Per press release from oneworld US Airways will join oneworld(R) with effect from March 31, 2014, following completion today of its merger with alliance founding member American Airlines. All its regional affiliates, operating under the US Airways Express brand, will also transition to oneworld at the same time. So we can expect the ‘end of March’ departure from Star Alliance to happen, I’d think, on March 30. That would be the last day to use US Airways miles to issue tickets for travel on Star Alliance airlines. Existing award reservations are fine, of course, and can be made through the end of schedule on that date (meaning in the US Airways context for travel 330 days into the future). Although any changes to travel won’t be possible on Star Alliance airlines after that date —…
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Earning Miles Cheap With Money Orders, Big Miles for TV, and CorporateMergerSpeak: Bits ‘n Pieces for December 9, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: The key corporate-speak of US Airways management seems to be “bias towards action” and “team-building” Thank goodness the American Airlines-US Airways merger should mean ditching the US Airways IT system. Systems integration is hard, but whatever pain travelers experience when it happens we’ll need to remember that the current US Airways system is no walk in the park even now. The 30,000 United mile signup offer for DirecTV was extended through February 5. Buying money orders with debit cards. The main card for doing this currently is the Suntrust Delta debit card, which has changed its terms and conditions to say you won’t earn miles for money orders. We’ll see whether actual practice matches that change. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis…
PointsHound Hotel Booking Website Adding More Hotels Where You Can Earn Miles And Hotel Points/Elite Status + 1000 Point First Time Booking Bonus
PointsHound and Rocketmiles are the two major websites that award you frequent flyer miles when booking hotel rooms. In general Rocketmiles has the biggest mileage offers, but they also have the fewest hotels and are in a limited – but growing – number of cities. Booking through Rocketmiles will not entitle you to earn points and elite stay credit through a hotel loyalty program. (Some hotel chains like Marriott and Hyatt will honor elite benefits on third party bookings, while Starwood and Hilton’s policy is not to do so.) PointsHound has more hotels in more locations, a subset of which are referred to as ‘DoubleUp’ hotels where you earn miles and can still earn hotel points and elite stay credit. As a result I’ve found PointsHound to fit my own travel patterns better, but both…
Lufthansa Apparently Spinning Off its Frequent Flyer Program
Robb sends me this article in German suggesting that Lufthansa will be spinning off the Miles&More frequent flyer program into a separate entity. (Thank goodness for Google Translate built into Chrome!) The article suggests that the Miles&More program — much smaller than those of US airlines like United, Delta, and American — contributed 700 million euros in profit to the airline in 2012, with 2013 results expected to be similar. That’s a net of about a billion dollars. Frequent flyer programs, even outside the U.S., are big businesses. Air Canada’s Aeroplan was the first frequent flyer program to spin off as a public company, in 2005. At the time it was expected that United – -whose loyalty program exists as a separate wholly-owned subsidiary — would eventually do the same, but the financial crisis intervened.…
Man Left Behind on a Plane, Couch Surfing Hookups, and More (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 8, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Man falls asleep on a United Express flight, and gets left behind on the aircraft. It’s locked, he can’t get off. Not the first time this has happened, either. Couchsurfing is really about hookups. But you still don’t earn frequent guest points, but then I suppose it doesn’t involve much loyalty! Rocketmiles is offering 2014 bonus miles for a stay that includes New Year’s Eve (on top of regular miles earned for hotel bookings). The one thing the American Airlines-US Airways merger does have is labor’s blessing. Not that peace will last, but many folks get raises. Hopefully everyone works constructively to make the combination, expected to close tomorrow, as smooth as possible (which won’t actually be smooth, at least for a couple of weeks in early 2015).…
Wyndham Visa Increases Signup Bonus to 45,000 Points
Last month I wrote about how the Wyndham Visa was the only no fee card that allowed points transfers at a reasonable rate to many different airlines. There’s also a $69 annual fee version of the card. And through December 31 it has a 45,000 point signup bonus. Earn 30,000 Bonus Points with first purchase Earn 15,000 bonus points after you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months of account opening The strongest benefit of the premium version of the card is increased hotel earning. So I’d be more inclined towards the free one for ongoing spend for someone that doesn’t do a ton of credit card spend and thus wants a no annual fee card. And to be sure that’s a bigger bonus than they usually offer for the card. And it is a…
The American-US Airways Merger Will Close on Monday Morning: How Will That Affect Your Travel?
Monday morning the merger between American Airlines and US Airways is expected to close. This much may be obvious to some, but no to others, and this site attracts many any readers of all backgrounds and experience so it seemed worthy of a mention. While the news will report that American Airlines and US Airways have merged, for all intents and purposes that changes absolutely nothing in terms of immediate travel, and travel through the holidays. American and US Airways continue to operate as separate airlines and there’s not even any relationship between the two yet for the flying public. For the next month you will not even be able to earn American miles when flying US Airways (or vice versa). So if you have reservations to fly US Airways, continue to check in with…
What are the World’s Best Airport Lounges?
Scott McCartney‘s latest Wall Street Journal column makes some interesting claims about lounges. Why Are US Airline Lounges So Far Below World Standard? He explains that US airport lounges are below the standards of Europe and especially Asia because they’re populated by low fare domestic passengers rather than high fare premium cabin long haul ones. In other words, the economics are different. (Though I’m not sure why United’s and American’s international first class lounges, then, would be below the standards of their Asian counterparts.) That said, US lounges aren’t below the standard of many European business lounges, and certainly not below the standard for South America, or for that matter India or Parkistan. But in some sense that’s what George W. Bush used to call “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” I’ve spent many hours…
The Real Lesson for Dealing With Weather and Flight Disruptions
Yesterday I shared my experiences flying through significant weather events and some lessons for dealing with them. But I left out one of the most important lessons: avoid them in the first place. When you can possibly pull the plug on the trip before you begin, you probably should throw that option into the mix. Wandering Aramean tweeted at me, I still don’t believe you chose to fly in to an ice storm in Dallas. Seems like a bad decision all around. My response was that I chose to fly the day that US Airways and America West merged their reservation systems, too! In other words while I think I have pretty good strategies and approaches for dealing with problems as they arise, I’m probably too willing to push forward into the middle of situations…
January-March: Up to 7500 Miles Per JFK-LAX Flight Segment on American
Between January 7 and March 31 American is offering bonus miles to promote their new premium domestic product that will eventually serve New York JFK to both Los Angeles and San Francisco. The first new plane begins on the JFK – Los Angeles route on January 7. So this bonus promotes the JFK-Los Angeles flights. (JFK-San Francisco begins to get the new plane in March.) American’s new international business class aboard the 777-300ER is outstanding. We’ll begin to see the new seat on the 777-200 and 767-300s during the first half of 2014. American’s also got a new pimped out A319 but unfortunately it has just half the first class seat of the aircraft its meant to replace — a very tough upgrade. I am very very interested in these new A321s that will be…
