Last week I attended a pre-opening dinner at American Express’ new Centurion lounge at New York LaGuardia. It’s a fantastic space, smaller than the other Centurion lounges, which makes sense given its purpose — LaGuardia isn’t a ‘long layover’ airport. At the time of the dinner American Express didn’t have a firm opening date. Construction was done, permits were in hand, but they were still working out final service details. A little birdie tells me that the lounge is now open, as of 6am this morning. Access rules: The lounge can be accessed by: Centurion and Platinum cardholders: Cardmember may bring in their spouse and children or two guests Other American Express cardholders: $50 per adult (children complimentary when accompanied by paying adult) Hours: The lounge is open from 6am to 8pm daily. Location: The…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for August 2014.
Here’s How Much Partner Redemptions Cost US Airways Dividend Miles
Yesterday I shared the internal numbers from American AAdvantage — the number of members, how many miles they’re awarding, and how many unredeemed and unexpired miles are left. Most importantly, we can see how those have changed year-over-year for a long period to understand how the program is being managed. US Airways doesn’t provide nearly as much detail as American does about their frequent flyer program’s economics. That said, looking back at old SEC filings, I found that their 2010 10-K filing had much that was fascinating. They assumed 11% of awards would be redeemed on partner airlines. (That contrasts with 16% for Alaska Airlines) Each 1% of redemptions on partners was projected to cost US Airways $8 million. US Airways believed the average mile earned was redeemed in 28 months. There’s more recent data,…
Here’s Today’s Frequent Flyer News Not to Miss
News and notes from around the interweb: Barb DeLollis reminds us that United’s plan to improve performance by ditching 50 seat regional jets has been their narrative for 8 years. The bed bugs at United’s corporate headquarters have apparently been contained. This is not a way I would recommend earning miles. Alaska Airlines is doing very well despite erstwhile partner Delta’s ramp-up in Seattle. Alaska is replacing most of the partnership’s revenue loss, including with a 20% increase in revenue from their American Airlines partnership. TSA Nude-o-Scopes have backdoor passwords and one could, it’s claimed, even be accessed via the internet. Recent improvement to the American Airlines mobile app Forget the negativity: air miles offer ‘an Earthly paradise’. Now that Air India is a member of the Star Alliance, I found this Air India first…
Is US Airways Charging Taxes They Shouldn’t… And Even Keeping the Money for Itself?
In my post highlighting the current 100% US Airways bonus for buying miles that’s open to many, John asked, Why does US Air collect a 7.5% gov’t tax for shared miles promo? Delta does not. The feds DO NOT collect a tax for shared/transferred miles. When you ‘share miles‘ (transfer your miles to someone else), US Airways charges you: $0.01 per mile plus a processing fee of $30 and a tax recovery charge of 7.5% (Emphasis mine.) Should US Airways be charging tax, when nobody else does? Or is it a junk fee, lining their pockets, under the guise of a tax?
Brazilian Family Under Investigation Over $17 Million in Manufactured Spend
Reader Denis passes along this story (Portugese) about a family under criminal investigation over manufactured spend. It’s not clear from the article how laws would have been broken. Google translates the charges as, Gang, embezzlement, forgery, use of false documents and money laundering. Apparently they earn only about $740 per month but managed to generate ~ $17 million in credit card charges last year. Denis explains that “he used a form of wire transfer known in Brazil simply as “DOC”, which is the way most bills (utilities, credit cards, cable….) are paid, but he issued those DOCs to himself or someone else in his family.” Those funds transfers generally come with a fee, ~ 2.5%, so it’s unclear from the story how he managed to keep his costs low enough to make the credit card…
New Airline (‘Reborn’) PEOPLExpress Has a Very Bad Day, and Teaches All Other Airlines an Important Lesson
The ‘new’ PEOPLExpress airlines had a very bad operational day yesterday. They took to their Facebook page, with a message signed by their President: Lots of customers appreciated this heartfelt and detailed explanation, although I’m not sure in his position I would have scolded customer behavior (it won’t be taken well by the customers who behaved that way, and will be read mostly by customers who didn’t — and is about the airline’s needs rather than theirs — although perhaps it paints a sympathetic picture). It seems like they handled things better than United does. Although their non-Facebook communication probably wasn’t as good, based on this Facebook comment: While I am grateful for the explanation, I am still upset about the lack of knowledge from your airport checkin-in counter staff, not being able to get…
LAN Business Class to Ecuador for Under $1000: Head to the Galapagos!
The indispensable The Flight Deal points to a LAN business class sale, $998 New York – Quito / Guayaquil, Ecuador. Normal coach fares from New York to Ecuador runs about $600. They rarely go on sale. If you want to go to the Galapagos too, LAN’s fares from Guayaquil is about $350 roundtrip. You can also redeem 7,500 British Airways Avios each way to Galapagos from Guayaquil. There is no premium class seats between Guayaquil and Galapagos or within Ecuador– only coach. If you just want to go to the Galapagos, book the deal to Guayaquil. (New York – Guayaquil is non-stop, going to Quito involves flying to Guayaquil and connecting to a one-cabin domestic flight, and is the same price terminating in either city.) The fare must be purchased by August 25 for travel…
American Reveals its Frequent Flyer Program Data to the SEC: Here’s What We Learn
Frequent flyer statistics: American AAdvantage is the largest frequent flyer program in the world — including US Airways members, they boast more than 100 million members. At that scale, nearly all analysis can be done by the numbers, and fortunately American is more revealing about their numbers than most other carriers. Airline filings with the SEC can be extremely enlightening if you’re willing to work through them. American’s filings provide quite a bit of detail about the number of members, how many miles were issued in a year, and how many miles remain outstanding (unexpired and unredeemed). I had a look at annual 10-K filings from the beginning of 2008 through the beginning of 2014. Here’s what they show:
Get Instant Free Status from Avis and National Car Rental
Last month I wrote about how you can get free and easy rental car elite status if you have a World Elite MasterCard. Plenty of readers have one of these, for instance if you signed up for the Citi American Airlines Executive Card when it was offering 100,000 bonus miles. johnf pointed out though that there are links available with both Avis and National that let you sign up and receive elite status instantly. Avis has their MasterCard World Elite signup offer online. This gives you instant Avis First status. You’ll have to enter a MasterCard as your credit card of choice. National Car Rental makes their signup link available as well. Which means most should be able to use it. Years ago you used to be able to sign up for Avis Presidents Club…
Is the Airbus A380 a Failure?
The Airbus A380 is cool. Efficient Asian Man says “the 747 is iconic while the A380 looks like a retarded goldfish” but the whale is huge and is amazing to fly. I still think it feels bizarre at takeoff, flying on the upper deck. It feels underpowered as it glides into the sky, it’s too smooth. Boarding the entire upper deck from separate jet bridges, you almost don’t realize that there’s a full length plane beneath you. You can pack it in densely or add amenities like Emirates has done with the shower, or Etihad is doing with their 3-bedroom residence (which isn’t as insane as it sounds, since it leverages what is mostly otherwise dead space). A New York Times story this weekend contends, though, that overall the A380 is a failure. There are…
