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Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2007.
9,999 Bonus Miles with Budget
Dec
19
2007
Budget car rental is offering 9,999 Continental Onepass miles on rentals of five consecutive days or more through January 31, 2008. Reservations must be made at Continental’s website at least 24 hours in advance with discount code (BCD code) U072506. Flyertalk discussion is here, and note that some folks are finding a higher price than otherwise best available when renting under this offer.
25,000 Bonus Miles for 6 Car Rentals
Dec
19
2007
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.
Discounted Business Class Awards to Spain
Dec
19
2007
For travel between January 1 and March 12, American AAdvantage is offering discounted redemption on Iberia, the best deals being business class from either Boston or Washington, DC to Madrid for 60,000 miles instead of the usual 90,000. If only my plans were taking me to Spain in March instead of April!
Details of Alitalia’s “New” Program (And How You Lose All Your Already-Accumulated Miles)
Alitalia has come out with details of its ‘new’ frequent flyer program. Really, it’s just a tweak of the old one, but by ending that one and starting fresh they get to completely flush out their existing mileage liability and hose their customers. Welcome to Alitalia! As previously reported, the current program ‘ends’ December 31 — that’s the end date for accumulating miles to add to existing ones, which must be redeemed by June 30th or else they disappear into the ether. Alitalia will match your existing miles in the new program, however, if you take two Alitalia flight segments in the first six months of 2008. Partner flights don’t count, so if you earned Alitalia miles on an Italy trip and you’re in North America you pretty much have to go back to Italy…
Amex Plat Free Virgin Silver Status
American Express Platinum has a new benefit, Silver status with Virgin Atlantic. (Centurion gets Gold status, and Virgin is an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner, so this relationship isn’t suprising.) Since the signup offer is online, it’s unclear to me what kind of verification takes place that the person signing up is an actual cardholder. I imagine there’ll be a file sent by Virgin to Amex of those who have signed up, and some matching process will likely occur in the future, but all this remains to be seen. Silver status comes with 2 free upgrades each for the Heathrow and Gatwick Express, a mileage bonus on Virgin Atlantic flights, and Premium Economy checkin privileges when flying Virgin in coach. Not a ton, but better than a hole in the head.
On Lufthansa’s Newly Acquired Stake in JetBlue
Joe Sharkey suggests a motivation for Lufthansa’s purchase of a stake in JetBlue: slots at New York-JFK in advance of Open Skies. It’s not clear to me how partial ownership gives Lufthansa access to these slots, though. Lufthansa may well get a board seat or two, but they still have to act in the best interests of JetBlue shareholders writ large. And it’s non-obvious how that means Lufthansa will be able to transfer or buy slots that they couldn’t otherwise have come up with an arrangement for. But then I might just be naive in the ways of international airline finance. Me, I’d never put $300 million into an airline even if I was an airline. (The old joke rings true, “What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Start out with a billion dollars…
Slaying the StarNet Dragon
Last week I described United’s system for denying awards on its partners, StarNet. Airline partners offer award seats, United won’t book them, and its representatives say the award “isn’t available.” I didn’t manage to get United to book first class award seats between Bangkok and Europe. But Lufthansa seats were easier to secure. I knew the flights I wanted, the ANA award search tool showed them as available. And when the United outsourced customer service rep said she couldn’t “see” the flights I gave her the flight numbers and she entered the request — they came back confirmed. The best hint, it seems, that United is ‘filtering’ an award for a given flight is that the rep won’t just say “there aren’t any award seats on that flight” or “all I have is coach on…
The Chase Churn is Over
For years frequent flyers got mileage-rich signing up for the United Visa fee-free the first year, scoring the signup bonus, cancelling, and then signing up again. Chase, which issues the card, finally closed that opportunity. However, lesser known to the frequent flyer universe, other Chase cards could continue to be ‘churned’ — the Priority Club, Marriott, British Airways, and Southwest Visas, for instance. That appears to be no more. There are confirmed reports with the British Airways and Priority Club Visas that Chase is sending repeat cardmembers a letter saying that they won’t be getting the signup bonus miles. I assume this extends to all Chase products, or at least to all Chase mileage products. It’s a sad day, indeed. Chase joins American Express at (quite reasonably) refusing to give out signup bonuses more than…
Korean Air Skypass Introduces Expiring Miles
Miles earned on or after July 1, 2008 will expire after five years. Previously, miles never expired.The announcement claims that miles in the majority of international programs expire after 18 months or three years. What they don’t say is that any activity in an account with most of those programs will extend the validity of those miles another 18 months or three years.That doesn’t seem to be the case with this new change to Skypass. Instead, they’ve gone the route of programs like Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles — use ’em or lose ’em.
