United, United Express
About Gary Leff
Cheap Australia and New Zealand flights
Qantas is offering roundtrip fares of $498 + tax from Los Angeles to Auckland and $598 + tax from Los Angeles to Sydney. Ticket by May 7th and depart by the end of May. The stay must last 7 days minimum, one month maximum. The minimum stay requirement makes this a decent vacation but not a trip worth flying just for the miles. Hat tip to David Rowell.Update: I indicated earlier that Qantas flights earned American Airlines miles, but this fare (booked in “Q” class) does not according to American’s website.You can, however, earn full mileage with Alaska, Continental, or USAirways. Bear in mind, though, that those will not be elite qualifying miles.
Columns worth reading
A three-pack from Smarterliving.com: Ed Perkins outlines credit card chargebacks, Zak Patten offers tips on planning a Hawaiian vacation, and Josh Roberts explains what most of us already know — that a hotel website’s “best rate guarantee” doesn’t actually mean it offers the best rate.
Every Breath You Take, They’ll be Listening to You
Your favorite frequent flyer program may be recording customer service calls for more than just quality and training purposes. Folks have long been aware that tapes of conversations can be good protection for a company to have later, but it’s interesting the business strategy and analysis that can come out of such recordings. Would an automated frequent flyer line, providing mileage balances or even upgrade processing, save money? That probably depends on how often flyers call to request balances or upgrades without purchasign tickets. Tracking software can help answer those questions, and even warn managers if there’s an uptick in the frequency of the phrase “cancel my account.”
A change in routing strategy for USAirways
USAirways plans to deemphasize hubs in favor of more point to point service. I’m in general a big fan of the currently disfavored hub and spoke system, but USAirways is desperate. They lost $177 million last quarter with post-bankruptcy costs and their Philadelphia hub is being challenged by Southwest. Besides, USAirways has poorly placed hubs to begin with. With Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, USAirways passengers are constantly overflying USAirways hubs. They aren’t positioned for passenger convenience, but merely duplicate service. And with existing concentration cities in places like Washington, DC, Boston, and LaGuardia, their most lucrative routes bypass their hubs to begin with. USAirways desperation watch continues…
In truly minor notes…
From the latest update from Colloquy.com… S&H Greenpoints can now be exchanged for other currencies at Points.com. iDine Prime — the cashback (and fee-based) version of the free dining for miles programs — is offering a free one-year trial. And use of Visa debit cards outpaced Visa credit cards in 2003.
USAirways joins Star
USAirways is set to join the Star Alliance on May 4th. And they are running a sweepstakes for Star Alliance tickets.
Big Diners Club News
Diners Club looks to have solved its merchant acceptance problem by creating an alliance with Mastercard that should be in place come year end.When I analyzed the card last month I suggested that broad acceptance was the only true drawback.I already carry the card because of the flexibility of its rewards program and the primary rental car insurance. When the partnership is in place I’ll be able to start recommending the card as a broad solution, and it will vie for a place in most mileage junkies’ wallets.
Mobissimo Airfare Searches
Mobissimo is an airfare search engine worth booking. Like SideStep, it’s a metasearch tool: you enter your search query and it goes out to various other travel sites and brings back the results. Unlike SideStep, you don’t have to download software. On the plus side, it searches the various online services (such as Destina, Travelocity, Zuji, Opodo, Onetravel) in addition to the travel providers themselves. On the downside it doesn’t suggest alternate airports and search those automatically.Searching last minute fares to Los Angeles from Washington National, Mobissimo outperformed SideStep and Orbitz (finding a $311 fare on Northwest with only two days advance purchase and no Saturday stay). SideStep, though, found a $207 fare on Frontier from Dulles to Los Angeles that — even when specifying Dulles as departure airport — Mobissimo didn’t find. So it’s…
Paper is expensive!
Aeroflot signed a deal with Sabre that will allow the airline to offer e-ticketing and online booking.Going electronic will no doubt also help the airline mine its frequent flyer databases.The airline estimates that ticketing and distribution costs will fall 20%, saving the airline $10 to $20 million a year.
