Flyertalk discussion is here, and note that some folks are finding a higher price than otherwise best available when renting under this offer.

The $375 (gulp!) annual fee, though $300 in the first year, comes with Continental Presidents Club membership – which also gets you access to Northwest and Delta clubs. The similarly priced American Express Platinum card comes with this same lounge access plus access to American Airlines AAdmiral’s Clubs and other benefits (like the Fine Hotels and Resorts program and domestic companion airfare benefit) not matched by this card.

However, for flyers seeking elite status on Continental, it offers the best credit card elite status perk I’ve seen with any airline: up to 28,000 elite qualifying miles per year through spending on the card, and best of all you can drop those elite qualifying miles into your Continental account in 2,000 mile increments whenever you choose. (It looks to me like you could even save these up for a couple or even three years if you wanted, as they appear not to expire.)

What’s more, the card comes with Avis President’s Club status — which offers a guaranteed two car class upgrade and guaranteed availability. It’s one step below Chairman’s Club and used to be a perk afforded only to Amex Centurion cardmembers and to a handful of lucky beneficiaries through corporate contracts. (Although the benefit can apparently be accessed by anyone online, which I’ll explain in a followup post.)

Finally, a friend emails that the card comes with complimentary Platinum status with Hyatt and fast track to Diamond status (top level Hyatt status in just 6 stays). This benefit isn’t mentioned anywhere on the card website, and I haven’t verified it, but if true would be a real world-class offering that on the whole would seem to justify the price for a Continental flyer.

The account needs to be opened with a minimum of $100 and monthly direct deposit avoids a fee. (I haven’t checked, but moving money over from paypal will often get treated as a direct deposit, anyone who has tried this with Chase please let me know in the comments.) Checking account must remain open for a minimum of six months

Offer expires December 31, and you have to actually print the certificate on the web page and bring it into a Chase branch to set up the account, you can’t do it online.

Full fare tickets are refundable, upgradable, and earn 150% of flown miles.

This has been out for at least 10 hours but still appears to be going strong.

Update 11:15am Eastern: Still available. Here’s the Flyertalk discussion. Really great fare.

Update 7:05pm Eastern: This fare is still available. Turns out it was filed on October 17th. Didn’t get posted on Flyertalk till the weekend and no one seems to be minding the store. Sure, it prices out around $600 with taxes — but it’s a full fare refundable ticket that’s upgradable and earns bonus miles and bonus qualifying miles. This could give someone Platinum status on a Skyteam airline for under $3000 — and do it in the comfort of upgraded business class. Sure, $600 isn’t nothin’ but it’s also less than the lowest coach fare might be in July or August, and this fare does permit booking next summer!

Update Sunday 10:35am Eastern: Still there!

The only thing it has going for it is airline partners where you occasionally have a chance to redeem miles. Alaska Airlines has generally good award availability. They’re in Skyteam, which opens up plenty of airlines, but almost across-the-board Skyteam members offer poor award chances.

Continental is in my experience terrible at making seats available at the ‘normal’ mileage requirements on most routes and best flight times, and this is especially true in premium classes of service. So when collecting Continental miles, realize that they aren’t worth as much as American miles, for instance.

(Though you can transfer Onepass miles to Amtrak, and from Amtrak to Hilton, and eventually get something for your points — though Amtrak places a limit for their non-elite members of 25,000 points transferred out of a Guest Rewards account each calendar year.)

Still, there are times it might make sense to accumulate a few Continental miles.

Back in 2000 there were some megabonuses, I vaugely recall some folks earning 100,000 or more miles on a single roundtrip flight.

And then there are offers like this one — through October 2nd when you register and get a Continental Mastercard you’ll receive 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase and double miles on all spending through the end of the year. That’s at least three full months of double miles.

So if you’re a big spender this could be worth it. After all, even when regular-priced awards aren’t available you can spend additional miles to buy your way out of capacity controls.

This is not a ‘fee waived the first year’ offer like you frequently find with American and United credit cards, but may work for some folks.

international rewad and upgrade travel will see significant mileage increases for the 2006 program year.



It sounds like Y upgrades to BF to Hawaii will jump to 15,000 miles while discount economy upgrades will cost 35,000 miles in addition to any required fees. Upgrades to Asia will jump to 50,000 miles for discount economy tickets (plus fees) and 25,000 for full Y. Europe will jump to 40,000 and 20,000 respectively.



Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like offered inventory will change much …nor will the fee for the mileage option on discount economy tickets. Mark Bergsrud mentioned at a Q&A at the ‘Do today that they don’t expect any changes with the system and inventories.

An upgrade award to Hawaii from a discounted fare costs 17,500 miles now plus as much as $450 each way. That’s going to go up to 35,000 miles. Roundtrip that’s 70,000 miles and as much as $900 to upgrade.

In contrast, United offers upgrades to Hawaii from anywhere in the U.S. on any fare for 15,000 miles each way or 30,000 roundtrip. No fee is required.

What possible reason is there again to acquire Continental miles? Conceivably if you live in Houston, but even then you could be a member of Northwest’s program (which is only marginally better) and receive elite benefits. And if you’re not going to earn status and you’re going to fly on Continental for goodness sakes accumulate your miles in a real program like Alaska Mileage Plan.

The increase in upgrade prices remains a rumor, but it’s a sufficiently believable one that it underscores why you wouldn’t want to accumulate miles with Continental whether this particular change pans out or not.

Update: One conceivable reason to accumulate miles with Continental did occur to me, but it’s a fairly limited circumstance. If you live in a Continental hub city and buy discount fares and fly just enough to make elite status and are able to buy your tickets online at Continental.com you’ll get full elite credit for those flights, which you wouldn’t get accumulating miles in the Northwest program.

So if accumulating miles with Continental makes the difference between elite status and not, and elite benefits are more important than awards, then accumulate those OnePass miles. But don’t delude yourself into believing they’re worth anything.

You can now receive your BusinessFirst upgrade rewards until 24 hours prior to your scheduled departure. Previously, 72 hours were required.




Effective February 1, 2006, you may redeem reward travel within the 48 contiguous U.S., Alaska and Canada on round-trip flights of 1,500 miles or less for only 20,000 miles.




Effective April 1, 2006, some Easy Pass BusinessFirst reward mileage requirements will change:








































Routes between:	Miles required before 4/1/06	Miles required 4/1/06 and after
N. America and Asia	240,000	250,000
N. America and Europe	200,000	250,000
N.Amer & India/Africa/Mideast	240,000	250,000
N. America and Tel Aviv	200,000	250,000
Hawaii and Europe	220,000	270,000
Hawaii and Tel Aviv	220,000	270,000
Asia or Europe & S. Amer.	240,000	280,000




 

The introduction of 20,000 miles for flights under 1500 miles is a response to United and American offering 15,000 mile awards for shorter flights.

The change to upgrade redemption rules is a good one. Continental is afraid that customers will upgrade instead of buying full fare, so they make it difficult. Previously if there were empty business class seats 3 days before the flight you still won’t be able to redeem for them. But whether this change is ultimately an improvement depends on whether the airline releases some of these unsold seats in the period between 24 and 72 hours from departure. A better change would be to allow frequent flyers to use points for any seat eventually unsold, including at the airport.

The increase in miles required for EasyPass awards is especially problematic. A 25% increase for flights between the U.S. and Europe! These are the awards folks are stuck with when regular awards aren’t available, and they’re becoming even more expensive. 250,000 miles for business class to Europe is absurd. And while a valuable award to the extent it provides full flexibility and nearly unlimited availability, Continental’s pricing is out of this world. United charges 150,000 miles for the same award, and for that price will even take you unrestricted in business class to Australia.

This points to something else I’ve been worried about, perhaps the United chart is too lucrative relative to its competitors. I’m afraid that United — which really hasn’t increased its award pricing over the past three years while in bankruptcy yet has printed tons of miles — will start to hack away at their chart.

Register on the Continental website with offer code 58038 (for Platinum status) then go to the ‘Apply Now’ page and enter your OnePass account number and PIN code and complete the application by December 31, 2005 (so hurry – just 5 days left). You need to make your first purchase by March 1, 2006.

Other offer cards are 58039 for Gold status and 58040 for Silver status.

The offer is intended to be targeted. The terms and conditions say

This offer is non-transferable and is intended only for the person to whom it was sent.

However, the website lets anyone register for the promo. So this one is a big ‘Your Mileage May Vary’. Print out the registration confirmation and all other screens along the process to put yourself in a better position later. If the status is what drove you to apply for the card you should be able to at least get the fee credited back later. (And you can always get the fee credited back within a month of it appearing on your statement if you press hard enough, that’s a right you’ve got on any credit card in the U.S.)

But it’s likely worth the $85 fee just for the 15,000 bonus miles with first purchase and 5% discount on all Continental tickets purchased with the card at continental.com for your first year as a cardholder.

The Flyertalk discussion of this offer is here.

Update 12/31/05: I titled the post ‘too good to be true’ and caveated that your mileage may vary. Not entirely surprisingly, Continental is not honoring the offer.

(Hat tip Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)