Bizarre: Etihad Encourages Elites To Squander Miles On New Account Numbers [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • If you’re going to offer this, don’t charge for it – let alone 50,000 miles – unless perhaps it’s for account number 000000000001. That’s like getting 212-867-5309 as your phone number.

  • Frontier announced that they would fly New York JFK – Los Angeles, and then they quickly scrubbed their press release as though the flight never existed. Presumably they got that slot from someone who didn’t want them driving down fares on that specific route and perhaps the slot deal hadn’t yet been finalized. Now they’ve announced New York JFK to Atlanta, so we know that they weren’t getting the slot from Delta….

    That would probably mean it is either a JetBlue slot, an American slot, or a slot held by a partner of one of those carriers that JetBlue or American can influence. Frankly, I think it is unlikely to be American, and is almost certainly associated with JetBlue.

  • Stay classy, American.

  • Ex-JetBlue employee calls in bomb threat, plants device at Kennedy Airport’s TWA hotel

  • 600 British Airways Avios for signing up to take surveys and completing one

  • Brian Sumers reports that 5.5% of Hawaiian Airlines frequent flyer members, and 30% of active members, have the airline’s co-brand credit card (assuming that all co-brand cardmembers are included in the total of active members).

    HawaiianMiles has 2.3 million active members1, and 12.3 million total members. In 2019, it had 9.9 million members. About half of the active membership lives in the mainland United States, while 18 percent live in Hawaii, and 31 percent live elsewhere, the airline shared.

    Hawaiian has more than 700,000 co-brand credit cards and debit cards in circulation.

    The revenue from the program is solid, if unspectacular. Hawaiian’s loyalty program collected about $290 million last year from third parties, up from $275 million in 2022 and $215 million in 2021.

  • Earn up to 6,000 Hilton points on premium cabin Delta bookings

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Getting your own FF number is a very Arab thing to do, so I suspect it will be reasonably popular. Some people pay literally MILLIONS of dollars for customized phone numbers and license plates. Google it! When I lived there, even people who were affluent, but not ultra wealthy would do things like pay $70,000 for a meaningless (to me) plate like B 293 to go on their car. These could often be resold for profit.

  3. Something I’ve noticed recently is the phenomenon of charging ridiculous point prices for ‘experiences’ — meaning low/zero cost of production — redemptions.

    Perhaps as a way of monetizing FOMO? Possible due to people treating SUBs as free money?

    YOLO?

    Dunno. But based on FB postings, I am seeing people gladly redeeming points at shockingly low values. To the point where folks would be significantly better off redeeming for cash and using that cash to purchase.

    I guess it does give the person the warm fuzzy of getting something flashy seemingly for “free”. But …

  4. @Chris, I did Google it and sure enough, you are correct. It – acquiring a special, status number – seems a pretty common thing to do in ME countries.

  5. In the the state of Rhode Island it is to. Drivers transfer from parent to child I have my grandfather that he got in 1954. X123 There is 800,000 vehicles in the state. Low numbers are rare

  7. I’m assuming that AS will not “split” the credit card portfolio between Barclays and Bank of America.

    Unlike AA and US who at the time of their merger had large numbers of credit cards in force – much more so for AA and Citibank kept and continue to keep both Barclays and Citibank. Barclays HA portfolio maybe robust – but it’s just not that large,

    AS has an outstanding relationship with Bank of America – including the revenue share/rebates that goes back to AS.

    AS and Bank of America have been issuing co-brand credit cards going back to the SeaFirst days of the late 1980’s!

    The AS/BofA credit card is the only airline co-brand credit card that provides first bag free and priority boarding to authorized users without having to have the primary cardholder on the same reservation.

    Is anyone doubting that AS will not purchase the HA credit card portfolio from Barclays?

    SO_CAL_RETAIL_SLUT

  8. BTW you can get 867-5309 for a number of area codes. It’ll cost you from $2, 500 to $87,000.

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