View from the Wing

Lufthansa is offering 2000 bonus points for new members who enroll in Miles & More and accrue 3000 miles by June 30.

(Thanks to Free Frequent Flyer Miles for the heads up.)

Hyatt is offer 2500 bonus points with your first stay by November 30 as a new member when signing up via a special offer.

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

Virgin Atlantic is ‘refreshing’ its program earning and redemption.

The upshot is that some awards are getting more expensive, for example Upper Class awards from the U.K. to the U.S. are currently 80,000 points and will be going up to 90,000 points (Boston/New York/Washington DC) or 100,000 points (Miami/Orlando/Vegas/Los Angeles/San Francisco).

The old award chart is here.

As described in today’s MilesLink Newsletter, Airtran and Wendy’s have partnered to give away credits in the Airtran frequent flyer program when you buy drinks or combo meals at Wendys.

You earn a quarter of a rewards credit for each combo, 20 or 32 ounce drink purchased at participating Wendys through December 31st.

An Airtran coupon will be printed on the cup. You can only buy five drinks per transaction, so you may need to go stand in line a few times or circle ’round the drivethrough.

After you have consumed your beverage, carefully cut out the Proof of Purchase/AirTran Flight Coupon along the dotted line. Fill out a 3×5 card with your complete name, street address (no P.O. Boxes) and AirTran Airways A+ Rewards account number and mail in a handwritten business size (#10) envelope along with at least four (4) but no more than one hundred and twenty-eight (128) Proofs of Purchase/AirTran Flight Coupons per stamped envelope to Wendy’s/AirTran Airways Promotion, AirTran Airways Special Services, 1224 Bob Harmon Road, Savannah, GA 31408 to be received by 2/13/06. Extra postage may be required.

Since there’s a cap of 32 Airtran A+ Rewards credits (enough for two roundtrip coach tickets on Airtran, or if you prefer Airtran will buy you a single roundtrip ticket on another airline) you can’t become the next Pudding Guy (and you won’t get a movie made about your mileage exploits)

Here’s the discussion on Flyertalk. Here’s the FatWallet discussion.

I’ve been meaning to go to CityZen, the restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental DC, for awhile. I finally gave it a try Friday evening.

The food was excellent, though there were some missteps.

Valet parking is complimentary. The restaurant validates. They asked for my ticket when I entered, and they returned it to me as I left. The valet walked us the ten feet from the car to the hotel with an umbrella since it was misting. Service was friendly, knowledgeable, and discrete throughout… with one blaring exception.

Little things, like replacing my wife’s napking when she got up to use the restroom, make a big impression.

The dining room was beautifully-designed but loud, making conversations difficult. The restaurant has an open kitchen, but it isn’t silent or perfectly orchestrated like you’d see at Maestro. Of course, it doesn’t really need to be silent, since it’s difficult to hear your dinner companion, let alone the sous chef.

We didn’t want to talk, anyway, we wanted to eat! The first amuse was a mushroom fritter, absolutely delicious. The second was an olive oil custard, a bit too “eggy” for my taste but still good.

My first course was a white truffle risotto. There was one person on staff whose job for the evening seemed to be slicing the white truffles into the risotto at each table that ordered it. He was very nervous. The chef must have given him a lecture about how expensive truffles are. He broke one in half into my plate and removed the two pieces with his hands! (I imagine he’d ultimately fish them out, but would have thought he’d at least take the dish back to the kitchen to do so…) Still, the risotto was absolutely sublime.

The breads were interesting. In addition to standard offerings we were brought a wooden box with mini “tollhouse” rolls — bite sized offerings that absolutely melted in my mouth.

For an entree, the trout was more delicious than any I’ve ever tasted. Though the presentation was more interesting and elaborate at Tetsuya’s, the piece of fish itself was more flavorful at CityZen.

The intermezzo, a quinelle of leechy sorbet in a glass of melted sorbet, was a bit too sweet for its purpose I thought. I had the broken down charlotte for dessert, which was good.

All in all, I’d say CityZen is the best meal inside the District right now.

I first mentioned Pizza Hut’s loyalty program a couple of years ago.

With some time and members under the crust, they’ve concluded that the program increased “incremental orders by 93% from members over a matched control and raised incremental net sales 65 percent.”

They found that, somewhat counterintuitively, charging a fee to their best customers actually worked best. It apparently builds commitment and buy-in to the program and brand.

Promo code DCMIDWEST will get you 10% off at Midwestairlines.com on tickets purchased through November 30, 2005 for travel through February 17, 2006.

It’s a Diners Club card promo but terms and conditions don’t seem to require use of a Diners Club card (and the Midwest Airlines website probably wouldn’t even know if you were using one anyway, now that Diners Club is just a Mastercard — at most they’d be able to restrict payment to Mastercards but they probably don’t even do that).

Travel from November 23 to 27 and December 22 to January 2, 2006 is blacked out from the discount.

As reported by NotiFlyer, Southwest is imposing capacity controls on its awards.

Currently an award ticket is good on any seat. There are a few blackout dates, but otherwise award tickets aren’t restricted.

As a bone to members, Rapid Rewards credits will expire after 24 months instead of 12. They’re also removing blackout dates, but blackout dates are meaningless once you introduce capacity controls. Now they’ll be able to allocate as many as zero or one seat on a flight. Who needs blackout dates?

Southwest is headlining the change to 24 month expiration of credits, and buries the news in the middle paragraphs. Clearly an attempt to divert attention from the real bad news and soften the blow.

Rapid Rewards members, you have my sympathy.

Probably the best hotel promo around, Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights, will return from September 1 through November 30.

The offer as usual is a free night after every two eligible stays paid for with a Mastercard.

Registration for the promo will begin August 15.

bmi has introduced its buy-on-board menu and it contains this frustrating statement:

Only food and drinks purchased from the cabin crew may be consumed on board.

I’m not sure how or whether this will be enforced, but it’s a striking policy. US domestic carriers offering buy-on-board haven’t adopted similar policies… yet.

InsideFlyer interviews the President of GlobalPass who tries to explain the gutting of their program.

The most offensive piece has been taking existing mileage holders and requiring them to earn additional points in order to use miles already in their accounts. The new program offers points for booking travel through their portal, which may even be more expensive than competitors, and then for each new point earned one can use an existing point.

The explanation is that the program needs frequency from their members, people got too good a deal in the past, and the old model of awards they promised wasn’t good for the company so they shouldn’t have to live up to those promises.

Not at all surprising, but also a good reminder that this has never been a trustworthy program. GlobalPass is not a company one wants to do business with.

eBay Anything Points is being phased out.

eBay is discontinuing a 2-year-old incentive program for sellers and partners in the United States, the company announced on Monday.



eBay Anything Points, which operates like a “frequent flyer” program to stimulate customer loyalty, will be phased out by Feb. 28, the company said. Points earned under the program will be honored through August 2006.

…

eBay will prevent sellers from offering the incentive points on new listings starting Aug. 15. eBay said it would, on Sept. 30, remove remaining points from listings still offering them.

The Anything Points program on eBay Canada will continue.

This is very disappointing news for me. Other than signing up for some free trial offers a year ago, I only used this on my Priceline bids. But the value proposition was compelling — 1000 to 1500 Anything Points on a successful bid, which converted at better than 1:1 into Cathay Pacific Asia Miles. And since 60,000 Asia Miles buys a British Airways business class ticket from the US East Coast to most destinations in Europe, the program offered $3000 - $5000 in airfare for 45 - 55 Priceline wins.

Soon I’ll have to go looking for the next best Priceline deal.

Frontier Airlines has launched a new feature for its frequent flyer program allowing elite members to redeem points for merchandise: the More Store.

Frontier Ascent and Summit Early Returns members (those who fly at least 15,000 miles a year) will be able to trade miles for jewelry, rounds of golf, restaurant meals, luggage, sporting events, overnights at the Brown Palace and tickets by visiting www.frontiermorestore.com

…

The Web site also has an online auction feature, with items including a new Mercedes M- Class SUV with a starting bid of 10,000 miles.



More Store perks partners include restaurants such as Jax Fish House, Tamayo, Zengo, Panzano, Lola, Aix, Luca D’Italia, The Palm, Rioja and Opus.



Frontier frequent fliers can trade miles for rounds of golf at Bear Dance, Green Valley Ranch, The Raven, Pelican Lakes and Arrowhead, or get tickets to the Rockies, Crush, Nuggets, Avalanche, House of Blues Concerts or the Grand Prix.

Andrew Hudson, a senior-level marketing executive with Frontier, told Inside Flyer magazine (subscription required)

Our loyalty program did not stack up against other programs. It was not at the level it should be.

It isn’t often that a marketing executive is so candid. Perhaps they can be now, because from the little browsing I’ve done of their offerings it looks very impressive.

Most miles-for-merchandise offers are fairly low end or represent poor value for points. Here there are some reasonably priced offerings (such as a round of golf for 6000 miles) and a whole bunch of aspirational awards.

While much has been made of the Mercedes on auction, ’starting at’ 10,000 miles (no one expected it to go for that!), I’m most impressed by the depth and quality of other things on auction, such as a Denver’s hotel’s presidential suite along with meal voucher. Frequent flyer programs are at their best when they offer otherwise-unattainable experiences. Hotel programs won’t generally allow members to access a presidential suite, but the More Store is auctioning one at the Brown Palace in Denver. It remains to be seen how competitive the final pricing is at the end of an auction, but kudos for making such things available.

You can earn triple Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles (August 1 - September 30) when flying from LA or San Francisco to Hong Kong on first, business, or qualifying (Y, B, H, K, L, M, V) coach fares.

You could also choose to earn double American AAdvantage miles through August 31 on these flights, but only when flying first or business class (”I” business fares are not eligible for the AA offer).

Personally I’d opt for the AsiaMiles, both because coach fares are eligible and because AsiaMiles are hugely valuable — they allow upgrade redemption on Cathay, American, and British Airways and 60,000 AsiaMiles gets you a business class award on BA from the US East Coast to most destinations in Europe (it would take 100,000 BA miles).

Canadians can get a Cathay Pacific Visa Platinum card from RBC Bank.

The annual fee is stiff at CA$150, but the card earns 1 AsiaMile per Canadian dollar spent — pretty good earning — on top of the 5000 AsiaMiles with first purchase.

The AsiaMiles program permits upgrading on British Airways and American in addition to Cathay Pacific, and some of its awards are incredible values. 60,000 AsiaMiles buys you a business class award of less than 5000 miles each way. That would yield a British Airways ticket from the U.S. East Coast to most destinations in Europe. American charges 50,000 miles in coach for that.

AsiaMiles is my program of choice for transferring eBay Anything Points, by the way, since 1 eBay point yields slightly more than 1 AsiaMile.

Gulf Air is offering triple miles through June 15 on several routes

The offer is valid for Economy Class travel from Abu Dhabi or Dubai to: Bahrain, Beirut, Frankfurt, Kuwait, London and Paris; from Bahrain to: Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Dubai, Frankfurt, Kuwait, London and Paris; from Doha to: Bahrain, Beirut, Dubai, Frankfurt, Kuwait, London and Paris, and from Muscat to: Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Beirut, Dubai, Frankfurt, Kuwait, London and Paris between 16 May and 15 June 2005.

Virgin Atlantic is offering double points and elite status matches, sensing an opportunity to poach frustrated Qantas flyers.

In the middle of the month, Starwood ran a promotion offering 25% off hotel night award redemption for platinum members.

They apparently had some bumps in notifying members (though readers of this blog were well-informed).

As a result, they’ve extended the offer. Via Starwood Lurker on Flyertalk:

[T]hrough midnight Eastern US time on Monday, May 30th, Platinum members can make their plans online at spg.com and then call the Platinum Concierge line to make use of the FRED redemption code for a 25% off savings. The same Terms and Conditions apply that were in effect previously. This is for award stays booked through Wednesday, August 31st only.

Back in November I reported that Qantas had gutted its frequent flyer award chart, with awards increasing in price as much as 92% (Sydney to New York-JFK in First class was going up to 392,000 points)!

It should come as no surprise that Qantas frequent flyer members reacted to this news by booking as many international awards as they possibly could before the new point requirements went into effect, and as a result there are reports of very limited award availability — that most of the international awards on Qantas have simply been snatched up.

It’s difficult to know the real numbers without a systematic award search, but the theory itself seems plausible.

Air Canada may be on the verge of spinning off its Aeroplan frequent flyer program with details being finalized as soon as the end of this week.

They tried this a couple years ago, but details of their bankruptcy and reorganization financing stood in the way.

Word is the program is being valued at about US$1.18 billion, down slightly from earlier estimates.