Starwood is giving away NCAA Championship basketball tickets to Platinum members at precisely noon eastern on Friday. Shouldn’t have told you that, less chance for me to score the tickets…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for March 2009.
$300 Washington DC to South Florida in First Class
US Airways has a $134+tax fare each way between Washington National airport and Fort Lauderdale. Decent enough fare during normal times, it prices out at about $309 roundtrip. But this is a first class fare. (And this morning it was pricing out about $50 less!) West Palm Beach is available for $399 roundtrip all-in. Compare this to American’s discounted “KUP” fare, DC to Miami of about $900 roundtrip. First class for the price of advance purchase coach, the fare won’t last long for sure. It’s an “A” fare which is discounted/restricted first class so it’s non-refundable and carries a $150 change fee. Fare basis is AA7UPN.
A Good Time to Book Way Ahead for Transpacific Premium Award Travel
I don’t usually talk about planning award travel ten months off, but I happened to notice today that there are tons of dates in January, 2010 available where All Nippon Airways is offering two first class award seats, Chicago – Tokyo. I didn’t check the reverse, or other gateways (New York-JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco… sadly ANA is pulling first class from Washington-Dulles in July, and first class award seats departing Japan have been harder to secure in the recent past) but if you’re having difficulty getting back my suggestion is to search first class awards on Asiana — Seoul – JFK, Seoul – Chicago, and the ubiquitously available Seoul – Los Angeles (this is certainly the most available transpacific flight in first class for an award, offering seats nearly every day of the year…
Why Different Members Receive Different Mileage Offers
Different customers get different mileage offers, and Chris Elliott thinks it’s discriminatory. Which is rather silly. Different members with very similar profiles will get different offers precisely because their profiles are similar. It’s called “split testing.” You want to know what offer gets the strongest response. And in order to do that you need to compare people with similar profiles, and vary only the offer. Perhaps you get the same response giving 1500 vs 3000 miles, in which case you want to give out fewer miles. Perhaps 3000 miles seems ‘too good to be true’ and people ignore the offer. Or perhaps there are even more offers out there, say a 10,000 mile offer. Maybe 1500 isn’t enough to get a response but the response rate is virtually identical for all offers above 3000. The…
Time to Redeem Those bmi Miles! First Class Awards Getting More Expensive…
bmi Diamond Club is increasing the cost of first class award redemptions by 25% effective May 1. First Class award flights Miles only Miles plus Cash Current x 2 Miles x2 Cash x2 From 1 May 2009 x 2.5 Miles x2.5 Cash x2.5 In addition to charging 2.5 times the miles (instead of double) for first class compared to coach, whether for an all-miles or a cash and points award, they are also imposing a 10,000 mile surcharge each way for Lufthansa First Class. It’s not 100% clear whether this applies to both all-miles itineraries or to cash and points itineraries as well. If the latter that would actually be an improvement, because currently cash and points awards cannot include Lufthansa First Class. My assumption is that there’s too much availability in Lufthansa first, the it’s…
