shanghai Airlines. For Swiss availability you had to get a Miles and More account or Expert Flyer, and even then you’d only know what award seats were being offered to Miles and More members, not to partners. Air China was available on Expert Flyer.

Today’s big news: sometime around noon eastern, the site went down for maintenance. Remember, this is late night in Japan.

And when it came back up, it was comprehensive.

The ANA award search site now includes Swiss, Air China, and Shanghai Airlines.

And that also means that the KVS Tool searches these airlines for awards using the “Awards/Star Alliance” method.

That’ll make grabbing seats on Swiss soooo much easier. Thank you, All Nippon Airways!

See Lucky on this one:

For years now Chase has had the deal whereby you can earn 25,000 Continental OnePass miles for opening up a Chase personal or business checking account with debit card, and you can do it once a year. Last year I earned 50,000 OnePass miles by doing this…

[F]ortunately they seem to have extended the promotion through June 30 today. That’s perfect, because if you sign up on April 1 or later, you can even earn Mileathon credit.

Here’s the coupon for the personal checking account and here’s the coupon for the business account.

The winner of my twitter giveaway of 2 Hyatt Place hotel nights and 2 months of personal assistant services from TaskUs.com is @allisonkasic — congrulations Allison!

And keep following me on Twitter for other Twitter-exclusive giveaways and frequent flyer updates.

Thanks to BoardingArea and to American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card for sponsoring the giveaway of a trip (air/hotel/meals) to Australia’s Gold Coast.

This blog’s winner became one of 20 finalists, with the ultimate winner chosen at random from the winner from each of the BoardingArea blogs.

And the ultimate prize winner is Istvan.

Congratulations!

And now to announce the winner of @garyleff Twitter giveaway of 2 Hyatt Place hotel nights and 2 months’ personal assistant services…

Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Hotwire now lets you select your bed type at some hotel properties.

The status quo on opaque sites has been:

[Y]ou can’t choose your bed type up front. You’re typically left asking for your preferred room type at check-in. (I sometimes remember to call the hotel in advance and ask for my preferred room type.)

But that doesn’t always work, especially if you’re sharing a room with someone you don’t want to share a bad with. In those cases, an opaque site may be out (although bear in mind that most hotel chains don’t guarantee bed preference except to their elites, even on regular paid bookings through their own websites).

This is a real improvement, Mark notes it was introduced in November but somehow I didn’t notice it either and yes I’ve used Hotwire on several occasions since then. Perhaps this isn’t all that widespread yet across cities and properties. But it’s a good trend.

And don’t forget that when booking through Priceline, Hotwire, or really any other site that you may have cashback or mileage-earning options. Once upon a time when the eBay Anything Points program existed, you could earn 1500 points for a 4-star Priceline win and those points converted better than 1:1 into Cathay Pacific miles via points.com — a business class roundtrip award ticket from the US to Europe could be had for about 35 successful priceline wins.

Now the rewards aren’t so lucrative, but according to evreward you can get 2% cash back…

Randy Petersen interviewed Jeff Diskin, Senior Vice President of Customer Marketing at Hilton in the April issue of Inside Flyer.

And Diskin had one of the most interesting spins on their points devaluation I’ve ever read. They were “over-indexed.”

Here’s his answer, and it’s really enlightening.

We were and have been, sort of “over indexed” for some period of time in terms of the value of some reward properties, and frankly we weren’t getting credit for that. Because what the research pointed out is what you do with your points is of great interest to you when you’re looking to shop with them. People are looking to shop with them because they are looking to offset the cash outlay with whatever points they’ve accumulated. So everybody is within the same environment which is very difficult for people within the hotel space. What it does is basically focus on the return on spend that members get. And being over indexed in terms of the base level doesn’t give you enough payback because not enough people can understand or know what it is. We are actually recognizing that it’s much more important to have promotional activity in the marketplace to segment divide and conquer and put different initiatives in place for different groups of travelers. Not just by their tier level but also by the type–if they’re resort stayers or meeting planners–versus just having a core proposition which we over indexed. So, it was surprising to learn that, but when you think about it, you would have thought we would have known anyway.

Diskin believes there’s little benefit in having a better value proposition for redemption than competitors.

So what he says they learned is they need to keep customers on the treadmill. Increase the number of points needed for an award and keep them earning points towards those rewards. Like Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football.

Diskin does at least see the need to offer redemption for better than a basic room, and to continue to reward their highest value top-end elites.

But what he misses is that his program is the least rewarding for top-end elites now. Diamonds don’t get suites as a benefit of the program (as Starwood, Intercontinental, and Hyatt elites do).

But given Diskin’s thoughts on devaluation, adding a new higher tier makes more sense than increasing benefits, you can’t provide a good value product you have to keep your members on a treadmill constantly striving for more.

I also think Diskin misses the mark on free internet for elites. Randy notes that Starwood and Marriott recently added this as a benefit (though Marriott limits the geographic scope, and Hyatt in fact was first to the table with this benefit). And Diskin responds that Hilton already offered this as a choice to elites, and they don’t choose it. Well, of course they don’t. Hilton says you can have upgrades and breakfast, points, or internet. Internet isn’t the most important benefit and members aren’t willing to give up their upgrades (!) for it. Hilton will be foolish to think that the overall package of benefits they offer to members doesn’t matter.

With this interview, Randy has done us a real service. If you can cut through the spin, there are some very telling comments here.

The first stage of the Boarding Area – American Express Premier Rewards Gold card giveaway is complete — each of the BoardingArea blogs has selected one entrant for the final drawing.

And the winner of this blog’s entry is Connie. There were over 600 loyalty program tips submitted, and Connie’s was chosen at random (from those meeting a bare minimum threshold of seriousness/responsiveness to the question).

Connie’s tip was:

When dining out with a group of friends and the bill comes on one ticket they always choose to pay cash. I take all their cash and then pay the entire bill – along with my portion of course – on my credit card simply to get the miles.

I’m disciplined enough to put the cash in my banking account and make a payment towards the credit card right away.

More contest details and winners of other giveaways to come…

‘Fuel dumps’ on international airline tickets are apparently dead. For some time it has been possible to push down the price of an airline ticket by getting pricing engines to ticket without fuel surcharges, which in some cases can be as much as $400. It’s a great savings, and there have been various techniques for accomplishing this.

This Flyertalk thread has attracted about 4800 posts over the past year and a half about dropping fuel surcharges from tickets, and fleshing out the techniques. Many of the posts are ‘in code’, referring to booking tickets on Priceline as “negotiating” (William Shatner is ‘The Negotiator’…).

In that thread, folks are blaming Airfare Watchdog who outlined one of the more popular techniques in a blog post yesterday, detailing adding throwaway segments to Canada to the end of a ticket to drop fuel surcharges.

(I made an oblique reference to this technique about a month ago.)

The consensus view is summed up by Lucky:

[H]ours after the article was posted, fuel dumping was no more.

On one hand there are all kinds of nasty names I’d like to call AirFareWatchdog, and I’m not alone… At the same time, how the hell did it take the airlines two years to figure this out? Frankly, I thought they just had no way of preventing this, but the fact that they pulled it hours after the article was published suggests that’s not the case. Are they really that oblivious?

Either way, AirFareWatchdog, shame on you…

But it seems odd to me that when there’s a Flyertalk thread with 5000 posts one would blame a blog post for getting the word out and spurring action that shut down this technique.

And I can’t imagine that the technique could get shut down in a matter of a few hours, I have to believe that the fix was in the works already. My personal guess is coincidence.

Either way, one of the really great airfare pricing tricks appears at least at the moment to be no more.

Via Holly Hegeman, this 1933 promotional video for American Airlines (“American Airways”) is a must-watch for aviation geeks.

Holly quotes from the beginning of the video

From the beginning of time, man has been the master of his own journey, he chooses the road by which he goes. He steps ahead or he steps aside. Here’s the man who steps ahead. The kind of man who gets things done. He knows where he’s going and how to get there — The American Airways way.

I’m planning on doing a trip report of some sort, I’m just back in the US from a jaunt to Asia in First Class on Cathay Pacific (Toronto – Hong Kong – Manila – Hong Kong – London) with a return to North America on British Airways in First Class. I had the Presidential Suite at the Intercontinental Manila, and suites on Mactan Island and in Macau, plus lunch at the Fat Duck Restaurant outside London. Certainly plenty of stories to share.

But since I’m just back to the States today, and need to oh I dunno work all week (and I won’t be back in the air for about 11 days..) the trip report will have to wait. I’m not promising anything at all for specific delivery dates. I have to do my taxes as well, and while I care about my readers the government scares me.

Y’all may recall that I shared my approach to the British Airways strike, that I made a one-way mileage booking on United as a backup in case BA couldn’t get me home. Fortunately I didn’t need the backup flight, and I cancelled the award and have the miles back in my account.

In that thread, commenter Blake reminded me of something I had been aware of a few months back and then forgotten –

When you check-in for the BA flight, change your FF # (from AA or whatever it is you used to book the award ticket) to your BA number. I flew BA first during the strike (which didn’t end up hapening) over the holidays and got a 25k mile present for the inconvenience…even though it was an award ticket.

I immediately recognized this as good advice! The flight segment was an award issued with American miles issued from my account. As a result, the booking had my American AAdvantage number in it. I couldn’t change that online. My wife’s reservation had no number associated with it, so I added her BA account through the British Airways website. Then at check-in I gave them my BA account as well.

Well, no apology bonus yet but it’d be too soon for that. We’ll see if one comes, it would certainly be deserved with no hot food and barely any service (the flight attendant complement was 8 rather than the standard 11 for the flight, and many weren’t really up to par in any case). Though ultimately I was just happy to fly and not have to use my backup award.

But we did both earn miles for the flight itself. And since it was a first class booking, we earned double miles.

So.. thanks, Blake, for the reminder!

According to the Delta website, the Delta – Midwest Airlines partnership “[t]erminates June 7, 2010.”

I haven’t found any press release, or mention of this on the Midwest Airlines website. But naturally there is a thread on Flyertalk.

Midwest partners in addition to Delta were KLM, Frontier (as they’re jointly owned by Republic), and Amtrak.

Delta’s departure, as poor as their award availability is, leaves a real hole. And redeeming on Midwest isn’t great either, the program even still has blackout dates.

In the past the airline has had several frequent flyer relationships, including American, Virgin Atlantic, and Scandinavian. But those days appear gone.

While the program wasn’t all that appealing in the first place to me, I’d probably just credit Midwest miles to Frontier at this point. At least they partner with Airtran!

Any Midwest advocates out there disagree?  Hit the comments with your explanation.

A few days ago I outlined Hyatt’s outstanding “Big Welcome Back” two stays earns a free night at any Hyatt worldwide promotion.

The registration page is now live.

Register.

You can enter the contest here at View from the Wing by leaving a tip in this thread.

Pearls of Travel Wisdom has written an extensive FAQ on the BoardingArea/American Express Gold Coast trip giveaway.

The list of 20 participating BoardingArea.com blogs are here, you can enter once at each blog.

A reader points me to a story that apparently the Securities and Exchange Commission figured out that frequent flyer miles are code for insider trading, at least in the case of Igor Poteroba and Aleksey Koval.

Among the means of communication used to illegally tip and trade on the inside information were coded e-mail messages that referred to securities and money as “frequent flyer miles” and “potatoes.” ..

Poteroba: Keep me posted as to how * * * [m]any frequent flier miles you’ve got this far and how many you plan to get by Friday[.] Will be in Boston tomorrow[.] Plans for a trip look fine so far[.] Worst case we can get a refund by Monday, hopefully we do not[.]

Koval: As I mentioned, I just got into this frequent flyer program. I got five thousand of sign-in bonus miles but thinking maybe if I fly often, I will get additional three to five K miles.Poteroba: On the frequent flyer program topic you mentioned, I think you should sign up for another flight, if you can, since they are providing bonus mileage soon[.]

According to the SEC’s complaint, Koval wired $5,000 into a brokerage account of Vorobiev that had been inactive for nearly six months. Koval then bought 2,100 shares of Guilford stock in the account at a total cost of $4,983. Both monetary amounts are consistent with the amount of 5,000 “sign-in bonus miles” referred to in the coded e-mails. A few days later, Koval wired an additional $4,800 into Vorobiev’s account and purchased an additional 2,030 shares of Guilford stock at a cost of $4,780. The money transfer and subsequent stock purchases are consistent with Koval’s coded statement that he “will get additional three to five K miles.”

Be careful out there, the government is watching your bonus miles!

Scott McCartney‘s excellent Middle Seat column covers the final resolution to the British Airways India mistake fare ($40 + taxes/fees for full fare coach).

BA lost a small claims case, and settled another.

The Department of Transportation has said that airlines should at least ‘make consumers whole’ if they cancel tickets, covering costs that consumers have incurred as a result of the mistake fare.

Most useful in the piece is the analysis of who has a policy to honor mistake fares:

UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, Continental Airlines Inc., Southwest Airlines Co., JetBlue Airways Corp. and Singapore Airlines all say their policy is to not cancel tickets even when a mistake is discovered, no matter how large the error.

“That is the right thing to do,” says United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski. In 2007, United honored a business-class fare from Los Angeles or San Francisco to destinations in New Zealand that was missing one zero: it was sold as $1,062 plus taxes and fees instead of $10,620 plus taxes and fees.

American takes it case-by-case:

In January, AMR Corp.’s American Airlines sold tickets from the U.S. to Australia with service on partner Qantas Airways for $1,100 round-trip—a fairly normal sale price for coach seats—except those fares were mistakenly for first-class seats, which normally cost as much as $20,000 round-trip. American decided the price was obviously too good to be true, and it canceled the reservations, refunded the fare paid and offered customers a $200 voucher for their inconvenience.

American says it took its guidance from the DOT’s agreement in the British Airways case. A spokesman says the airline will honor some mistaken fares and doesn’t have a blanket policy, but considered the Australia mistake too large to honor. “Such errors are extremely rare, but they do happen,” says spokesman Tim Smith.

(Emphasis mine.)

Via Bruce Schneier, this piece does a good job explaining the process that names go through in getting on the list, and distinguishing between the various watch lists, selectee list, and no fly list.

Schneier catches this bit of stupidity from the article:

If a person on the no-fly list dies, his name could stay on the list so that the government can catch anyone trying to assume his identity.

… and adds:

But since a terrorist might assume anyone’s identity, by the same logic we should put everyone on the no-fly list.

I recently gave away two Hyatt Place hotel nights and two months’ personal assistant services each to two lucky readers of this blog.

I admit, these giveaways take up time and attention, especially while I’m on the road.

And there are more coming, I mentioned that I’ll be giving away a high-end laptop bag shortly. And of course there’s the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card-Boarding Area Australia Gold Coast trip giveaway which you can enter here, it includes airfare and hotel and meals, plus cash and cash equivalents to cover taxes on the prize.

So this blog has definitely been inundated with reader giveaways of late. And in between international first class cabins, beach resorts, and the like (trip report of some sort likely coming), I’ve still managed to let y’all know about Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights redux (just scroll down a few posts) and the Amtrak Mastercard with 36,000 points as a signup bonus.

But I’m going to try something a bit new, I don’t want to inundate this blog with nothing but giveaways, I’m going to try a giveaway on Twitter as well.

Hyatt Place offered me a two night stay in addition to two months’ personal assistant services, on top of the two prize packages they offered to have me give away. Well, I’m here looking out for my readers (whether on this blog or twitter) and I’ve decided not to keep the nights for myself.

Instead, I’m giving away this additional package of two free Hyatt Place hotel nights and personal assistant services on Twitter.

Here’s how to enter — follow me on Twitter and tweet:

RT to enter (up2 5x/day)+ follow @garyleff 2win 2 Hyatt Place hotel nights+ 2mo personal asst services. http://tinyurl.com/yamtr6s

You can enter up to 5 times per day, and I will pick the winner at random from amongst those entering by 11:59pm Eastern time on Sunday, March 28.

You have to continue to follow me on twitter of course to win, otherwise I won’t even be able to notify you that you’ve won!

Here’s the offer: 18,000 points with first purchase and an additional 18,000 points after spending $2000 on the card within the first 3 months.

Amtrak points can be used for train travel of course, or if you’re an Amtrak elite or spend $200 per year on the card on Amtrak travel you can transfer points out to Continental, Choice Privileges, or Hilton HHonors. 36,000 points are also enough for $350 in gift certificates with a variety of stores.

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

BoardingArea is running a giveaway of a trip for 2 to Australia’s Gold Coast — airfare, 7 nights hotel, and meals.

You can enter here.

Each of the Boarding Area blogs offers a chance to win, the list of participating blogs is here.

Honestly, I was late to the party, flying on the other side of the world when we were allowed to post this. So I currently have fewer entries on my blog than Lucky has on his.

But I want to win! I want to show that my blog’s readers are the best, the strongest, and most deserving of the prize. So I want us to have the most entries — so do me a favor? Enter to win!

I appreciate it.

At least that’s what I’ll always call it. Last year it was “The Big Welcome” promotion, and now it’s “The Big Welcome Back.”

No matter, the crux of it is still the same: every two stays earns a free night for use anywhere in the world.

Of course, you have the option of taking 5000 Hyatt Gold Passport points instead, and you can bank those, whereas the free nights must be used by August 31 (historically Hyatt has offered to extend the validity of these nights, especially for their Diamond members, but this is by no means guaranteed). The short time in which to use the free nights means some will actually prefer points. But in general the free night is a much better option, claimed at a top tier porperty that usually requires 18,000 points.

The old Faster Free Nights promos required you to pay for your stay with a Mastercard. That’s no longer part of the deal. Though back in the day, once upon a time, a Priceline stay counted and if you charged anything to your room during the free night it would wind up counting as well — making it in essence a free night for every one night stay. Oh, those were the days!

But this Hyatt promo really is the mother of them all, and real worthwhile bonus, while the other hotel chains piddle away. Hilton was supposed to offer their very modest second quarter promo (of double points or 1000 points per night) but that thus far appears to be targeted.

The real value in Hyatt’s Stay Two, Get a Free Night offer is loading up on cheap stays, such as airport stays on a Saturday night, and using two of those to fund a high-end stay such as that Park Hyatt Sydney or Park Hyatt Tokyo.

The only real requirement is that you actually check into your room (though occasionally members find a property which permits phantom stays — that is, which posts a qualifying stay activity on a prepaid rate even when you don’t actually show up, cheap phantom stays are like gold under this promo). And as long as you’re not doing a phantom stay, you can effectively get a 20% discount on your Hyatt stays by buying Hyatt gift cards at Costco.

You will need to register, and that won’t be available until the start of the promo on March 26 (it will be here but the site isn’t live yet). The promo lasts through June 30. A wonderful second quarter promo!

And with the recent Gold Passport improvements — true availability of award nights without blackout dates or capacity controls on standard rooms, free internet for elites, 4 confirmed suite upgrades annually for Diamonds — this makes it a good time to consider giving Hyatt some business, or even comping over your existing hotel status and start off as a Diamond member.

The Flyertalk thread on the promotion is here.