Last night I wrote about an offer for 50,000 American Airlines miles after $750 in purchases on a new credit card within 4 months and an additional 50,000 miles for spending $10,000 on the card within a year.

There’s also a nice 75,000 mile signup bonus offer for those who don’t think they can meet the $10,000 minimum spend requirement — this one requires just $1500 in spend on the card within 6 months.

All of these offers come with first year annual fee waived.

But they’re being sent out by email, and the links in the emails take you directly to an application. That’s leading to plenty of teeth gnashing on Flyertalk, and much speculation on blogs, that the offer is targeted and that folks using the links may not get the bonuses.

To me that makes little sense. Anything’s possible, I suppose, but the offer sent out by e-mail does not say that it is targeted. It appears that everyone getting the offer by email is getting the same link, or rather is being taken to the same page, it’s not as though it’s a personalized URL that’s filling in unique information.

The email could certainly say the offer is for the recipient only, that it is non-transferrable, but it does not. It would certainly seem legitimate to receive the email, forward it to a friend, and they’re excited to sign up and do.

And what seems to happen is that hte application link embeds an offer code that’s passed to Citibank, which then causes Citibank to know how many miles to award.

From the comments in yesterday’s post on the offer, Menashe wrote:

Signed up for and got approved for 100K Visa card. I called and the representative confirmed that the terms were 50K and $750 in spend and another 50K after $10,000 within a year.

I had a Citi AAdvantage M/C, but canceled it 9 months ago.

A Flyertalk member took the same approach:

Me and GF applied were both instantly approved. Called up this morning spoke to them to ensure that this was indeed the fee-waived/75K mile offer that we had signed up for and was told yes is showing as so on both and will be credited the miles after meeting the spend.

And another Flyertalk member reported:

I just applied and was instantly approved! I called to make sure that I was in fact receiving the 75,000 miles, (making sure to not actually state how many miles I THOUGHT I was going to receive), and it was confirmed that if I spend $1,500 in the time period, I would receive the miles.

Now, I’m not making guarantees as to who will be able to get this bonus if they’ve had the card before, or that Citibank won’t screw this up somehow for any given individual, but the interesting thing here is that folks who signed up for the offer that did not receive the email got approved for the card and the correct offer has been applied to their account. Just as I’d have expected.

There’s no warranty of course with any of this, but it should all work and indications thus far are that it will. And of course what’s the worst case scenario here, after all…?

Here’s the links again…

• 75,000 miles after $1500 in purchases within 6 months, no fee the first year –
  75,000 mile signup bonus: Visa
  75,000 mile signup bonus: Visa Business
  75,000 mile signup bonus: American Express (still issued by Citi, of course, not Amex)

• 100,000 miles: 50,000 miles after $750 in purchases within 4 months, and another 50,000 miles after $10,000 in purchases within 12 months, no fee the first year —
  100,000 mile signup bonus: Visa
  100,000 mile signup bonus: Visa Business
  100,000 mile signup bonus: American Express (still issued by Citi, of course, not Amex)

Personally, though the offers say that they’re valid through October 31, I wouldn’t wait that long. Something tells me that Citibank hasn’t envisioned the degree to which interested parties might take them up on this. So while it shouldn’t be necessary to jump on this instantly, personally I still would.

I’ve long resisted installing the Priority Cliub toolbar on my computer, their 300 point offer for doing so just wasn’t lucrative enough for me to bother downloading software and uninstalling it. And the last thing I want or need is more clutter on my laptop (not to mention the eternal ire of my IT department).

But Frugal Travel Guy points out that you don’t actually have to download the toolbar to get the points — you just have to enter your Priority Club number and PIN and your name and e-mail address.  Click submit, the points post instantly, and you’re just taken to a screen where you have the option to download the toolbar.  Works like a charm.

So no reason not to do it.

It’s not just US Airways jumping on the mileage mall bonus train, United and Priority Club are offering bonuses, too. Though they aren’t as lucrative as what US Airways has come out with.

Priority Club is offering 1000 bonus points if you spend between $100 and $500, 1500 bonus points if you spend between $500 and $1000, and 2500 bonus points if you spend $1000 or more at their retail partners through the Priority Club shopping mall by September 7. For a $100 purchase that’s a bonus 10 points per dollar, not bad. If you spend $500 it’s a bonus 3 points per dollar. “Meh.” And of course you don’t get any incremental bonus for spending more than the minimum for each level while not reaching the next bonus level. Plus of course the most points you can earn from the offer is 2500… which in Priority Club-land isn’t very many.

United’s Mileage Plus mall will give you 1000 bonus miles for $500 or more in qualifying spend with their retail partners by September 10. Woo hoo!

Neither of these offers require registration, and neither is all that lucrative. But if you happen to be making purchases online anyway, they can add to the kitty.

I had been hearing rumblings of new benefits coming for the Starwood American Express card for awhile. I had heard a number of really creative ideas, and had been hoping for something game changing.

American Express had gotten pretty creative with their co-branded Hilton Surpass card, offering top-tier Diamond status based on credit card spend. I knew $40,000 spend wouldn’t actually get Starwood’s Platinum status, which is actually useful (much more so than Hilton Diamond).

But with the pending introduction of a Hyatt co-branded card (about which I get very few answers, and all Chase execs seem to clam up, there seem to have been some problems in paradise even before the card rolls out), I rather thought that Starwood and American Express might come out guns blazing.

Instead, (hat tip TM Travel World) they are raising the annual fee from $45 to $65, eliminating the annual 50% off rack rate certificate that few used (though which is sometimes useful on suites in particular and at some properties saved $20 or $30 a night occasionally), and introducing two new benefits:

• 5 nights towards elite status annually. So 20 nights to Gold and 45 to Platinum (rather than 25 and 50, respectively). Achieving Gold is roughly meaningless, the incremental benefit over ‘preferred plus’ is really just a 50% points bonus on in-hotel spend. The card still offers Gold after $30,000 in spend in any case, so it’s a benefit only to lower spend customers not working on Platinum status via nights. But this will be a big deal for those travelers who regularly barely make Platinum on nights. There’s no help here for folks who make Platinum with 25 stays.

• Third night free on paid Sheraton properties, but only some Sheratons will participate and I’d guess it’ll mirror the ones that participate in similar promotions Starwood runs offering discounted stays without using the card.

I’m not concerned about losing the “SPG50″ disocunt certificates, they aren’t a huge loss. The third night free at participating Sheratons isn’t much of a gain, either.

The $20 increase in annual fee isn’t huge, Starwood points are worth enough to me as a result of my spend that I’ll eat the increase. Anyone whose decision is driven by the difference in fee probably shouldn’t have been using the card in the first place. And it’s still less expensive or at least no more expensive than most serious competitor cards on the market.

And the five nights towards status will be helpful to some, but I would have loved to have seen the opportunity for more elite credit based on spend volume or the ability to earn stay credits tather than nights.

Bottom-line, some will feel slightly positive and others slightly negative, these reactions should mostly balance out. Much ado about nothing.

The Global Traveller has the details on Shanghai Airlines’ departure from Star Alliance.

Shanghai Airlines will leave Star Alliance at 31 October 2010.

The alliance status of some of the Chinese airlines has been up in the air for a while due to the complicated and evolving cross-ownerships in each other – Shanghai is in the process of being merged with China Eastern, which earlier this year announced an intention to join Sky Team. China Eastern is itself partly owned by both Cathay Pacific (Oneworld) and Air China (Star Alliance). So it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Shanghai Airlines would leave Star Alliance.

Travellers on Shanghai Airlines will now have a period of a year or two without alliance benefits but existing Star Alliance awards on Shanghai Airlines for travel after October will be honoured. Those flying on paid tickets on Shanghai Airlines from November will no longer be able to earn Star Alliance frequent flyer status miles. Whether redeemable miles can continue to be earnt will depend on the frequent flyer program being credited to as some may continue to have Shanghai Airlines as a non-alliance partner and others may drop them.

Shanghai Airlines joined Star at the same time as Air China, and they’re an interesting operation but I’ve never had the opportunity to fly them. I’ve also never booked an award segment with them, as though their inventory shows up without difficulty on the All Nippon website I’ve only ever attempted bookings via US Airways and US Airways agents have never been able to see the flights.

Hey, I managed to get Continental to book (and price the taxes on) an award with a couple of Blue1 segments, that was an incredible undertaking, I suppose I should be thankful.

But Shanghai Airlines, I hardly even knew ya! Presumably they’ll be a part of Skyteam at some point, maybe my dormant Delta miles will re-acquaint me with you in the future.

I haven’t found a web page detailing the offer, but American is sending email solicitations for their co-branded products from Citibank offering 40,000 American AIrlines miles after $750 in spend, first year fee waived, and two lounge passes.

The previous best offer I was aware of was for 35,000 miles, fee waived, but without the lounge passes.

Here’s the Visa link, the American Express link, and the Business Visa link. (Oddly they didn’t send along a similar link for their Mastercard or their Business Mastercard.)

Now, these links take you straight to the application.  So you can trust me (and Citibank) as to what they are promising.  But that’s the offer from the email.  Passing along in case it’s useful, and would appreciate your hitting the comments if you find a web page dedicated to them or that spell out the offer.

(HT: Samir.)

Update: As Frugal Travel Guy points out, a bunch of different offers are being sent out today, and according to this Flyertalk thread some are even better — a 75,000 mile sign up bonus (!!) and a 50,000 mile bonus plus a second 50,000 after $10k in minimum spend. There’s a second Flyertalk thread as well, but no one has yet managed to post links for the more lucrative offers. Keep your eyes open in your e-mail inbox — and your junkmail folder — in case anything good pops up!

Update 2: Someone has posted the links from the emails they received about the better offers. Again, the links go straight to an application page — there’s no ‘landing page’ outlining the bonus offer.

For the 50,000 miles after $750 in purchases within 4 months and another 50,000 miles after $10,000 in purchases within a year, fee waived first year, here’s the Visa link, the Amex link, and the Business Visa link.

And this is apparently a link for the Visa Signature with 75,000 miles after $1500 in purchases within six months, fee waived first year.

No guarantees of course that these links will work for you, but they are links that members of Flyertalk provided out of the emails received today.

Update 3: TM Travel World has links to the 3 different cards offering the 75,000 mile signup bonus after $1500 in spend within 6 months. This is the better offer for those who won’t be able to meet the $10,000 spend requirement for the card with the bigger signup offer.

Back in December, FTD offered a lucractive mileage-earning promo with United: 30 miles per dollar plus 1500 miles per order.  That link is still active and should continue to provide the offer as long as it is.

Obviously most lucrative with smaller orders, .e.g a $29.99 purchase yields 2400 miles.  But not worthwhile for most on a straight points-purchase basis because of the shipping charges that FTD adds to orders (~ $15 in most cases).

Still, it’s far less expensive to order flowers through a deal like this than to buy miles.  And oh yeah, you get flowers too!

And if you’re going to buy flowers online anyway, it’s the best current offer that I’m aware of, so I thought I’d bring it forward from the December archives.  Love it when deals last longer than one imagines they will…

Via Lucky, channelling the Traveling Better forum’s Jon NYC, it appears that American is eliminating their ‘close-in’ award booking fees for elite members.

United eliminated these fees for everyone last summer (after introducing them in the fall of 2006.

Delta got rid of these fees for everyone, but they’re apparently considering bringing them back, at least for non-elites and folks who don’t hold a Skymiles co-branded American Express card and who aren’t booking with a Saturday night stay.

The driver for eliminating these fees is that accounting rule changes don’t let the programs recognize revenue from sale of miles until those miles are redeemed (or expired). So the programs really want to see members booking awards when ‘low’ priced seats are available, seats that are very inexpensive to the program. And the close-in booking fees are huge discouragements to booking those awards.

The reason for the fees, though, is precisely to discourage the use of awards for last minue bookings, so that members don’t book cheap seats on miles instead of paying cash. A bit of a tug-o-war between the programs and revenue management.

Like Lucky, I’m surprised that this benefit is being extended only to elite members. But I imagine it’s a compromise in that tug-o-war.

Meanwhile, American is also apparently matching a long-standing United benefit for its top tier elites, AAdvantage Executive Platinum members will be exempt from fees for award ticket cancellation and mileage redeposit fees, and from fees on changes to award tickets, and this will apply to awards issued from an Executive Platinum’s account (as opposed to awards issued in the name of the Executive Platinum member). So if an Executive Platinum redeems for a family member they can make fee-free changes. If a family member (who is not Executive Platinum) redeems for an Executive Platinum, change fees would apply. This matches United’s rules for the benefit.

United has new online games with prize drawings, what’s most interesting though is the good chance of instant winning 10% electronic discount certificates. Folks on Flyertalk are racking up the discount codes.  Plus the games are actually pretty well-done, at least as far as these gimmick marketing online games go.

Here’s one for my blog readers in Spain. I realize that this blog often has a North American bias in the extreme, but those nifty Google stats pages do tell me I have friends (or at least frenemies) on the other side of the pond. So hopefully someone finds this useful!

Via Frequent Flyer Bonuses, Star Alliance member Spanair is offering a free flight on one of their new routes for every three flights taken on any Spanair route.

Qualifying flights must be taken by December 31, and redemption flights must be flown by March 31.

New routes include Barcelona to Belgrade, Dubrovnik, Edinburgh, Malta, Marseille, Naples, Nice, Nador, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Venice, Zagreb; Madrid to Belgrade, Edinburgh, Dubrovnik; and Alicante to Algiers.

The US Airways Back-to-School Bonus Miles promo offers cumulative bonuses based on the number of US Airways mileage mall merchants you make purchases with by August 31.

There’s no bonus for buying from just a single merchant, but a 20% bonus for 2 merchants, 30% for 3, 40% for 4, up to a 100% bonus for shopping with 10 merchants during the promotion period.

No registration is required, and all US Airways Dividend Miles mall merchants qualify.

Transactions have to post to your account by November 5 with a transaction date between July 26 and August 31 in order to qualify. And only the first 10 (based on posting date) shopping transactions will earn a bonus. Bonuses will post to accounts on November 5.

This one certainly isn’t as lucrative as the Holiday Shopping promo where 5 merchant transactins earned a 250% bonus, and there’s no “Track-it-Back opportunity” where a merchant is awarding so many miles that the bonus makes it worthwhile to purchase product just to earn the miles.

But it’s a good bonus nonetheless, one that will make me pay more attention to the US Airways mileage-earning opportunities for online purchases over the next month. Though in most cases I find it worthwhile to make purchases via the Continental mall, where my Continental Mastercard earns double miles on all purchases there all the time. But as always it comes down to the specific miles offered in each program for each merchant, something that I use EV Reward to check on before buying anything!

Via Kohoutek on Flyertalk, American National Insurance Company offers 500 US Airways miles for getting an insurance quote… or for not getting a quote:

To request 500 Dividend Miles Offer without obtaining a free rate quote, please send a postcard or letter to Dividend Miles Offer, 2450 South Shore Boulevard, Suite 401, League City, TX 77573-2997. Include your name, address, email address and Dividend Miles number. Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing. One postcard or letter request per Dividend Miles account.

The New York Times reports that the current version of the pending New York State budget

includes a 20 percent increase in hotel occupancy taxes for travel intermediaries (meaning travel agencies, tour operators and online travel companies).

Get that? A tax on travel agencies and online booking services. That’s distinct nad separate from the hotel occupancy tax.

The “Interactive Travel Services Association” calls this “the Connecticut and New Jersey tourism promotion act” because raising the cost of travel to New York would push travelers elsewhere.

But that aanalysis is really incomplete. It’s actually the “major hotel chain revenue channel integrity act.” It’s the Marriotts, Starwoods, Hiltons, and Hyatts versus Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. This tax applies to rooms booked via third party sites, not rooms booked with a hotel or chain directly.

The major hotel companies have been trying for several years to wrest control of the distribution fo the rooms away from sites like Expedia, pushing bookings onto their own sites. In the travel slump of late 2001 through 2003, hotels relied increasingly on third-party discounters, but paying those commissions or offering blocks of rooms at a wholesale discount was a costly way to move their inventory. So they’ve worked hard to bring customers back to booking directly through their own channels.

That’s why chains like Starwood and Hilton only offer elite benefits to members staying on rates booked directly with the chain. Marriott still offers elite status benefits to customers regardless of how they booked their stays. But the major chains even once recognized status on stays booked through opaque sites like Priceline. I knew people who qualified for top tier Diamond status with Hyatt strictly on cheap Priceline stays (and would use those stays to count towards promotions like Faster Free NIghts, where two stays would yield a free night… and where a phone call charged to the room on a free night would then count as a stay towards the next free night).

I still believe that a hotel is well-advised to treat their elite members as elite members regardless of the booking channel the customer uses. If a hotel is sold out on the Starwood site but Expedia still sells them a room, their loyalty led them to book the Starwood hotel, then their Starwood Preferred Guest elite level should certainly be recognized.

And even when a guest walks in on a Priceline stay, that person has still shown their loyalty over time to the chain, and that person ought to be recognized as valued by the brand whenever they set food into one of the brand’s hotel properties.

Radisson Hotels ‘gets this’ internationally, where their elite members are welcome any time for a complimetnary coffee or hot chocolate and to use wireless internet in the lobby lounge. Their elite levels are always welcome.

Or as the Flyertalk member that I learned the most from over time, PremEx, used to say “I am not my rate.” Seven years later, I still remember this post of Mark’s about Starwood not awarding points on stays booked through third parties:

Welcome to the Starwood Preferred Rate® Program. You are no longer a Preferred Guest.

Forget about the 25 or 50 or 75 stays you had on normal rates, that earned you Platinum. Walk in the door on Jan 1, 2004 on an occasional Priceline or other third party booking…and magically and mystically you’ve somehow become a Non-Preferred Guest!

And now that that fundamental change in the program has kicked-off and that wall has been shattered to pieces, where will it end?

Only property elite benefits when staying on Rack Rates? That also would certainly improve elite benefits too…on only those times that you were staying on Rack Rates!

Slippery slope, my friend.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer to be a Preferred Guest. As long as I’m at a Starwood property, I prefer and expect to get the recognition I earned. And I earned that status all on qualifying rates.

Because I’m a Platinum Preferred Guest. I am not my rate.

In any case, this has long been a strategy to push their customers to book through their own channels in order to re-capture commission and incentive revenue being paid to third party sites.

Now it seems they have help from government. You can book directly through the hotel or, if you prefer, through a third party website like Expedia. But if you do that, the State of New York will tax you.

Corporate welfare, in the guise of raising revenue to close a state budget gap, and with the ‘veneer’ of fairness. In most cases, third party booking sites remit taxes based on the price of the room charged to them by the hotel, rather than the retail rate they charge the consumer. Of course, a hotel could charge a lower price directly to the consuemr and pay the lower tax. But to the extent they do not do that, some argue that different tax schemes are at play. (I actually disagree — in both cases, the amount of money being paid to the hotel for a room night is what’s taxed.)

But the fairness arguemnt only gets you so far, as in North Carolina:

North Carolina recently passed a similar tax on travel intermediaries, but in this case the tax levied is the same as whatever the hotel occupancy tax is in the given municipality. North Carolina’s law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2011.

In New York State’s case, there’s a unique tax proposed on third party booking agencies that would not apply to booking with a hotel chain directly. Disproportionality, clearly. And something that the hotel chains themselves have been wanting desperately since at least 2003.

United is discounting short-haul awards booked by August 31 for travel through January 7, 2011. Instead of the usual 12,500 miles one-way or 25,000 miles roundtrip, they’re charging 8,750 one-way or 17,500 roundtrip.

This applies to awards booked at least 7 days in advance of travel (no discount on last-minute award bookings), and is for flights that are 700 miles or less each way and only within the Continental U.S. or between the U.S. and Canada.

That’s a better value for those awards, of course, and I’ll take the discount. It’s for coach only, and I can certainly stand coach on a short hop. But it’s still not the way I’d tend to use my miles, and the discount isn’t “what it once was.”

Back around 2005 and 2006, United and American offered short-haul awards — flights 750 miles or less — for 15,000 miles. Continental offered 20,000 mile awards for flights of 1500 miles or less.

They’ve raised the price and reduced the distance of these awards in bringing them back, and they’re for a limited time only. Still, charging fewer miles is better. And interesting to see United not playing total lame duck, especially with their boss man planning to step down with the Continental merger.

On the Economy Plus One-time Option Page, United details a short-term promotion where customers traveling in economy plus from August 6 – August 16 can request a complimentary drink.

Complimentary alcoholic beverage offer for Economy Plus customers is available during first beverage service only on flights departing August 6 through August 16, 2010. Upon request, each customer seated in the Economy Plus section during the promotion period is eligible for one (1) complimentary alcoholic beverage.

That’s great for elites sitting in coach, of course. And it might just get some more people to buy up to Economy Plus. More importantly I’d love to see it as a test of developing a real premium economy product, beyond just 3 to 4 inches of legroom. When United was unloading excess amenity kits they were giving old ones away to folks sitting in Economy Plus on international flights.

To date United hasn’t really figured out what it wants Economy Plus to be, they talk about it as a true premium economy and they market the dickens out of it, but it’s been legroom-only. Sure would be interesting if they decided to get serious about it.

Holly Hegeman reports that Graham Atkinson will “not be staying with the “new” United.”

Though United’s Jeff Foland will run the combined loyalty program in his place.

This seems like a strange move to me, they’re cleaning house at the top but leaving a United person in place.

I still expect that program to be called Mileage Plus, it’s the name that the larger pool of members are identified with. And I assume they inherit the Mileage Plus architecture. So at least initially more features of the United program than the Continental one, though I fully expect changes between now and the day the switch is flipped to merge membership lists.

First, I assume that some time after the United-Continental transaction closes, but before the programs themselves combine, that there will be a way to move miles back-and-forth between the two programs. US Airways-America West did this. Delta-Northwest did this. It will be expected.

Second, once that happens members will have a window in which they can take advantage of the best of both programs — United offers one-way awards, Continental more generous routing rules (a stopover and an open jaw rather htan just one or the other on awards between geographic regions). And of course Continental doesn’t ‘block’ award inventory.

Third, Starnet blocking has to go away. During a period where members can move miles back and forth they can use miles without blocking by moving the points to Continental. Putting the Continental folks in charge, given that they haven’t engaged in blocking of partner awards, suggests that they might not with a combined program. And United’s own blocking has been much, much lighter than any time in years since early May. I had never seen United allow booking of Thai premium class seats between Europe and Bangkok, and I can regularly access Lufthansa’s transatlantic award inventory, something that was nearly impossible at end of April.

Fourth, we’ll get to keep United’s one-way awards, but also get United’s expiring miles. We’ll probably get United’s award routing rules, as well. That’s all a trade which is worthwhile if we lose the blocking of award inventory, though I’d love to keep Continental routing rules.

I do worry somewhat about Jeff Foland in particular running the loyalty program. As Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales for United he’s in charge of customer contact centers (so their offshare call center implementation) and eCommerce (united.bomb).

These are certainly “interesting times” that Continental and United loyalty members live in.

Every so often American seems to offer the opportunity for 10% discount codes on purchase of airfare through their marketing partners.

Everyone who ‘votes’ in the Century in the Making sweepstakes by September 12 will receive a 10% discount code valid for purchase and travel through October 26.

Wandering Aramean reports that Southwest is going to start enforcing the expiration dates on their drink chits.

This may seem minor to some (most?) but I have to say, I have a stash of these old drink coupon books and despite having expiration dates on the coupons it’s always been nice that Southwest would take them. I could give them away to colleagues stuck on a Southwest flight, or offer up a bunch to buy a round for the plane.

It was just so very Southwest that these coupons would always be taken, no questions asked. But no longer.

Southwest has had a VERY lenient policy regarding drink coupons over the years. Most notably was that, although there was an expiration date printed on the coupons, they were always accepted. As of Sunday, August 1, 2010 that will no longer be the case. Starting in the new month no chits will be accepted past their printed expiry date. Additionally, chits that do not have an expiry date printed on them will inherit such a date: August 31, 2011. Finally, the drink coupons that customers receive for buying Business Select fares – the most expensive fares Southwest offers – will now only be valid on the day of travel; they cannot be saved for future use.

There are also some changes expected with the next round of drink chits that get issued. Most notably they have the customer’s name and Rapid Rewards member number printed on them. No word yet from the company on why they will be personalized but it will certainly limit the 3rd party market value of the chits. Selling a drink chit on eBay is much less likely to happen if it has a name and member number on it.

I guess I could head out to Dulles this weekend and start handing out my soon-to-be-worthless stash at a Southwest boarding gate..

Travel Weekly has published a pretty damning hit piece on Kate Hanni, the airline passenger ‘consumer advocate’ with hair-brained schemes that seem to make passengers worse off and who seems as inclined towards publicity for its own sake as, say, Chuck Schumer.

It’s a rambling piece with a whole lot of irrelevant detail and meaningless facts dropped as innuendo. Still, there’s a good bit in there that helps paint a picture of FlyersRights.org as a confused shop and Kate Hanni in particular as erratic and untrustworthy.

There are allegations that she’s misled Congress, especially about the size of her ‘membership’ which appears to be anyone who signed an online petition, and the number of calls her organization receives. Her group hasn’t ever filed a tax return, and seems very lackadaisical in handling of money.

She’s alleged to have manipulated the data in her airline report card to get the results she wanted (she hates Delta) — describing her group’s use of ubstantiated date as what makes it ‘distinct.’

Last March, for example, FlyersRights’ report card identified Delta as the worst violator of passenger rights. It was not the first time Hanni had singled out Delta in this way. The airline was named worst in 2009, too.

But draft copies of the report made available to Travel Weekly indicate that Delta scored at the bottom in 2008 only after Hanni adjusted the scoring metrics she had used in earlier reports…

Mogel pointed out that change in methodology included unreported tarmac delays compiled from unsubstantiated media reports, hotline calls and email. “I used to debate with her constantly about those numbers,” he said.

Hanni says such unofficial sources are what makes the organization’s report cards “distinct,” adding, “We have a hotline and we should use information we get from it.”

…In effect, Foreman switched the grading system from a purely objective ranking by number of incidents to a subjective interpretation based on a given incident’s perceived severity. Foreman defended that change, arguing, “Sometimes, a grading system can be subjective because that’s what it is.”

Whatever the new methodology, the numbers do not appear to stand up to scrutiny. A Travel Weekly review of flights cited by Hanni in this year’s report card as “unreported” by the airlines revealed that many of those flights had, in fact, been reported. In other cases, DOT data revealed that no delays had occurred in the first place or that the delay had been minor.

The article also claims Hanni has used her organization to agitate for a contributor to obtain federal contracts.

Oh, and there’s even a sex tape.

Most of this is entirely beside the point, which really is that her group delves into issues that she’s acknowledged she has had little expertise in, and even her core claims about tarmac delays and the need for the recently-enacted “three-hour rule” for domestic flights have been ill-conceived.

I was walking into a meeting when my cell phone rang. It was someone in the auditing department at US Airawys.

“This is XXXX from US Airways. I see you have an upcoming trip with [my wife]. Are you still planning on taking that trip?”

“Umm, which trip is that?” I do have more than one upcoming itinerary, so really didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Departing on XXXXX.” Oh, my India trip! Now I was scared, I’m being called by an auditor about an award redemption. And I thought she might do something unpleasant. Like cancel my award.

“Yes, of course. What seems to be the matter?”

“Well, you don’t have enough miles in the account for that.”

“The miles were taken out of my wife’s and my accounts separately for this. And I certainly do have plenty of miles still in my account!”

“Well, the miles were taken from your wife’s account but there’s no other mileage number in the reservation. And she didn’t have enough miles.” Now I was really concerned that she might do something unpleasant. Like cancel my award.

Leave it to US Airways to issue tickets, and not even have an audit travel of the miles tied to a reservation. The tickets were queued up for auditing, flagged somehow, because miles were pulled for only one ticket instead of two. The auditor looked at the account, saw there were enough miles to support the second ticket, and was ready to cancel my trip. Glad that I answered the phone, though I like to think they’d have left a message with a number to call them back and would have given me the chance to do so.

In fact, the miles were pulled out of my account for my ticket and my wife’s account for hers. But apparently because the reservation was initially set up as two passengers on a single record locator when I held it, and only split later when they pulled both of our miles, both reservations appeared as though they were being support by my wife’s account. My miles were taken, but that deduction wasn’t in any way tied to my reservation!

Once the auditor looked up my account, saw the miles were pulled from it, she entered my Dividend Miles number into the reservation (had no idea it wasn’t already in their, the US Airways website isn’t especially reliable…), and assured me that I was all good.

Here I thought I was already good when I could see all of my flights with ticket numbers on the operating carriers’ websites. And indeed I still can, so fortunately US AIrways hasn’t done anything unpleasant. Like cancelling my award.

In the end all was fine, but it points out how US AIrways’ systems don’t speak well with each other, how processes are manual, how small glitches on the part of an agent can trigger problems, and how US Airways has gotten much more aggressive these last few months in their auditing.