The cover story of this month’s Inside Flyer is called “The Ethics of a Mile” and deals with gifting, bartering and selling awards — and the consequences for violating a program’s rules. In general, most airline and hotel programs will let you gift an award ticket or hotel night to anyone you wish (although some programs will limit you to giving travel to family members). But going beyond that — sell your miles on Craiglist or through a broker — and you risk having your accounts closed, tickets cancelled, and even being banned from future participation by a travel provider. Even giving a ticket to a charity for a fundraising auction violates some programs’ rules. Last month I explained What triggers an airline or hotel program to suspect you, and how to respond if they…
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A Way to Liquidate Gift Cards, a Chance to Get in Under the Wire, and Free Points for Watching a Video
News and notes from around the interweb: The hotel – Hyatt Regency Crystal City – for Frequent Traveler University is now sold out except for the program’s room block. So folks buying a ticket for the biggest gathering of frequent flyers ever can still get a room. Act quickly, because that won’t last. Liquidating gift cards by paying bills at Kmart Delta Points reports that Delta Skymiles will be eliminating round the world award tickets starting January 1. Delta has not provided notice of this devaluation. Not a new list, although I hadn’t seen it before, and I definitely don’t agree with all of it — the Periodic Table of Airlines La Quinta 300 free points for watching a video is back through the end of November (HT: wlopez70) You can join the 40,000+ people…
Is it Time for the Goverment to Regulate Legroom?
Christopher Elliott, who will be bringing his blog to BoardingArea.com, says the government should regulate legroom and shoulder room onboard planes. He offers a scary quote from the ever credible FlyersRights group. “Airlines are aggressively reducing seat and passenger space to squeeze more revenue out passengers, despite health and safety being threatened,” says Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org, an advocacy group for air travelers. And concludes that “he solution.. as simple as developing minimum seat comfort standards and enacting common-sense government regulation to enforce them.” He wants 34 inches of seat pitch, and 18 inches of width.
A New Alternative to Bluebird Emerges! Don’t Eat That! And Two Other Things Not to Do…
News and notes from around the interweb: The new co-branded American Express and Target Prepaid REDcard which should let you load up to $72,000 per year. US to eliminate option to add pages to passports in 2016. Because the rest of the world stopped doing it, after pressure from the US. This can’t be a good idea for tomorrow, right? The meal improvements at American can’t come soon enough! Aegean — which had the easiest path to Star Alliance Gold status for life — if changing their system to require annual requalification. And, sadly, they’ll be sending out new elite cards to take the place of our long expiring ones (which will no longer be valid for for lounge access). You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day —…
When Hotel Check-in is “A Time for Choosing”
I’m more than a little bit tired today, but that’s not important right not. I failed to take my own advice, and wound up making a poor choice last night. Here’s a travel conundrum: You arrive at a hotel at 1 a.m. You have to be up at 6 — although it would be better if you were up at 5. When you walk into your room there’s a loud noise coming from the bathroom fan. You’re exhausted and just want to go to sleep, but you’re afraid it will keep you up or wake you up. Do you: Go back downstairs to the desk and get a new room, or Try to minimize the noise as best you can and tough it out? It’s worth deciding the answer to this question in advance, because…
Randy Petersen Calls Me Out: Should American Make a Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Program Their IT Priority?
They say you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Nevertheless last month I called out Randy Petersen‘s September editorial in Inside Flyer for suggesting that American get ready for a revenue-based program right away… contra the statements made by the airline’s CEO that the focus now is on merging two airlines and that decisions about those sort of changes come later. Randy follows up by calling me out in the opening to his October issue of Inside Flyer, and says he wasn’t advocating that American adopt a revenue-based program, just that they build the IT infrastructure now to do so. He has this to say about me.
Understanding, Aligning — and Gaming – Domestic Upgrades on American and US Airways
As the merger between American and US Airways continues apace, systems are being updated and policies are getting aligned. One area where we’ve already seen some alignment is domestic upgrades, with American elites eligible for complimentary upgrades on US Airways (as US Airways receive) albeit only at check-in, and US Airways elites eligible for upgrades (paid, except for US Airways 100,000 mile flyers) at check-in only if Ameircan would otherwise sell a first class seat to a non-status member. There’s been some speculation that the US Airways processes for upgrade have been aligned a bit with American AAdvantage policy. But before we get there, we need to look at how America’s domestic upgrades work.. and how US Airways upgrades have worked and how it’s been possible to game the US Airways system to jump the…
American Introducing Cadillac Tarmac Transfers… and 7500 Miles for a Test Drive!
There’s a brand new announcement today of an American Airlines Cadillac partnership. It brings tarmac transfers for high value customers making tight connections at certain airports, and a new promotion to earn miles for test drives, with possibly more to come. Make Tight Connections By Driving Across the Tarmac in a Cadillac American launched tarmac transfers at LAX last week for Concierge Key members making tight connections. And they’re rolling the service out to Dallas Fort-Worth and both New York JFK and LaGuardia airports by the end of the year. They’re partnering with Cadillac in this offer, as part of a larger brand partnership. The plan is for 2 cars per airport at this point, and transfers will be in a Cadillac CTS, SRX or Escalade. They’ll evaluate how many cars they ultimately need for…
Hyatt’s Mobile App Goes “Ooops.”
On Thursday I wrote about a stackable Hyatt bonus — 1000 extra Gold Passport points per stay booked through a Hyatt mobile channel, which can be earned on top of the current 50,000 point promotion. Several readers identified problems completing a reservation with the new Hyatt app. SkiCo asked if I would reach out to Hyatt, and I did. MJM speculated the issue was related to his having stored his Hyatt Visa information in his account. And indeed, that seems to be the case. Here’s what Hyatt shared back: [W]e identified an issue affecting mobile app bookings made with a Hyatt credit card, and we have been working to address it as quickly as possible. An updated version of the iOS Hyatt app has been released, and we continue to investigate issues with the Android…
Marriott: We Stick It To You For Your Own Good!
On Friday, Scott Mayerowitz reported on Marriott’s big settlement with the FCC over blocking guests use of their own wifi. The Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center wants its exhibitors to pay $250 to $1000 each to the hotel’s wifi. So they didn’t want folks to be able to bring their own, and they used equipment to jam the signal. It’s one thing to provide a service, a convenience, even at a high price. It’s another thing to have folks find themselves in the exhibit hall and prevent them from using a service they had prepared to bring themselves in order to extort money from them. If the hotel had a policy clearly on its website, or in its meetings and events contracts that stated only hotel wifi signals could be used (and requiring meeting…
