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

(Hat tip to Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.