Here’s the scoop: Starting Jan. 15, 2014, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members will be able to earn elite qualifying miles on all 12 of the carrier’s international partners, including British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Fiji Airways, Korean Air and Qantas. Mileage Plan members already earn elite qualifying miles on AeroMexico, Air France, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Emirates, KLM and LAN. Alaska has really been stepping up. A year ago I had them on a watch list to devalue their program in a big way, and of course they still could, but the huge competitive pressure that erstwhile partner Delta is putting on them by building up a significant Seattle presence seems to put off the possibility at least and light a fire under their competitive offerings. Not only has Alaska added Emirates as a partner,…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2013.
BREAKING: New Threat to Aviation Security Identified
Having declared victory in the War on Water, with no more liquids greater than 3 ounces allowed beyond the security checkpoint, the next front in the battle to keep the skies safe from Terrorism and Other Threats is going to have to be stopping the existential risks posed by two inch plastic toy guns that come with children’s toys. Or something. Thank goodness for the quick work of the TSA! Yesterday at approximately 17:00 hours, a one Mr. Rooster Monkburn was successfully disarmed when a TSA agent confiscated the monkey sock puppet’s two-inch, vaguely gun-shaped piece of plastic—and then threatened to call the police. …“She said ‘this is a gun,’” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.” …”She took my monkey’s gun.” The TSA has issued a…
Why the Era of Mileage Running is Over
At the end of each year stories appear about mileage running, taking flights for the sole purpose of accumulating frequent flyer miles. I spoke to a writer yesterday interested in the phenomenon, and I told him his story was several years late. I first heard about the practice sitting on a short flight from Washington Dulles to Atlanta in 1998, my seat opponent was telling me about a friend of his enroute to Tokyo trying to requalify for his top tier elite status on United. I was flummoxed, it hadn’t ever occurred to me that someone would do that. Just three years later I found myself doing my very first mileage run – an end of the year trip to put myself over the top for status. I’ve rarely made true mileage runs, though I’ve…
Have You Flown Regularly to Tel Aviv? El Al Will Give You Up to Top Tier Status
David H points me to the following offer: Hi All, Superfly is giving its eligible members Gold, Plat and Top Plat status. Some members have already received the offer and posted it online so we decided to go ahead and post on FlyerTalk as well. To be eligible you must have: 1) A U.S. or Canadian address on your profile on elal.com 2) No current or past elite status (Gold or above) in the last 3 years 3) Multiple flights to TLV in the last 2 years This is not a status match. The scoring is based on number of flight to TLV (either direct or through Europe), class of ticket, and willingness to switch and commit to EL AL. To sign up please follow direction: 1) Update your EL AL profile with your US or…
Will US Airways Really Stay in Star Alliance to the Bitter End?
This morning US Airways and American Airlines closed their merger. The oneworld alliance sent out a press release that US Airways would move over to oneworld on March 31. I speculated that they would stay in Star until March 30th. Some readers noted that this date was actually included in the airlines’ press releases. I had previously suggested that US Airways would leave Star and shortly thereafter join oneworld. There’s been some speculation about a gap between leaving one alliance and joining another — a gap that would: Make it much more difficult to use US Airways miles Make it much more difficult to fly US Airways while crediting to a non-US frequent flyer program You could credit any oneworld airline travel to American, even as a US Airways elite, and eventually they’ll let you…
As a Way of Saying Thank You: My Million Reader Giveaway!
I’m putting together a giveaway of items,, both big and small, that I’d like my readers to have as a personal way of saying THANK YOU this holiday season. I don’t really track my blog traffic all that closely. I know that of the hundreds of thousands of visits this blog receives each month, each person comes an average of about four times. But that’s as far as my tracking of these things goes. I remember way back, after I had been blogging for a year, that my traffic was about 500 visits per day. That was 10 1/2 years ago. Back then I did have an email list of a little more than 1000 people who had signed up to get my posts each day. That sort of encouragement made me feel like what…
Official: US Airways Joining oneworld on March 31
Per press release from oneworld US Airways will join oneworld(R) with effect from March 31, 2014, following completion today of its merger with alliance founding member American Airlines. All its regional affiliates, operating under the US Airways Express brand, will also transition to oneworld at the same time. So we can expect the ‘end of March’ departure from Star Alliance to happen, I’d think, on March 30. That would be the last day to use US Airways miles to issue tickets for travel on Star Alliance airlines. Existing award reservations are fine, of course, and can be made through the end of schedule on that date (meaning in the US Airways context for travel 330 days into the future). Although any changes to travel won’t be possible on Star Alliance airlines after that date —…
Earning Miles Cheap With Money Orders, Big Miles for TV, and CorporateMergerSpeak: Bits ‘n Pieces for December 9, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: The key corporate-speak of US Airways management seems to be “bias towards action” and “team-building” Thank goodness the American Airlines-US Airways merger should mean ditching the US Airways IT system. Systems integration is hard, but whatever pain travelers experience when it happens we’ll need to remember that the current US Airways system is no walk in the park even now. The 30,000 United mile signup offer for DirecTV was extended through February 5. Buying money orders with debit cards. The main card for doing this currently is the Suntrust Delta debit card, which has changed its terms and conditions to say you won’t earn miles for money orders. We’ll see whether actual practice matches that change. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis…
PointsHound Hotel Booking Website Adding More Hotels Where You Can Earn Miles And Hotel Points/Elite Status + 1000 Point First Time Booking Bonus
PointsHound and Rocketmiles are the two major websites that award you frequent flyer miles when booking hotel rooms. In general Rocketmiles has the biggest mileage offers, but they also have the fewest hotels and are in a limited – but growing – number of cities. Booking through Rocketmiles will not entitle you to earn points and elite stay credit through a hotel loyalty program. (Some hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt will honor elite benefits on third party bookings, while Starwood and Hilton’s policy is not to do so.) PointsHound has more hotels in more locations, a subset of which are referred to as ‘DoubleUp’ hotels where you earn miles and can still earn hotel points and elite stay credit. As a result I’ve found PointsHound to fit my own travel patterns better, but both…
Lufthansa Apparently Spinning Off its Frequent Flyer Program
Robb sends me this article in German suggesting that Lufthansa will be spinning off the Miles&More frequent flyer program into a separate entity. (Thank goodness for Google Translate built into Chrome!) The article suggests that the Miles&More program — much smaller than those of US airlines like United, Delta, and American — contributed 700 million euros in profit to the airline in 2012, with 2013 results expected to be similar. That’s a net of about a billion dollars. Frequent flyer programs, even outside the U.S., are big businesses. Air Canada’s Aeroplan was the first frequent flyer program to spin off as a public company, in 2005. At the time it was expected that United – -whose loyalty program exists as a separate wholly-owned subsidiary — would eventually do the same, but the financial crisis intervened.…
