With the US Airways – American Airlines merger, expected to close shortly, there are basically three risks for customers: Integrations never go as well as hoped. Training employees on new systems is hard, even when you get the IT right. People are grumpy. They take it out on customers. This is a challenge for any airline merger, and a key reason why many business travelers don’t like mergers – period. US Airways members lose out on generous awards. US Airways is a member of the Star Alliance which means more flight options to Europe and Asia than oneworld, which it will be joining with the merger. There are some great values in the US Airways award chart, like 90,000 miles from the US to North Asia. US Airways agents are generally clueless and their IT…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2013.
Quick Technical Help from My Readers?
Some folks may have noticed I’ve been invited to do a whole lot more media recently — giving quotes in places like the New York Times and prominent travel magazines, I’ve been profiled in Town & Country and Washington Business Journal, and I’ve been on the Colbert Report. Yesterday I did a ~ 25 minute radio interview for a show on SiriusXM. They sent me an .mp3 file of the interview. I’d love to know where I can upload mp3 files greater than 20 megs. Today I’m taping for CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Video I know how to upload, at least to YouTube. But any advice would be appreciated — on services I can use to upload large media miles, so that I can link tot hem here on the blog and archive…
50% Back and Lots of Miles from Neiman Marcus Through Noon Central on Tuesday
Nieman Marcus is often referred to as ‘needless markup’. But they have an uncharacteristically good, stackable deal that you can take advantage of only for the next several hours. Here’s how a $200 purchase from Nieman Marcus earns a $50 rebate, a $50 gift card, and up to 3900 miles. For many, that’s better than 50% off. If you have an American Express card, log into your account and under ‘Offers for You’ (next to ‘transactions’) you will likely find $50 back on a $200 purchase from Nieman Marcus. Click ‘Save offer’ next to this offer. Mentioned both on the Nieman Marcus website and on the AAdvantage shopping portal, promo code GC4YOU gets you a $50 gift card when you make a $200 purchase. This is only valid through noon Central time on December 3…
United Offering Double Miles to and From Seattle — And How They’re Doing it Wrong
United is offering double miles on flights between Seattle and Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Anchorage. You have to register and purchase travel by December 31 and fly by May 31. Here’s the kicker: flights booked prior to December 2 are ineligible for the bonus. If the idea is to generate loyalty, rather than just protect yourself from seeing mileage bonus-savvy customers booking away for the generous offers in the market from Delta and Alaska, then United should value all of its customers — especially those who were already loyal and purchasing travel with them. Instead, this sends the message that their business is taken for granted. Clearly United wants to goose its Seattle flights, and protect itself from customers who might book United looking elsewhere instead — and do it at the lowest…
How Much Are Miles Really Worth? The Answer May Surprise You
There are several ways to figure out how much miles are worth. When I was growing up the rule of thumb used to be 2 cents, which was wrong on many levels but made intuitive sense to someone that hadn’t thought about points for very long: “25,000 miles pays for a $500 cross country ticket.” Of course not all tickets were cross-country, many tickets were less expensive, award travel gives up earning miles, using a domestic ticket as the benchmark ignored some of the best uses of miles, and of course capacity controls (and back then, even blackout dates) weren’t factored into the value. Award chart changes and tighter capacity certainly has changed the value of a mile since then. But how much are miles worth today? I’ve written in the past that the value…
The Most Important Things You Missed Over the Holiday Weekend
If you spent the long US holiday weekend mostly offline, you missed quite a bit in fact some of the better or more important things on View from the Wing in the past month. So I wanted to highlight a few posts. If you’ve been constantly clicking refresh waiting for new posts throughout the Thanksgiving respite, you can skip this! The Best Mileage Purchase Deal: US Airways share miles is back, offering points at a big over 1.1 cents apiece. How to Make Your Holiday Travel a Smoother Experience The Craziest Things People Have Done to Earn Miles How to Ensure Your Family Can Sit Together on a Flight “Fuel dumping” as a Tool to Reduce Airfare Prices, Explained What to Do if Your Frequent Flyer Account Gets Audited Six Things You Can Do to…
And the Winners of $1000 in Marriott Gift Cards Are…
Marriott is running a Cyber Monday sale today, 30% off of bookings made this Monday at ~ 350 participating Marriott hotels in North America for travel between December 20 and March 31. The deal is available here. And to promote it Marriott provided (2) $500 gift cards to give away to View from the Wing readers. I asked folks which sale property they’d like to visit. And I’ve now drawn the two winners with the help of random.org. They are: Winner #1 Claire wrote, The Marriott Marquis in NY Winner #2 Stephen wrote, JW Marriott New Orleans! Congratulations to you both, winners will be getting a note soon to arrange delivery of their prize. Thanks to all who entered, and enjoy some great deals out there for Cyber Monday! You can join the 30,000+ people…
American Express 33% Transfer Bonus to Hilton — And the One Time it Makes Sense to Do It
American Express Membership Rewards is running a 33% bonus on transfers to Hilton HHonors through January 31. This means that instead of transfer at a ratio of 1:1.5 you transfer at a ratio of 1:2. Frankly, you can normally get a 1:2 transfer ratio by transferring American Express points to Virgin Atlantic at 1:1 and from there to Hilton at 1:2. (And for that matter you can do the same with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, making Hilton a stealth transfer partner of Chase.) It’s even better to make the Hilton transfers when American Express is running a transfer bonus to Virgin. (One ended yesterday.) Of course, transferring directly to Hilton is faster and involves one less step. That said, I do not recommend it. I wasn’t even a huge fan of transferring to Hilton before…
How I Confused a Hotel into Giving Me a Free Suite Upgrade
An interesting thing happened on a recent stay at the Hyatt Regency Austin. I wound up with a ‘free’ upgrade to a suite with view of Lady Bird Lake and a patio. And I almost got kicked out of that suite! I’m not going to do a full review of the hotel, as I’ve already written about this property here and here (so didn’t feel the need to write about it after several subsequent stays, natch). Hyatt Gold Passport offers complimentary upgrades to Diamond members, but those upgrades exclude suites. Some hotels will give out available suites to diamonds if available anyway, but the program doesn’t promise it. If a Diamond wants a suite, they can confirm one at time of booking four times per year (for up to 7 nights on each stay) using…
This Week the Supreme Court Will Hear the Case of the Rabbi Kicked Out of His Frequent Flyer Program
Back in May I discussed the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case of the Rabbi whose Northwest account was closed for complaining too much. Ginsburg sued. His complaint was dismissed in federal district court on the basis that state law can’t be used to address airline price, route or service issues since those are pre-empted by the federal Airline Deregulation Act. A 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling disagreed, and now the Supreme Court will hear the issue. Reader and attorney Eric M. Fraser updates us on the case, as it prepares to go to oral argument in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Eric M. Fraser is an appellate and antirust attorney with Osborn Maledon. He is an active flyer and reads View from the Wing to help keep his preferred status…
