Randy Petersen generously offered me the opening editorial for the January issue of Inside Flyer some 11 months ago. I offered my 5 Frequent Flyer Wishes for the New Year. One came true unequivocably. One might have come true. And another is either true or two-thirds true. In short, my wishes are: ■United ends Starnet blocking. No other major North American program engages in the practice. No other Star Alliance member engages in the practice. United should allow its members to book the award seats being offered by its partners, not pretend that the partners aren’t offering them the seats. ■American and British Airways each permit members to book transatlantic awards on the other carrier. There’s no legal reason that this legacy restriction remains in place. ■Delta brings back at least 24 hour holds for…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for November 2010.
Making a Grilled Cheese Sandwich With an Iron in Your Hotel Room
Bobby Laurie and Sara Keagle teach you how to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron in your hotel room in their first ‘tips from above’ video. I had the pleasure to meet them both, finally, in Houston last week. Their recent Crew Lounge podcast they wanted to know what in the world they were doing at Table #1 for the Frequent Traveler Awards. Well, I did the seating and… a last minute reshuffle it was just the most convenient thing for me to do to make table assignments work, hah! And a little insider’s tip for anyone at a dinner, table one is rarely if ever actually the best table. Either the table numbering starts from the wings of the room (and you generally want to be in the center) or the event…
What the TSA Thinks of You and Your Rights
Mom vs. the World blog is apparently a former TSA screener and offers telling insights into what screeners think about passengers and about passenger protestations about their rights. Seriously, here’s an unvarnished perspective that will help you understand the mentality of the checkpoint. Even without the nude-o-scopes, the TSA mocks you, And the way you dress and what you pack isn’t just your business. It’s disrespectful of the TSA screeners. [T]hat vibrator in your carry-on luggage that looks like it would satisfy an elephant, yeah I see that and I see you standing right in front of me. But sure be offended by the naked x-ray image a person in another room is seeing, don’t worry about the vibrator at all or the other weird and crazy crap in your bag. I have seen the…
COPA and Avianca to Join Star Alliance
Lucky beats me to the punch that Copa and Avianca will be joining Star Alliance. Continental, which used to own a majority share of Panama City-based Copa, retains a 10% ownership and significant marketing relationship. The carrier had been a member of Skyteam but left with Continental, and had been alliance-less since then. It’s not a surprise to see this coming along with United and fully integrating into Star. Columbian-based Avianca is merging with current Star Alliance member TAMUnited and Lufthansa partner TACA. Lucky thinks bringing Avianca and Copa into Star means that the combination of TAM and current oneworld carrier LAN will mean that that entity will be a oneworld carrier. And that’s certainly the most likely scenario, it would be strange to see such large competitors as Avianca (merged with TACA though retaining…
FlyBE’s Ultimate Award Capacity Control: Abolish Award Redemption for the Most Popular Routes
Seth writes that FlyBE is removing their most popular award destinations from their redemption chart, they’ll no longer allow their members to redeem for flights to Spain, Portugal and Croatia effective March 31. Why? Because that’s where their customers most wanted to go! It’s nonobvious to my why capacity controls won’t solve the problem of too many customers wanting to redeem on these routes, and they have to instead decide not to allow it at all. Rather reminds me of 2005 when Delta members were simply not allowed to redeem on Air France or KLM over the summer. Of course in that case Delta was paying a partner for seats, one customer service explanation at the time was that Delta had reached its budget for paying Air France and KLM for seats and wouldn’t spend…
50 Continental Miles Per Dollar at FTD and 1800Flowers for Co-branded Mastercard Holders
One of the neat features of the Continental Mastercard is double mileage earning for purchases made via the Continental mall. (One of the other features is the ability to take advantage of their frequent 100 or 250 free mile signup offers, such as for reading a web page that says you can do this or that with your card.) Flowers (and similar gift item) vendors often have some of the most lucrative mileage and cash rebate promos, since the products are fairly high margin. At times the offers through Continental are as low as 10 miles per dollar, and the offers do fluctuate. Currently both 1800Flowers and FTD are showing up at 25 miles per dollar. Which — for folks who have a Continental Mastercard — actually yields 50 miles per dollar via the card’s…
1000 United Miles for Using Mobile Check-in By the End of the Year
Via Lucky, United is offering 1000 miles for registering and using mobile check-in by December 31.
American’s Pilots Want to Be Exempted from the Nude-o-Scopes
The American Airlines pilots union wants to exempt its pilots from the TSA’s nude-o-scopes because they’re, well, stupid. And they are, though what I object to is the idea that pilots would get exempted but not the rest of us. Now, they’d justify special exemptions for pilots because of the frequency with which they go through the backscatter machines and the chance that repeated exposure could have detrimental effects. But certainly frequent flyers go through them as often or more often. And of course radiation risk really just applies to one type of device (backscatter) and not the other (millimeter wave). But at least the Allied Pilots Association is against the nude-o-scopes, the Airlines Pilots Association, which represents pilots at most US carriers, actually favors them. I’d love for someone to figure out why?
Free Wifi for the Holidays is Back (with a lot more widespread availability than last year)
Airtran, Delta, and Virgin America are teaming up with Google to offer free wifi onboard from November 20 through January 2nd. These are among the most wifi-enabled carriers (I believe Airtran’s entire fleet is fully equipped) and the price is certainly right. I’ve come to value the connectivity tremendously, especially on long flights. At four and a half hours I thought the advertised $20 on my Alaska Airlines flight on Friday would be worthwhile to buy myself back some extra productivity. It was a pleasant surprise to see that I was actually only charged $5, even without Google subsidy! Now, if they’d do corporate sponsorship year-round of free wifi I’d actually switch my web broswer to Google Chrome which this deal is supposed to be promoting. Still, it’ll be interested to see when onboard wifi…
USA Today on Award Booking Services
I spoke with Laura Bly yesterday morning before heading to the airport, and today she’s written about my award booking service and about Lucky’s in her USA Today blog. She wanted me to differentiate our services, explain how mine is different or better and candidly I told her I’d never say a negative thing about his and that I often recommend people to him when I happen to have a full plate of clients, in the midst of travel, and working on deadline for my real job. And I offer that recommendation wholeheartedly. Of course I think I’m pretty good at this as my happy clients attest.. In the piece the author is a bit hard on herself, she managed business class awards to South America on her preferred dates but didn’t realize that if…
