View from the Wing

Northwest’s Drive Your Way to 25K promo offers 25,000 bonus miles after registering and completing

six (6) car rentals, for three (3) days or more per rental, of a mid-size or larger vehicle between December 10, 2007 and March 10, 2008with National Car Rental.

Flyertalk discussion is here.

Continental Airlines inflight currency, the kind that pays for drinks and headsets, is acceptable onboard by Northwest. I never realized that, and apparently many Northwest flight attendants don’t, either. (In addition to selling scrip at checkin kiosks, Continental gives these out to their OnePass Platinum members.)

It’s confirmed by Northwest on a Flyertalk thread that the Northwest flight attendant manual is clear on this fact under amenity coupons (section 365.1.4 if feeling particularly confrontational about the subject).

A very minor issue, to be sure, but something I never knew for sure. Drink up!

As a result of some prodding on Flyertalk, Northwest has added a more detailed page on how their complimentary domestic upgrade system works.

Nothing really new here for the already well-informed, but a good step forward nonetheless.

Northwest is offering 500 bonus miles for booking a roundtrip on their website and paying with Paypal by September 30 for travel through the end of the year. (Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

I do suppose that more payment methods are better, and this in essence gives customers the ability to pay via direct debit from a bank account in addition to a credit card, and they won’t need a Visa-branded debit card in order to do it. my hundh, though, is that the universe for this is rather small.

Paypal is a great way for small shops to begin accepting credit cards without much hassle, and to give customers confidence in paying by credit card when the vendor is a relatively unknown. But for larger institutions? I’m not really sure I follow the benefit to Northwest here. Presumably it’s not business-changing, but they view this as a big enough deal to promote it with bonus miles…

It seems as though Northwest Airlines may not be enforcing the Saturday night stay rule on award tickets in order to be eligible for their standard (”PerkSaver”) mileage pricing. Developing…

Northwest’s Last Minute Packages (formerly ‘CyberSavers’) are offering a fantastic deal — promo code LMP2007 is taking $300 off a trip of $300 or more.

Per Northwest’s promotional email, it’s only supposed to be taking off $25.

One Flyertalker writes

I just snagged a trip for Fri. night - Sun. night to the Chicago vicinity with two nights at a Radisson for $5.91 all-in.

So if you’re still looking for something to do Memorial Day Weekend (or the following weekend), this may be the deal you’ve been waiting for.

Northwest is offering (registration required) 5000 bonus miles for purchasing a roundtrip flight in the next three days for travel through June 13 to the following destinations:

Northwest has finally improved the offerings of its elite program. It doesn’t bring them up to par with American and United, which both offer a substantial international upgrade benefit to their top tier flyers, but it’s a move in the right direction. The Flyertalk discussion is here.

After flying 60, 90, 120 and 160,000 miles Northwest is offering elites the choice of new benefits (much as United has been doing the past couple of years). Choices include bonus miles, the ability to give away lower tiered elite status, lounge memberships, and most importantly — starting at 120,000 miles flown — international upgrade certificates.

Now, Northwest only offers 2 at 120,000 miles and 2 more at 160,000 miles flown (compared to 6 for United and 8 for American at 100,000 miles) but Northwest’s certificates appear to come out of revenue inventory so you’re not jockeying or waitlisting for a seat. That’s a real start, and finally a reason to fly Northwest if you do more than just domestic travel (where the only real benefit to the program has been complimentary domestic upgrades).

I’ve been saying for years that this is a needed step for their program. Their view has been “we just don’t have as many business class seats as the competition so we can’t offer this.” Guess they’ve come around!

Northwest is offering a 25% bonus on hotel points converted to miles by January 31. Registration is required.

only valid for WorldPerks members who reside in North America.
The bonus applies to points converted from Goldpoints, Hilton, Hyatt, Priority Club, and Marriott. Starwood transfers are not included.

Northwest is offering 5000 bonus miles for spending $250 on a Northwest Visa at the WorldPerks Mall through January 15, 2007.
Registration is required.

Through December 31, Northwest is offering new members enrolling in Worldperks up to 7000 miles:

• Earn 1,000 Bonus Miles: complete your first flight (one-way or roundtrip)
  
• Earn 5,000 Bonus Miles: complete a second flight (roundtrip only)

• Earn 1,000 Bonus Miles: subscribe to NWA E-mail for two consecutive months.

Flights must be completed within six months of enrolling to earn the bonuses, and the offer is available to accounts with North American addresses only.

(Hat tip to Flyertalk’s slippahs.)

The Upgrade Travel Blog says you should avoid Northwest DC-9s because these aging planes are increasingly responsible for delays, with a single plane causing 2564 minutes of delays so far year to date.

I say you should avoid Northwest DC-9s because their first class cabins offer a tighter pitch (34 - 35 inches) than United’s economy plus on an Airbus A320 (36 inches). And the United Airbus offers channel 9 air traffic control, rather than no inflight entertainment at all.

Who needs unlimited domestic upgrades when that just means first class on a Northwest DC-9?

Register by October 17 and earn 5000 bonus miles on your next Northwest roundtrip completed by November 30.

Northwest is finally promoting the 20th anniversary of its frequent flyer program. There’s a not-all-that-right instant win game from October 4-23, and much like American’s effort several months back they have an ‘offer of the day’. Today’s is quite nice — double iDine miles for your next 12 dines through November 30 (up to 20 miles per dollar spent if you’re already an ‘elite’ member of the dining program).

Worth continuing to check out…

Worldperks University has added a new, third course — read a couple quick screens, take a three question ‘quiz’, and get 100 bonus miles. The offer says miles post in 3-4 weeks, but they actually post instantly.

When you complete the quiz you also become eligible for

Book and fly one roundtrip flight on an NWA- or KLM-operated flight within the next 90 days and earn an additional 2,000 Bonus Miles.

Back in March Northwest introduced the first two easy quizzes, I’m glad to be able to ‘enroll’ in another one at the start of a new semester…

(Hat tip to Slippahs.)

I may have mentioned this before, but I don’t think so. Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Northwest’s co-branded Visa product is matching the standard signup incentives offered by United and American — 20,000 miles with first purchase (though US Bank won’t waive the fee for the first year like Chase and Citibank will).

Still, if you’re going to sign up for a Northwest Visa this looks like the best offer.

Northwest is offering 500 bonus miles for shopping online through their Worldperks Mall and spending $150 or more between July 1 and September 15. Registration is required. See the details on the offer, because some of their participating merchants (eg hotel, car, flowers) are excluded from earning the bonus.

All your online purchases should — of course — receive some kind of reward, whether it’s Northwest miles or something else. The best one-stop sources for learning about the best bonuses are the extensive RewardsDB charts and the Webflyer tool.

It’s always worth checking out these resources before making an online purchase of any kind. (And it’s not just miles - you can earn cash rebates, too.)

If you enter promo code BTN06 while signing up for BizPerks, the Northwest Airlines small business program, you’ll receive 50,000 bonus Biz Perks points.

These covert to, say, 5 free club passes and 5 free drink coupons or a domestic upgrade and a couple club passes.

The offer expires September 30th.

Update: To qualify for the points you need a flight in full fare coach (B fare) or higher by September 30th credited to the Bizperks account. Still worth signing up just in case, but no longer the gimme it first appeared.

Last month Northwest began charging $15 to pre-reserve its best (sic) coach seats. Now they’ve relented and decided not to charge this fee to elite members.

One benefit has always been blocking the better coach seats for elites. There’s not really much in the way of ‘better’ coach seats on Northwest, unlike United which offers elites extra legroom at the front of the coach cabin. But all of a sudden non-elites could take these seats for $15, and even elites had to pay.

(Bizarrely under the scheme, elites would get upgraded to first class but still be charged extra money for cruddy the coach seating they had pre-reserved.)

Now Northwest says they’ll still reserve some of these seats exclusively for elites and won’t charge elites for ‘coach choice’ seating. It’s a small victory, a very small victory, but the coach choice program had become endemic of a belief that Northwest no longer cared about its best customers. So it’s good to see the move reversed.

Last week I mentioned that I didn’t think Northwest’s move to charge for ‘premium’ seats in coach (which, outside of exit rows, aren’t in any way actually better) was a big deal.

For infrequent flyers it’s neutral or a positive, the opportunity to access seats — though not meaningfully better — otherwise were mostly available to Northwest elites.

For frequent flyers it’s more or less a non-issue: if you’re regularly flying Northwest and spending much time at all in coach you should be changing airlines. The only positive Northwest has is its domestic upgrade program, which isn’t just complimentary but also something they regularly deliver on.

Still, charging elites for something they used to get for free (without even anything new offered up in return) is never a good thing.

But what really irks me is the poor spin that Northwest puts forward, telling the Washington Post that

its offer matches — or is even better than — similar moves by other carriers. Ebenhoch cited United Airlines, which charges a fee for a seat in its Economy Plus cabin.

Unmentioned even by United is that Mileage Plus elite members get economy plus seats for free. Northwest should be ashamed of themselves for attempting to charge elites for these seats… and doubly so for claiming their offering is on par with United’s.