The All Nippon Airways award booking engine is the best way to search Star Alliance award inventory. Get yourself an ANA Mileage Club account and you have a pretty darn good gauge of what’s available as an award to Star Alliance partners. It pretty much never shows Singapore Airlines business and first class availability (what few seats may exist) from the US to Asia. But otherwise it’s pretty much a match for what everyone has access to, other than United Mileage Plus (because United often ‘blocks’ award seats being offered by their partners when United doesn’t want to pay for the seats; you could book the same flights with Continental or US Airways miles for instance that United claims are unavailable). There are really only two drawbacks to the tool, and one of them has…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for March 2010.
Hyatt Place Twitter Giveaway Wnner
The winner of my twitter giveaway of 2 Hyatt Place hotel nights and 2 months of personal assistant services from TaskUs.com is @allisonkasic — congrulations Allison! And keep following me on Twitter for other Twitter-exclusive giveaways and frequent flyer updates.
Gold Coast Australia Giveaway Winner
Thanks to BoardingArea and to American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card for sponsoring the giveaway of a trip (air/hotel/meals) to Australia’s Gold Coast. This blog’s winner became one of 20 finalists, with the ultimate winner chosen at random from the winner from each of the BoardingArea blogs. And the ultimate prize winner is Istvan. Congratulations! And now to announce the winner of @garyleff Twitter giveaway of 2 Hyatt Place hotel nights and 2 months’ personal assistant services…
Hotwire Introduces Select Your Preferred Bed Type on Some Opaque Bookings
Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Hotwire now lets you select your bed type at some hotel properties. The status quo on opaque sites has been: [Y]ou can’t choose your bed type up front. You’re typically left asking for your preferred room type at check-in. (I sometimes remember to call the hotel in advance and ask for my preferred room type.) But that doesn’t always work, especially if you’re sharing a room with someone you don’t want to share a bad with. In those cases, an opaque site may be out (although bear in mind that most hotel chains don’t guarantee bed preference except to their elites, even on regular paid bookings through their own websites). This is a real improvement, Mark notes it was introduced in November but somehow I didn’t notice it either and yes…
Hilton HHonors’ Senior Vice President’s Own Words Explaining Their Lack of Value to Their Customers
Randy Petersen interviewed Jeff Diskin, Senior Vice President of Customer Marketing at Hilton in the April issue of Inside Flyer. And Diskin had one of the most interesting spins on their points devaluation I’ve ever read. They were “over-indexed.” Here’s his answer, and it’s really enlightening. We were and have been, sort of “over indexed” for some period of time in terms of the value of some reward properties, and frankly we weren’t getting credit for that. Because what the research pointed out is what you do with your points is of great interest to you when you’re looking to shop with them. People are looking to shop with them because they are looking to offset the cash outlay with whatever points they’ve accumulated. So everybody is within the same environment which is very difficult…
Winner of View from the Wing’s Entry in BoardingArea Gold Coast Australia Trip Giveaway
The first stage of the Boarding Area – American Express Premier Rewards Gold card giveaway is complete — each of the BoardingArea blogs has selected one entrant for the final drawing. And the winner of this blog’s entry is Connie. There were over 600 loyalty program tips submitted, and Connie’s was chosen at random (from those meeting a bare minimum threshold of seriousness/responsiveness to the question). Connie’s tip was: When dining out with a group of friends and the bill comes on one ticket they always choose to pay cash. I take all their cash and then pay the entire bill – along with my portion of course – on my credit card simply to get the miles. I’m disciplined enough to put the cash in my banking account and make a payment towards the…
Airfare Pricing ‘Trick’ to Drop Fuel Surcharges from International Tickets is No More
‘Fuel dumps’ on international airline tickets are apparently dead. For some time it has been possible to push down the price of an airline ticket by getting pricing engines to ticket without fuel surcharges, which in some cases can be as much as $400. It’s a great savings, and there have been various techniques for accomplishing this. This Flyertalk thread has attracted about 4800 posts over the past year and a half about dropping fuel surcharges from tickets, and fleshing out the techniques. Many of the posts are ‘in code’, referring to booking tickets on Priceline as “negotiating” (William Shatner is ‘The Negotiator’…). In that thread, folks are blaming Airfare Watchdog who outlined one of the more popular techniques in a blog post yesterday, detailing adding throwaway segments to Canada to the end of a…
Must Watch 1933 American Airlines Promotional Video
Via Holly Hegeman, this 1933 promotional video for American Airlines (“American Airways”) is a must-watch for aviation geeks. Holly quotes from the beginning of the video From the beginning of time, man has been the master of his own journey, he chooses the road by which he goes. He steps ahead or he steps aside. Here’s the man who steps ahead. The kind of man who gets things done. He knows where he’s going and how to get there — The American Airways way.
I Just Earned Miles on an Award Flight
I’m planning on doing a trip report of some sort, I’m just back in the US from a jaunt to Asia in First Class on Cathay Pacific (Toronto – Hong Kong – Manila – Hong Kong – London) with a return to North America on British Airways in First Class. I had the Presidential Suite at the Intercontinental Manila, and suites on Mactan Island and in Macau, plus lunch at the Fat Duck Restaurant outside London. Certainly plenty of stories to share. But since I’m just back to the States today, and need to oh I dunno work all week (and I won’t be back in the air for about 11 days..) the trip report will have to wait. I’m not promising anything at all for specific delivery dates. I have to do my taxes…
Midwest Airlines and Delta Break Up
According to the Delta website, the Delta – Midwest Airlines partnership “[t]erminates June 7, 2010.” I haven’t found any press release, or mention of this on the Midwest Airlines website. But naturally there is a thread on Flyertalk. Midwest partners in addition to Delta were KLM, Frontier (as they’re jointly owned by Republic), and Amtrak. Delta’s departure, as poor as their award availability is, leaves a real hole. And redeeming on Midwest isn’t great either, the program even still has blackout dates. In the past the airline has had several frequent flyer relationships, including American, Virgin Atlantic, and Scandinavian. But those days appear gone. While the program wasn’t all that appealing in the first place to me, I’d probably just credit Midwest miles to Frontier at this point. At least they partner with Airtran! Any…
