News and Notes from around the interweb:
- Starwood and Delta introduced “Crossover Rewards” back in February. It was originally rumored that Starwood Platinums would receive space available upgrades on Delta but that benefit wasn’t included in the rollout.
It’s now official: Beginning September 12 Starwood Platinums registered with Crossover Rewards will be in the queue for space available upgrades at the gate, behind all eligible airline elite members (even behind Alaska’s elites). So don’t count on ever getting one, and don’t make your flying decisions based on this. But it’ll be a nice surprise for some if it happens.
- Back in January Delta announced that unless your account is based outside the US or you put $25,000 in spending on a co-branded Delta credit card, you’ll have to spend a minimum amount on Delta tickets in order to earn elite status beginning next year. As part of this change, Delta’s website now displays qualifying spend.
- While Qatar Airways won’t join oneworld until October 30th, you’ll apparently be able to start earning American AAdvantage miles when flying them and redeem American miles for Qatar awards beginning September 23.
- Air Canada is offering up to 15,000 bonus miles for logging a whole bunch of flights by November 30th: 12 segments earns 3000 bonus miles and 25 segments earns 15,000 miles. Registration is required.
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You say “don’t ever count on getting one”, but that’s not true; it’s totally route dependent. My dad gets upgraded as a silver all the time on flights like ICTATL and MDTATL and often there are empty F seats. Now I know by definition that less people fly these routes, but I think it would be helpful to note it’s route specific. With a little work and research, your readers might find routes and timings that do get them a shot at an upgrade.
3000 bonus miles on Air Canada for flying 12 segments? Seriously? I can earn 3000 bonus miles by not having the maid clean my room 6 nights at Starwood Hotels. This isn’t an interesting bonus.
3000 miles? Worth what 60 bucks? So you’d have to spend 12 x $250 or so = $3,000 dollars say to earn 60 bucks worth of bonus? What’s that? 2%?
Incorrect math, Glenn. First off, a segment != roundtrip flight. If you have two connections each way (which is generally easy to accomplish with AC fares), that’s six segments per RT. If each RT costs $300, that’s $60 rebate on $600 in spend. However, your best bet is 25 segments for $1250 which gets you 15k miles, a $300 rebate by your calculation.
That’s a 10% and 24% rebate respectively.
Thanks Hans. Appreciate the correction. Of course its still all theoretical. And I stand by my contention that a bonus of 3,000 Air Canada miles isn’t worth the level of effort required here.