Jan 20 2016

United spokesperson Rahsaan Johnson just shared with me a new policy, in effect starting today: 1K and Global Services members receive both a complimentary beverage and complimentary food item when seated in economy.

The snack and drink benefit, I can say as a top tier elite with American, is something that really improves the coach experience. It takes it from mass transportation (‘cattle car’) and helps to personalize it, because even when you don’t get upgraded there’s still a benefit to your status and individual recognition. Together with a complimentary extra legroom seat, flying coach as a top elite really isn’t bad.

Continue Reading »

Jan 20 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

Continue Reading »

Jan 20 2016

Avianca LifeMiles just became a whole lot more valuable and useful. They’ve solved the limitation on booking ‘mixed cabin’ award tickets. That makes the price at which they sometimes sell miles even more tempting.

Continue Reading »

Jan 20 2016

There are those who would argue that awards are earned One Mile at a Time and so 100 miles should seem like a really appealing reward. I’ll certainly earn my 100 miles here and there, from the smallest online purchase to the occasional online surveys (most useful for extending the life of miles, or generating partner activity in all-too-rare partner earning promotions).

Continue Reading »

Jan 19 2016

Starwood’s first quarter promotion was really disappointing when it came out — but they’ve made it better with additional threshold bonuses for staying 15 and 25 nights during the promotion period.

Register of course, because earning double points if you happen to stay 2 nights at a Starwood hotel during the promotion period — or at a 250 bonus point per night participating hotel — is better than not earning those points. And if you’re spending a bunch of nights with Starwood the quarterly promo got reasonably rich.

Continue Reading »

Jan 19 2016

What is the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program? Miles used to be thought to be worth 2 cents. I think that conventional wisdom developed out of the idea that a cross country flight cost about $500… or 25,000 miles. 20 years ago that was generally true, and award availability wasn’t really a problem either.

I’m going to share my own rough and ready number for several different programs. And I’m going to explain how I think about the value of miles — why they are different for different people, and for different circumstances of how you plan to use them.

Here’s how to think about the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program.

Continue Reading »

Jan 19 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

Continue Reading »

Jan 19 2016

Delta’s astonishing arrogance is covered in a piece by Benét Wilson for Airways News that basically asks whether Delta CEO Richard Anderson is an evil genius.. or just evil?

While frequent flyer programs may have been overly generous, especially coming out of the Great Recession, and no longer need to be as rewarding to fill incremental seats on planes — and Delta could extract surreal amounts of cash from American Express after their co-brand issuer lost its deal with Costco — research suggests they may have wrung out way too much value from the SkyMiles program and could be on the verge of hurting themselves by it.

Continue Reading »

Jan 18 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

Continue Reading »

Jan 18 2016

Fuel surcharges don’t matter much to most consumers. They’re advertised as part of the paid fare when buying a ticket. They even earn credit in revenue-based frequent flyer programs. They really only matter to consumers who have airfare discounts that don’t apply to the surcharges, and to frequent flyers booking awards.

Since fuel prices have dropped, and fuel surcharges are now absurd on their face, several airlines have just renamed ‘fuel surcharges’ as ‘carrier-imposed surcharges’. In the US that’s important because in the US fuel surcharges unrelated to the price of fuel are considered by the DOT to be illegal.

Now there’s literally no justification for the surcharges. They’re just a fee for nothing. They’re ‘carrier-imposed’ (of course, who else sets fares?) but don’t cover anything in particular. That begs the question, why do airlines do this?

Continue Reading »