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.
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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:
London Flight Taxes to Be Reduced, Flights that Don’t Earn Miles, and an Airline Dropping $500mm on Wine!
News and notes from around the interweb: Emirates spending $500 million on its wine program. I’m skeptical of the number, and it just sounds like prepurchase of years’ worth of bottles in any case. Their wines are better than what US airlines serve, but the eye popping number doesn’t make their wines the best either. And with the airline’s growth, it’s not really that much in any case.. (HT: Milepoint) Australians on government-chartered relief flights don’t earn miles and other odd requests for Aussie consular assistance that the government is cracking down on. (HT: Chris Guillebeau) Restaurant recommendations for those coming to Frequent Traveler University this weekend. This doubles as a good suggestion list for DC/Northern Virginia generally. I agree that Jaleo is the best option in Crystal City/near the airport, and the ‘worth a…
Loyalty Programs that Surprise and Delight Engender Both Appreciation.. and Bitterness
I’ve just received 1000 free Hyatt points ‘as a Diamond member and Hyatt Visa cardholder’. Naturally this has me speculating that it’s funded in part by Chase. Perhaps because Diamonds benefit less from the credit card since they have no use for its free Platinum status, although on the other hand Hyatt Diamonds likely places a higher value on Hyatt’s points than other members. It’s just 1000 points. I value that at ~ $14. But it’s a surprise gift! I sure loved it when out of the blue Hilton give American Executive Platinums top tier Diamond status. Northwest used to build a bit of surprise and delight into the Worldperks program for Platinum members: 1000 miles every time they didn’t clear a domestic upgrade. On short flights there were frequent flyers hoping not to get…
Another Airline Goes Revenue-Based!
Star Alliance member (and Diners Club Rewards transfer partner) South African Airways is going to revenue-based mileage-earning starting February 1, 2015. They’ll award 1 mile per R1.60 spent on airfare and fuel surcharges This applies only to South African’s own flights THere’s no change to mileage-earning on partner flights. Unlike Delta and United, South African isn’t capping the number of miles you can earn with the most expensive tickets. Since awards as well will be based on price, the mileage cost will be inclusive of fuel surcharges for South African flights. And they’re introducing redemption of miles for any seat on any of their flights with the new revenue-based structure. Another revenue-based change will be that in addition to upgrading from full and nearly-full fare tickets with miles, they’ll let you pay the cash difference…
US Airways Adopted the American Airlines Celebrity Pet Program
Per JonNYC of Traveling Better, American and US Airways aligned their pet policies three months ago. They adopted American’s pet in cabin policies for both carriers. Except that US Airways doesn’t accepted checked pets ‘due to aircraft cargo limitations’ US Airways now offers American’s celebrity pet program. Yes, seriously. American really does have a Celebrity Pet Program. We occasionally allow “celebrity” pets to travel in the cabin under different rules. We used to transport the dog from Frasier quite often, for example, and we have handled other celebrity animals from time to time over the years. They are not covered by standard pet travel fees. But as noted, these seats were paid for.” American also outfitted their Airbus 321Ts flying New York JFK – Los Angeles and San Francisco with a special place for pet…
Delta Will Sell You Elite Qualifying Miles And Even Elite Qualifying Dollars!
As airlines are wont to do (see, for instance, American’s offer), Delta will sell you elite qualifying miles to top off your 2014 total and boost your 2015 status. Delta, looking out for my best interests, won’t sell me any qualifying miles since they’ll sell you between 2500 and 10,000 miles and I’m more than 10,000 from status with them (my current total is 0). Delta seems quite excited in the announcement that spending to buy elite qualifying dollars will count as elite qualifying revenue as well towards the minimum spend requirement for Delta elite status. As I say they won’t sell them to me but that’s alright, buying ‘Medallion Qualifying Dollars’ isn’t an especially good foreign currency play in any case. Though their willingness to sell qualifying dollars leads naturally to a question that…
