On December 22, US Airways eliminated their temporary elite status offer that allowed you to fly a lot in a short period of time to keep elite status. A couple of months ago I said that if I were running the program I would end it come December. I assumed that had to happen months before American and US Airways actually combine their frequent flyer programs because it would be really complicated to register folks for the US Airways promotion, give them 90 days to fly, and move Dividend Miles into AAdvantage during that 90 day period. They’d have to build whole new IT process just to accommodate these trial preferreds whose qualifying period includes time in both the US Airways Dividend Miles program and the American AAdvantage program. Commenters Larry and will both wondered…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2014.
Starwood’s First Quarter Promotion Leaked Early!
Starwood has already pulled the details off of their website, since they apparently didn’t want to make their first promotion of 2015 public yet. But — hat tip to Mommy Points — between January 5 and April 15 you will earn: Double points on stays of 2 or more nights 1000 bonus points for every 5 five nights stayed during the promotion period, up to 4000 bonus points. Registration will be required, opening in the coming week. There will be non-participating properties, although ~ 90% of Starwood hotels will be eligible for the promotion. This promotion isn’t as generous as, though does stack with, Starwood’s offer of 500 bonus points per stay booked through the Starwood app (earn up to 3 times, through March 31). So not a huge offer, which isn’t surprising in a…
The First Etihad ‘Residence’ Trip Report, TSA Stealing Underwear, and Lawsuit Against a Bad TripAdvisor Review Thrown Out
News and notes from around the interweb: TSA: (T)hong (S)tealing (A)dministration? Of course, stealing ladies underwear from checked bags is one thing. Don’t wave them around like a prize. The first passenger to fly in Etihad’s ‘Residence’ onboard their A380 has written a trip report. (HT: Lucky) Court rules TripAdvisor doesn’t have to turn over the name of a reviewer to a hotel that they reviewed. The hotel wanted to sue over the bad review, but the property is in a stay with a strong media shield law that was determined to apply. (HT: Alan H.) Qantas customer who has taken 1000 flights, takes a charter to Antarctica and offers frequent flyer tips. Is Cyprus Airways on the verge of shutting down? Play Lufthansa’s Virtual Pilot Game The Korean Air ‘nut rage’ executive has actually…
Watch This American Airlines Dallas – Rio Flight Taxi Without Tires!
An American Airlines 767 blew all 4 right main gear tires on landing at Rio yesterday morning. The aircraft didn’t stop — it taxied to the gate with smoke coming from those tires. The aircraft’s next flight, American 974 to New York JFK, was cancelled. There’s quick video of the plane taxiing. (HT: World Airline News) You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Why Restaurants in Airports Are So Bad (And Why You Should Stop Eating at Shake Shack)
Tyler Cowen wonders whether the Shake Shack IPO means it is time to stop eat there? After an IPO, the equity share of the original creators — in this case Danny Meyer — is diluted. Meyer’s incentive to maintain quality standards and his personal brand name is weakened. The subsequent public shareholders are more likely to insist on a less risky and more mass market approach…In other words, both the signaling and the moral hazard arguments suggest that soon you should stop eating at Shake Shack. I actually think Tyler is late to the party on this: the IPO signals we already should have stopped going. When Shake Shack opened at New York’s JFK airport in 2013 (and then opened a second JFK location, 14 gates down from the original), and when Delta started serving…
A New Way to Earn Miles When Paying Your Rent
Via the Forward Cabin, Radpad, a service that offers both credit card and debit card payments for rent, offers a monthly check-cutting service to landlord that only charges a $4.95 fee when using a debit card. Your first month’s rent payment is free with a debit card. Then it’s $4.95 for up to a $5000 payment. Credit card payments cost 2.99% so aren’t worth doing. But if you have a rewards debit card this can be a great way to earn miles for your rent. This is possible, because the cost to process debit transactions is really low (because of the Durban amendment) But for the same reason, banks usually do not incentivize debit transactions any longer. Here’s what does still exist: I use the Suntrust Delta debit card, which earns 1 mile per dollar…
Ruh-Roh: Are American’s Business Awards Offline, Just As Points Are About to Expire?
Business ExtrAA is the American Airlines small business program, where points are earned in parallel to AAdvantage miles. It’s an opportunity to double dip — you add your Business ExtrAA number to reservations and earn business points, while the traveler earns frequent flyer miles as usual. And then you redeem the points for travel, or Gold elite status or lounge access. Points expire in the program. Points earned during a year expire December 31 two years following. All points in the Business ExtrAA program earned in 2012 and not yet redeemed expire today. So today is a pretty important day for the program. And all award redemption options have disappeared off of the Business ExtrAA website. If you have Business ExtrAA points expiring, I would call customer service to redeem today rather than waiting for…
American Express Campus Edition Eliminates Load Options
American Express Campus Edition – the prepaid product marketed to college students in conjunction with Barnes & Noble campus bookstores — allowed you to load at the bookstore cash register with a credit card or gift card. The card allowed a maximum balance of $1000, and charged $3.95 to reload at register. You could then take the money off the card at an ATM machine (first withdrawal free each month, $2 thereafter, plus fees charged by the ATM owner). The fees and need to be near a campus bookstore probably made it not useful for most people. But I long had a campus bookstore in the lobby of my office. (So a ‘weedkday’ errand, not a weekend mileage errand.) Sadly the options for loading these cards are being limited soon. So now more register loads…
IHG Rewards Club Sneaks a Big Change Into Their Terms and Conditions
IHG Rewards Club has made a big change in their terms and conditions with no advance notice, or even any notice, to members: they will no longer award points even for incidentals on stays booked through third party website. Hotel loyalty programs have spent years trying to gain control over the distribution of rooms. Years ago Priceline nights counted towards Hyatt elite status and even towards promotion earning (such as ‘Faster Free Nights’). In some cases such generosity was because of systems limitations. Bookings through third party websites like Expedia, Orbitz, or Booking.com are costly to hotel chains. On the whole they’ve driven down those costs over the past few years as hotel occupancy has gone up, but it’s still a huge expense that can run 15% – 25% of a room night. So hotels…
Hilton HHonors Announces Hotel Award Category Changes — Find Out Which Hotels Will Cost You More (or Fewer) Points to Redeem
After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly two years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year. And Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of ‘transparency’. At least they are announcing the changes. And savvy members could create a change detection for the page. Towards that end, Hilton is making category adjustments to several hotels effective January 14.
