As expected, Alaska Airlines has gotten up their award chart for redemptions on Emirates which will begin January 16. I was sleeping last night when this was first noticed — while Lucky tripped over himself, fell, and quickly got up a blog post while bleeding in order to bring you the news first. So hat tip Lucky. Here are the award charts: As is common for Alaska Airlines awards on partners, they do not publish award charts for travel between every region of the world. For instance there is no award on Cathay Pacific between Europe and Asia. You can fly Emirates between North America and the Middle East, India, Africa, and Asia but not, say, all the way to Australia. Alaska Airlines awards on partners are roundtrip only, no one-ways for half the miles.…
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What Starwood’s Lawsuit Against Two of it Own Hotels Reveals About the Starwood Preferred Guest Program
On Tuesday I wrote that Starwood is suing the Parker Meridien and Perker Palm Springs hotels, accusing them of fraud and seeking to abrogate their contracts. Starwood is trying to cancel its agreements with the Parker Meridien hotels in New York and Palm Springs after the properties allegedly faked accounting records and guests in order to claim over $1 million in payments from SPG. LoyaltyLobby tracked down a copy of the lawsuit (.pdf) and it makes for interesting reading. It reveals the details of the fraud. Starwood Preferred Guest was the first program to offer ‘no capacity controls’ on award nights. If a standard room is available at a hotel, a member can use points for the room. The way that they do that is offering deeply discounted payments to hotels for their rooms most…
You Can Fly Singapore Airlines First Class on Points — Here’s How!
Singapore Airlines offers an almost mythic first class product. The service is great. The seats are top notch. The Krisflyer inflight entertainment system is grand. The food is good, the alcohol very high end, and the amenities copious Mostly though the awards are perceived to be very hard to get. That’s because they almost never make long haul premium cabin award space available to their partners like United and US Airways. US Airways added a footnote to their award chart to say these seats are not an option. Back in July Singapore Airlines awards were made available to partners as a result of a systems glitch. This wasn’t awards at a discount. The error was that the awards existed for partners at all. And there was a feeding frenzy. But the truth is that Singapore…
What American’s Pilots are Being Told About Their Post-Merger Future
Terry Maxon published the American Airlines pilots union Q&A on the memorandum of understanding they’ve approved relating to how pilots would be treated in a potential merger with US Airways. Terry’s summary is better: Q. Why haven’t American’s pilots been told what’s in the memo? A. We can’t. We promised. … Q. When will we be informed? A. When the airlines let us. Q. When will it take effect? A. When we merge. Q. When will we merge? A. Don’t know. … Q. Who’ll represent the pilots after a merger? A. Probably us. We’re bigger. You can of course read the real memo.
Aisle Seat Bathroom Etiquette
If you’re in the aisle seat, is it fair game to go to sleep? And if you’re not in the aisle seat — and you have to use the lavatory — do you wake the person sitting next to you in order to get up and go, or do you hold it? Does it depend on how long the flight is? I just got off of a fairly short flight, I was upgraded — best I can tell the only passenger with a complimentary upgrade on the flight — and wound up in a middle seat. And I had to use the facilities. The man sitting next to me in the aisle sleep was dozing off. I had a real conundrum. It was only a 90 minute flight, so it’s not unreasonable for me to…
Bits ‘n Pieces for January 8, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Starwood is trying to cancel its agreements with the Parker Meridien hotels in New York and Palm Springs after the properties allegedly faked accounting records and guests in order to claim over $1 million in payments from SPG. (HT: @Jamison) I stayed here a few months back and it definitely needs some investment. It used to be one of the best redemption values in SPG, back when it was a ‘category 5’ hotel. Not so great as category 6. Soon to be category nothing. When Qantas and Emirates struck their partnership on routes between Australia and Europe via Dubia — much to the chagrin especially of oneworld alliance partner British Airways — they specifically didn’t partner on Qantas’ pacific routes between Australia and the U.S. Emirates would like…
Club Carlson’s First Quarter Promotion is Triple Points
Club Carlson is offering triple points on hotel stays and food and beverages charged to your room beginning on or after January 8 and completed by March 15. Registration required in advance of eligible stays in order to earn the bonus points. Once you’ve earned your points they can be leveraged with the ‘two for the price of one award nights’ benefit that comes with Club Carlson credit cards.
Bits ‘n Pieces for January 7, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: A fire broke out in a parked Japan Airlines 787 at Boston’s Logan airport. The plane has had some teething problems but my sense is the gums are bleeding just a bit. Sen. Rand Paul’s son was arrested for underage drinking after getting off a plane in Charlotte. He’s 19. US Airways swears they didn’t serve him on the plane, and they double triple quadruple pinky swear. (HT: Milepoint) Air Berlin, which is owned in part by Etihad (which is cuddling up to Air France and Skyteam even though Air Berlin is a part of oneworld), will be installing the same flat bed, aisle access business class seats that Etihad uses. This is great news as it’ll be another lie flat business product to Europe. And for British…
Getting Another Airline to Give You Status Based on the Status You Hold with Your Current Carrier
… or in the case of American AAdvantage, just because you’re going to be doing a bunch of flying in the coming three months. An airline status match is an old, useful, and venerated idea. I think it was about 9 years ago on Flyertalk that I created ‘The Status Match Master Thread’ to answer one of the most frequently asked questions across frequent flyer-dom, “will a specific airline match my current status with my preferred carrier? And how do I go about getting that match?” Inside Flyer magazine even reprinted the post, because it addressed what was once a fairly secret, unpublished phenomenon — the idea that airlines were interested in acquiring their competitors’ best customers, but elite status had a lock-in effect. Sure, you might want to defect from United to American or…
Priority Club Completely Revamping Reward Night Chart in 11 Days
Priority Club has completely revamped their award chart. The current redemption table prices hotels based on their brand (and in most cases there are a couple of points levels within each brands, with the more expensive hotels tending to cost more points). > Last year’s new-ish ‘multiple levels for each brand chart’ just went into effect a year ago. Since the change was done without notice, they provided a ‘grace period’ if you knew to call and ask where they would credit you points back into your account to make up for award price increases. Under the new chart which goes into effect January 18, awards still cost between 10,000 and 50,000 points but hotels will be assigned to one of 9 categories (like how other hotel chains do it, but with more categories) instead…
