View from the Wing

Delta will no longer allow Skymiles members (at least those members in the U.S.) to hold awards over the phone. If you book by phone, you have to ticket immediately. And booking over the phone just became more limited, as non-elites can only make telephone award reservations between 8am and 10pm Eastern.

Holding awards for 48 hours is still possible online. Awards on Delta as well as parter airlines Hawaiian, Alaska, Continental, and Northwest are bookable online.. sort of, sometimes, when the website works and prices out awards correctly.

Of course, that means that awards on other partners like Air France, Aeroflot, and Korean cannot be held at all.

This is a really annoying change. Finding awards can be challenging at times. Sometimes it takes humans because the online technology is lacking. You find flights that may work after a long time on the phone. You’ve annoyed the agent, making them do so much digging for you. And you just can’t push them any farther. So you put the award on hold, and then try to improve what you’ve held. No longer possible with Delta.

Several carriers have shortened their hold times in recent years. I remember when United offered 30-day holds on awards, and it was pretty easy to get an agent to extend the hold after that. Then they went to 14-day holds. Then 3-day holds. And then any United award itinerary with a Singapore Airlines segment in it could only be held 24 hours. And then the list was expanded to include Asiana, or so I was told on a reservation this month.

But holds are important, as you coordinate flights with award hotels. Or in my case as I find an acceptable itinerary and try to turn it into a desireable one. I’m currently on a wonderful trip that would never have been possible without several phone agents and award holds.

I mean, come on, bring back the 48 hour hold. This is just punitive, Delta!

One Mile at a Time points to a Wall Street Journal piece on the coming three-tiered structure of the Delta Skymiles redemption program.

Earlier in the month I wrote that the coming three-tiered structure would be bringing back ‘last seat availability’ to the Skymiles program; that the highest third tier would mean more miles but at least true redemption for any seat, as offered by most other frequent flyer programs. Delta’s earlier removal of this option was a real affront, but the hope was that this was temporary.

The Wall Street Journal piece, though, either misrepresents the coming change or suggests that Delta won’t be bringing back last seat availability.

Delta also plans to increase the number of “tiers” in its SkyMiles plan this spring. Instead of offering domestic tickets for either 25,000 or 50,000 miles — with many more tickets available for 50,000 miles — the airline will offer 50% of its total seat inventory for 40,000 miles, while maintaining the same amount of seats in the 25,000-mile tier. Most remaining seats will fall into the 60,000-mile tier.

Most remaining seats? At 60,000 miles?

American offers true last seat availability for 50,000 miles domestically in coach.

United offers true last seat availability for 45,000 miles domestically in coach.

If (and this remains to be seen) the Delta program’s introduction of a third tier does not include true last seat availability, Jeff Robertson will be frequent flyer program public enemy number one.

Tim Winship makes a point about Delta’s new miles as money option for award tickets that I neglected to mention: that the tickets you ‘buy’ at one cent per point are treated as award, rather than paid, tickets. In other words, they don’t earn miles and they can’t be upgraded.

Still, Winship concludes

[T]he increased flexibility, transparency, and convenience provided by Pay with Miles will be welcomed by many SkyMiles members and sets a new industry standard for award availability.

Now, as I mentioned previously, United already offers Choices — a similar program for Mileage Plus members with a co-branded Visa credit card. So it’s hardly a new industry standard being pioneered by Delta. Of course, holders of the Delta American Express card can use all their miles in this program, rather than just the miles earned via the credit card (as United’s program limits members to doing). But United treats redemptions via their program as paid tickets which earn miles and can be upgraded. So here, United offers the better value proposition (although still not a good enough one to entice me to redeem any of my miles this way).

I agree that this development isn’t a bad thing but we shouldn’t pretend it’s a meaningfully good thing either.

It’s not even a ‘new standard for award availability’ as Winship claims, either, because up until recently with Delta you could redeem any seat on the aircraft for additional miles. Delta took away that options (though there are hints they may bring it back at a new extortionary level). Most other airlines still allow this.

So it doesn’t yield more availability. But it does allow you to get at availability for otherwise cheap tickets. It’s better to use 15,000 miles for a $150 ticket than to use 25,000 (or more) miles for that ticket. But that doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t be wasting your miles this way anyway!

Meanwhile, the program doesn’t help, really, with availability on expensive last minute fares. If a ticket would cost $1500, it’ll cost you 150,000 miles! Under the old ‘any seat for twice the price model’ you could expect to obtain last seat availability for 50,000 miles…

My real point is that this new program is a non-issue. And despite positive coverage elsewhere it does not move Delta to the head of the pack for award availability. They’re still behind the better players like American (and United, given availability with Star Alliance partners).

Delta is offering double miles to Mexico (in coach, triple miles in business) for travel through April 15. Registration required.

Eligible routes:

Atlanta (ATL)	Guadalajara (GDL)
Atlanta (ATL)	Leon (BJX)
Atlanta (ATL)	Queretaro (QRO)

Los Angeles (LAX)	Guadalajara (GDL)
Los Angeles (LAX)	Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo (ZIH)
Los Angeles (LAX)	Loreto (LTO)
Los Angeles (LAX)	Mazatlan (MZT)

New York (JFK)

Mexico City (MEX)

A rather strange (to me) offer of miles for subscribing to an online service:

Access over 4000 best-selling business books—each succinctly summarized in five pages, and earn 10,000 SkyMiles. GetAbstract’s expertly-written summaries are available online, 24×7, downloadable to your PC, PDA or iPod.

I can’t imagine I actually want this. 12 months for $299 or 6 months for $179, and either apparently earns 10,000 miles.

At 1.79 cents a mile it’s a bite more than I would be willing to spend to buy Delta miles (a penny is my limit) but if anyone finds this even remotely appealing it’s likely a good deal.

Update: that’ll teach me to read promos when I first wake up in the morning, before my coffee. The offer states:

You receive 10,000 Delta award miles for a one year subscription!

And a one-year subscription is $299!

Again, only worthwhile if something like this interested you anyway, certainly not just for the miles.

T-Mobile is offering 10,000 Delta miles over the course of your first year.

Subscribe to an Unlimited National Annual or Month to Month subscription plan and earn up to 10,000 miles over your first year of service by earning 500 miles per month of paid service and 2,000 bonus miles for every six months of paid service.

This is better than the standard 5000 miles they’ve offered, though not worth signing up just for the miles. If you’d subscribe to T-Mobile anyway, I haven’t seen a better bonus.

Through December 15th, 1-800-Flowers.com is offering 10 Delta miles per dollar spent plus a flat 2500 bonus miles on each order.with promo code DL8.

A $30 flowers order would generate 300 miles + 2500 miles, a total of 2800 miles and an astounding 93 miles per dollar.

Of course it isn’t that simple, you have to pay shipping charges and those don’t earn miles, but it’s still an outstanding deal on flowers orders. The less expensive the item, the better a deal that it is since the 2500 bonus miles are fixed per order.

I haven’t purchased from 1-800-Flowers in awhile, the better miles offers (and more reliable posting of miles) have come from FTD, but the last time I did it was possible to get airline miles (via promo code such as this one) and cashback via referral link (such as 7% back from e-bates). Not vouching that this is still true, and I’d hate to lose out on the monster bonus miles as a result of going through a referral link, but it would probably still work - interested to hear in the comments from the experiences of readers that may have used promo codes and cashback links together with 1-800-Flowers recently.

In any case, this is the best offer on flowers I’ve seen in four years, since 1-800-Flowers was giving away 100 miles per dollar spent. My understanding at the time was that they had pre-purchased large blocks of Delta miles and those miles were expiring at the end of their three-year validity (if not awarded). So they ran a crazy promo to generate some cash. However they didn’t anticipate the power of the internet, and they wound up massively oversubscribed… Perhaps something similar is going on here.

iDine (aka Rewards Network) has a new Delta dining for miles bonus that offers both redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles (registration required). Four qualifying dines of $25 or more in October and November earns a bonus 1000 miles that even count towards status.

Now, it’s just 1000 miles. But the notable thing is that the bonus offers the opportunity to earn elite status for something other than flying.

Already increasingly common (and in some measure pioneered by Delta) is elite status through credit card spending.

And last year USAirways offered its ‘Everything Counts’ promo at the end of the year where most miles (credit card spending excluded) counted towards status. Some Dividend Miles members became Chairmans Preferred 100,000 mile ‘flyers’ by sending a whole lot of flowers.

So this is another step in that direction, one that clearly recognizes the value of frequent flyer program partners and partner revenue. We’ll likely see more offers of this sort, and from more airlines, over time.

Traditionally frequent flyer miles are redeemed for capacity controlled awards. Airlines offer a limited number of seats for redemption that they expect would otherwise go unsold. And some travelers are frustrated they can’t find the seats.

But in general there’s always been the option to spend more miles in order to get any open seat. With United, it’s the “Standard” award rather than “Saver.” With Delta, this higher mileage option has been known as “SkyChoice.”

But Delta has announced that as of December 1, spending double the miles no longer gets you any seat. Instead, it just gets you access to more award inventory.

Now they’re not the only airline to do this. They’re following Northwest’s lead. But they’re still in the minority.

Rulebuster, Standard — or whatever you want to call them — awards are rarely useful (I prefer hunting and pecking for capacity controlled awards to get the most out of my miles). But when they are useful, they’re very useful.

It’s nice to know that with the mileage balances I have and with just a few hours notice I can get on just about any plane in the world and only pay the taxes (and perhaps a telephone or airport ticketing fee, grrr). It’s nice to know that if I really need to be somewhere, I can be. A last minute trip to a funeral, perhaps, where the tickets are prohibitively expensive.

United used to offer one of the great award values period in their higher-priced mileage chart — until last October, any business class seat from North America to Australia (no capacity controls!) was 150,000 miles. They’ve raised the price of that award, but at least they still respect the idea that more miles can buy you any seat.

Delta has raised the price of its SkyChoice awards, especially international premium class awards. Now that these awards will be capacity controlled as well, you might think they’d lower the price. Alas, I’m not that naive…

Shutterfly is offering 1000 Delta miles for spending $20 or more (not including shipping) through December 31st.

Through June 30, Delta is offering 4,000 Skymiles just for enrolling and entering your Starwood Preferred Guest number. Offer may be targeted, so your mileage may vary…

Free Frequent Flyer Miles points to an an offer of Delta miles for new countertops.

There are always miles for shopping offers, but I point this one out because I hadn’t seen it before and because it’s rather timely — I’m actually pondering new countertops in my kitchen. I don’t yet know the quality of the product offered here or how it compares on price, but pocketing a few thousand miles for something I’m goingt to do anyway always grabs my attention.

Details of the offer:

Delta Sky Miles are awared based on final price of purchase of installed countertops from e-counters.com. Additions to orders for non-installed items do not count towards purchase amount for Sky Miles calculation. Installed Countertop purchase price is subject to change pending on-site measurement by e-counters.com affiliated professionals, and the Sky Miles award amount will be calculated as 1 mile per $1.00 spent on final installed countertop price. Sky Miles are rewarded in denominations of 100 miles. Awarded amounts will be rounded to the nearest-lower multiple of 100 miles. (example: if final installed countertop price is $2,370.00, the Sky Miles award amount will be 2,300).



You must sign and submit to installer or e-counters.com a signed copy of your Install Approval Form prior to Sky Miles awards being issued. Please do not sign and submit your Install Approval Form until such time as your installation is actually complete and satisfactory.

(And yes, spelling mistakes always do raise a flag for me, though I’m looking forward to my miles being “awared” after I’ve made a purchase..)

Delta is offering up to 25,000 bonus miles for activity with their partners. Registration is required. The offer is 5000 miles for each 5 unique partners with activity during the qualifying period of April 1 - May 31 (too tight a timeline for my tastes).

Airline partners don’t count. Each partner counts only once, so only one Hilton stay would count as a partner (but a Hilton stay and a Marriott stay would be two partners). Transferring points into Delta should count, and each source should be a different partner, so I may transfer points in from Starwood, American Express Membership Rewards, and Radisson Goldpoints.

Read the terms and conditions on the promo, but it should be pretty easy to rack up 5000 bonus miles — much harder to hit a full 25,000.

Free Frequent Flyer Miles points out that you can get 500 miles for an auto insurance quote from Ameriprise, and that it works every six months. So even if you’ve done it before it might be time to do it again.

Jeff Robertson, who runs the Delta Skymiles program, is now participating regularly on Flyertalk. He’s only made six posts so far, but they’re excellent. By excellent I mean that he avoids the usual marketing speak. Explaining the change to Delta’s mileage expiration policy, he actually says

[R]egardless of how “loyal” someone may be to us, anyone who hasn’t had activity with Delta in anyway in the last two years, is not all that valuable to us.

Of course, I disagree harshly with Jeff’s assessment (not about the value proposition of customers hurt by mileage expiration, he has better access to the numbers than I do). Making the change essentially retroactive is inherently dishonest. This is a company that years ago advertised during the superbowl that their miles would never expire.

Perhaps they now find they can make more money by dishonoring their commitments. Never mind the moral case here, in the long run reneging on commitments undermines confidence in the business, customers come to learn they can’t trust Delta. Delta becomes modern Russia.

But at least Jeff is honest about their motives, and I appreciate his participation and candor greatly.

Delta is offering 1000 miles for new frequent flyer account signups and 5000 miles for booking a Delta flight with an American Express business card. Offer appears valid through April 15th.

Update: Turns out to have been targeted - sorry!

This is probably too inside baseball and technical for most frequent flyer program members, but Delta has implemented some nasty changes in the way they allow (or don’t allow!) you to book awards. There’s a current discussion of this on Flyertalk, naturally.

As of this month, awards can only have two stops each way domestically and three internationally. If you live in, say, Montana and want to get somewhere on the East Coast you already have to make two stops (in Salt Lake City and Atlanta) most of the time. No extra stops in order to find an available award, and no extra stops to utilize your allowable stopover in a non-hub city.

You can also only use ‘published routings’ when constructing your award itinerary. I have a United award flying DC-New York-San Francisco-Osaka-Bangkok-Phuket (with stops in New York and Osaka that are less than 24 hours so technically considered connections) and Phuket-Bangkok-Hong Kong-Seoul-Chicago-DC (with a stopover in Hong Kong) on the return. Leaving as that getting a premium cabin award to Asia in the first place is more or less a non-starter with Delta miles, this sort of routing would never be permitted. Score one for the competition!

Most folks don’t book lots of connections, but take for example trying to book an award on Delta partner Continental Micronesia. I’d fly from DC to Atlanta to Los Angeles (all on Delta) to Tokyo (Continental) to Guam (Continental Micronesia). Whoops, I can’t do that! It’s now more than 3 flights each way. The only way to make this work would be if there’s award space available on Delta’s own Atlanta-Tokyo flight (good luck!). You can no longer use partner flights from the West Coast to Tokyo and travel beyond Tokyo, unless you either start in the partner’s gateway city or Delta’s own hub. If you have to connect you’re toast. And forget about island hopping, say to fly from Tokyo to Cairns (for access to the Great Barrier Reef).

A real drawback of the current programming architecture is that Delta only has their own routings in the system, making most partner awards (other than non-stops) impermissable until this programming glitch is corrected.

Variations from all of this may be possible, but require additional miles.

On the positive side, Delta is now allowing you to combined Skysaver (the regular award chart, eg 25,000 miles for a domestic coach ticket) with Skychoice (the more expensive chart that avoids capacity controls). So you could go one way Skysaver and the other Skychoice for 35,000 miles. Under the old system unless all flights were available as Skysaver the award would price at the higher 45,000 mile level. Technically this is an improvement, but who books Skychoice to begin with?

I was not a fan of Delta miles to begin with, this makes them far less attractive to me. I sure hope to “Keep Delta My Delta” — as I’d hate for my USAirways miles to become less valuable!

You can earn a 25% bonus on eligible spending (which should be all purchases) on the Delta American Express card from October 1 to November 30. Registration required.

If you stay 5 consecutive nights at am InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, or Holiday Inn Express in the U.S, Canada or Mexico for 5 consecutive nights or more through December 31, 2006 you can earn 10,000 bonus Delta miles.

Not bad.

Registration is required and you have to select Delta miles as your earning preference in your Priority Club profile.

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, there’s also a
Delta 25,000 iDine bonus on offer. Registration is required by July 25.

The deal is that you need 25 qualified dines of $25 or more by 12/31/06 for 25,000 bonus miles.