British Airways began offering full mileage-earning to their Executive Club members, even on discounted fares. That’s huge. No more 25% mileage-earning and never quite reaching an award. A monster step forward for a European program, and one that has Flying Blue scrambling and shaking their heads.

Every European discount fare traveler with a choice, not wedded to a non-stop (or not able to access one from their home airport) and not striving for elite status in a competing program really should consider British Airways Executive Club.

With bmi’s Diamond Club slated to go away, BA Executive Club became in one fell swoop arguably the best frequent flyer program in Europe. Sure, there are arguments to be made for Miles & More. But their award chart is expensive and has gotten more so. This really was a major change.

What BA’s members didn’t really get was a whole lot meaningful in terms of increased award availability. Sure, they get access to American Airlines transatlantic award space but the American premium cabin product isn’t all that and BA availability is far better to begin with. So while a nice feature, it’s not huge.

On the other hand, American Airlines AAdvantage members really got the brass ring.

American members can now use their miles for premium cabin awards from the US to Europe pretty much every single day of the year.

Before the change, American Airlines members couldn’t redeem for British Airways seats between the US and London. Now they can. And BA availability really is just that good, and they have that many flights to the US.

Can’t find Los Angeles – London non-stop? You’ll almost certainly find Los Angeles – Las Vegas – London or Los Angeles – Phoenix – London or Los Angeles – Houston – London. Can’t find Chicago non-stop? That Philadelphia flight is awfully darned available, and of course American’s domestic award availability is really, really good to manage connections.

Alright, a couple of caveats.

• Fuel surcharges. American didn’t used to add these to British Airways awards on those flights which members could redeem for — e.g. from Canada or the Caribbean to London, or London to the Middle East, Asia, Africa. Now all British Airways redemptions come with fuel surcharges, which transatlantic roundtrip can run $450. A US to Africa roundtrip can be double that. (Plus if you depart London rather than just connecting, you’ve’ got the UK’s premium cabin departure taxes, too.)

• American’s domestic award availability isn’t perfect, I mean right now if you look at the days leading up to Christmas there’s not a lot out there. Those dates have just been loaded into the schedule and I was struck that American wasn’t offering anything DC – Chicago for December 21-24 when I checked on Saturday morning.

But these are minor complaints, to me. I realize others feel differently, they believe that a free ticket should be a free ticket. Still, I believe that the fuel surcharges are a small price to pay for (1) an excellent true lie-flat business class product, which few carriers offer universally across the Atlantic, and (2) the outstanding award availability of British Airways, I know of no other airline which offers as many seats for redemption as they do.

If you want to take your family of six in the same cabin on the same flight, who else will offer that many redemption seats so often? Very occasionally Lufthansa will. But BA uniformly does on some flights, such as their Houston flights.

It’s absolutely true that fuel surcharges are a real cost. And they make economy redemptions a very poor value, since much of the ticket price is still being charged even though you’re spending your miles.

Still, the ability to use your miles for premium class travel almost every single day is a tradeoff I’m willing to accept.

Expedia has just launched a new rewards program that offers points for bookings made via the site.

They used to partner with Citibank’s Thank You Points but ended that relationship. Now their new offering is out, it lets you earn points for bookings made on their site and of course doesn’t interfere with the points you’ll earn from the travel provider as well (provided that the travel provider offers points for bookings made via Expedia, e.g. Starwood won’t give you points for room rates booked there).

Unlike the previous Thank You Points offering, you can earn points not just for ‘special rate’ hotels and hotel/air booking combos. Standalone flight bookings earn points as well, so do vacation packages except that car rentals don’t earn points unless tied to a hotel booking and cruises don’t earn points either.

Earning is one point per dollar spent with Expedia, their e-mail announcement says that redemptions start at 3500 points but we don’t know much more than that. Redemptions won’t be available until March and there’s no redemption chart. According to the program terms and conditions, “rewards will include airline tickets and hotel coupons valid on bookings at Expedia Special Rate properties.”

During the beta launch phase, membership is by invitation only. I’ve just posted the invite, though, on my Facebook page. Now downside to joining, of course.

Update: Looks like you can join by going here, scrolling down to the join link on the left hand side of the page.

Update 2: Apparently there’s a 1000 bonus point offer out there somewhere for signing up, haven’t yet found more details and it may be tied to folks who were previously active with Thank You Points with Expedia. But might make sense to hold off a few days on registering, in case there’s a signup bonus offer.

The New York Times reports that the family associated with the Lotus of Siam name, which built their reputation at their Las Vegas outpost, have split from the new New York outpost.

I’m only sharing this news because of my recent posts about both their Las Vegas and New York locations.

The New York Lotus of Siam is a major disappointment and this piece offers some clues, perhaps, as to why.

had disagreements with their partner, Roy Welland, who had owned the upscale restaurant Cru in the space where Lotus of Siam is located. She said her parents wanted the restaurant to be more homey and affordable than Mr. Welland did.

But, she added, Lotus of Siam would remain open and that “nothing will change there.”

…”Our reputation is at stake; as a result, we are terminating this relationship in order to protect our morals and values; also, to protect the image of my parents, who have worked their hardest for the past 25 years.”

The upscale version of Lotus of Siam, neutered for the New York expectation of Thai, just didn’t work and wasn’t at all consistent with the brand. The restaurant tries to do mid-market finer dining, using Thai-ish food, and will continue to do so until everyone realizes that it doesn’t fulfill its promise either as Thai food or as upscale dining. The family has already left, leaving behind only the name.

I had a thoroughly unimpressive lunch at the Vegas location a couple of weeks ago, but my guess is that lunch is the wrong time to go, they’re very mass-market buffet focused at lunch and I think ordering off the menu gets short-shrift. Dinner there a few years ago was much better. Hopefully the return strictly to Vegas will allow sufficient focus to ensure that the restaurant survives there and continues to offer the excellent meals I’ve had in the past.

(HT: Samir)

I find the single most difficult award to get from North America is flying to Australia and New Zealand. It used to be easy, fortunately for me, because I have family there. For the past couple of years it’s been truly the needle in a haystack exercise.

Not that many years ago United offered a brief period where every flight had the full first class cabin available on points, but that was a glitch. More often than not there’ll be seats opening on United when the schedule loads, perhaps a single first class award and a couple of business seats, and those go quickly. Randomly across the schedule as time progresses more seats will open, but any given flight may be very tough to get. Expertflyer automatic searches and email alerts are very useful here. But thinking you can just grab a United flight from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Sydney on your preferred dates when you want to book is simply not realistic.

Air New Zealand business class – a wonderful product – can be very easy to get during the Northern summer months. But more often than not folks want to go during high season, and getting those seats in advance from late October through mid-March can be an incredible challenge. In my experience Air New Zealand tends to open business class award space 60 days out from travel.

Qantas offers quite a bit of service from the US to Australia and even flights to Auckland. But their availability is awful. Now, they load their schedules almost a year out, and there’s sometimes award space when the schedules load. American Airlines miles can’t be used until 330 days prior to departure, and that’s a bit of a challenge because those early seats may be gone in the three week period between when they first become available and when American AAdvantage can book them. Certainly more seats open later, but it’s still an incredible hunt and peck exercise.

One option for grabbing Qantas seats before American AAdvantage has access to them is Alaska Airlines. Alaska partners with Qantas and can access Qantas seats as soon as the schedule loads. Alaska won’t load it’s own flights into the system until 330 days out (and then I also find premium cabin seats on Alaska usually load a few days later). But they’ll let you book their partner seats immediately, and then call back to add the Alaska segments, and in my experience they won’t even charge a change fee for adding on the Alaska segments later.

Meanwhile another option is American Express points which transfer to British Airways Executive Club or just using BA miles, they can book those Qantas seats when the schedule loads, but their award chart to Australia is Very expensive.

In general the best way to get Australia and New Zealand award seats, especially during high season, is to have tremendous flexibility. Don’t start with when you want to go. Use a tool like Award Nexus to search broad swaths of dates, find the needle in a haystack, and then plan your travels accordingly.

But if you must fly on particular dates, or at least with flexibility of only a few days, things to consider are:

• Be willing to take less desirable routings. American miles can be used on Air Pacific, Los Angeles to Fiji to Sydney. Their business class is pretty ancient, but it’s not coach. It’s a connection in the middle of the South Pacific, but it gets you there. There’s also Air Tahiti Nui via Papeete (Tahiti) to Auckland, it’s another routing but note that Tahiti is one of the more difficult routes on its own and then Tahiti to Auckland isn’t daily service.

• Be willing to take less desirable and obscure routings. Air New Zealand island hops out of Los Angeles with their less than modern 767 aircraft, for instance, once-weekly to Raratonga and from there you can fly to Auckland.

• Be willing to fly via Asia. Many programs will permit an Asia routing, which often means 50% more flying, make it a larger trip and stop in Asia to break up the trip. Bangkok – Sydney is hugely available on Thai, for instance. And the Auckland flight is doable as well. Special bonus, Thai offers three-cabin first class service to Sydney. United won’t allow members to fly via Asia, however, so the only ‘creative’ routing is really via Honolulu to Auckland.

• Don’t forget flying out of Canada. Air Canada offers Vancouver to Sydney flights. Air New Zealand flies from Vancouver as well. Air Canada’s flight can be hard to get, Air New Zealand’s Vancouver flight is often more available than their others though it’s not a daily offering.

The craziest thing, though? The single most available way to get an award to Australia in a premium cabin is on V Australia. And their frequent flyer partner in the US is Delta. So while it may cost you 350,000 Delta Skymiles to fly business class on Delta to Sydney more often than not, it’s often possible to get a better inflight product on V Australia for 150,000 Skymiles. Not a fan of Skymiles generally, but when it comes to this most difficult of awards folks often have marginally better success with those Delta miles than miles in other programs.

The second most difficult award, I find, is Tahiti. That’s just because there’s so little flying there.

Air Tahiti Nui flies from Los Angeles. Those seats used to be easy to get, I’ve had a couple of first class award seats headed down there myself. In more recent times they started offering only a single first class award on most flights instead of two, and even more recently the reports I’ve seen have been that American AAdvantage hasn’t been able to access those first class award seats even when available (seats open in the “A” bucket). There aren’t a ton of flights, business class awards are often even harder than first class, but the do exist. The only miles that can be used to upgrade on Air Tahiti Nui are miles from their own program, upgrades are generally quite available but go try to find anyone with miles in that program.

Air France flies Los Angeles – Tahiti, but not daily. They do offer business class awards, though they’re especially tough to get in high season months of Northern summer and around peak holiday periods.

Ironically again, Delta miles are especially well-positioned here. They partner with both Air France and Air Tahiti Nui. American partners with Air Tahiti Nui. But have miles with a Star Alliance airline such as United or US Airways? Your only way to Tahiti is going to be via Auckland. So you have to get to New Zealand first (hard enough on its own) and then fly to Tahiti, so tons of extra flying to get there.

There are other routes, American miles can be used to fly LAN to South America and then to Easter Island and on to Tahiti. Hawaiian Airlines flies from Honolulu once-weekly on Saturdays. Not very helpful in most cases. If you’re in Asia there are other Tahiti options, but for a North American-centric flyer this is quite the challenge.

And don’t forget that most people don’t actually want to go to Tahiti. They want to go to Bora Bora, to Moorea, or to further out islands. And you can’t use your airline miles to get to those islands, you’re buying domestic flights separately (or to Moorea, a ferry option exists).

A special bonus third most difficult award is Male, in the Maldives. For North Americans it’s on the other side of the world. So you have to get yourself to Asia to begin with, though that’s usually not particularly challenging. But there just aren’t that many airlines flying to Male that are part of the major alliances, just not that many flights, and those that exist can be difficult to get seats on.

You can get yourself to Dubai, and Emirates has quite a decent amount of lift into Male. But those seats aren’t easy to get as awards in premium cabins, and it’s a long enough flight that you tend to want those premium cabins.

You can fly to Singapore, and Singapore Airlines flies to Male. So Star Alliance miles are pretty well-situated to accomplish this. But Singapore isn’t exactly generous releasing award seats, especially to their partners. And most people flying to the Maldives are looking for two seats. Singapore usually releases no more than a single premium class seat at a time on each flight to their partners, this isn’t always true with some intra-Asian routes but seems to be the case with Male. My advice here is to book one economy and one business class award seat, that’s something which is frequently available, and then just keep checking for a second business class seat to open up. There’s always the risk of sitting in coach on this nearly 2000 mile flight, but at least you can include the flying as part of the award.

Another approach is just to get to a ‘nearby’ location such as Bangkok, ‘only’ a couple thousand miles away, and buy a ticket on an unaffiliated airline, in the case of Bangkok there’s Bangkok Airways.

When committed to destinatios like Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Maldives some creativity, some flexibility, and some compromise are the order of the day.

Tell me about your successes and failures securing awards to Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Maldives..?

There’s a new all-time best offer for the Continental Airlines Mastercard, 50,000 miles after first purchase and no fee the first year. (HT: Rick.)

Continental and United have merged. Next year the frequent flyer programs will be combined. So there’s no reason to wait for a better offer for the Continental card. You can usually only get the signup bonus for each Chase credit card only once, if you haven’t had a Continental Mastercard before now is certainly the time to get one because the product will cease to exist in less than a year.

And of course your Continental and United mileage balances are going to be merged, so even if you’re just a United person you should consider grabbing these 50,000 miles because they’ll be added to your Mileage Plus balance down the road.

Now, you may not want to do this for about a week!

If you wait until February 1st when Continental’s Mile-a-thon offer begins (registration required), you’ll earn credits for that by applying for this card. That’s the strategy I used a year ago when I signed up for a Continental Mastercard, it netted me an extra 5000 miles.

I’ve actually kept the card, I rather like it, in fact it’s my go-to card for online shopping. That’s because Continental Mastercard holders earn double miles on all shopping done through the Continental Onepass shopping portal. Drugstore.com becomes 10 miles per dollar instead of 5, FTD (based on current earning, sometimes this changes) becomes 50 miles per dollar insead of 25. Just for a few examples.

I recently wrote about the 30% bonus on transfers from American Express Membership Rewards to Delta Skymiles and the 50% transfer bonus that folks are eligible for if they’ve never made a transfer before. Both offers require registration.

MilesQuest reports that the bonuses are stackable. If you register for both of them, and you’ve never transferred from American Express Membership Rewards to your Delta account before, you’ll earn an 80% bonus (through March 31). Plus if you transfer 50,000 points or more from American Express, you’ll earn 25,000 elite qualifying miles.

Now, if it’s me I’m probably not making the transfer for an 80% bonus (which I wouldn’t be eligible for anyway, because I have made some small transfers in the past). But it’s a lot more tempting than the usual offers, for sure.

Best Western is offering 250 American Airlines miles just for signing up for their frequent guest program. You need to set your “earnings preference” to American miles by April 11 to earn the free miles.

(Hat tip: MilesQuest.)

TM Travel World points out that since Delta upgrades can be used on Air France there’s a real strategic improvement that many people are missing.

Folks still need to buy nearly full fare economy tickets in order to upgrade from economy. And in general there’s much displeasure that upgrading from economy on Air France — now that Air France and KLM upgrades are now possible via the Skymiles program — only gets you premium economy.

But Troy points out that often buying premium economy is cheaper than buying full fare economy. And buying premium economy lets you upgrade to business class. So that’s sometimes the best strategy to use with Delta upgrades — discounted Air France premium economy fares to get business class on Air France, rather than buying full fare economy on Delta or on Air France. Cheaper, and (to some) a better product.

I’m not a big fan of Air France business class, when I flew it most recently a year ago I found the seats in terrible shape and among the least comfortable ‘angled flat’ I’ve experienced (almost closer to recliner style). The amenities were poor, video on demand meager, and flying to Paris the food was mediocre, the food was better on the return. Still, it’s business class and it’s transportation. And Air France business class awards and upgrades (both come from the same ‘O’ bucket which can be searched at FlightStats.com) are generally quite available from many markets, especially my own home market of Washington Dulles.

In early June the afternoon Air France Dulles flight goes to an A380, and business class award/upgrade space is wide open… So that should be a better, newer product and easy to name with purchase of premium economy tickets.

As Troy points out, you must contact “Delta agent to request upgrade. Please note: Many agents have no clue how to process them, so expect some long wait on phone”

I’ve been writing about this occasionally for several months, but credit card signup bonuses have been incredible over the past year. First there was the 100,000 mile signup bonus offer from Chase for a British Airways Visa, then Citibank came out with their 100,000 mile offer for their American Airlines cards. Chase even had a 50,000 mile offer for the United Visa.

Just incredible. Sign up for a credit card, maybe grab a second one (a small business card, most people are able to get one e.g. Their Name & Associates) and go anywhere in the world. In a premium cabin. Sometimes for an annual fee, other times even that’s been waived.

Those banks, they must really think acquiring a customer is valuable.

Well, the current big offer is 75,000 miles for an American Airlines credit card, bonus posts after spending $4000 on the card within six months, and annual fee is waived the first year. The offer runs through February 28.

Will it be extended? Who knows. It’s certainly true that bigger bonuses have become the new normal. I remember when 15,000 mile signup bonuses were a nice offer, 20,000 miles was a big deal. Most offers are better than that these days.

But will 75,000 or 100,000 come right back? Why risk it? If you haven’t had a American Airlines credit cards from Citibank, now is a pretty darned good time to sign up, unless perhaps you’re going for your mortgage this year. Credit score issues have been discussed in the past on this blog, they’re beyond the scope of this post, but in general best advice is if you have a good score then get these really good offer credit cards and the only reason to hold off is if you plan to get a mortgage within the year. (On the whole getting more unused credit available will push your score up over time, but credit applications temporarily ding your score a little bit and that on the whole this temporary ding won’t matter at all to your credit costs. But that’s a whole separate discussion. I had a pretty darn sweet score when I got my mortgage and I’ve been churning cards for years…)

My advice really is to grab these cards if you haven’t had them. Some people who have had them can get them again successfully, but Citibank isn’t automatically giving everyone the card and bonus if they’ve had those in the past.

I do find that people who have had a personal card in the past can get the business card usually, at least.

And if you haven’t had either, get both.

If you get both cards and meet the required minimum spend, you’d have 158,000 miles. You could fly first class from the US to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, stopover, and continue in business class to Bali. And return on Cathay in business/first as well (there’s no first class service from Hong Kong to Bali).

And of course a spouse or significant other could do the same thing by getting the two credit cards as well.

Boom, instant honeymoon. Ok, not instant, it takes a little while to spend the $4000 on each card and have the miles post, then you have to find availability. But Cathay Pacific has outstanding availability from Toronto and from San Francisco, they’re adding Chicago flights, and you can always grab an American or Alaska flight to the Cathay Pacific gateway.

Maybe I’m a bit over the top in this post but it’s only to reach out and grab you and shake you and say this one is just too good to pass up, and there’s only about a month left to grab onto it.

(The current 50,000 mile signup bonus offer for the British Airways Visa is pretty good too, but I’ll be happy if you just grab those American miles.)

Carol points me to a Flyertalk discussion from the past few days about Citibank sending 1099 forms to customers who earned miles from their checking accounts.

Folks are shocked, even though there have been plenty of references in early threads on Citibank banking promotions indicating that they do report the ‘value’ of miles provided to the IRS. It’s definitely not new.

Citbank reports as taxable the value of miles earned via bank accounts, but not credit cards (though apparently they once did this too – as a mistake! – since the latter are considered non-taxable rebates). This 2009 Flyertalk thread discusses Citibank reporting miles earning from banking products as taxable.

Aside from being annoying, folks think they’re getting a tax-free benefit but learn it will cost them real money, the net value of the benefit is lower — miles are often reported at a much higher value than is conventionally considered reasonable, e.g. at 3 cents per mile (consider redeeming 25,000 miles or even 50,000 miles for a $350 airline ticket, and you may redeem for premium cabin international travel but you wouldn’t pay the sticker price so that’s not a fair approximation either, I wouldn’t buy miles except to top off for a specific award at airline psoted prices). On the other hand when I ‘won’ a bunch of Starwood points for naming the Sheraton checkin kiosk, Starwood Preferred Guest sent me a 1099 for 1.5 cents per dollar, there was no dispute there.

From a legal standpoint Citibank is probably correct on tax reporting of rewards for banking products though I’d certainly be disputing the value of the miles if reported as particularly high. I posted in 2005 and reposted in 2008 how to handle the dispute of miles or prizes reported on a 1099 form to the IRS.

Obviously, this isn’t specific tax advice for your particular situation, and I am not a tax advisor. Rather, here is my best understanding of how this works…

First, you should attempt to negotiate with whomever provides the prize. The official way to do it (since in most cases you won’t be successful just asking for an adjustment) is to call the IRS at (800) 829-1040. It’s best to do so early in the morning in my experience, since you’ll have a better chance of getting through.

Explain that you received the 1099 and disagree with the amount that was reported on it, and that you’ve tried to resolve the situation but have been unable to.

Tell them that you were advised to have the IRS complete a Form 4598, “Form W-2 or 1099 Not Received or Incorrect.” It’s not something you can just download from their website.

You’ll need to give the IRS the payer information from the 1099 you received and the details of how you arrived at your own valuation figures.

The IRS will send the complaint form to the payer, who has 10 days to respond (you should receive a copy as well). Hopefully the payer will simply send a corrected 1099.

If you don’t receive a satisfactory response by the due date of your return, you have two options.

One is to include the amount that you believe to be correct on your return and attach the Form 4598 and an explanation. The IRS may later send you a notice of the discrepancy, so keep your records in good shape.

The other option is just to enter an adjustment as a negative amount. (You can even do that without going through the process of seeking to adjust with 1099, but your case may be more strongly documented if you’ve taken that step.)

If you received a Form 1099-MISC that shows $1,000 in box 3 for a prize yon won in a contest, but you know that a local store has the same item available for $750, you argue that the fair market value is $750. You can enter the $250 difference as a negative adjustment under Other Miscellaneous Income. One of the popular tax software packages advises that you enter “PRIZE FMV ADJUSTMENT” for the description and “-250″ for the amount.

No matter what course of action you pursue, you’ll want to document your adjustments, such as with ad clippings. If the prize was miles, and the fair market value was listed at a cost per mile greater than what the airline charges, simple printouts of the ‘purchase miles’ web pages should do the trick.

Fortunately, BankDirect doesn’t report the value of miles earned from checking accounts to the IRS…

Update: Commenter Harvey Mechanic that when you call the IRS as described about an incorrect 1099, they are now issuing letters in lieu of form 4598. But the procedure is otherwise the same. This was a minor change made after my original post on disputing the value of miles/prizes on 1099s, thanks for the catch!

Lucky and MilesQuest blogged earlier in the week about an offer of 30% bonus on transfers to Delta Skymiles from American Express through March 31 (registration required).

I meant to blog it for sake of completeness, in case any of y’all were going to happen to make transfers from American Express to Delta so as not to miss out on the bonus points. But it just wasn’t exciting enough to get around to, and certainly not a reason to proactively transfer from Amex to Skymiles. And since the bonus says it doesn’t post right away, it doesn’t help you transfer fewer points to top off for an award you’re about to redeem, it just gives you back more points later.

But Rene passes along a link for another bonus for first time transfers from Amex to Delta only, a 50% bonus on your transfer and 25,000 elite qualifying miles if you transfer 50,000 points or more through May 31 (registration required). As Rene points out, if you don’t have any Membership Rewards points you could sign up for an (expensive..) American Express Platinum card which gives you the ability to ‘borrow’ up to 60,000 points. Instant Silver status with Delta.

Not my cup of tea, I do have a Membership Rewards account and I’ve transferred a few small bits of miles to Delta here and there over the years to top off towards specific awards, I’m not personally eligible. I would probably do this just for the status if I were otherwise a Delta flyer — not to make silver but if it was going to make me Platinum instead of Gold. I wouldn’t do it just for the 50% bonus, since I’d prefer to hold back the flexibility of points and I still consider other best uses of Amex points worth better than 50% more than transfers to Delta. But it’s still an interesting offer, and better than the next-best one that I had recently seen out there.

This is very similar to the November/December offer, except only first-time transfers are eligible.

MilesQuest points to and offer for six months’ free subscription to the Wall Street Journal, no credit card required. Pretty cool.

It’s easy enough, but on second thought, too much work for me. I already read the articles I want online, this would be more paper piling up, and I’m too lazy to complete the needed surveys.

US Airways has been the leader in monetizing their frequent flyer program, offering more and bigger promotions than pretty much anyone else including to straight up buy miles. They offered something along the lines of a 100% bonus on purchased miles for nearly 10 months in a 12 month period beginning November, 2009.

And then they went silent. After a monster holiday shopping promotion at the end of 2009, the 2010 version was a thud. And they haven’t had buy miles promos for the past couple of months.

While US Airways had developed a reputation as the ‘consolidator for Star Alliance premium cabin seats’ (they were selling miles cheap, those miles then would be used for premium cabin awards on their partners, effectively selling excess inventory — those seats released as awards — for a deep discount, since you can hold an award without the miles in the account, it was a sure thing, reserve the seats and then buy the miles).

But more recently it’s become increasingly difficult to redeem with US Airways. Their systems were ‘unable’ to see Lufthansa first class award space between the US and Europe, and much speculation ensued that they were ‘blocking’ that space so that members couldn’t redeem for it, much like United has done at times when Mileage Plus didn’t want to pay their partners for the award seats that were being offered.

That became more or less a non-issue, as at least on Lufthansa’s 747s they’ve stopped offering award seats in first class most days into the future, as they reconfigure their first class product on the aircraft with new seats but only 8 rather than 16 seats. Of course, inventory on the Airbus routes remained. And there have still been occasional odd dates with first class award space even on 747s.

And then there were reports that US Airways was having problems booking available award seats on other partners as well, prompting much consternation and speculation.

The worry of a full Starnet Blocking system as has existed with United, coupled with a lack of promotions like the 100% bonus on purchased miles coming back, has generated some speculation that US Airways finally decided that while they generated some cash, in the long run it was too costly to do so in the way they had been going about it.

Except now they’re back but only for some members. I just received an email as follows:

Get 40% off your purchase of Dividend Miles

Thank you for buying, sharing or gifting Dividend Miles in 2010!

We’d like to help you earn more miles this year. Enjoy 40% savings
when you buy Dividend Miles before January 31, 2011.

This exclusive offer is just for you* and you can only get it here:
Buy up to 50,000 Dividend Miles and Save 40%

P.S. Your discount will appear on Step 2 once we have validated your account.

The 40% discount doesn’t show up on US Airways.com. Apparently it’s only available to email recipients, and only by using the email link. The offer lasts through January 31 and applies only to the first 50,000 miles purchased. Instead of a bonus of additional miles, it’s a discount on the purchase of 50,000 — encouraging you to purchase 50,000 miles, rather than encouraging you to acquire 100,000.

Put another way, they’re angling to get you to buy miles to save towards future awards, not to buy and cash in in the same transaction for premium cabin international seats on their partners. (You can of course top off an account to do so, but they’re not giving you a bonus that lets you do it solely on the back of the offer itself.)

So perhaps they really are tightening, even as they continue to push their bonuses and monetize the program. Not surprising at all, the gravy train couldn’t last forever.

… as captured by the camera on my blackberry.

This was the biggest ‘under 2 years old’ lap infant I’ve ever seen:

It’s time for US Airways to update their interiors to, umm, their own logos. They aren’t America West anymore.

This was my post-takeoff beverage, water:

Wine with dinner is served in the same plastic cups.

But then perhaps that’s appropriate, considering US Airways’ classy passengers up front.

Airline small business programs are an interesting way to ‘double dip’ on rewards. They’re designed to encourage businesses to focus on one airline and make their employees fly that airline. They offer the business rewards in addition to the miles earned by the traveler.

I’ve found American’s Business ExtrAA program useful in the past, I gifted gold status to a friend recently and mostly have used small points totals for club passes and the like. Even a solo regular travel can earn enough points in a year for a reasonable reward, you don’t need to actually be a separate business with plenty of travelers to benefit from the program.

In contrast, United’s Perks Plus is less friendly to the solo traveler just looking to double up on rewards.

Delta’s program is SkyBonus and they’re currently offering some generous signup bonuses, as flagged by this Flyertalk thread.

Sign up for Delta’s program with promo code SB2011NEW and you’ll get 25,000 SkyBonus points as a sign-up bonus. This signup bonus alone will get you 20 drink chits (10 drinks is 10,000 points).

Once you sign up you can quickly run through ‘SkyBonus University’ for 2000 more points.

If you don’t just redeem your points immediately for drink chits you can get to some higher-valued rewards. A single discounted domestic flight should get you up to 28,000 points (with Skybonus number in the reservation), which is enough for a one-way upgrade on a full fare domestic ticket. 30,000 points gets you four lounge passes. 100,000 points gets you Silver elite status to gift.

Residents of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania have an even more generous promo (presumably you could sign up under it and change your address later when it’s time to redeem). Promo code SBCBNEW will get you 85,000 bonus points after a single roundtrip, enough for a domestic award and very close to gifting someone silver status. There are additional bonuses under the promo, totaling a million Skybonus points after $30,000 in spend. But the really quick and easy win is just the bonus for a single roundtrip.

But at the very least, enjoy your drink chits..

This post on Flyertalk notes 3 quick Priority Club surveys which offer free points:

100 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/unfvmw
Answers are : C,D,B

100 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/fhaidt
Answers are: D,A,D

300 points: http://usa-survey.priorityclub.com/mwpvwj
Answers are: D, D, D, D, C

I had already taken the second and third surveys, it wouldn’t let me take them again. But it did let me take the first one.

TM Travel World runs down the fuel surcharges added to award tickets by various carriers. Bottom-line is that most North American programs do not add fuel surcharges to awards, most programs in the rest of the world do.

However, there are exceptions.

Air Canada Aeroplan adds thesef fees to flights on Air Canada only.

American adds them to flights on British Airways only. On the one hand it can seem worthwhile to pay them with American — British Airways availability in premium cabins tends to be excellent, and they offer a very good business class seat. But flying multiple long haul BA flights can really get costly. US to London, stopover, London to South Africa, and then back to the US via London can be more than $1000 cash per person in addition to miles as a result of fuel surcharges, high airport taxes, and the U.K. premium cabin departure (luxury) tax. Ouch.

Delta quietly adds these fees to rewards on some partner airlines and not others, and the list apparently changes. Troy does a good job keeping track of these. I had no idea they had begun adding fuel surcharges to Air Tahiti Nui redemptions. (American, which also partners with Air Tahiti Nui, does not impose these charges.)

Delta also has an ‘international origination’ fee, they add an extra charge for flights that begin outside of North America. Go figure! What’s more, they still to the best of my knowledge (please correct me!) do not publish an award chart that doesn’t begin or end in North America. How many miles is it to fly between South Korea and Thailand? Shh… It’s a secret.!

How big a deal are fuel surcharges? One Flyertalk thread this morning notes that redeeming an award using Lufthansa Miles & More miles can be more expensive than just buying a ticket.

This member found out that buying a coach ticket between Prague and Moscow cost 30% less cash than redeeming miles for an award, and of course you don’t spend any miles (and earn miles, and help qualify towards status).

Fuel surcharges pretty well make redeeming for economy class awards utterly illogical. Of course, I recommend premium cabin redemptions anyway, and it certainly makes those more expensive, but the outcomes with coach can be just absurd.

That’s why SAS Eurobonus is really to be commended. While most European, and indeed most non-North American programs add fuel surcharges to their award tickets, at the very end of 2009 SAS Eurobonus ended the practice. A real win for their members, really engendering loyalty, and a move that earned a Loyalty Leadership Award at the first annual Frequent Traveler Awards in Houston in November.

After pulling up to the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas by cab, I was offered assistance with my small carryon which I declined. There are two doors to walk through, the first was opened for me but the second was not. I faced long lines to check-in, which I thought was odd for 1pm on Monday. But this is a very large hotel (in terms of number of rooms, though not overall size of the physical plant). And it’s brand spanking new, just opened last month, so I was really looking forward to checking it out.

A very friendly guy checked me in, he was taught to try to connect with guests, saw my home town and noted that he had been to one nearby. And later in the process he asked how long I’ve lived there.

The check-in process needs to be improved, there are several independent lines and all were several people deep when I arrived. Of course, as they try to be friendly with the person checking in, they’re just lengthening the checkin lines. And some people are chattier than others — it’s important here to guess right who is going to be friendly and who is going to be efficient and choose your line accordingly.

The person checking me in was clueless about Marriott Rewards. I asked whether my Gold status got me anything at the hotel, he hemmed and hawed and then said he didn’t think so. Looked at the screen and said, “I think you’ve been upgraded” though it’s not clear that I was, I booked a “Terrace Studio with King” and I was told I was being given a “Terrace Studio.” Now, I haven’t done extensive comparisons of the rooms, I didn’t have much of a view, though perhaps my room was somehow better than some of the other rooms within the category though it’s far from obvious. Not that I actually cared, I was here alone for a single night and my breakfast was taken care of by the event in any case.

I’ve read on Flyertalk that they’re recognizing Platinum status, though it took a few days after opening before they got that worked out. There are so many suites here that it would be a challenge not to receive one. And Platinums get their breakfast at the hotel’s Wicked Spoon buffet. There are some reports of Golds with upgrades as well, but I felt no reason to push the issue and I wound up thoroughly pleased even with my basic room.

The public spaces are nice, the hotel isn’t all that large considering it features nearly 3000 rooms, but there are plenty of well-decorated places to walk and plenty of places to sit and congregate along the way.

The elevator are interesting, with LED screens displaying different scenes and scenery throughout the day. Televisions are commonplace, moving electronic screens less so except in the newest and most modern properties. The elevator here reminded me of the W Hong Kong, except their screen is on the floor of the elevator.

The room is very cool, stylishly decorated with a separated living room from the bedroom and a large bathroom. The bathroom has a separate tub and walk-in shower as well as dual sinks and a separate toilet room. The wallpaper in the toilet cabin is ‘interesting.’ The living room has a television, desk and chair, and large L-shaped couch. And the bedroom has another television as well.

I did like the wallpaper in the toilet room, it seems to demonstrate the level of detail and creativity that has gone into the rooms and into the hotel.

The TVs are the centerpiece of the room. You can control lights from the TV, browse the room service menu from the TV, and check out any spa or other bookings you’ve made on the TV. It’s a neat concept, but controlling lights
from the tv is a bit gimmicky, I don’t mind a separate remote control for lights in fact I rather like it, but the television took too much menu scrolling in order to manage the lights that it hardly seemed useful.

The TV stopped working sometime in the middle of the night. I called down and learned that it wasn’t just me, it was the whole hotel. And while the TV began functioning again after several hours, some of the features never worked. I tried to checkout using the television but it just returned an error. (I just called down to check out, I wish I hadn’t because it took several minutes. They did offer to email me my folio but it never arrived.)

Housekeeping leaves a little to be desired, I had a nice balcony but my glass door that opens to it had hand prints.

Some of the balconies have impressive views, mine felt like I was in any other city.

There were Bigelow toileteries, the mouthwash was open though and slightly used.

And shortly after I arrived housekeeping knocked on the door to see if I needed the room serviced, she hadn’t realized that I was a new guest in the room. (I hadn’t yet noticed that I actually did need the room serviced…) As I was packing up the next day to check out housekeeping entered the room and declared, “I thought you were already gone!”

I ordered room service coffee in the morning and had to wait on hold for about five minutes before anyone picked up. Typical for larger Vegas hotels, but not the standard I’m looking for. And when my order arrived, they forgot to bring my toast. And when they came back with my toast, it was the wrong kind. Ah, little things.

Housekeeping came by to pick up the tray without being asked, but while I was getting dressed. Proactive is good, and I never saw any trays out in the hall during my stay, but I prefer them to wait for me to request service than to interrupt. Still, I could have flagged the room for privacy and didn’t so I wouldn’t complain. I asked them to come back in 30 minutes for the tray, they said they would but did not.

These are all absolutely minor things, and none of them bothered me. If it was meant as a special stay, or a vacation stay, I probably would have minded.

The hotel does seem to offer the best entry-level rooms of any Vegas property curently. At over 600 square feet, with separate living area and large bathroom, plus they’re new and with latest technology, at the entry level I’d probably choose the Cosmopolitan over others in its class like Bellagio or Venetian for sure. In order to beat the upper level competitors, however, they’re going to need to iron out some of the wrinkles. But once you understand the property as basically being in a soft opening, even if they don’t call it that, the whole thing makes a good bit more sense. They only opened less than four weeks back, and they probably weren’t ready at the time. But they needed the holidays and the Computer Electronics Show, so they made it happen albeit not quite ready for prime time. Everyone on staff comes from different hotels and it’ll take a bit of work to standardize the routines. But I don’t doubt that they’ll get there, certainly by Vegas standards anyway.

First night Conde Nast hosted a reception in the Chandelier bar, which is a very cool space. And since it’s not enough to just pour high end drinks in a spiffy location, they had an artist painting throughout the evening. (I
never went back to check on what it was when she had finished.)

The next morning I was speaking, got to meet some fascinating travel specialists who specialize in booking trips with amazing attention to detail from rural China to safaris in Rwanda to excursions in Madagascar.

Lovely people, had a great time, and the Cosmopolitan can only improve.

I caught a cab straight away from the airport. I had been planning to come straight here. So I had the driver take me well beyond the strip to a strip mall that’s home to many ethnic restaurants a few miles away from the major action of the city, where Lotus of Siam can be found.

I had a wonderful dinner here a couple of years, and for many years it’s been highly touted as the best Thai restaurant in North America. The chef has won all sorts of awards. And they’re sure to let you know that, with the walls of the entrance filled with their accolades.

I was eager to return, especially after a less than stellar meal at their new New York location. I wanted them to redeem themselves.

I walked in shortly before noon, and was seated straight away. They brought me the menu, which is very very extensive, and I began to peruse.

What I hadn’t noticed on the way in was that there was a lunch buffet set up. All you can eat for $9. I took a look, though that wasn’t what I was there for. It looked ‘ok’, like any small Chinese lunch buffet that could be found anywhere in the country, at least any one that gets a pretty good volume of business such that things are fresh rather than sitting out, I saw them refilling the buffet frequently.

And therein lies the problem, perhaps. Everyone else in the restaurant was eating from the buffet. I ordered off of the menu. And I wonder whether they just weren’t really equipped to pay attention to a single dish when they were busy cooking en masse.

I started with the Nam Prik Ong (Northern red chili dip) which was good, but the last time I had it was in Chiang Rai so it’s unlikely it was going to measure up. I also ordered the Salmon Penang.

With so many things on the menu, I ordered based on what I felt like eating and what sounded good rather than giving the restaurant a fare shake in a controlled experiment. I should always order their spicy soup or coconut soup, it’s such a basic dish and I believe you can tell a lot about a Thai restaurant from the way they prepare their soups. I didn’t do that this time.

Really I was missing out because I was dining alone, how many dishes would I order? It was lunch, I was only so hungry, so I stuck with the two.

They asked me how spicy I like my food, I told them that I wanted it to be as spicy as it’s supposed to be. That I visit Thailand each year, that I am not afraid of spice. And the Nam Prik Ong had some flavor to it, so we were off to a reasonable start.

The salmon in penang curry though was a mistake. It was completely flat. There wasn’t much flavor, almost strictly coconut milk. The piece of salmon was a bit underdone. A fine enough piece of fish I suppose but one that could have been eaten in any restaurant of any kind, if it hadn’t been placed on a bed of coconut curry. Thoroughly disappointing.

And so I walked away unhappy, I can’t really say whether the place has gone downhill or whether it’s just not a good idea to come for lunch, that all of the good work comes at dinner. Perhaps the lunch buffet killed it. Perhaps the last two years’ economy in Vegas killed it. I suppose I’ll give it one more try, and definitely at dinner, also of course with more people to try more things. But I’m not in a terrible rush to do so.

I recently got an email from a marketing guy who wanted to send me a pair of Denon noise cancelling headphones in order to give them a try and review them here on the blog. I told him that he was welcome to send them along, but I wouldn’t promise to review them and of course I wanted him to know up front that I’d write whatever I thought. He was confident enough in the product that he sent them to me anyway.

A few years ago someone sent me a set of PlaneQuiet noise cancelling headphones, I tried them on a trip and my take was that they were better than not having noise cancelling headphones, they did cancel some noise and it was better to watch movies with them than a pair of regular ‘ol headphones. But that I wasn’t going to recommend them. I meant to blog the experience but never got around to it, figuring that I’d tell folks that if they were only willing to drop $49 on a pair that the PlaneQuiets were probably worth getting but that they didn’t come close to replacing Bose.

And I realize looking back that I’ve never reviewed noise cancelling headphones. I guess that’s because I never found anything that compared to Bose, that those are so standard as to not need discussion or comparison. What would anyone gain by my telling them that if they travel frequently a staple of their laptop bag ought to be a pair of Bose noise cancelling headphones?

I received the Denons and it immediately struck me how similar they appears to the Bose, the case seemed in many ways the same and of course the little pouch inside for various cords and attachments. Although I liked the compact design of the Denon, they folded up and the case fits nicely into the front pouch of my Tom Binh Checkpoint Flyer laptop bag.

After taking the Denons out on a trip for the first time, my initial impression was that sound quality was better with the Denon but that noise cancellation was better with the Bose. But first impressions aren’t always enough, so I decided to bring both Bose QC2s and Denons along for a side-by-side comparison. And I admit I was surprised by the comparison.

First, in fairness, I’m comparing them to an old set of Bose. In fact, the ear pieces are fraying on the Bose QC2s, these seem a prime candidate for lucky’s advice to trade in for $90 QC15 replacements.

But head-to-head the Denons really shine. The sound of movies and .mp3s off of my laptop is louder with the Denon headset. That’s a big issue for me, I love my Lenovo x200s but it doesn’t broadcast sound at a particularly high volume. Onboard an aircraft I need the volume. And with noise cancelling on, the sound quality of the Denon headphones was just excellent.

My second caveat is that my wife tells me that I don’t hear very well, she speaks to me and I don’t listen. I maintain it’s my hearing, though doctors tell me I’m fine. But I may not be the best to contrast subtle differences in sound. To me, side-by-side, I couldn’t tell the difference in noise cancellation between the two high-end headphones. They both did a good job, but neither really crowds out screaming babies so you can enjoy the solitude of the aircraft.

One feature I didn’t ‘get’ and that may be because I’m not enough of a connoisseur to notice the difference, but Denon offers not just noise cancellaton but also a “restorer” mode. They explain that compressed file formats get rid of some sound ranges in order to save on file space. And their restorer mode is supposed to bring back the richness that the files otherwise strip out. Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two modes, they sounded exactly alike to me.

One minor negative for the Denons is that With noise cancellation on, if the earpieces come close to touching each other you’ll hear high pitched feedback. I can’t just take them off my head and leave them on because they’ll invariably touch. So when I take them off I need to turn them off.

Noise cancelling headphones are a must for a road warrior. Good ones aren’t inexpensive, but they’ll last for many hundreds of thousands of miles. And if there’s a frequent flyer in your life who won’t splurge on a pair for themselves, they make a very cool, impressive, and practical gift.

These are expensive. They run around $340, which is about 10% more than the Bose QC15s. And if they’re going to command that price, then at a minimum the Denon headphones need a better name. Bose has established themselves as the frequent flyer’s go to for noise cancelling headsets at the high end. Their name is recognizable, and their “QuietComfort” brand resonates. Denon may we well regarded for sound quality generally, but they’re unkowns in frequent flyer circles and their “AH-NC800″ name just doesn’t tell you anything useful. I had to look it up about 5 times just to make sure I had it right, how is anyone going to recommend one to a friend? AH-NC800. Really??

Bose has stood the test of time, but the new pair of Denons are outstanding and I’m thrilled with them. Caveating that I don’t yet know how they perform over years, and for that matter I haven’t run through the battery yet so I can’t make a comparison of battery life, I can say that I’ll be using these as my primary headphones. Still, they were free so the real question is would I buy them? Since I think high-end headphones are worthwhile for frequent travel, and I think that they’re the equal or the better of the Bose, yes I would.