News and notes from around the interweb: Delta is selling used beverage carts, and you could own one! Another e-rewards signup bonus and a post making the point that you can have as many of these as you want (one per airline with which they’re offering them) using unique email addresses each time. Misleading marketing or language barrier? Congress voted to raise airport security fees not to fund airport security but as part of an overall budget deal (i.e. to pay for other things). But then when the TSA actually raised fees per the letter of the law, people didn’t like that. So the House voted unanimously to cap the increase. Passing through the American Express Centurion lounge at DFW airport yesterday, the new beef dish was gone (no bid deal, it pales in comparison…
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Signup Bonus Of Up to 90,000 Virgin Atlantic Miles
Back in August an offer came out promising up to 90,000 miles for the Virgin Atlantic co-brand credit card. It returned at the beginning of October. Now, these are Virgin Atlantic miles which aren’t the most valuable. And the offer required a whole bunch of spend. So it’s wasn’t the greatest card offer out there. In fact, I view the card as 75,000 miles for $12,000 spend and wouldn’t take it all the way to capture the full offer on the table. But it was from an issuer without too many co-brand cards (my only current Bank of America card is an Alaska Visa), and it’s potentially a lot of miles. The link for the offer appeared to die each time, so it seemed like the chance for this was gone. But it turns out…
HURRY: United.com Pricing Partner Business Class Europe Awards at a Discount…
Via Dan’s Deals, United.com is pricing business class awards between North America and Europe at the lower United price. United’s award chart bloodletting created a separate, more expensive award chart for travel on partner airlines (even ‘joint venture’ partners, where United is supposed to be indifferent as to whether you fly United or their JV partner). Business class between the US and Europe currently runs: 57,500 miles if you fly United (115,000 roundtrip) 70,000 miles if you fly a partner (140,000 roundtrip) Right now – for January, February, and March – they are pricing partner awards at the price of United flights. Of course that’s low season for Europe travel, so I am going to assume this is an ‘unannoucned sale’. Of course there is no telling how many days (or hours or minutes!) this…
500 Free Points, Old Planes That Still Fly, and Spirit Airlines Ready to Kick United’s Can
News and notes from around the interweb: 10 Veteran Aircraft Types You May Be Surprised Are Still in Service 500 free US Bank FlexPerks points Spirit Airlines takes on United: So much for low cost carriers focusing on underserved cities. Spirit will begin Denver – Los Angeles service, in addition to previously-announced Denver-Chicago and Los Angeles-Cleveland flights. These will bring Spirit’s Denver operation to 10 cities and Los Angeles to 9. Delta’s mileage-earning rates for partner flights next year have finally been released Cranky Flier talks to JetBlue founder and Brizilian airline Azul CEO Dave Neeleman about why their new service to the US can succeed, and more. If someone sitting next to you purchases Buy on Board, you’re 30% more likely to do so as well. (HT: Hans M.) You can join the 40,000+…
What US Airways Really Meant When it Tried To Clarify Elite Status Offer
American AAdvantage introduced a status buyback program and – as expected – US Airways Dividend Miles followed with its own a couple of weeks later. Now Dividend Miles has made some edits to their offer page. Now, I’m the last one in a position to criticize typos (!). But this one rather struck me. They also clarified the offer’s introductory text. So here’s the thing. You ‘can renew to the same status level or lower’ if you’re Platinum would mean that you can renew to Platinum. But if you’re Chairmans Preferred you can only renew to Gold. Of course once the American and US Airways programs combine there won’t be a Platinum (US Airways 75,000 mile) level. Although there will be a Platinum level, since that’s what American calls its 50k tier. This is why…
An Airline Runs the Numbers, Shows You Nearly All Customers Lose Out With Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Programs
Alaska’s strategy is to award high revenue customers, and their most frequent customers, with more miles. That’s because — as the title of one of their slides at this week’s Investor Day made clear — Industry transition to a revenue-based loyalty prorgram provides opportunity in the near term for Alaska. (Alaska was believed to be considering a revenue-based program themselves a couple of years ago.) Alaska has looked at the numbers, and shared them in a chart, to explain why customers are much better off with a traditional mileage program than a revenue-based one.
Free Hilton HHonors Silver Status (and Fast Track to Gold)
euflyer points out that the free Hilton HHonors silver offer I wrote about a little over a year ago is still available. Better to walk into Hilton as a silver than as a base member. First, because of the bonus points and in some cases free bottled water. But second and more importantly is that it serves as a reason not to be given the worst room on property, the one above the HVAC system or overlooking construction. That’s not a guarantee, but it helps. Four stays within 90 days upgrades your account to Gold status, which I consider to be the best HHonors status level (better than Diamond on an opportunity cost basis). Of course the easiest way to get and keep Hilton Gold is the Hilton HHonors Reserve Card which gives it to…
Alaska Airlines Introducing Extra Legroom Seating in First Half of 2015
Alaska Airlines is going to add extra legroom seat options for a fee in economy during the first half of 2015. Per Alaska’s vice president and chief information officer: Extra legroom can make economy bearable especially on the longer flights they run cross country. Presumably these seats will be confirmable at no charge at least for MVP Gold members. Brian Sumers reports that they are not adding extra legroom seats as I first imagined. Rather they’re charging more for exit row and bulkhead seats that have more legroom. Here’s the pricing: 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…
Singapore Airlines Refusing to Honor Business Class Mistake Fare
My cousin Lauren passes along this piece about a Singapore Airlines business class mistake fare that the airline apparently doesn’t want to honor. Singapore Airlines loaded business-class fares for flights between Australia and London into a global booking system that travel agents use to sell tickets to their customers. The cost of business-class tickets that should have sold for up to $6000 a piece for flights from December 8 was loaded into the global distribution system, or GDS as it is known in the travel trade, for as little as $3500. While less than the intended price, it doesn’t strike me as good enough to warrant a blog post as a sale fare let alone a mistake (even accounting for that fact that $3500 Australian dollars is about US$2950). It’s hardly obvious to me that…
How to Book Deeply Discounted Awards Flying Around Asia
A couple of years ago I wrote about flying for as little as 5000 points. That’s the Japan Airlines Mileage Bank promotional discount for travel on their partner Bangkok Airways. I wrote about the offer shortly after it was launched. And then it was extended for all of 2014. Now Rapid Travel Chai points out that it has been extended through March 2016. Here’s the discounted award chart:
