Avis is offering up to 9,999 Air Canada Aeroplan miles for rentals through March 31, but the bonus is somewhat limited in usability… not least of which because it’s just for my readers in or visiting Canada.  In addition..

First, it requires a 5-day rental or longer.

And second the higher mileage bonuses are applicable to higher car classes, smaller cars mean fewer miles.

Vehicle	Car Group	Bonus Miles	Coupon #
Sub-compact / Compact	A or B	2,500	MCAA037
Mid-size to Full-size	C, D, E	5,000	MCAA038
Premium, SUV, Minivan	F, G, H, V, W	7,500	MCAA039
Premium SUV	Z	9,999	MCAA040

The coupon code above generates the mileage bonus but per the terms and conditions of the offer must be used in conjunction with discount code (AWD#) H660500, which auto-populated when you click the ‘make a reservation’ link on the website for the offer.

United is running another ‘TWARE’ sale, 40% off of flights to Australia. The discount code is TWRAU. Need to ticket today for travel through November 30, and of course this will work on T, L, and K fares .. which means not upgradeable with United’s systemwide upgrades for 100,00-mile flyers.

Of course, even when the link stops working, sometimes the promo code still works.

Ever since my speculations about Starwood Preferred Guest award categories for next year, I’ve been thinking more and more about their award structure and am increasingly bothered by another feature of their redemption program — the exorbitantly high redemption rates for some of their high-end properties that are described as ‘all-sute’ hotels.

Some of their most expensive high-end properties, such as the W Maldives and St. Regis Bora Bora, are all suites. That is part of why they’re as expensive as they are.

In order to get the same value out of a (regular, not all-suite) category 7 hotel award as a category 2 weekend hotel award, the rate for the property is going to need to be about $1000 or more per night. That’s at the standard 30,000 Starpoints for a category 7 hotel, ignoring the high season premium that was suspended for 2009 and 2010. Some of those hotels are that expensive, though not always. Fair enough.

The all-suite hotels that are achieving these rates are placed in category 7 because of their rates. But because properties like the St. Regis Bora Bora and W Maldives are ‘all-suite’ they have no ‘standard rooms’ and thus the price of the award generally doubles (or more..). In other words, the redemption value is cut in half.

Put another way, the all-suite nature of the hotel counts against members twice. First, and quite reasonably, in terms of room rates. The nature of the hotel and its rooms drive the price of the hotel high enough to warrant the high redemption category. That’s how a hotel becomes, say, category 7 in the first place. But then they charge double points for the rooms, even though those rooms are helping drive the rates in the first place.

The Starwood program used to have category 5 as its highest levels, and hotels participated and offered rooms at the category 5 price point. They added a category 6 and also implemented double points charges for all suite properties. Then they added category 7.

I stayed in an overwater bungalow at Bora Bora Nui when it was a Starwood property. I didn’t get in on category 5 pricing when it first opened, I paid the higher all-suite premium for it as category 6… 186,000 points for four nights in a horizon overwater bungalow (additional premium for overwater) with then fifth night free. The property got even more expensive with the introduction of category 7 and all-suites.

But it makes for a nice comparison. While a Starwood point is generally worth about three times as much as a Hilton point (roughly, just currency conversion for similar properties), Starwood is really out of whack at the high-end. Bora Bora Nui has moved over to Hilton, and now runs 170,000 HHonors points for 4 nights. Put a different way, the points value required to redeem for this property dropped by about 2/3rds when it was rebranded a Hilton.

In fact, Starwood’s high-end all suite redemptions are so far out of whack that in many cases it’s much cheaper to pay the least expensive room rate and then redeem Starwood points as an Instant Award for a folio credit at the property. I know this has been done successfully at the W Maldives, for a much better redemption value than claiming an award. Though even this isn’t a good use of the points, since you’re only getting a bit over a penny per point in value back by doing this.

When a Starwood point is worth 3+ cents per night on average redeeming for hotels, it seems crazy to fork over 70,000 – 100,000+ points per night for high-end properties retailing for less than $1000. But Starwood’s newer award categories and double charging on hotels without ‘standard rooms’ has created this imbalance. When they should simply categorize a hotel’s ‘base’ room as ‘standard’.

US Airways is running a ’3-day sale’ on lounge membership, lasting through Wednesday September 29. The price is $249 and the $50 new member initiation fee is waived. (The ‘normal’ price is $450, or $375 for most US Airways elite members and $325 for Chairmans Preferred members.)

They’re also offering 3000 elite qualifying miles for joining using promo code CEB3K (that offer runs through September 30). These appear to me to be combinable.

It will even count as a ‘hit’ in the grand slam promo.

Of course, the US Airways clubs in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh still charge a buck for alcoholic drinks based on state law, and the Boston club has no liquor license if I understand correctly. But it’s still a great deal.

Now, I already get US Airways lounge access via my American Express Platinum card and via my non-US Star Alliance airline status. But if I were considering buying lounge membership, this is an outstanding offer. It’s the best price on paid lounge membership I’ve seen in a long long time.

In fact, if I had been considering buying Continental or United lounge membership, I’d likely buy this instead as it comes with access to their lounges.

(HT: Adam)

I won’t have a lot to say on the announcement of Southwest’s planned acquisition of Airtran. I’ll leave that to the Cranky Fliers and Dan Webbs of the world, it’s a little outside of my area of interest — I try not to fly Southwest or Airtran and have little interest in their mileage programs.

Still, it’s hard not to see this as a bg deal. This is obviously bigger than Southwest’s previous acquisitions.. Morris Air, run by Dave Neeleman who would go on to found JetBlue once his non-compete was up, and Muse Air which was founded by Southwest’s original President Lamar Muse and his son (and dubbed ‘revenge air’ after Muse’s ouster of Southwest and attempts to compete across Southwest’s key routes).

One expects Airtran to begin aligning policies with Southwest once the deal is approved. So Airtran’s baggage fees will go away. It’ll also raise Airtran’s costs to Southwest levels, which is good for their competitors. Though this eliminates a strong competitor in the ‘low cost carrier’ segment it will be hard for a Justice Department that’s allowing United and Continental to merge to block Southwest and Airtran.

In the end though I see this as a signal that Southwest isn’t Southwest anymore, that they don’t see the opportunities out there for strong organic growth within their business model. They tried to acquire Frontier and that failed, but it clearly wasn’t a one-off. This deal says it’s a conscious strategy to grow by acquisition and with a carrier whose low cost model is different (more hub-based than point-to-point) and with a different culture.

Frequent flyer perspective: A larger Southwest makes it an even bigger deal that Southwest is planning to relaunch their Rapid Rewards frequent flyer program in 2011, since the carrier itself will be bigger.

Otherwise, one less low cost carrier that I am choosing not to fly if I can avoid it but putting pricing pressure on the carriers that I do fly.

A big story for the airline industry, ho hum news for me.

TM Travel World has an excellent post where he lays out how he plans to get 36 ‘hits’ in the US Airways Grand Slam promotion and earn 100,000 bonus miles.

What’s useful about the post is that he details the specific items he’s doing and buying and their costs. I have many different items myself, and I’m not likely to hit the top bonus for 36 activities, but there are some useful nuggets here.

• He’s going to earn four different partner credits from hotel points transfers into US Airways. Starwood Platinum members can transfer as few as 1 point to miles in their choice of programs, you need to transfer a minimum of 100 miles for this promotion. Then he’s transferring points from Hyatt, Hilton, and Goldpointsplus.

• He’s going to credit six hotel stays and six car rentals to US Airways for six ‘hits’ apiece. The car rentals he’s doing just for the miles at about $30 apiece.

But here’s where it gets interesting.

• Register for the US Airways dining for miles program (Rewards Network aka iDine). You can just use a credit card that’s not registered with another Dining for Miles program and use it this one time. He says, “Plenty of Burger Kings on the list, just buy a kid drink.”

This one I’m not too sure about:

1 hit from miles for magazine, the lowest 300miles is not longer on the list, so I choose 400 one

Use of a partner without earning Dividend Miles will not count as a Hit.

• He’s done a quote request with 21st Century Insurance and he’s taking a ride on a Supershuttle.

• Here are the shopping purchases that seem useful to earn hits:

1 hit from Vinesse– buy pocket wine tasting guide, 4.95+2.5 shipping, you go to their website, find Gift section, then find book &CD section, this guide is there)

1 hit from Dividend Miles Wireless-Again, like last year, Cellphone wipe, 3.49+4.99 shipping

1 hit from OfficeMax– MMF wedgy scabbard antimicrobial pen refill – $0.59 + $7.95 shipping…

1 hit from Skymall– Search “Improvements”, then sort by price, you will find a item with $2.99 + $7.95 shipping

1 hit from Biscoff– cookies #0213 – $13.56 + $7.95 shipping…

1 hit from ChronoMed– Frequent Flyer Support Pack – $29.95 + $6.95 shipping

He suggests a boutonniere from FTD, but I actually needed to send some flowers to I used FTD via the US Airways website (granted, giving up more miles with United in so doing).

Then there are hits to be earned by buying miles and by transferring miles, the former being especially lucrative with the 100% bonus on purchased miles that US Airways is running.

• He also explains how to use the fewest miles at points.com in order to get a mile into your US Airways account for a partner credit:

I swap 20 miles AA to 5 Asia miles then swap to 1 US airways miles. Alternatively, you can swap 53 US miles to 18 Greenpoints, then swap back into 1 US airways miles

I’ve earned a hit by transferring e-Rewards points to US Airways and another hit from e-miles as well. And I made a purchase from the US Airways shopping mall, I regularly order from drugstore.com and usually buy via the Continental Airlines mall with a Continental Mastercard which earns double miles, so I did give up some more miles to move the activity to US Airways and earn the partner credit.

The Frequent Traveler Awards are underway, and I’m told there have already been hundreds of thousands of votes cast.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions here on my blog, by email, and on Flyertalk about what it’s all about, and how it differs from the Freddie Awards — which Randy Petersen decided to bring to a close after two decades. Like the Freddies, the Frequent Traveler awards fulfill a unique role:

• They honor the best loyalty programs, not the best or hippest resort hotels or airline seats and food.
  
• They are decided by the traveling public at large, not by a group of self-described ‘experts’.

I’m the Chair of the Frequent Traveler Awards committee that put together the structure, voting processes, and nominations for the Frequent Traveler Awards.

I had always been a bit of an armchair quarterback about the Freddies, and the process of defining the regions that we would offer awards in, determining the categories, how voting would work, and which programs and bonuses ought to be nominated taught me just how difficult it can be to put together this kind of endeavor.

For instance, the Freddies wanted not just to be a popularity contest (who could spam their members enough to generate the most votes) but a recognition of the best of airline and hotel loyalty programs. And so the Freddies asked voters to select a program and rate the program 1-10. The programs with the highest average rating by those offering to rate it was the program that would win (provided it was selected by a minimum threshold of voters).

Problem is that different people rate the same thing differently, what might be a 10 to an excited voter like me might be an 8 (also good!) to someone else. Even if both voters think the program is providing tremendous value. And it turns out that voting an ’8′ for a program because you think it’s the best in effect was a vote against that program, because it would bring down the program’s average. That’s why some programs began instructing their members to “Vote a 10 for….”

Still, it was an interesting innovation and more importantly a very important point — that what we want isn’t a popularity contest but an expression by the traveling public about which programs are delivering the most value to their members.

And while I used to shake my head at some of the results, it was the public at large speaking, just as it will be with the Frequent Traveler Awards.

Frequent Traveler Award voting is a little bit different though, instead of giving one program a rating of 1-10, we ask members to rank programs (up to 4). That way voters are comparing programs, saying that they believe a program is best relative to others.

We spent a good deal of time on the voting process, diving into political science literature and systems of voting. And while some of us were tempted by the more scientific but also obscure voting mechanisms that might do an even better job getting at the best representation of member opinion, there’s also a need to be simple enough that folks can understand the process as well. In other words, there are tradeoffs in the voting mechanism.

We’ve got fewer categories than the Freddies did, perhaps that’s a mistake but in our first year we thought a more modest endeavor made sense. We kept core categories like Best Program, Best Elite Level, and the bonus categories. But we’re keeping the awards ceremony a bit shorter, we’ll get to the end of evening celebrations and the armchair quarterbacking that much quicker… No best web site, best member communication, or best customer service (which is difficult to parse between the loyalty programs and the airline or hotels they represent).

Our regions are a bit different than the Freddies, the Middle East is grouped with Asia Pacific rather than Europe and Africa. That way the Emirates and Etihads compete against Singapores and Cathay rather than BA and Lufthansa. We thought they were more like in kind. Judgment calls. But otherwise it’s the same — Americas, Europe and Africa, and Asia Pacific.

Similarly, we decided that each airline would be assigned to its home region, and that every voter could choose which of three regions to vote in but they could only vote in one region. Now, that does mean that the excellent British Airways Visa from Chase won’t be nominated as Best Credit Card in the Americas. And that members aren’t comparing Continnetal against Air France-KLM. But the tradeoff seemed an unwieldly process.

What results is six categories for each voter to express their opinion in, comparing what they believe is best in rank-order fashion against the other programs they’re most familiar with.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m pretty outspoken about the best and worst of frequent flyer and frequent guest programs. But as much as I like Hyatt this year, or Onepass and Aeroplan (I voted in the Americas), I’m only one vote out of many hundreds of thousands. We won’t know who the winners will be until November 4 in Houston, but then we’ll be able to pretty definitively answer the question what’s the best airline and hotel loyalty program? And then the armchair quarterbacking and dissection can begin!

e-Rewards, the survey site that lets you redeem points for miles in a variety of programs (unless you sign up via a specific program, in which case your redemptions are restricted to that program), plans to implement (on or about October 1) some pretty extreme tracking cookies to watch your overall web browsing sessions.

On the whole, I find that their surveys are less rewarding (fewer points for longer surveys) than they were perhaps five years ago. And the opportunity cost of my time has gone up. I rarely find it worthwhile to complete their surveys on the basis of the rewards they’re offering.

But I still complete some surveys because I like to have a small stash of points that I can redeem at-will. The surveys are too cumbersome for, say, the 1000 frequent flyer miles I’ll eventually get. But when I can transfer the points into a program and receive credit from that program for partner activity when there’s a bonus running for having activity with lots of partners, the surveys will have been that much more rewarding.

For instance, I recently redeemed for the minimum transfer to US Airways in order to get a partner credit in their Grand Slam promotion.

So the program is somewhat useful to me but I don’t like the changes one bit. The privacy policy now contains a section on “Advanced Cookies”:

Advanced Cookies
The advanced cookie tracks the patterns of online behavior of e-Rewards Members. The advanced cookie, which may be placed by e-Rewards or a third party, incorporates a key which can identify tags contained in certain online content relating to our clients and their products and services. If an e-Rewards Member views a page containing any content including the tag, the key will send e-Rewards an update confirming that the Member has viewed the page containing this content. Certain Web pages or Web-based advertisements you view may be tracked, and in some cases, this tracking data may be combined with survey answers you provide. The tags are not included in any content which could provide information of a sensitive nature, for example information about religious beliefs or health. The information collected will be used to identify suitable candidates for particular market research studies. Members will have the opportunity to opt out of receiving such advanced cookies on their computers, including those placed by e-Rewards or by a third party, by updating their preferences on their e-Rewards “My Account” page . We do not have access to, nor control over, third party cookies or how they may be used. If you would like more information about third party use of cookies, and about your option not to accept these cookies, please click here. Your access to our Web sites will not be affected if you do not accept cookies placed by third parties.

They do offer the ability to opt-out of these cookies, and I have. You can update your contact information and the last option on the page is to opt in or out of these advanced cookies.

I’m not a privacy zealot. Personalized advertising doesn’t bother me, in fact I would prefer to see offers that actually dovetail my interests than those divorced from them. I don’t fear corporations. But they way I think about this is summed up rather well by an apocryphal Winston Churchill story:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

What e-Rewards is doing is sort of creepy, and most importantly they aren’t offering nearly enough rewards for me to agree to give them the information they’re after. If they want these advanced cookies on my machine, they had darn well haggle up the price..

(HT: Free Frequent Flyer Miles)

Starwood assigns hotels to award categories (which determines the number of points it takes to redeem a room night) based on each hotel’s projected average daily room rate for the year.

Back in February, Starwood announced that they wouldn’t be changing hotels’ award category assignments (for the most part) for 2010.

They spun this as doing a favor for their members — we aren’t raising point requirements! — but my view was that given the way they structure and describe the program, they should have been lowering points costs.

Each year when they moved more hotels up in categories than down, it was justified based on the room rates those hotels were drawing. Starwood has even added increasingly higher category levels to the program in order to charge more points for the highest priced properties.

But then 2009 was the worst hotel occupancy and revenue environment since the Great Depression.

So it seemed to me that on the whole hotels should have been going down in category, not staying the same — that was just locking in award chart inflation in a falling price environemnt.

In fairness to Starwood, they did get into the nitty gritty with me and explain that award categories are based on their revenue projections for the year going forward, and that they expected 2010 to be better than 2009 and thus on the whole many properties should have been going up in price — but they weren’t passing along those increases.

Ok, they base these things on forecasts so they get to ignore the abysmal 2009 actual numbers (as one Flyertalk member observed early in the year, “They look into their crystal ball, and based upon what they see the ADRs are likely to be in the coming year, they adjust the categories. GAAP needs a provision for this approach to accounting”). How they expected 2010 to be even as good or better than 2007 or 2008 it’s hard to imagine.

Fairness to Starwood, in 2009 they suspended high season surcharges for top category properties, and certainly it’s true that some hotels would have gone up in price.

But after an award category decision at the beginning of 2010 that struck me as sleight of hand, but which Starwood assures was not, it will be especially crucial to watch their decision-making for 2011. It’s a key time for the program, where members will really discover whether or not they can trust the program (with their point balances and their loyalty).

As we enter the fourth quarter of the year, industry-wide hotel occupancy is 5.7% below the median for the entire 2000 through 2007 period. Occupancy is below 2008 levels. And more importantly, average daily rates (which Starwood bases its categories on) are off more than 10% from 2008 levels. So if current trends hold, and fuzzy math about projections aside, we should see an on-net reduction in hotel categories for Starwood at the beginning of the year.

My bet is that we won’t, but I’d love to be proven wrong!

The very best credit card signup bonuses out there are undoubtedly the 75,000 and 100,000 mile bonuses for new American Airlines credit cards from Citibank. The offers run through October 31.

The 75,000 mile offer has a landing page that includes the relevant details — no fee the first year, bonus miles after $1500 in spend within 6 months.

The 100,000 mile offer is 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. It’s just links, though — no landing page — everyone has been confirming that the links which take you to an application directly without mention of the bonus works just fine. The links attach the relevant offer code and that’s what Citibank sees and awards miles based on. So no worries.

But what’s the next offer? After all this one only has a month left to go.

Yaniv sends me a link to this 100,000 mile bonus offer landing page: 50,000 miles after $2000 in purchases within 4 months, another 25,000 miles after $10,000 in purchases within the first year, and an additional 25,000 miles after $10,000 in purchases during the second year. The annual fee is waived the first year.

So obviously not as good an offer — it’ll be the second year of cardmembership before you get the full 100,000 miles and you need to put $20,000 in spend on the card to get there. Plus you’ll pay the second year $85 annual fee.

So why do I mention the offer? Because it has a landing page and doesn’t have a published expiration. At least it appears so, it’s early – before my first cup of coffee – but I didn’t see an expiration date in the terms and conditions of the offer. Which simply means it’ll be around until the page is gone. So it may be useful after the other offers expire on October 31.

Still, jump on the earlier offers, they’re truly outstanding.

Oliver sends me to the just-announced Business Traveller Awards for 2010. Presumably he does this so my head will fall off my head and begin spinning while steam pours out my eyes.

Now, these awards — given by a group of self-appointed experts without transparent criteria — are often nonsense. The better awards give reason to quibble, and individuals can differ, but this one is perhaps the most ludicrous not only because it’s selections are inane but because they are not even internally consistent.

They can’t even both to massage idiotic results so that they’re consistently idiotic in the same way across categories!

Take Emirates, which they say is a better airline than British Airways (true enough). But then British Airways is a better long-haul airline than Emirate. Questionable at best. But for both statements to be true, then Emirates must be a better short-haul airline to compensate.

(Right? If BA is better long-haul, then for Emirates to be better overall they must beat out BA for short-haul. Otherwise if BA is better in both categories it should be better overall.)

But wait! British Airways is listed as THE BEST short-haul airline. Which means logically they cannot conclude what they conclude, that Emirates is better overall.

Follow?

Meanwhile, let’s stay on Emirates for a minute. They’re the second best in the world, and the only Middle East carrier listed among the world’s best. But somehow they lag behind Etihad in the Middle East.

Okay, let’s return to British Airways. Before I focus on more logical inconsistencies, let’s just stop to ponder any survey that claims British Airways to have the world’s 3rd best cabin staff.

Oh, wait, this is the same survey that lists Heathrow among the world’s best airports. Also THE best for duty free, though to me Sydney seems missing here..

While we’re on the theme of boosting British Airways beyond any reasonable comprehension, let’s all hail that their airport lounges are ranked as second in the world, second only to the Virgin Clubhouse at Heathrow, and that Business Traveller doesn’t seem to think much of Lufthansa’s German offerings to name just one missing example.

Since we’re talking Heathrow, let’s get back to inconsistency. Heathrow is name as one of the world’s best airports, Amsterdam is not. But Amsterdam is ranked as a better airport than Heathrow within Europe. (Does this mean that Heathrow must therefore be better than Amsterdam outside of Europe in order to compensate and score higher overall?)

Really, I need to stop. Because once I get down to the rankings of best individual business hotels in North America, find that the four best are all in New York, and that the list includes the Intercontinental Barclay and the Waldorf Astoria…

Thanks, Oliver. The bright red cinders in my eyes are beginning to burn out, hopefully I’ll recover.

In the meantime, have you voted in the Frequent Traveler Awards? Because not only does the Frequent Traveler awards spell its name with only one L (!), but certainly you can do better with your vote than these Business Traveller awards do with all of theirs…!

Upgrade: Travel Better notes that Air France is upgrading their business class seats. But that they won’t be introducing true lie-flat seats, and that these below industry standard seats will take three years to roll out.

Crazy, huh? It amazes me that Air France continues to enjoy a positive reputation amongst the general public, at least here in the US and among the less-traveled. One assumes that this is driven simply by a belief that the French exhibit quality and style. And that they haven’t actually flown Air France recently.

Certainly Air France’s ancient angled-flat seats need replacement. On my last Paris trip I flew the carrier’s business class, wanting the non-stop for the short hop across the pond and for what would be a quick trip. Key elements:

• Seat had pieces coming off, and wasn’t especially comfortable. With United and British Airways and others offering or rolling out true lie-flat, Air France’s aging and decrepit seats are wholly uncompetitive. What could convince them though to remain below industry standard for the foreseeable future?

• Service was surly in both directions. Not surprising. Amenity kit was as meager as I’ve seen, a notch below Alitalia even.

• Food was decent departing Paris, but inedible departing Washington DC. And I know they’re French (and British Airways does this too) but flights to and from North America ought in my view to have more for breakfast than yogurt and a croissant.

Without even plans ot go fully flat in business, I have no great desire to repeat the experience.

There’s some great speculation at the Traveling Better forums about expected soon to be introduced upgrade awards using American Airlines miles on British Airways (and likely Iberia), and of course BA and Iberia miles on these carriers as well.

Given the anti-trust approval for the carriers’ joint business ventures, the airlines and mileage programs will certainly become more integrated.

Now, most Star Alliance programs already allow for reciprocal mileage upgrades. Oneworld hasn’t had that. But this subgroup of oneworld carriers almost certainly will.

British Airways offers four classes of service beyond Europe — economy (World Traveller), premium economy (World Traveller Plus), business (ClubWorld), and first class.

So one imagines that an American mileage award would be good for upgrading one class of service. In other words, economy to premium economy rather than economy to business. That’s similar to how you can use British Airways miles to upgrade BA flights.

But at the same time carriers American and Iberia don’t have a premium economy product, so upgrades would be coach to business class. It’ll be interesting to see how they square that circle, Traveling Better’s JonNYC predicts that upgrades from economy to business on American and Iberia with partner miles will require the purchase of higher fare classes than upgrade from economy to premium economy on BA. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, the piece that I’m waiting for is this: the ability to redeem miles for award tickets between the US and London (on BA with American miles, and on American with BA miles). The claim had always been that they couldn’t offer reciprocal mileage earning and redemption on these flights because of anti-trust concerns. That was a stretch, though perhaps true for mileage earning and far less reasonable a claim for mileage redemption. But with anti-trust exemption that argument no longer exists. There’s no reason other than American’s desire not to pay for British Airways redemption seats to restrict mileage redemption on flights between the US and London.

British Airways transatlantic award availability is excellent, at least and especially in first class. Now, the non-stop flights from Los Angeles are the toughest in my experience. San Francisco isn’t easy but it exists. Vancouver is outstanding in first class. Dallas and Chicago are pretty good, especially in frist as well. Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia availability are out of this world good, in both business and first class. Then there’s Boston, Washington DC, and many other cities.

Once this restriction on transatlantic redemptions goes away – and we all need to call American on it, it’s wholly unjustifiable – these seats will no doubt be a bit harder to get. Great availability nad most of the people who would use it cannot. And it’ll be a real expense for American.

Currently members have to redeem British Airways transatlantic from Canada, Mexico, or the Carribean.. which has been a great workaround for me. It’ll be nice to see that go away.

TM Travel World reports that the Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express from Bank of America earns 2 points per dollar spent and 5000 points auto deposits into a Fidelity brokerage account as $50. That amounts to 2% cash back.

There’s also apparently an option to turn off direct deposit of cash into Fidelity and convert points one-to-one into Air Canada Aeroplan, which means you earn 2 Aeroplan points per dollar spent. It’s a no annual fee card to boot. Interesting deal! Haven’t done full due diligence yet but it’s got my attention. Anyone out there with experience on this one?

A couple weeks back I speculated on the causes of variation in flight attendant service levels around the world. I argued that there was a mix of union rules, corporate leadership, and cultural factors which explain differences in service levels among airlines both within and across regions.

But The Flying Pinto makes me think that it’s the median passenger that drives much of this.

You don’t have to be a flight attendant who believes they’re there primarily for your safety to become jaded pretty quickly if every flight was like the one that Sara describes…

Via Frugal Travel Guy, Marriott is offering 5000 points for a timeshare presentation. The pitch takes about 30 minutes, is described as online but one of Rick’s readers says is actually by phone, but at least isn’t in person. And the report suggests it’s pretty soft sell to boot.

So if you expect to have 30 minutes to kill and want a few points, you can schedule a pitch.

Tim Harford, whose writings I usually much like, explores whether frequent flyer programs are inefficient for the economy. He’s right to suggest that they create product differentiation among air carriers that might otherwise be commodity products. And as differentiated products, consumers have preferences (driven by value created by the program’s loyalty program)>

Certainly in the context of business travel, employees with a preference for air carrier may make a choice that’s different from what’s in the best interest of the employer.

That’s sometimes true. Agency problems exist any time someone is spending another person or entity’s money.

On the other hand, the personal benefits from frequent flyer programs make business travel much more palatable. Employees with elite status fly relatively hassle-free, aren’t charged checked baggage fees that they’d otherwise expensive, often receive meals in first class instead of buying food and billing the company. And they’re more willing to take on the flying that benefits their employers because of this treatment. They get priority on waitlists, help during irregular operations, and are more likely to make their meetings and waste less time along the way. Much better for employer productivity.

Moreover, the employees are getting compensation from the frequent flyer program (in the form of free future travel) in exchange for their business trips instead of from their employers. It’s as reasonable as Harford’s assumptions to believe that without the ‘kickbacks’ from frequent flyer programs, that employers would have to compensate their employees more to take on high volume business travel.

Harford suggests that frequent flyer programs “artfully create what economists call “switching costs”, by offering employees an incentive to stick with an individual airline.”

And there are elements of this, but it fails to understand the specific industry behaviors that have developed by competitive firms to offset this effect and encourage customers to switch carriers.

Sure, an elite member of American Airlines AAdvantage wants to stick with AAdvantage because of their elite benefits. But Continental realizes that the customer is a valuable one, and that it’s difficult for that customer to switch. So Continental will ‘match’ the elite status of that American Airlines customer with status in their own program on request. (This is usually a once in a lifetime proposition, and nearly all U.S. programs offer some form of status match or expedited status program.) Boom, switching costs due to elite status gone.

When frequent flyer programs began they realized that a depleted account meant a customer might leap to a competitor. It was commonplace for a carrier to award, say, 5000 miles to a customer who depleted their account so that there’d be reason to continue accruing in that program.

That’s no longer the case, and likely reasons why. Having mileage balances in a particular program hardly create switching costs. A member reaches a mileage threshold and receives a free trip. Account depleted, no more switching costs. Customers don’t even need to stick with their existing carrier in order to continuing accruing miles up to the point they have enough to redeem. More than half of miles are earned from sources other than flying, a customer might charge some more to their credit card or credit some hotel stays to an airline program.

Finally, Harford’s claim that frequent flyer programs drive up price seems to run counter to empirical facts — that prices are far lower on an inflation-adjusted basis than they were before the introduction of such programs.

Frequent flyer programs are both a marketing expense and in and of themselves a profit center. In most cases they are the most profitable part of an airline. They drive business to the airline and to their partners who buy miles from the carrier. And they generate consumer value, customers use them to access not just flights which replace those they’d otherwise purchase for cash but travel they would never otherwise be able to experience — a middle class collector of miles who flies in flat bed first class offerings with good champagne, caviar, and complimentary airport limousine transfers. Miles are the great democratize of travel.

American AAdvantage is offering a 20% discount on awards from Los Angeles to Tahiti with partner Air Tahiti Nui.

Book by October 15 for travel through March 31, and the offer applies to both economy and business class.

Recent reports on Flyertalk suggest that it’s no longer possible to book first class awards on Air Tahiti Nui using American miles. (It’s never been possible using Delta Skymiles, either, even though Delta is also an Air Tahiti Nui partner.)

Specific dates are off-limits for business class, as well:

Award travel embargo dates apply to travel in Business Class as follows:
Flights from Papeete, Tahiti to Los Angeles: December 18, 2010 – January 7, 2011.
Flights from Los Angeles to Papeete, Tahiti: December 18, 2010 – December 29, 2010.

(HT: TM Travel World.)

In general I find that awards to from North America to Tahiti are the second most difficult to secure. Admittedly, I’m highly North America-centric. The most difficult in my experience is North America to Australia and New Zealand direct. Via Asia (or Europe and Asia) is quite doable. But those non-stops from Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Vancouver to Sydney or Auckland on United, Air Canada, and Air New Zealand are all quite tough to come by. The Air New Zealand flights are actually the most doable, though in Northern Hemisphere winter the business seats usually only release exactly 60 days in advance of flight (and closer in as well, but that 60-day release date seems to be quite common).

For North America to Tahiti direct the only options are Air Tahiti Nui’s Los Angeles – Papeete flights (American and Delta are partners) and Air France’s non-daily Los Angeles – Papeete flight (Delta also a partner here). The limited flights make the award so difficult.

Air New Zealand also used to fly the route, but now the only Star Alliance flight to Tahiti is Air New Zealand via Auckland. So on a United Airlines award ticket, you’d first have to get the very tough to find Auckland seats and then also get the non-daily flight from Auckland to Papeete as an award as well. And that’s a lot of extra flying.

Hawaiian Airlines flies once-weekly on Saturdays from Honolulu as well.

With those oneworld miles there’s the especially interesting routing via South America and Easter Island on LAN. That’s one worth doing for its own sake, but not if you only want to go to French Polynesia.

Two months ago I wrote about Citibank’s offers for either 75,000 American Airlines miles (after $1500 in purchases within 6 months) or 100,000 American Airlines miles (full bonus after $10,000 in purchases within 12 months) for their co-branded Visa, Visa Business, and American Express.

These current offers appear to expire October 31, 2010. So if you’re on the fence, they’re still available, time to jump on them. While we’ve seen the occasional targeted American Express Platinum 100,000 mile signup bonus (with $495 fee..) and last year’s British Airways Visa 100,000 mile bonus, I’d still rank these bonuses as the best credit card offers ever made.

Here are 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)

However, one of the most frequently asked questions is “but those links don’t say I’ll get the bonus!” And that’s true. These are links from e-mails that take you directly to applications, and they’ve been working successfully for the past two months. People call up Citibank after applying, if they’re concerned, and Citi reps read off the promotion they’ve signed up with.

Still, it’s always comforting to see the offer in advance, to be able to print it in case of any problems.

And now a website has been discovered for the (3) 75,000-mile credit card signup offers.

• No fee the first year
  
• 75,000 bonus miles after $1500 in purchases within 6 months
  
• Offer available for the Visa, American Express, and Visa Business cards

I’m not aware of a website for the 100,000-mile offers, no worries the links above still work. If you have a link to a landing page displaying the 100,000-mile signup bonuses please share it in the comments. (But for many, the lower spending requirements for the 75,000 mile bonuses represent the easier and better offer.)

But it’s nice to see a landing page explicitly offering that 75,000 mile bonus.

The W Hotels Store is offering all items at 35% off with promo code WKLX6, their beds come with free shipping. Back in May the price of the mattresses went up about 10%, but the 35% off code will still be worthwhile for many.

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, back when there used to be occasional 40% discounts available).

Expiration date on the offer is unknown, if you’re interested you may want to make the purchase now.

(HT: Dan’s Deals.)