The Global Traveller lays out the plan to close bmi’s Diamond club.

Back in April, the bmi website said the program was ending and members being migrated over to Lufthansa’s Miles and More program. That turned out to be a bit premature, the notice was only intended for residents of specific countries where bmi had ceased service.

But since Lufthansa controls the carrier it was only a matter of time before they migrated its frequent flyers away from the more (too?) generous Diamond Club program and over to their own offering.

According to Kiwi’s post,

Lufthansa says the 2012 accounts will reflect the full effect of Diamond Club closure. This means Diamond Club will be closed by around 30 June 2011. Other aspects of integration refer to a country by country approach, and this may continue to be used for account closures.

We have other hints from the Lufthansa treatment of Brussels Airline and Swiss programs. Roughly 6 months notice was given of changes

It will be a sad day for bmi die-hards. As I wrote in April,

One strong benefit of Lufthansa Senator is the 50% off redemption for a companion on the same award. That’s not matched by bmi’s offerings.

But bmi Diamond Club was otherwise so much more valuable, in particular the items that will be missed:

■The Cash and Points award chart that really stretched the value of miles.
■One-way redemptions at no mileage premium.
■Better award chart
■Better partner earning with Hilton (I earn 1000 bmi miles per night up to 3000 per stay when I double dip with bmi)
■Less draconian mileage expiration rules
■The recently introduced family accounts (which were especially great for signing up family with signup bonuses, even if those family members never flew, just for the free miles you could use)

It’s worth thinking about how to use any accumulated Diamond Club miles before the transition, at least unless you’re planning to use the 50% off a second passenger on the same award offering for Senators.

Starwood points are incredibly valuable for their large number of airline transfer partners at a 1:1 rate (Continental and United though are not so favorable, LAN is at an incredible 1:2), for the 5000 mile transfer bonus for each 20,000 miles you transfer to an airline, and all in addition to the hotel redemption options.

Sure, I have my issues with Starwood’s award category creep. But the Starwood Amex remains the best general, al-purpose credit card for points accrual. There are some reasons to get other cards — such as when spending will help you requalify towards elite status with your preferred airline, or because you’re after a very specific award like a British Airways companion award ticket or US East Coast to Europe in Business Class (in this one particular case, the Asiana American Express from Bank of America is excellent) — but without a very specific reward goal in mind or for general points accumulation, hard to beat this card.

Historically, the best (low key) offer was 15,000 points at signup and another 15,000 points if you spent $15,000 within six months of getting the card.

Now, as blogged by Lucky and by TM Travel World, American Express is now offering all 30,000 Starpoints after spending just $1000 on the card within 3 months. So a much lower spend requirement for the big haul of points. The offers say they expire July 6, so worth jumping on this now.

And of course there’s both a personal card and a small business card, and both come with the $45 annual fee waived the first year. So there’s potentially an easy 60,000 Starpoints for the taking.

Now, American Express is usually pretty adept at only awarding a bonus once per card, though in my past experience at least if you have had a card and cancelled it you can apply again and get the difference in miles between the signup bonus you actually received and what’s now on offer. That experience is quite dated, so perhaps others will chime in with more recent experiences. And I certainly have heard of folks getting Delta American Express signup bonuses more than once, several years apart.
Starwood allows points to be transferred between any two accounts at the same residential mailing address, so a husband and wife could each get the two cards and wind up with 120,000 Starpoints in the same Starwood Preferred Guest account (actually 124,000 once meeting the spending requirements on all four cards). And those could all be transferred to the same airline mileage program account.

Note that Brad’s Deals claims you can get 40,000 points per card but nowhere on the links he provides does it appear to me to say that (10,000 points with first purchase and then 30,000 more after $1000 in spend). I’m sure that they’re using referral links that’ll get them kickbacks for signups (the links I’ve offered above get me nothing) and perhaps the Amex -marketing rep has even told the Brad’s Deals folks that, or perhaps they’ve misunderstood the offer.

If it were me, I’d go for the standard deal of 30,000 per card after $1000 in spend, and of course I’d also print out copies of the offer just in case they’re ever needed arguing for the bonus should it not post on its own.

Update: I misread Brad’s post, he wasn’t saying there was a 40k bonus being offered. The deal I detail above does appear to be the best one. The website Brad was linking to didn’t have teh details of this mythical offer simply because it doesn’t exist, he didn’t say that it did, and I simply read his post too fast. Whoops!

I’ve never found a magic cure for jetlag. I really don’t suffer too badly going to or returning from Europe. If I take an overnight flight I just have to force myself to stay up, a short name mid-afternoon is fine but I can’t let myself go to sleep otherwise. The key of course is to adopt the local time as quickly as possible. Coming home from Europe I’m just tired early, and that can last a couple of days, but I’m otherwise fully functional. Similarly coming home from Asia is no big deal, I love making it back mid-day rather than late at night or else I’ll suffer for 24 hours. But my real challenge is going to Asia. I show up and though I may be tired at night I will wake up in the middle of the night. And I’ll be up. And it’ll just take maybe four days to stop doing that.

Still, there are certainly some best practices to adapt better and more quickly to a new time zone and avoid jetlag.

• If taking a redeye flight, especially one that’s shorter than US East Coast to Asia, don’t drink caffeine and try to get to sleep right away.

• This is an easy one to say, and one that my regular readers will appreciate, but one that will come off as extremely pretentious to those dropping in here for the first time (who don’t realize that reading this blog will very much help you accomplish this top!): Don’t fly coach. That alone makes a huge difference, both in ability to sleep and in general relaxation/stress mitigation level.

• Many folks report good success taking No Jet-Lag pills. It may be a placebo, but anecdotally they seem to work.

• Drink a lot of water. Avoid alcohol, and if you do drink then you need all the more water.
  .
  
• Try to adjust to the new time zone the day before flying out. Continue to adjust to the local time by sleeping or forcing yourself to stay awake during the flight.

• Take a shower on arrival and change clothes. Then stay up until bedtime local time, no matter how tired. A quick nap is OK, but that’s it. If it’s sunny, take a nice long walk.

Last week I got an email from the Cherry Marketing Institute (@choosecherries) and they’re promoting the idea that tart cherries provide a natural dose of melatonin, which should be good for preventing jetlag and adjusting to local time.

They passed along some research that suggests these cherries are a good way to get the melatonin that helps regulate biorhythm and sleep patterns. They suggest melatonin an hour prior to sleep time on the plane and for three evenings after arrival. And of course dried cherries can be taken through all but the most respect my authoritah checkpoints.

I don’t know whether it’ll work or not, but they want folks to try it and are sponsoring a giveaway to prove their point. One blog reader will win:

. A four lb bag of dried cherries

. A Kashmere red pillow case-socks-shawl travel set

. A Tory Burch Cosmetic Case

. A Cherry Marketing Institute tote bag

Just leave a comment to this post by noon Eastern on Monday July 5 about how you deal with jetlag, one comment per person, and one commenter will be chosen at random to win the prize. Any questions? Drop me an email.

Back in February I reported on research that planning vacations generated the greatest amount of happiness, much more so than being on vacation and that the happiness effect from vacation wore off quickly upon returning to real life.

Via Marginal Revolution comes more research on what kinds of vacations make us happiest.

For example, how long we take off probably counts for less than we think, and in the aggregate, taking more short trips leaves us happier than taking a few long ones. We’re often happier planning a trip than actually taking it. And interrupting a vacation — far from being a nuisance — can make us enjoy it more. How a trip ends matters more than how it begins, who you’re with matters as much as where you go, and if you want to remember a vacation vividly, do something during it that you’ve never done before. And though it may feel unnecessary, it’s important to force yourself to actually take the time off in the first place — people, it turns out, are as prone to procrastinate when it comes to pleasurable things like vacations as unpleasant ones like paperwork and visits to the dentist.

Much of my own approach and advice is consistent with the lessons of the article.

Taking lots of trips means less pressure on any given trip to get down to relaxation quickly, and less pressure to be refreshed.

Don’t try to do too much, if you take plenty of trips then each one doesn’t have to be perfect and if you don’t do everything in one place don’t worry you can come back.

Make travel part of the trip. If you aren’t an expert, work with one. Too many disaster trips reported to Chris Elliott that could have been saved with a bit of better planning. But you want to make sure you have reasonable connections on reliable carriers with plenty of backups in place in case things go awry. Long-haul coach travel is tough, I suspect that folks with lots of miles willing to spend them on premium classes of service find the trip itself much less stressful than average, I know I do.

And don’t go for average!

Looking back, what matters far more is the intensity of sensation, whether it’s excitement or pain or contentment. And it’s not the overall average of the experience that people remember, but how they felt at the most intense moments, combined with how they felt right as the experience ended. Psychologists call this the “peak-end rule.”

(Perhaps I just rather liked this article because it appeals to my priors, I’ve argued here and elsewhere that people tend to underinvest in peak experiences.)

Even after following all of this advice, though, it’s possible to become blase’ about it all, you do everything perfectly and make the most of your time but it’s how you always travel so it no longer feels special.

One consistent research finding is that people have a stubborn unconscious ability to adapt to their circumstances, whether those circumstances are good — like marrying their true love — or bad, like getting divorced. Whether they want to or not, people quickly begin to take things for granted.

I’ve experienced this international first class with the best suites and great tour guides and lovely spas piled on top of wonderful meals. They’re great but nothing like the first early times. They’re my ‘normal’.

The counterintuitive solution, the article suggests, is something I’ve long adopted:

The most effective way to inoculate a vacationer against the deadening power of adaptation, however, may be the most counterintuitive — to break it up, to interrupt it with real life.

Many folks find it odd how much work I do on vacation, I usually tell them I’d rather be working from the beach in Thailand than my office! And folks usually nod in agreement. Still, protecting the ‘me time’ of vacation may not be the best strategy, I find that I plug in and catch up a little bit in between beaches and massages, I feel comfortable knowing that things are in order and that I won’t be so overwhelmed as to kill my vacation buzz when I come back plus each new bit of relaxation and enjoymen feels fresh rather than just another hour staring at the ocean.

I also don’t stay at a given hotel property more than maybe 5 days tops, I begin to get bored with the same relaxation routine, I’ll change cities and venues to break things up and give myself new sensations (not to mention new choices from the breakfast buffet!). I love trips with ‘multiple parts’ to them, several unique adventures. One recent trip combined Manila with the beach in the Philippines, Macau, and London — four distinct places over two weeks though with the shortest amounts of time in Manila and London.

The best advice, I think, is just to accunulate large amounts of miles so that you can take plenty of trips to far aaway places as often as possible in premium classes of service!

@USAirways is offering deep discounted fares this week. They don’t offer Twitter deals as frequently as United, this is something new for them. And they’re not especially flexible. At least with United one can leave from various cities usually and there’s flexibility in travel dates. With US Airways departure city and travel dates are limited. Still, they’re worth watching for especially if you live in a US Airways hub city.

Yesterday’s offer was Philadelphia-Oslo.

This morning’s deal is $79 each way plus tax for roundtrip Charlotte – Rio.

•Depart from Charlotte between September 21 and 23, 2010.
•Return from Rio between September 27 and 29, 2010.
•Hurry – there are only 30 seats each way!

If this helps you, great! If not, follow @USAirways on Twitter and hopefully their deals later in the week will appeal.

Mostly though I hope this week’s experiment because a regular offering and that they broaden booking dates and departure cities. Perhaps if this test is viewed favorably they will.

I took awhile thinking about whether to post this, and what to say. As a result, Lucky beat me to the punch on this one.

Delta is offering double miles on all credit card spend with their co-branded American Express products between July 1 and September 30 if you redeem an award of at least 10,000 miles, e.g. a 25,000 domestic coach saver award or a 10,000 mile redemption for cash and miles. (Registration required.)

Double miles is always tempting, and this one doesn’t appear to be capped like most Delta Amex promotions have been in the past. But it’s still not enough to tempt me to acquire a Delta American Express or to use one.

Say that I was going to put $100,000 in spend on a credit card during the promotion period. I’d earn 200,000 Delta miles. That’s great, but might get me one business class ticket to Asia (one-way at low, the other direction medium, for 180,000 miles). In theory it could get me two business class tickets to Europe (most likely if I can find availability on Air France).

On the other hand if I put that same $100,000 in spend on a Starwood American Express, I can transfer those points to Air Canada Aeroplan and I’ve got enough for a first class ticket (not business) to Asia with two stopovers, crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific or one ocean in each direction.

Or I’m 78% of the way towards 2 business class tickets to much of Europe.

Or I’m within 1000 miles of enough points transferred to ANA for two Virgin Upper Class tickets from the US to London.

And more importantly I’ve got the transfer flexibilitiy that points in Starwood entails, as opposed to having Delta miles.

Double miles is about the only thing that would tempt me to spend money on a Delta American Express, unless I was looking for elite qualifying miles based on credit card spend and I cared more about my elite qualification for domestic upgrades than award redemption. But leaving aside elite qualification, it’s a pretty easy calculation for me — not going to switch spending over to Delta for this product.

That said, if you have a Delta American Express card and you plan to use it anyway, register for this bonus because double miles are better than not.

Gary from Free Frequent Flyer Miles writes about his experience taking Alaska up on their on-time guarantee for checked bags.

The Alaska Airlines offer of 2,000 miles or $20 if your luggage arrives over 20 minutes after the airplane door opens is a super deal. I snagged 4,000 miles on my recent trip between San Francisco and Spokane. I just timed it carefully, starting my timer the instant the door opened. Luggage arrived 21 and 23 minutes after that. A quick stop at the luggage office got me the certificate. No questions, no hassle. Amazingly, I was the only person from the two flights taking advantage of the offer, even there was a sign on each carousel advertising it.

I may need to start checking bags when flying Alaska.

A European Union project is trying to develop cameras and microphones to monitor passengers on airplanes and bomb sniffing equipment to detect explosive materials in lavatories.

Brussels is funding research at Reading University aimed at detecting suspicious behaviour on board aircraft.

A combination of cameras, microphones, explosive sniffers and a sophisticated computer system would give a pilot early warning of any danger. But the work will alarm civil liberties campaigners who fear the growth of the surveillance state.

Microphones would eavesdrop, listening out for anything which could suggest terrorist behaviour. Inside the lavatories explosives sniffers would detect if a bomb was being assembled.

All this information would be analysed by computer and if it spotted something untoward, the flight deck would be told instantly.

The key to the work is developing software which can spot a genuine threat. “We want to avoid saying that nervous passengers are potential terrorists,” Mr Ferryman said

If computers and software are flagging suspicious behavior, you’ll have both false negatives (so won’t help detect terrorists) and many false positives (distracting the flight deck and impeding safety).

We supposely have no fly lists to keep terrorists off planes, and behavior detection at airports. But we acknowledge those don’t work and somehow think computer behavior detection and scanning key words in conversations onboard is going to work better, instead it’s something other than flying the aircraft that we’ll be asking pilots to do. That won’t make us safer.

Here are the previous posts from this trip report:

1. Prelude
   
2. Desperately Making it to Toronto, Sheraton Toronto Airport
   
3. Toronto – Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific First Class

4. The Wing lounge and Hong Kong – Manila, Cathay Pacific First Class
5. Intercontinental Manila Presidential Suite
   
6. Manila – Cebu and the Hilton Cebu Resort
   
7. Philippine Cooking Class
   
8. Cebu – Manila and Return to the Interconinental Manila Presidential Suite
   
9. Manila – Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific First Class and on to Macau via Turbojet
   
10. Westin Resort Macau
    
11. Fernando’s, Beijing Kitchen, and the City of Dreams
    
12. Macau – Hong Kong via Turbojet and Hong Kong – London, Cathay Pacific First Class

13. Waldorf Hilton Hotel, London
    
14. Lunch at the Fat Duck Restaurant

Heathrow was a ghost town when we arrived. BA might have been covering all their London City flights (such as those are!) and all long-haul from Gatwick. But between intra-Europe cancellation, delays from contracted-out flying on some of those routes, the odd long-haul cancellation, and all of the folks who had simply cancelled their plans to travel due to the flight attendants strike, there just weren’t very many passengers around Terminal 5.

We were traveling on hard fought first class award seats. When the tickets were originally booked, we were in First. Then BA stopped offering aircraft with first class on the Toronto route for the Winter. They brought it back, though, for one day after we were scheduled to fly, so I decided to change our flight plans. I’ve flown BA before, but in Club and never in First, and darnit I wanted to try it out. Only… they swapped aircraft and cancelled first class on the flight we’d rebooked on. So a couple of weeks before the flight when I noticed they brought it back for a single day on our originally-planned date of travel, I switched us again.

Now, we were flying on American miles. I don’t have top status with them, so no waived change fees. Rather, American’s distance-based oneworld awards allow fee-free changes to flight and date, just not routing or carrier. So it was never a problem to switch between British Airways flights on the London-Toronto route as long as they had award space.

Only now we were flying first class without proper first class service, with the legal minimum complement of flight attendants for the aircraft given the flight attendant’s strike (we were lucky our flight wasn’t cancelled, I didn’t expect it would be — if they were going to try to operate one of the two flights to Toronto I figured it would be the one later in the day and with the larger aircraft, which turned out to be correct).

Oh well, we headed to first class check-in where the attendants were suitably bored.

They didn’t priority tag our bags, and it didn’t occur to me until later that I had noticed this. I was more focused on having them switch out our American Airlines mileage numbers for British Airways Executive Club numbers. Why? Because there had to be some chance that BA would compensate folks for the strike or for flying with less than the usual standard of service. And I figured it’d be easiest to get these points if they had my BA account number on hand.

Ultimately BA didn’t award points for the lack of service, but they did award miles for the flight itself despite our being on the award. With the proper bonus for first class as well as tier points, to boot!

Through the standard Heathrow thorough security, we turned right to the Concorde Room

We set up for awhile out on the deck area overlooking the terminal and airport operations

After awhile we headed back inside the lounge to the restaurant

It took quite awhile to be seated, first it was a matter of any staff members wandering by the front of the restaurant and then it was a matter of waiting for one of them who seemed to care enough to seat us.

We placed our orders, the food came reasonably quickly enough but neither one of us much enjoyed the dishes.

We picked at the food just a bit and decided to head back towards the deck of the lounge where we were sitting earlier, figuring that we could just as easily eat different snacks out there. Of course during our time in the lounge no one ever came outside to check on us, so I consulted the lounge menus and went over to the bar to place orders.

How could they screw this up, right?

The one especially interesting happening during our time in the lounge was that a man entered the lounge ‘the back way’, coming up the stairs from below and entering onto our deck area. Sneaky!

It was soon enough time to board, or so the monitors said. Our flight was showing on time, so we headed to our departure gate, on the lower level so it appeared we’d be leaving from a remote stand.

Only we got there, and though the departure monitors hadn’t been updated it appeared as though we were delayed about 40 minutes. It’s much nicer, I find it, when flying first class and someone else monitors these things for you and escorts you to the plane when it’s time. The Concorde room really wasn’t great, but it was better than the holding pen waiting for the buses to take us out to the aircraft.

Turns out we were waiting on one additional flight attendant, and then we were off!

Breathing a sigh of relief that we’d be taking off, and against my better judgment, I went ahead and cancelled my backup reservations on United for the next morning. When strike dates were announced I booked one-way awards in business class – standard awards! – back home. I held them in my back pocket in case BA wasn’t going to get me back home to go to work. And though I should certainly have waited until I was home in Toronto, after all we hadn’t taken off yet, I decided that this was the last thing I wanted to think about when I landed so I quickly handled the cancellation. Fortunately I didn’t need that reservation, and we took off about an hour late.

The old BA first class cabin is certainly dated, it’s a good thing they’re updating it, and I found the seats both worn and rather narrow. But it was first class and just a seven hour flight or so.

Normal amenity kits and newspapers were distributed, I thought this might not be a bad flight after all! A bit chaotic, and they had to ‘re-do’ the safety announcements, but we were on our way home after a long and really quite lovely trip.

Shortly after take-off, a meal was served. Or so it was called, this seemed more like a United lunch service in business class on a domestic three-class aircraft…

Now, I knew that BA wasn’t serving hot meals. And with a lighter than usual complement of flight attendants I understood single tray service. But the chicken salad was quite inedible.

To her credit, the flight attendant realizing that I wasn’t eating, offered to bring me one of the few cheese plates that had been boarded. She offered this to me very hush hush, letting me know that she didn’t have nearly enough for everyone. At least it was something. And there wouldn’t be any additional meal service prior to arrival, other than helping myself to crisps in the Club Kitchen.

A daytime flight, so no PJs, I just put myself halfway into bed mode and closed my eyes and woke up a couple of hours outside of Toronto. Upon landing we headed towards immigration and then waited on baggage. Since we weren’t priority tagged we were naturally out close to the end, and then sauntered over to the Sheraton attached to the airport again for some more much needed rest.

I did write to American after the flight, though, and they deposited a bunch of miles into my account for the disappointing service.

Thank you for your email to AAdvantage® Customer Service. I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

We are sorry to hear of your disappointing experience on your recent British Airways flight, and especially so since you used AAdvantage awards for your travel.

As an expression of our regret for your disappointment, and as a gesture of goodwill, we have credited your AAdvantage account with 18,000 bonus miles. Please allow up to 48 hours before viewing this adjustment online when you login to AA.com with your AAdvantage number and password. We hope this gesture helps make your next trip using AAdvantage miles more enjoyable.

Since I was so darned close to the two million mark with American and these miles count towards my lifetime status, I was happy with the gesture and it made the flight go down easier (not to mention the 7000 BA miles I picked up for the flight!). Ultimately I was happy to have been able to fly when so many other flights were affected by the strike, I got to try out the British Airways first class hard product, I just didn’t get to experience what it was “usually like.” Funny thing, even more disappointing to me than the flight itself was the mediocre experience in the Concorde Room. It was a lounge with food served rather than buffet and that wasn’t too overcrowded, that was all.

I bang my head against the wall when I need to make a booking and find out that there was a great deal that I just barely missed out on. Travel providers often dump inventory cheap online, but there’s so much information out there that it’s often overload.

I have a Twitter account, I enjoy tweeting and engaging, and following me on Twitter is one good way to keep up with this blog. But following a bunch of folks, I often don’t see many of the tweets even by folks or companies I follow.

I lucked out with a summer deep discount deal from the Intercontinental Montelucia, a $99 rate that included a $25 room credit and as a Royal Ambassador member my upgrade was confirmed in advance. Sadly the property has no lounge, but the rate encouraged me to go. That’s one they promoted on their Facebook page, but that I read about on Flyertalk.

One of the more frustrating deals to miss, though they’re not always worth not missing are United Twares, discount Twitter fares. They’re generally only available for a few hours and if you’re not on Twitter all the time or if you follow many people you could easily miss them.

They recently had US West Coast to Buenos Aires for about $700, under $400 fares to Anchorage, and 40% off Australia (priced under $800 from Washington-Dulles).

Fortunately there’s a thread on Flyertalk where people post when there are good United Twitter fares. And if you’re a registered member of Flyertalk you can ‘subscribe to the thread’ to get an email whenever someone posts there. I want to make sure I see Twares asap, since they won’t be around long, and this way I get ‘em in my inbox. Not what United intends, but a handy workaround.

Another good place for discounts, especially I find for discounted hotels, is TravelZoo. I often don’t find the deals listed in their weekly ‘Top 20′ e-mail to be all that useful, but TravelZoo is pretty good at compiling hotel offers – usually good prices that also include various throw-ins and book via a hotel provider’s own website so the rates are eligible for points accrual and elite benefits independent of whether the chain offers those on third-party bookings. Sometimes these providers are paying TravelZoo for the promotion, sometimes not, but it’s a good place to go that even I can often forget to check before a trip.

For my most frequent readers there’s probably nothing new here, and I suppose I usually just assume everyone is familiar with all the tools for making travel better — from improving the booking process and earning cash back, to getting the best prices, to selecting the best seats — but after making suggestions on a nearly daily basis for how folks can reduce their travel costs or manage their miles I thought it might be useful to share a list of ten different websites (and more, since in some cases I’ll list a couple in tandem) that are public but surprisingly secret.

Autoslash. About three weeks ago I introduced folks to this new website. It’s the best search tool out there for rental car pricing, because it searches not just regular rates but automatically searches for the best publicly available discounts (applies discount codes and coupons). And it keeps searching for improved pricing and notifies you of price drops for your rental.

The Intercontinental Hotels Friends & Family Rate is still available on-line and usable by anyone. It’s a prepaid, non-cancellable rate but when available is usually good for 40% off the best available (cancellable) rate. It’s a bigger discount than standard advance purchase. When the rate first came out, more often than not it earned points and stay credit despite terms and conditions to the contrary. Now most hotels have caught on, you won’t earn points with it. But elite benefits are generally not a problem. So a really good, deep discount for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, et al properties.

Awardwallet is the best tool I’ve found for managing frequent flyer accounts. You enter your account numbers and passwords, and can check all your account balances in a single click, or log into an account with a single click. There are several sites offering similar services, like Mileage Manager and Miletracker. But I find Awardwallet to offer the best coverage and reliability. I’m happy to kick in my $5 for six months of their premium service, which includes showing expiration dates for miles in most programs.

E-bates and other cashback sites let you earn a kickback on your travel bookings. The MilesLink newsletter this past week linked to my post on getting cashback for your travel purchases. It even makes me happy to do bookings for others, since I stick a bit of cash in my pocket at no cost to them…

Evreward. You can earn miles or cash back for nearly any online purchase you’re going to make anyway, you just have to start at the appropriate shopping portal to do so. There are tons of them out there, and Evreward does the comparison of offers for you. Just type in the name of the merchant and it’ll show you the different options you have, and often display available coupon codes as well.

Biddingfortravel.com for Priceline intelligence and Betterbidding.com for Hotwire intelligence. I care too much about my elite benefits.. suites and free internet and club lounge access.. not to mention my points and the need to requalify for status. So I don’t use Priceline or Hotwire nearly as much as I used to. But there are certainly cheap hotel nights out there for the taking, and these sites provide the intelligence to decode what hotel the opaque sites are offering to you. With Hotwire, BetterBidding offers hotel lists to decipher quality levels and amenities and identify the hotel. They offer Priceline tips as well. Biddingfortravel is the granddaddy of Priceline sites, not as comprehensive as it once was, but still very useful in figuring out what hotels Priceline may offer at a given quality level in a specific zone, and members post their winning and losing bids to help you ascertain how much to bid.

Seatguru and SeatExpert. SeatGuru is the best known site for showing each airline’s seat maps with commentary on which seats are the most desireable (e.g. extra legroom) and which ones to avoid (narrower due to curvature of the aircraft, too close to the lavatory and likely to smell). But I’ve actually become more partial to SeatExpert, which performs a similar service but seems less prone to errors in my experience. SeatGuru has often been wrong (such as about seat power) or hasn’t had the aircraft I’ve wanted (a week or so back I was looking for United’s new configuration Boeing 777). Both sites are worth consulting for sure.

ITA Software. For most people, just using Kayak to search for airfare makes sense. But there’s really no more powerful tool to pull up itineraries than ITA Software. They’re a company that develops search tools, you can’t book through them, but their tools are available online for anyone to use. And If you develop a working knowledge of their routing language you can have them search multiple airports at the same time, limit your search to specific carriers and specific number of connections, and even search for all flight combinations that include a specific flight. And they also have a low fare calendar search that’s pretty useful as well.

Expertflyer and the KVS Tool. These are the two most powerful tools for any frequent flyer, but except for stripped-down functionality with KVS neither one is free. Expertflyer basically lets you access a computer reservation ssytem and search for fare availability, it will even let you search for award availability with a handful of carriers. And most usefully, it will keep checking for when availability opens up on a specific airline in specific fare class (including award space on those carriers it supports) and will email you when the availability opens. That’s great when you have an award where you’re looking to improve just a single segment. It’s not as comprehensive as the KVS Tool, my program of choice, but KVS lacks the auto-search/e-mail feature. On the other hand, while it accesses publicly available date, it provides an incredibly convenient way to search availability from a variety of different sources (availability can be different in Worldspan versus Apollo versus Sabre and different sources are more reliable for different carriers). It lets you search awards comprehensively for Star Alliance, almost comprehensively for oneworld, and for a few Skyteam carriers. And it even accesses Visa rules, Minimum Connection Times, and flight status. Well worth the fee to an expert very frequent flyer, but this is not a tool for novices.

Okay, that’s really only nine. That’s because I’m relying on you for number 10. Please hit the comments with what sites you find most useful..?

TM Travel World explains how to take $80 off a Lufthansa flight purchased by August 11 for travel through December 30.

First, download a voucher.

Then make your booking on the Lufthansa website and

enter the number during the final step of the booking process. On the payment page, enter the voucher number into the field “Enter your Voucher:”. Be sure to click the “Apply Voucher and reduce Fare” link.

One voucher per reservation, so if multiple people are traveling you may want to book separately (to each get the $80 discount). A US credit card is required for the booking and travel must originate in the US (at a Lufthansa gateway, naturally).

It’s finally official. Now all those honeymoons to Greece on miles don’t have to terminate in Athens with separate paid tickets to Crete and Santorini.

In addition to flying to the islands, they service major cities of Western Europe as well as Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Istanbul.

Aegean is expected to merge with Greek carrier Olympic in the fall. Too bad Olympic no longer serves North America and Australia, that would’ve been an interesting (to some…) ‘surprise’ way to book awards Down Under.

Spirit, the airline which used to charge more for online bookings (“web convenience fee”), came up with the idea of charging for carry-on bags and which is known for MILF sales (“Many Islands, Low Fares”) naturally developed a tasteless ad in the wake of the BP oil spill to get me and everyone else talking about their (abysmal) product.

Ah, so the beaches they fly to have suntan oil. Ok… At least they didn’t advertise a “flood of low fares” to New Orleans after Katrina.

In other somewhat-related news, Scott McCartney points to a new ad campaign by startup Russian low cost carrier AviaNova which has funding from the same private equity firm that holds a stake in Spirit.

Now, maybe the Hooters Air model really can work, I suppose the flaw in their plan wasn’t the Hooters Girls but rather hubbing in Myrle Beach, South Carolina..

… and beds receive free shipping as per usual.

Discount code is T4G6K.

I have the W Hotel plush top (not pillow top) mattress, along with a feather bed. That best approximates the real W bed, and there are some reports of the pillow top mattress eventually having a memory after awhile, whereas I can always change out the feather bed.

I’ve long been happy with my purchase (made early 2007). And it’s been awhile since the 35% discount has been around, much much longer since they’ve had a 40% discount which I used when I bought mine.

Expiration date on the offer is unknown, the discounts which used to be around more often than not haven’t been lately. So if you’re interested you may want to make the purchase now.

Back in May price of the mattresses went up about 10%, but the 35% off code will still be worthwhile for many.

(HT: Dan’s Deals.)

Last week I received an email from a public relations person inviting me to come up to New York for a Skyteam press event tomorrow, celebrating the alliance’s 10th anniversary.

Unfortunately I’m pretty heavily committed tomorrow so I’m not headed up there, though they were offering lots of senior-level interviews (Skyteam’s Managing Director and their Chairman) which could have been interesting.

In person you sometimes get much better answers than in writing, where folks are much more careful and guarded. But I still shot back to them a couple of questions that are really the ones that interest me most.

View fromg the Wing: the primary consumer benefit of alliances is earning and redeeming miles on alliance partners and access to partner lounges and SkyTeam obviously provides both. But in terms of mileage redemption, SkyTeam as a whole lags behind both Star (in particular) and oneworld in opportunities to use miles for premium cabin international travel. Alliance-wide there’s not redemption access to the first class cabins of those partners which offer it, and business class inventory is on the whole tougher to get. Do you see this as a challenge/opportunity? (Or do you disagree with this statement?) And if so any plans to improve here?

Skyteam:

The ability to earn and redeem miles has always been a key passenger benefit of alliances. It is true that there is a finite amount of space available on board each flight, and that can make finding award inventory for a specific itinerary a challenge at times. This fact of life applies to all alliances. Despite lacking the ability to add flights, SkyTeam is committed to doing what it can to improve the frequent flyer redemption benefit across all member airlines. For example, our Mileage Upgrades program enables frequent flyers to use miles to upgrade to Business Class on international flight itineraries on most SkyTeam member airlines. We continue to collect feedback and results from passengers to improve future phases of the program and we are considering an automated version, including expanded criteria for eligible flights and the ability to make and confirm requests online. Frequent flyer programs are one of the most important alliance benefits for travelers and SkyTeam continues to pursue enhancements to this program.

Bottom-line, there are only so many seats, redemption is hard (no reference to how it compares in other alliances). And then, ooh, look over there, shiny things! We’re working on our alliance upgrades! (Again, no comparative analysis vis-a-vis other programs).

View from the Wing: Are there other unique selling propositions for SkyTeam compared to rival alliances that I’m overlooking?

The basics of the three global airline alliances are the same, however we know that the passenger’s ultimate choice of airline, and hence their choice of alliances, is primarily based on where a passenger is traveling from and where they are traveling to. In other words, does the network match the need?

SkyTeam has a very robust route network. Its carriers operate from the most modern and convenient hubs across the continents. In fact, a key element of the SkyTeam alliance is the hub-and-spoke system, which provides unparalleled connectivity and an easy way for customers to travel. Because our members have complementary networks, and because SkyTeam provides faster transfers, particularly across hubs, passengers can fly on any SkyTeam member from their departure city and reach any location in the world.

Ok, now the fight is on! We’re comparing ourselves to the other alliances. Their argument: the most modern and convenient hubs, and faster transfers.

But… really? Atlanta, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Nairobi? Amsterdam is a decent place to connect, and so is Incheon, and for that matter Detroit and Memphis.

But I’m not sure I’d say they have most modern hubs with the fastest transfers. I mean, I’d put Munich and Vienna (and even Zurich and Frankfurt) up against de Gaulle any day. Almost anyone’s hubs are better for connecting than Atlanta or JFK. And who offers better connections in modern terminal space than Singapore and Cathay at their home airports?

It’s a good talking point but it doesn’t really ring true.

As someone who redeems more miles than probably anyone else, I can say that I value my miles in oneworld and Star programs more than those in Skyteam programs. I value the ability to redeem for international first class. And I value the top-end world carriers like Cathay and Singapore and All Nippon that populate the other alliences more than traveling on Korean and Air France.

Being a part of an alliance is better than not being a part of an alliance. Delta’s partnerships, with Air France and with Korean and now with Vietnam Airlines, make their miles much more valuable than they would otherwise be. But I do always come back to, “compared to what?” and compared to oneworld and especially Star, they’re a bit of an also-ran on the world airline alliance stage.

Things in the Sky calls it an interesting argument, but really that’s way too generous.

Congressman James Oberstar thinks checked bag fees justify the government re-regulating the airlines.

Deregulation has been credited with making airline travel affordable for the average American. But Oberstar pointed to the $2.7 billion the airlines earned in baggage fees in 2009 as evidence that consumers are no longer benefiting from the system. He said he believes there’s support in the House for re-regulation.

But consumer pricing is still consistently on the decline as a result of deregulation. (People forget that the whole point of the regulated era was to maintain high fares to boost airline profitability, that it wasn’t until 1976 that the Civil Aeronautics Board began ‘experimenting’ with allowing regulated airlines to offer discount pricing.)

And as Dan points out the bag fees amount to less than $4 per passenger. The TSA costs far more than that, yet somehow government bureaucracies are a good idea here.

Meanwhile, there’s a bill in Congress that’s passed the House to increase ticket taxes. How does Oberstar, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, square his support for taxing consumers more for their tickets with his rants about roughly the same per-passenger cost for baggage?

Except of course that (1) more dedicated revenue increases the resources under the direction of the transportation bureaucracy, (2) baggage fees aren’t subject to tax, and (3) the latter doesn’t provide an opportunity for grandstanding.

Mike’s Deli across from my office imposes additional fees on top of the lunch special (sandwich + chips + small soda) if you don’t want Lay’s brand. And Ted’s Montana Grill will charge you an extra $2 to turn your side of fries into Chili Cheese fries. Small potatoes perhaps. But take P.F. Chang’s, according to Wikipedia the “P.F.” stands for founder Paul Fleming, who isn’t even Chinese (how about some transparency?) and they have over 200 restaurants. Their market cap is over a billion dollars. They charge extra for fried rice (though not for brown rice).

If it would get votes or TV time, or shake loose lobbying cash, no doubt it would be time to regulate Chinese menu pricing.

The new episode of The Crew Lounge hosted by Sarah and Bobby features Deltalina as a guest.

She’s still a flight attendant, teaches courses for Delta (not to mention doing promotional events), and she’s single. She’s happy to have folks come up to her and take photos, doesn’t like when people point from afar, and has been approached in an airport bathroom and just wanted to finish what she was doing…

Turns out the name originated on Flyertalk, a passenger called her that on a plane and she went with it, and it took off (it’s been used on CNN and elsewhere, and became semi-official, she adopted it for Twitter, here’s Deltalina’s Twitter feed.).

Katherine’s father is from Puerto Rico, speaks Spanish, often often flies Delta’s Latin American routes.

Here’s the Delta safety video, with the famous finger wag:

Continental agents do what their computer tells them to do. They aren’t especially empowered. And in a dispute between common sense and the computer, the computer is always right.

Continental doesn’t permit ‘holding’ an award except when there aren’t enough miles in the account, and you plan to transfer points in (e.g. from American Express). My understanding has been that Continental will only put an award on hold for 24 hours, which is plenty to make a transfer since Amex points transfer more or less instantly, sometimes the points won’t be available for 15 minutes or so but it’s more or less immediate.

Although each time I put an award on hold with Continental, the agents tell me they’re putting the awards on a three-day hold. The reservation on the Continental website will say just one-day, though this will usually change and indeed the three-day hold is what happens.

United on the other hand will do a three day hold (sometimes 72 hours exactly, sometimes midnight three days later) but only when miles are in the account at least with a partner award, and they’ll deduct the miles at the time they’re putting hte award on hold. What’s especially frustating if you’re a few miles short is that you can’t hold an award until all the miles are there, and even buying miles takes about 48 hours whereas with several other programs it’s instantaneous. One could easily wind up buying miles only to find that an award is no longer available once those miles post to your account.

Hard to guess which policy will survive the merger, in most things I’m guessing that the United architecture will be used (Mileage Plus is the bigger program, they’ll retain the name) but that Continental policies will eventually be put into place or they’ll transition towards those policies in advance of the actual merging of the programs. But that requires reprogramming IT systems, something United isn’t known for exceptional competence in. And American still allows 5-day holds (even if Delta only permits awards holds on their website, not over the phone, and even then for 24 hours only.. quite unfriendly especially when their website is so broken). I’m hopeful that the American policy won’t change, and that will encourage the combined United-Continental to offer some form of flexible holds. Long gone are the days when United allowed 30-day award holds and even those were easily extendable…

Another major difference is cultural between the two carriers. Continental agents are in the US, don’t operate on a 24-hour schedule, and aren’t as empowered as United agents. On the other hand, Continental doesn’t enforce the same routing rules on awards that United does. United agents will sometimes make up their own rules (I once had one tell me that I had to follow the overwater carrier’s routing rules on a partner award, that Asiana didn’t permit stopovers in Beijing on the way to Bangkok, and thus I’d have to leave the award as an open jaw and swim — when in reality the routing rules of the overwater carrier is a way to get around maximum permitted mileage restrictions on an award, if there’s a published routing you can use that to exceed mileage allowances).

But United agents are much more empowered, while Continental agents do what their computers tell them. United agents at a certain ‘level’ of permissions can override most things that are automatic in the Mileage Plus system, long before United introduced one-way awards level four (from memory) agents had the ability to offer one-way awards as an ‘exception’ (and agents were encouraged to collect a change fee for doing so, fee collection wasn’t automatic).

Yesterday I ran into the “computer is always right” roadblock with Continental. I held a business class roundtrip from Australia to the US. The award chart says this should be 135,000 miles, but Continentals computers priced it at 147,500 — business class outbound, first class return, even though there wasn’t a single first class segment (even domestic first class, which shouldn’t matter) on the itinerary. I went through multiple agents and supervisors, all of whom insisted I was wrong, the computer was right, but none who could explain why other than to speculate that Air New Zealand (the carrier on the return) might be more expensive because it’s better than United (true.. but hah!).

Now, I have a note out to someone at Continental who hopefully can intervene, but the Continental computers are king and supervisors don’t employ common sense to override them.

One other item this points to is that Continental does do one-way award pricing even though they require roundtrip awards. I also put together a US-South Africa award with the outbound in South African business and the return via Europe in First Class. The award priced at 142,500 — a hybrid of the ourbound business price and return first price. I had forgotten they do this and was pleasantly surprised, it’s something United doesn’t do. They let you combine saver awards with double miles awards on the same ticket as well.

Of course, United has one-way awards on United metal and effectively that means as long as you’re flying United you can price things the same way. But United doesn’t offer one-way awards with partner yet and doesn’t offer one-way awards over the phone, either. A function again of United IT challenges.

Ultimately the combined airline will certainly have one-way awards, the merged entity won’t take away this benefit, and I’d have to think they’ll offer it with partners online and by phone and then we’ll have the best of both worlds for award pricing. But I’d have to think that empowered agents go away, it seems as though it’s long been a Continental benchmark and their managers believe in rules and computers over discretion.

Cranky Flier wants to learn lessons from the handful of government grants to subsidize air service that haven’t been total failures (but hardly represent the best possible uses of funds in a world of tradeoffs, hunger and homelessness and whatnot). His post is titled, When Airports Should Subsidize Airlines.

The short answer, though, is that they shouldn’t. And Cranky almost understands that:

As a general rule, if you as an airport think there’s some insanely large untapped market that nobody knows about, you’re probably wrong. The airlines do this for a living, and if there’s a missed opportunity, they’re likely to find it. In nearly all cases, it’s best to just work on lowering your operating costs as much as possible to try to attract service for the long run. Otherwise, you’ll just end up paying for service for a couple years and then end up with nothing.

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Cranky want to learn how to make noon and midnight happen more often in a 24 hour period.

Brett points to three supposed successes — getting Delta to keep flying from Portland to Tokyo during the flight’s off-season (what’s the real public benefit in that?), guaranteeing a few months’ of minimum revenue to encourage Horizon to start serving Santa Rosa, and Southwest’s service to Panama City, Florida where major development is underway (and this one is hardly a fair argument for the government’s program, since it’s actually subsidized by the developer and not by the government… and what’s more, Southwest’s CEO says he doesn’t think the experience is replicable.).

It’s absolutely true that there are occasional grants that will lead to continuing air service. It’s very difficult to pick ex ante which those are going to be. If you make 100 grants, and 5 turn out well, and you don’t know up front which those five will be, you shouldn’t make any in the first place. Your portfolio will be operating at a huge loss.

And those that are obvious enough up front that they might turn out successful are projects that an airline might liekly undertake without the subsidy.. but might as well wait on to see whether they can obtain the subsidy first before starting service. The better investments that the government might make are ones they’re unlikely to be able to influence one way or the other, and the worse ones will pretty clearly turn out badly.

And on the whole, don’t forget what these programs usually wind up paying for.

It’s not really reasonable to say, “great, let’s keep having the program but make only the good investments.” That’s simply not how it works, or could ever work.