Award travel on United’s new Washington Dulles-Tokyo flight is only 45,000 Mileage Plus miles in coach between October 28, 2006 and March 31, 2007. You can start from other cities, but need to connect to and from the Dulles flight.

(That tip to Flyertalk member Boazs.)

As revealed on Flyertalk, United Mileage Plus members booking business class transatlantic or transpacific award flights can only be booked in coach on Singapore connecting segments.

S*MPI/STAR-AWARD RULES.R:

**NOTE: X/I/O IS NOT OFFERED ON ALL ROUTES.

FOR SQ BUSINESS CLASS AWARDS WITH CONNECTIONS/STOPOVERS

TO/FROM A TRANSOCEANIC FLIGHT BOOK *I* CLASS FOR TRANSOCEANIC

FLIGHT ACROSS THE ATLANTIC/PACIFIC AND *X* FOR ONWARD FLT

EXAMPLE – SQ BUSINESS CLASS AWARD LAXDPS

BOOK *I* LAX-SIN AND *X* SIN-DPS

SQ AWARDS THAT DO NOT INVOLVE A TRANSOCEANIC

SECTOR USE *I* FOR ALL SECTORS INCLUDING 2 CABIN AIRCRAFT

Lesson is that if you fly Singapore on a business award you’ll want your onward connection on another Star carrier in order to remain in business.

I’ve been meaning to blog this but Upgrade Travel beats me to the punch: United is no longer allowing its partner Star Alliance Gold members to access economy plus seating (they’re not allowing full fare passengers access to these seats either, which is bizarre). Now economy plus is available only to United elites and those who ‘buy up’ at the airport.

Economy plus is the same seat as coach with no additional services, just a few extra inches of legroom. It isn’t “premium economy” as the rest of the world understands it. But United sees the ability, presumably, to upcharge. Doesn’t make me happy one bit, even though it’s a seemingly small change.

United is offering 5000 to 15000 bonus miles for flying its new non-stop between Washington-Dulles and Tokyo between October 28, 2006 and March 31, 2007.

15,000 miles is for paid First Class and Paid Business Class (except for Z fares). 7,500 miles is for Z fare business class and expensive coach fares (Y, B, M, H, Q fares). 5,000 miles for less expensive coach fares (V,W,S,T,K fares).

The bonus can be earned up to 3 times, and flights between December 20, 2006 and January 10, 2007 do not earn the bonus.

Registration is required.

You do need to be a Toyota owner, though, since they ask for your vehicle identification number. Sign up here.

You’re asked to enter a promo code, just click the ‘need help’ link beneath the promo code box and you’ll be given a code to enter.

Miles apparently post within a couple weeks, at least according to reports on Flyertalk.

United has introduced Star Alliance upgrade awards — upgrades on most of their Star Alliance partners confirmed by redeeming miles. These has been available on other Star Alliance carriers for several months, United has just introduced them, but it’s notable that only Star Alliance offers this quite so broadly.

United miles can be used for upgrades on ANA, Asiana, Austrian, LOT, Lufthansa, TAP Portugal and Thai Airways. (United miles could previously be used for upgrades on Lufthansa, but those were space available rather than confirmed.)

Currently there are no upgrade options for other Star carriers such as Singapore, Air Canada, bmi, Swiss, Spanair, SAS, South African Airways, etc. Hopefully they’ll come in the future.

Unfortunately you need to be buying nearly a full fare ticket in order to use this option. Y and B coach fares can be upgraded to business, and C and D business fares can be upgraded to first.

Got this last night by email:

United’s GroceryMiles has a sweepstakes to give away miles:

• First prize: 340 people will win 25,000 miles
  
• Grand prize: 10 people will win 150,000 miles

Register by July 31.

Here’s the biggest iDine bonus I’ve ever seen.

If you spend $125 a month at iDine restaurants on qualifying dines during each of the last six months of the year you’ll earn 25,000 bonus United miles.

Registration is required by July 25.

I’ve probably undercovered the introduction of the Mileage Plus Choices program (okay, I’ve undercovered everything since I haven’t had the time or brainspace to post for the last couple of weeks).

The June 2006 issue of Inside Flyer calls the Choices program “The New Golden Egg” so it certainly warrants a mention, though I’m not nearly as high on it as Randy Petersen seems to be.

United’s new bombshell, Mileage Plus Choices, means looking at the future of frequent flyer programs in a whole new way.

The “Choices” program allows United Visa cardholders to use the portion of their miles earned through their credit card as a form of cash to buy airline tickets, hotel nights, or rental car days (along with a few specialty items) with their miles.

The program is incredibly confusing at first glance because United now has two parallel currencies. Miles are earned from a variety of sources including credit card spend, but only credit card miles are in a special bucket with a different name (‘choices’) which can be redeemed for these awards.

Presumably JPMorgan Chase, which issues the United Visa, kicked in with cash and marketing muscle to launch this program. It’s a shot at Capital One and other proprietary programs which offer unrestricted redemption of miles for flights. Of course, United already offers this (it’s called ‘standard awards’). But here’s another version of a standard award, where only a subset of miles can be used.

Like Capital One, which offers ‘miles’ that can never amount to a better-than-1% rebate from credit card spending, the Choice program offers similar lack-of-value.

Choices can be redeemed for a 1% rebate – subject to certain restrictions – on airline tickets purchased from United. When redeeming for hotel nights or car rental days there’s just a 0.8 cents/mile return.

To a certain extent, more choices are better of course. So it’s difficult to complain about having more redemption options. But I can hardly conceive of a time when it makes sense to actually use this option.

Inside Flyer offers this example of the value of the Choices program:

For instance, when you decide to redeem a domestic award, always start with “pricing it out,” using miles from the Choices program. Let’s say you price out an award from San Francisco to Phoenix. Given the competitive market and airfare sales, you might be able to snag a seat for $159 roundtrip. Using the Choices program this will cost you 15,900 Choices miles, far fewer than the 25,000 miles you might have had to pay if seats were available using your normal miles.

Sure, fewer ‘choices’ are required than miles for this hypothetical ticket. And if no saver award seats were available, then even more miles would be required for a standard award. But you shouldn’t be redeeming your miles for $159 domestic tickets anyway. So Choices is being compared to a straw man.

Miles are best spent on international business and first class awards and for international upgrades. Occasionally domestic upgrades and first class awards can make sense. But a coach domestic ticket? And one that could be purchased for $159? Hardly.

Choices looks favorable compared to a hypothetical silly use of miles, but remains almost as silly itself.

Leave aside just how complicated this program is (just check out their FAQ), a sure recipe for disaster in loyalty marketing. All the program does is create a benefit floor, United miles can be worth no less than 0.8 to 1 cent per mile. But that’s just damning with faint praise. Even the unattractive Diners Club travel program offers a 1.25 cent/point value, and I have no interest in using my Club Rewards points that way.

The only interesting component of the program is the ability to redeem ‘choices’ for elite qualifying miles, so if I’m a hair short of my status I might use this option. But for most folks Choices is an option worth ignoring.

So why even write about it? The real risk here is that this is an industry directional shift. The Inside Flyer piece cites the underpromoted partnership that Delta has with American Express offering a similar deal, and the Air New Zealand Airpoints program where ‘dollars’ are earned instead of miles. The risk is that this is a trend, where ‘miles as money’ with an anemic rate of return ultimately replaces award charts. The program may become the goose that killed the golden egg of my 8-10 cent per mile return itineraries.

Ultimately I’m a bit more optimistic, though. Completely gutting frequent flyer programs, turning this redemption floor into a ceiling, makes little sense when the programs themselves are profitable entities. There’s no reason to drive away consumers, which is exactly what would happen. Why accumulate points that can only be used for a 1% rebate with United Airlines, when you can nab a credit card that yields 1.5% cash deposited into a brokerage account, or 1% cash with certain spending bonuses up to 5%?

Award availability, and perceptions about the difficulty redeeming miles for flights, is a serious problem for airline programs. And no doubt some program managers will overreact and undermine the value propositions they offer consumers in the process. But ultimately I can’t believe a program like this could foretell the end of the mileage program.

I’m pleasantly ensconced in the Diplomatic Suite at the Intercontinental Bangkok, but this news is important enough to say some things about before I head out to dinner.

United has announced changes to its frequent flyer program, which are pretty much all bad.

They begin by announcing new “Domestic Short Haul Saver Awards” — these are short flights that require 15,000 miles in coach instead of 25,000 miles. United has actually been offering these for some time now, and the announcement is that the benefit is being reduced not introduced.

Previously the reduced mileage was applicable to flights of 750 miles or less. Now it applies only to flights of 700 miles or less. What difference does 50 miles make? Just ask New Yorkers. LaGuardia-Chicago is 733 miles. Newark-Chicago is 719 miles. Since the awards only apply to flights on United and not partners, New Yorkers can only use this award to fly to Washington-Dulles.. And nowhere else.

The other ‘improvement’ is saver awards available on every flight to every destination. But this promise doesn’t say how many awards or in what class of service. United has historically been reasonably good about award availability to begin with, so there’s not clearly and new benefit here whatsoever.

Now that United has packaged together two meaningless improvements in a press release, you naturally have to get ready for the other shoe to drop.

The lighter punch: new award booking fees start October 16: $75 for travel ticketed six days or less prior to departure and $50 for travel ticketed 7-13 days prior to departure. 1K and Global Services members are exempted from the fee.

It remains to be seen whether this can be circumvented when booking travel on all United metal. As long as routings remain the same, date changes are free on all-United awards. So in theory you could book travel a month out and then change the dates to just a few days in advance provided there’s the award availability you need. This strategy has worked with American for a long time. Which brings up another basic question here: some carriers have had award ‘expedite’ fees as a legacy of paper ticketing days and even a time when award ‘certificates’ really did have to get generated. Those fees just didn’t go away (because they generated revenue) once awards went all-electronic. But to introduce such fees now is absurd. Sure, airlines want to discourage the use of awards for last minute travel which is usually otherwise more expensive. But this is just chinsy, a junk fee to say the least.

It irks me, but I can live with it. What’s much worse is the devaluation of miles that United has announced.

“Miles required to redeem for certain awards to change”

United’s new award chart is here.

Some tidbits:

• Domestic first class awards go from 40,000 to 45,000 miles.
  
• Domestic first class to Hawaii goes from 60,000 to 75,000.
  
• First class from North America to Europe goes from 100,000 to 125,000… 5,000 miles more than first class from North America to Asia (which thankfully stays the same)!
  
• Australia takes a huge hit: coach goes from 60,000 to 80,000… Business from 90,000 to 110,000… First from 120,000 to 140,000.

But even worse is what United is doing to their ‘standard’ awards, which offer last seat availability on any flight for additional miles.

• Domestic coach goes from 40,000 to 50,000 miles and domestic first class goes from 80,000 to 90,000.
  
• North America to Hawaii in first class goes from 120,000 to 150,000.
  
• Again, Australia takes a hit: coach from 100,000 to 150,000… Business from 150,000 to 220,000… First from 200,000 to 270,000. Wow.

My best guess is that award space on United is going to get very tight for awhile, with members burning through miles and making bookings before the new chart goes into effect in October (those bookings can stretch out through September, 2007). Then awards will become a bit more available, as members will have exhausted some miles and remaining miles won’t nab as many awards.

I predicted this exactly two months ago (and the implications of my writing on mileage inflation has suggested this would happen for far longer). But it’s still a big blow.

United Mileage Plus miles are no longer a clearly superior currency. They’re still preferable to Continental and Northwest miles, for sure, though not nearly as much as they used to be. But the award chart no longer offers substantially better value than American’s.

Complaining to United will likely do little good, they surely expect some blowback. Other carriers have changed their award charts over the past few years but United — while in bankruptcy — seemingly held back. They lured travelers to their planes with generous mileage bonuses. Offers of 30,000 miles might have convinced people to fly, thinking “hey, that’s a third of a business class ticket to Autralia!” Then United turns around and says “we’ve given you so many miles of course mileage prices go up.”

Instead, it might not be a bad idea to start mailing those United Visa cards back to Chase Bank. They’re the biggest buyer of Mileage Plus miles, and the United Visa is their strongest credit card product. If they started losing customers because of their partner’s changes they might exert some influence over United’s frequent flyer program.

Increasing the price of an award by 70,000 miles in a single swoop is unconscionable. Increasing the price of an award (as in the case of intra-Hawaii awards) by 100% in a single swoop is unconscionable. United should hear from its members about this.

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles (actually, I got the email myself several days ago and then promptly forgot), you can get 4000 United bonus miles for signing up for Netflix. (Registration required.)

It’s 2000 miles after your first month (minimum cost $9.95) and 2000 more miles for paying with a United Visa (which you can get free the first year and 20,000 bonus miles).

United is offering up to 15,000 bonus miles for roundtrip flights to Australia from the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands from March 1 through April 30, 2006. Registration is required.

• 15,000 bonus miles for purchasing and flying a paid, qualifying roundtrip in United First® (F fare only)
  
• 10,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Business® (C, D fares only)
  
• 7,500 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy® (Y, B, M, H fares only)
  
• 5,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy (Q, V, W fares only)

(No bonus miles are offered on the absolute lowest — S and T — fares.)

Partner and code share flights don’t qualify for the offer. Tickets must be electronic. Miles should post 6 to 8 weeks after completing the return flight.

Register to receive 1000 bonus miles on a roundtrip flown on United’s low cost subsidiary, Ted. The bonus can be earned twice between February 12 and May 12, 2006.

The bonus is meant to “Wish Ted a Happy Birthday.” Personally I wish the operating gurus in Elk Grove had smothered him at birth. RAR!

Pursuant to Regulation FD, United filed its presentation to the JPMorgan Annual High Yield Conference with the SEC. It makes for interesting reading.

United has cut labor costs per available seat mile by 32%. Only USAirways — which went through two bankruptcies — has gone further. Northwest, just entering the bankruptcy process, has only cut their labor costs 3% over the same period of time. Northwest has the highest costs of any major carrier.

Shocker — United has far less debt after bankruptcy. The reduction is all centered around rejecting pensions, retirement benefits, and some leases.

Playing with numbers — United compares its operating margins with Southwest’s by removing Southwest’s fuel hedges.

Going forward United plans to de-peak hubs (more continuous flow of aircraft so they don’t pay people to sit around, people wait for planes rather than planes waiting for people) and continue outsourcing call centers and automating them (“agent agent agent”).

Mileage Plus has 45 million members and contributes over $800 million in revenue. That makes the frequent flyer program even bigger than flying cargo.

My greatest fear is that the awards offered by airlines and hotels will go away, that the great values will disappear. What if I can’t use 60,000 Cathay Pacific miles to fly British Airways business class to Europe anymore? What if 90,000 United miles no longer buys a business class ticket from the US to Australia?

I have this recurring nightmare, I hope speaking it aloud doesn’t make it more likely to come true, and fortunately it’s just my worrying and not something based on insider information.

United’s award chart is so much better than any of their U.S. competitors’. Many other airlines devalued their award charts in the past few years while United was in bankrupty (the Qantas term for it was ‘rebalanced’). United didn’t make award chart changes, I assume they didn’t want to alienate their best customers at such a fragile time. Will they change their award chart now?

United was printing miles like mad during that period of time (in part due to bankruptcy, to retain customers, etc). And I suspect that some concessions were made on the Mileage Plus revenue side with Chase bank which issues the co-branded visa and provided debtor-in-possession financing, exit financing, and favorable terms on credit card processing.

More miles alone suggests revaluation. Superior chart relative to competitors suggests revaluation. That most others have gone through revaluation and not United suggests that they may follow. Separately, Randy Petersen has said that he expects Mileage Plus to “relaunch” this year. The implication was that it would be a positive relaunch, but I’m not so sure. Re-launching an already excellent product scares me. Think New Coke.

Whenever I see real value, I assume it’s going to disappear. And the United chart really is quite good for international premium class travel.

Take a simple comparison between Northwest and United.

Northwest is 100,000 miles in coach to Australia. United is 90,000 in business.

Northwest’s standard business award to Australia is 150,000 miles. That’s the price of United’s “rule-buster” equivalent. United offers last seat availability for the same number of miles that Northwest makes you scrounge for seats.

This difference is little understood. When people say that not all miles are created equal, they’re usually referring to the ease of finding award inventory. But award pricing is perhaps even more important.

And relative to many competitors, United’s is just so much better that it almost has to be revalued. Doesn’t it?

In addition to discounted coach awards to Sydney, United is offering coach awards between the U.S. and London for 35,000 miles for travel through March 31.

The text of the offer says

You must book your award ticket online only.

However, the terms and conditions of the offer say

You may purchase the reduced award through united.com or through United Reservations (call 1-800-UNITED1). The $15 booking fee is waived.

Either way, it appears as though awards are still pricing at 50,000 miles even though the promo should have gone into effect February 1.

Flyertalk.com discussion of the offer is here.

United is apparently offering coach awards between the U.S. and Australia for 45,000 miles.

I say ‘apparently’ because though the terms and conditions suggest the promo should be active and redemption possible online, awards still seem to be pricing out at 60,000 miles.

(Perhaps the web page meant to say that the award could not be booked online, which is also why the page says that the $15 award booking fee would be waived. That would explain why the website spits out a 60,000 mile price in spite of the promo. I’ve been too busy to call and find out the truth myself.) Flyertalk discussion of this offer is here.

I just got an email from United titled United award seats to exciting destinations.

The idea is that it’s possible to get awards with United miles, there are seats available, and they’re going to help me think of places I can successfully go with my miles.

You’ve earned your miles and we’d like to help you to use them for award travel. So now we have a dedicated page that will be updated every month with destinations where there are ample seats available on United®, United Express® and TedSM.



Visit a favorite city, take a break to a sunnier destination or try somewhere new and exotic.



Your seats are waiting.

So what routes are they highlighting in the e-mail?

1. Chicago (ORD) – Washington, DC (IAD)


2. Denver (DEN) – Las Vegas (LAS)


3. Los Angeles (LAX) – Phoenix (PHX)


4. San Francisco (SFO) – Kona, Hawaii (KOA)


5. Washington, DC (IAD) – Fort Lauderdale (FLL)

Chicago – Washington DC? Los Angeles – Phoenix? They’ve got to be kidding. And then the fine print even emphasizes that they’re only talking about awards in coach…

On Thursday I mentioned that the Starwood American Express is offering double points for tax payments. According to Free Frequent Flyer Miles the United Visa is offering double points on tax payments as well.