Via Wandering Aramean, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America have announced a frequent flyer tie-in.

You can now earn miles in Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club when flying Virgin America, or in Virgin America’s Elevate when flying Virgin Atlantic. But the earn rates are really bad.

Virgin’s Flying Club earning is as follows:

Main Cabin* – 50% of miles flown
Main Cabin Refundable* – 100% of miles flown
Main Cabin Select Instant Upgrade* – 100% of miles flown
Main Cabin Select* – 100% of miles flown
First Class* – 150% of miles flown

Not that you’d want to, but crediting Virgin Atlantic flights to Virgin America’s Elevate program offers pathetic earn rates. The cheapest fares only earn at 10% of miles flown as points (that’s not as bad as it sounds, given Virgin America’s ‘points’ system, but it’s still pretty bad).

Still, this means that if I ever get around to flying Virgin American that I’m not ‘throwing away the miles’ because at least I can credit to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, as I have a decent stash of those — when there’s not a decent promo for rental cars, I credit my Avis rentals there (1000 miles even on a one-day rental and on discounted rates) and they’re an American Express transfer partner so I can always top off if I need to.

More options are better than fewer, the reciprocal earning is good even if ungenerous. For now it appears to be just an earning relationship and that there aren’t yet opportunities for reciprocal redemption.

Registration is required. Every three stays through September 30 earns a free night valid December 19.

On the one hand, Starwood’s limiting the offer to two brands annoys somewhat, but presumably there will be a separate offer coming chain-wide shortly. And the earning period for these is fairly short.

But it’s nice to see Starwood giving away free nights, and not just free weekend nights. Maybe they’ll learn from Hyatt yet!

(Hat tip TM Travel World.)

Delta Skymiles is offering a 20% bonus on points transferred from American Express Membership Rewards through September 30. (Registration required.)

The bonus, though, isn’t expected right away:

Bonus miles will be posted 4 to 6 weeks following the end of the promotion.

The offer is not a good reason to transfer American Express points into Delta Skymiles. But if you’re going to make such a transfer anyway (eg to top off towards an award you know is available) then you might as well get the bonus…

United just announced a Twitter deal to Australia, 40% off (for real) to Australia in October and November.

These deals usually don’t last long, just a couple of hours, although at times continuing to enter the promotion code will continue to work (at times even for a couple of days!) long after the deal ‘ends’ on the landing page for the offer.

In this case, the promo code is TWRAU.

These fares do earn miles, but are not ugpradable with United 1K Systemwide vouchers.

Fares aren’t as low as a month ago when United made a similar 40% off offer, but that’s a function of the calendar — October and November are more expensive months to fly to Sydney than August/September.

I’m stuck flying nothing but domestically for the next couple of months, I have an India trip coming up (my first time in India!) but I’ve been still itching to at least book something internationally. So I did some research and put together a first class award to Asia, something I do at least once a year.

It’s still about six months off, but I booked it anyway just to satisfy my wanderlust. Remember that planning a vacation is what brings the most happiness. And I’m pretty happy with what I came up with, flying All Nippon, Singapore, and Thai.

I thought I’d share some of the comprehensive availability searching that I did yesterday, in case it’s useful to any of y’all in planning your own first class awards. In all cases I searched beginning mid-January for (2) first class seats, and given what I wanted I was searching Asian Star Alliance airlines to and from the East Coast ia the Pacific.

Chicago O’Hare – Tokyo Narita (All Nippon): 1/17, 1/18, 1/20, 1/25, 1/26, 2/1, 2/3, 2/8, 2/15, 2/16, 2/17, 2/21, 2/22, 2/23, 2/24, 3/2 [through June 1]

Washington Dulles – Tokyo Narita (All Nippon): Nothing [through June 1]

Tokyo Narita – Chicago O’Hare (All Nippon): 1/20, 1/21, 1/25, 1/26, 1/28, 2/1, 2/5, 2/8, 2/9, 2/10, 2/11, 2/12, 2/15, 2/17, 2/19, 2/22, 2/23, 2/25, 4/1, 4/5, 4/6, 4/7, 4/8, 4/9, 4/12, 4/15, 4/16, 4/19, 4/20, 4/21, 4/22, 4/26, 4/27 [through June 1]

Tokyo Narita – Washington Dulles (All Nippon): 1/20, 1/21, 1/26, 1/27, 2/1, 2/2, 2/3, 2/4, 2/8, 2/9, 2/10, 2/15, 2/16, 2/17, 2/23, 2/24, 4/1, 4/6, 4/7, 4/12, 4/19, 4/20, 4/21, 4/22, 4/27 [through June 1]

Seoul – New York JFK (Asiana): 2/8, 2/18, 2/26, 3/28, 4/11, 4/18, 4/25, 5/2, 5/9, 5/16 [through June 1]

New York JFK – Seoul (Asiana): Nothing [through March 31]

New York JFK – Tokyo Narita (All Nippon): Nothing [through March 31]

Tokyo Narita – New York JFK: Nothing [through April 10]

Asiana used to offer outstanding availability in first class both from Chicago and New York. But Chicago has gone two-cabin 777, and in November the JFK flight downgauges from a 747 to a 777 with a smaller first class cabin. So it becomes quite difficult to get more than one first class award seat.

ANA was once incredibly easy to get first class awards with, thinking back to 2006. Their old-style (“SuperStyle”) first class had 12 seats and most days and routes I’d find availability. When they moves to suites, eight seats on the 777, it became incredibly hard to get first class awards except for at the very last minute. Two years ago they started opening up in advance more or less in the Winter months only. I do find it odd though that Dulles – Tokyo has no flights with two first class award seats, while Tokyo – Dulles has a reasonable number of dates open.

Chicago has long been the easiest, DC the first cabin often goes out quite empty and should be even easier than it is, and there are Los Angeles and San Francisco flights as well — I didn’t check those.

Similarly for Asiana, Los Angeles – Seoul is an option for first class, and Frankfurt – Seoul has reasonable availability in first also. But again, those flights were beyond the scope of my search.

In February, Chase announced that they’d be bringing a new Hyatt co-branded card to market. And since then we’ve heard… nothing. Chase execs that I’ve pressed have clammed up, ‘we’re not allowed to talk about it.’ I surmised tha there might be trouble in paradise on the way to making the card a reality.

But Hyatt now says that the card is on track to launch “in a month or two.”

No word yet on benefits.

After 21 years, the Freddie Awards were retired. And that was sad news for those of us who follow loyalty programs closely. They were real awards voted on by large numbers of real travelers, focusing on what’s being done right by frequent flyer and frequent guest programs. These were awards programs wanted to win, and really did influence the thinking of program executives towards how to better deliver value for their members.

Moreover, there really does have to be a way — beyond just reading this blog — of answering the question, which program is the best?

Fortunately there’s going to be a new award stepping precisely into this space, the press release has gone out, so this is now public, the new Frequent Traveler Awards are coming.

Voting will begin next month and the awards ceremony will be on November 4 in Houston. Flyertalk and Internet Brands are working on the project as sponsors, though there’ll be more partners coming online shortly. I’m deeply involved as chair of the award nominations committee.

Here’s how it will work:

Frequent flyer and frequent guest programs from around the world will compete in five categories. Voters will select programs in one of three global regions: Americas, Europe/Africa, and the Middle East/Asia and Oceania.

Awards will be presented in five categories to recognize the best airline and hotel promotion for earning, best promotion for redemption, best redemption ability, elite benefits and branded credit card. A sixth award will recognize the overall airline and hotel ‘Program of the Year’ in each region. In addition, a separate award will honor significant contributions to the loyalty industry by an individual or corporation.

The Frequent Traveler Awards will be voted on by frequent travelers worldwide, allowing them to rank airline and hotel programs from their point of view. The merits of what each program offers will determine the winners.

You can follow on Twitter and also on Facebook to stay up-to-date and make sure that your vote counts!

Continental’s generous routing rules are one reason why I’m not all that happy about the pending Continental-United merger. Wandering Aramean writes about his booking from the US via Europe and Asia to Australia. US Airways permits this, Aeroplan often won’t (though booking via Asia is perfectly doable).

United on the other hand requires US-to-Australia awards take a much more direct routing, eg San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Vancouver to Sydney or to Auckland and on to Australia. (There are a couple of other permissable routings, such as via Hawaii and New Zealand, but those aren’t generlaly useful.)

Continental offers one stopover and an open jaw, whereas both US Airways and United will allow only one or the other. But more importantly Continental doesn’t really have much in the way of routing rules. Like US Airways they don’t force you onto published routings or to keep your award within a route’s published maximum permitted mileage.

Starnet blocking issues aside, where United has been known to refuse to book award seats being offered by their partners when they don’t want to pay for those seats (and blocking has been much less of a problem since early May than it was in the months prior), this is another reason to prefer Continental mils over United miles. And it’s a reason why American Express points are great since they transfer nearly instantly to Continental (and Continental will hold an award without the miles in your account for up to 3 days, whereas United won’t hold an award on their partners until miles are in the account and even purchased miles from United take 48 hours to post). Sadly it’s almost certain the once United and Continental merge there won’t be an opportunity to transfer American Express points to the new combined program.

The Australia route is a great example of why program selection matters. In my experience the two toughest awards to get, particular programs notwithstanding, are North American to Australia and also to Tahiti. In the former case, it’s because United has been incredibly tight with their US-Australia non-stop inventory, they seem to release a handful of seats when the schedule opens and then they’ll dribble a few our over the course of the schedule. (Ben suggests waitlisting as a viable strategy.) Air New Zealand seems to release seats during their high season at exactly 60 days out in my experience. And Air Canada’s Vancouver – Sydney flight isn’t easy to get.

So a program that lets you take a ‘creative’ routing to Australia is often the only way to get there on points, at least confirmed in a premium class of service.

Tahiti is tough because there are only two carriers that fly there from the US — Air Tahiti Nui (partners with American and Delta, easier to get their seats with American miles in my experience, and it’s an expensive award for the distance flown) and Air France (Delta partner, their flights aren’t daily, and during high season seats are very tough to get). If you have miles in a Star Alliance program your only way to get there is Air New Zealand via Auckland, and that flight is only three days a week. A ton of extra flying, first to New Zealand and then up to Tahiti. (With American miles you can fly via Santiago and Easter Island…)

If your award goals entail one of these destinations in particular, your choice of program matters a great deal. Yesterday a reader asked for advice in using their US Airways miles for a honeymoon in Tahiti. I explained the challenge, that they’d have to fly to New Zealand first (not that this is an easy award to get in its own right), and they responded that they were hosed by US Airways again! While my take is that they weren’t at all, I love, love, love US Airways miles. Just not for that particular award.

Ultimately I have a hard time using Delta miles for most things, I love American miles for their domestic availability and to South America (even with the addition of TAM to Star Alliance, American’s own flights to South America supplemented by their LAN parntership is just vastly superior) and booking on Cathay Pacific. But I’ll place my bets on most routes most of the time on Star Alliance carriers to get me the seats I need. And my personal favorite Star carrier programs for award bookings are Aeroplan, Continental Onepass, and US Airways in that order.

Update: As I think more on it, I actually believe I prefer Continental miles over Aeroplan miles, even though the Aeroplan award chart is in many cases less expensive and even though Aerooplan allows two stopovers or a stopover and an open jaw (more generous than Continental). That’s because (1) they allow award holds when there aren’t enough miles in an account, Aeroplan does not, which makes booking with Amex points easier, and (2) they allow changes to routing and carrier, not just to date and time, after departure on Star Alliance award tickets. I value the ease of booking and flexibility enough to warrant the higher award cost, but that’s just me, and others will still prefer Aeroplan. Sadly I expect much of this Continental flexibility to go away post-merger.

TM Travel World explains how to avoid telephone ticketing fees with Delta when booking partner awards.

Most partners cannot be booked online, and if you ticket over the phone they charge a fee.

But Troy points out that on the web (and only on the web, not by phone) Delta will permit you to hold an award. So hold whatever segments of your trip are avsilable online. That creates a reservation.

Then have an agent update the reservation over the phone with the additional flight segments you need. You can refresh your screen and the reservation right in front of you will show up with the new segments.

Once they’re there, instead of having the agent book the ticket, just purchase the ticket online.. no telephone booking fee. Sneaky, eh?

I’ve always thought that the best way to complain to a travel provider was to be concise, stick to the facts, leave out extraneous details and minor annoyances. And if possible, ask clearly for what respoinse you believe is warranted.

Often on Flyertalk, on Tripadvisor, and elsewhere you’ll see long rants about the taxi ride to the airport as part of a complaint to the airline. Those are just beside the point, they make it harder to get through the letter andundersand the point. And usually the complaints are being read by customer service center agents who aren’t equipped to decipher complex arguments. You want to make it as simple as possible for the person reading your complaint to digest it, put it into the appropriate category, and act.

And yet… I read this complaint from PointsWizard about the Crowne Plaza Long Island. It’s full of just the kind of extraneous detail that I would have avoided. And yet… it worked, he got a full refund and then some. And yet.. he’s somehow still not satisfied.

Complaint #1 was that the hotel was hard to find. Ok, perhaps there’s constructive criticism but it had an address, the hotel website has directions, and Rich had a GPS, how difficult could it really have been?

Then it took him a long time to find a parking space. As we’ll see later, the hotel was booked solid.

Then check-in was “slow” but this isn’t defined. How long did it take? What seemed to be the problem? Was there a long line and not enough staff, or did the staff member just seem confused?

He got his room, apparently went inside but couldn’t lock the bottom lock. The hotel said they were sold out so they were going to fix the problem instead of just sending him to another room. But since the problem couldn’t be fixed quickly and easily they assigned him to another, better room.

His complaint? The hotel must have lied about being sold out, since they were able to change rooms for him (umm… no they just wanted to fix the room rather than re-assign him, since they expected to be full), and shouldn’t he have gotten the better room from the start? It has a microwave and a refrigerator! (Now, there’s no mention of Priority Club status, he’s staying on points, and the hotel is sold out. He’s complaining that he was moved to a better room..?)

But wait.. the new room isn’t better! The old room had real glasses, the new room just styrofoam cups! What kind of establishment are they running here??

And there’s no backup roll of toilet paper in the bathroom! And only decaf coffee was free in-room, you had to buy a $2 cup of regular downstairs if that’s what you wanted!

The priceless conclusion?

I received points because I was a Hilton Honors member I guess to try to win my business – If this is an example of your hotels would you even want to stay in this one?

Well, good to know that he’s a Hilton HHonors member, but this is a Priority Club property. And somehow Priority Club decided that they’d refund all his points and give him an additional 10,000 points.

But what does he think of this rather generous response from Priority Club?

That was a poor response knowing someone complained to IHG corporate office.

If your trying to get people to try your hotels and there is a problem you should go out of your way to make them happy not angry

Everything I thought I knew about complaining was wrong.

Via Lucky:

US Airways is offering a a double elite qualifying and redeemable miles promotion for select markets through the end of the year. Those markets are PIT, RDU, BOS, and MSP.

Unlike the similar Delta and American promotions that require travel to originate in the targeted city offering double elite qualifying miles, the US Airways offer includes travel to those cities as well.

Registration is required separately for each fo the double elite qualifying offers.

Last week United announced that they were bringing back discounted economy short-haul awards through August 31.

So naturally I just received an email from American announcing the same — down to the length of flights this applies to and the deadline for booking those flights, as well as the pricing.

With short-hop awards, customers can fly on American Airlines®, American Eagle® or AmericanConnection® non-stop routes under 700 air miles each way within the continental United States and Canada for a reduced number of miles.

Travel one-way in Economy Class for only 8,750 miles (17,500 miles round trip) — a 30% savings off of the standard MileSAAver award!

To qualify for this special award, book your reservation by August 31, 2010 and travel between August 3 and December 15.

As before, these awards are more expensive than they were when they were around a few years ago (15,000 miles back then) and apply to shorter flights than back then (the earlier offerings were for 750 miles). But I’ll take them, and hopefully American jumping on the offer will encourage United to extend the offer, American to match again… Sadly American now is only matching, rather than trumping such as with a longer promotion. So we may need Delta to enter the mix…

Through September 30, Continental is offering 250 free miles for registering on a page promoting spending your miles on Continental Onepass auctions.

As with many of these offers, I don’t necessarily bet the points will post for folks who don’t have a Continental Mastercard. But they might. And since the rules of the promotion don’t say you need to have the card, you could probably argue for your 250 points if you don’t and they don’t appear..

Oh, and these auctions seem to be even worse than the ones on eBay. Not that the items on the Continental auction site are fake, of course, but 11,000 miles for two Cleveland Indians tickets… with a week left to go and the price left to rise?

I received an email this afternoon that Hilton is finally adding free internet as a benefit for their Gold and Diamond members — and not making them choose free internet or club lounge access and an upgrade (which isn’t to a suite anyway).

Hilton Worldwide is pleased to announce that beginning September 1, 2010, all Gold and Diamond HHonors members will receive complimentary high-speed internet access during their stay at all 3,600 hotels within the Hilton Worldwide portfolio of brands.

Over a year ago, Hyatt pulled the trigger, offering all elite members free internet.

Then Intercontinental came out with free internet for their Ambassador and Royal Ambassador members, but details have fluctuated a bit. It’s been at some hotels, not all. Then a special promotion. And only on the ‘free internet rate’. Though some hotels now offer it across the board. An early adopter, but not all the way there.

Starwood lept in with free internet for Platinums, effective earlier this year.

Within a week, Marriott announced their own benefit for Golds and Platinums, in the US and Canada and later expanded to the Caribbean and Central and South America. But not Europe or Asia.

At the time, the head of HHonors explained that he didn’t think his elites wanted free internet.

Diskin responds that Hilton already offered this as a choice to elites, and they don’t choose it. Well, of course they don’t. Hilton says you can have upgrades and breakfast, points, or internet. Internet isn’t the most important benefit and members aren’t willing to give up their upgrades (!) for it.

I called them out extensively on it, and they must have believed it was hurting them in the marketplace because they’ve finally climbed on board.

It’s interesting that they’re offering the benefit at the Gold level in addition to Diamond. Hyatt offers it to their Platinums as well. And both of those levels are more easily attainable than Marriott’s Gold for sure. Starwood still doesn’t offer it to their Golds.

Oddly there remains little real difference between Hilton’s Gold and Diamond levels, even after Hilton reduced the Gold level breakfast benefit last year to continental. Hilton still much needs to add benefits to the Diamond tier, not as they’ve previosuly discussed just adding on a higher and more difficult to reach tier which is actually benefit-laden. They need their upgrades to include suites, at least, which would involve a real culture shift within Hilton. I’m not talking about Hyatt’s generous confirmed suite upgrade benefit, which would be nice. Just the possibility, at least, of an upgrade to the best available room at a hotel.

But then a guaranteed late checkout benefit for Diamonds even would be nice…

.. but for today I suppose I’ll take free internet!

Priority Club’s new Point Breaks list is out, these are discounted award night redemptions, hotels that will cost only 5000 points per night.

Now, though this round of Point Breaks is valid through October 30, in fact the best properties seem to drop off the list over the course of the list’s three months. In fact, sometimes the best value properties disappear within days!

This time, though, I spy only a small handful of Intercontinental properties, none of the incredible values we’ve seen in the past. Specifically, if your travels happen to take you to San Pedro Sula, Guadalajara, Phnom Penh, or Amman you may be able to book the Intercontinental there for just 5000 points per night.

There are plenty of Holiday Inn options, and in smaller towns I do sometimes find those to be a decent, ubiquitous option — made better by an exceptionally low redemption rate.

But I admit, I do find this list uninspiring. Still, award redemption discounts are great, and worth consulting the list if you might be considering one of these properties.

Scott Mayerowitz has an ABC Travel piece tied to Spirit’s new charges for oversized carry-on bags going into effect.

I’m quoted in the piece saying, “This is the airline that’s famous for hating their customers,”

And of course I believe that — Ben Baldanza spurred the creation of the ‘cockroach’ movement (elite passengers so identifying themselves) after comments that passengers who always bought the cheap US Airways fares the company were offering were not necessarily loyal. And of course US Airways as a carrier was itself the cockroach that would not die, in part because of the loyalty of such unvalued customers.

Then as head of Spirit, Baldanza was famous for his ‘oops’ reply-all to staff that a complaining customer wasn’t worth an apology, treat them badly but they’ll be back for more cheap fares.

The carry-on fees are hardly even Spirit’s dumbest ones yet.

Plus Baldanza isn’t entirely wrong, either. He’s more customer friendly in the sense that he and his airline are more transparent in what they intend to offer than most. And he’s clearly differentiating his product.

Whenever Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary falls out of the news, he makes some blustery claims about charging to use the lavatories onboard. He’s not doing that really, just getting media attention, and focusing consumers on the lengths they’ll go to ‘be the cheapest’. It’s no surprise Baldanza has claimed that Spirit bookings have gone up since announcing the planned carry-on fees. (Of course it could also just be the peak summer travel season..)

The point that got lost in my quote above for the ABC piece is that while Spirit may not be the most customer friendly, they’re quite well known for the product they deliver, if a customer is unhappy they should just make a choice. I blame no one but the consumer for stories like this.

Spirit offers what it offers. Consumers that are happy with the tradeoff should fly them. Cosnumer who won’t be happy with their offering should book elsewhere. I know I do.

There’s certainly no reason to yell and scream at congressioanl hearings over the matter, outside of perhaps Ft. Laduerdale they’re hardly even a major player, and Ft. Lauderdale isn’t even the major airport in the area. There’s plenty of consumer choice, consumers should just… choose.

The new Upgrd Podcast is posted, and Grace from Fly Gracefully joins us to discuss airport security (nudo-o-scopes and the ‘tampon paradox’), how to detect a terrorist (a ‘supposed’ 1K who needs to ask a flight attendant about United’s meal times), and avoiding United’s domestic reservations agents — or human agents altogether — when ticketing squirrely awards.

Check it out!