Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Delta Will No Longer Hold Awards On Telephone Bookings

by Gary Leff on March 19, 2008

Mar 19 2008

Delta will no longer allow Skymiles members (at least those members in the U.S.) to hold awards over the phone. If you book by phone, you have to ticket immediately. And booking over the phone just became more limited, as non-elites can only make telephone award reservations between 8am and 10pm Eastern. Holding awards for 48 hours is still possible online. Awards on Delta as well as parter airlines Hawaiian, Alaska, Continental, and Northwest are bookable online.. sort of, sometimes, when the website works and prices out awards correctly. Of course, that means that awards on other partners like Air France, Aeroflot, and Korean cannot be held at all. This is a really annoying change. Finding awards can be challenging at times. Sometimes it takes humans because the online technology is lacking. You find flights…

Will a New Delta Skymiles Third Redemption Tier Bring Back Last Seat Availability?

by Gary Leff on March 15, 2008

Mar 15 2008

One Mile at a Time points to a Wall Street Journal piece on the coming three-tiered structure of the Delta Skymiles redemption program. Earlier in the month I wrote that the coming three-tiered structure would be bringing back ‘last seat availability’ to the Skymiles program; that the highest third tier would mean more miles but at least true redemption for any seat, as offered by most other frequent flyer programs. Delta’s earlier removal of this option was a real affront, but the hope was that this was temporary. The Wall Street Journal piece, though, either misrepresents the coming change or suggests that Delta won’t be bringing back last seat availability. Delta also plans to increase the number of “tiers” in its SkyMiles plan this spring. Instead of offering domestic tickets for either 25,000 or 50,000…

More Reasons to Dislike Delta’s Pay With Miles Program

by Gary Leff on February 29, 2008

Feb 29 2008

Tim Winship makes a point about Delta’s new miles as money option for award tickets that I neglected to mention: that the tickets you ‘buy’ at one cent per point are treated as award, rather than paid, tickets. In other words, they don’t earn miles and they can’t be upgraded. Still, Winship concludes [T]he increased flexibility, transparency, and convenience provided by Pay with Miles will be welcomed by many SkyMiles members and sets a new industry standard for award availability. Now, as I mentioned previously, United already offers Choices — a similar program for Mileage Plus members with a co-branded Visa credit card. So it’s hardly a new industry standard being pioneered by Delta. Of course, holders of the Delta American Express card can use all their miles in this program, rather than just the…

15% on American Flights FROM California

by Gary Leff on January 18, 2008

Jan 18 2008

Following yesterday’s 15% off on American flights to the Los Angeles area, American is also offering 15% off on flights from California to everywhere they fly with promotion code CALIGO. Flights must be booked before January 23, 2008 for travel through March 13, 2008, and cannot include flights on February 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24.

15% Off American Flights to Los Angeles-area Airports

by Gary Leff on January 17, 2008

Jan 17 2008

Promo code DFHOLLYWDGO is valid for 15% off American Airlines one-way or roundtrip flights to Los Angeles, Burbank, Orange County, and Ontario. Book by January 22 for travel between February 26, 2008 and April 30, 2008 (excluding March 14-16, March 21-25, or March 28-31). Valid for coach only, up to six passengers on one reservation.

American Airlines London Bonuses

by Gary Leff on January 12, 2008

Jan 12 2008

American is offering progressive bonuses for London flights — each successive roundtrip of the same fare type earns more bonus miles than the last. Registration required. First/Business Class (booked in F, P, J, A, D, or I) Economy Class (booked in Y, B, H, or K) Discounted Economy Class (booked in L, M, N, S, or V) First Round Trip 10,000 miles 5,000 miles 2,500 miles Second Round Trip 20,000 more miles 10,000 more miles 5,000 more miles Third Round Trip 30,000 more miles 15,000 more miles 7,500 more miles Three business class roundtrips earn 60,000 bonus miles. Three lowest coach fare roundtrips earn 7500 bonus miles. One business class roundtrip and one discount coach roundtrip earns 12,500 miles (10,000 + 2500). Tickets must be purchased and flown between January 11, 2008, and May 15, 2008.

Discounted Business Class Awards to Spain

by Gary Leff on December 19, 2007

Dec 19 2007

For travel between January 1 and March 12, American AAdvantage is offering discounted redemption on Iberia, the best deals being business class from either Boston or Washington, DC to Madrid for 60,000 miles instead of the usual 90,000. If only my plans were taking me to Spain in March instead of April!

USAirways Adds Surcharge for USAirways.com Bookings

by Gary Leff on December 12, 2007

Dec 12 2007

USAirways has apparently added a $5 surcharge to flights booked on its own website. CrankyFlier has the goods. This seems inconsistent with USAirways’ own policiesThere is no booking fee for tickets purchased or redeemed on usairways.com. However, when CrankyFlier confronted USAirways with evidence — that the website was pricing out itineraries $5 higher than the airline’s published fares — they acknowledged it, but refuse to call it a booking fee. [T]he $5 increase you’re seeing is essentially a fare increase to fares booked at usairways.com.” Regardless of the semantics, it is now $5 more expensive to book tickets at usairways.com than it is to book at some other online engines such as Priceline.com (their traditional airfare booking site, not the name your own price site – Priceline doesn’t add booking fees). Even booking through Expedia,…

StarNet: United’s Weapon of Mass Award Destruction

by Gary Leff on December 10, 2007

Dec 10 2007

Back in July, I wrote up a primer on securing Star Alliance awards. In it, I alluded to Starnet, the system that United uses for booking these awards for Mileage Plus members. Its search capabilities are primitive (you often can find better availability searching segment-by-segment that you can telling the agent your origina and destination, simply because it doesn’t search many possible connections). But most vexxing for frequent flyers is that the system filters availability. That is, a partner airline may be offering a seat for award redemption — but United’s system will still tell you it’s unavailable. The agent will usually blame the partner (“they aren’t offering any seats”) when that isn’t true at all. Instead, United doesn’t want to pay for the seat. United is known to ‘filter out’ availability especially of Luftansa…

Continental Inflight Currency Accepted on Northwest

by Gary Leff on December 8, 2007

Dec 08 2007

Continental Airlines inflight currency, the kind that pays for drinks and headsets, is acceptable onboard by Northwest. I never realized that, and apparently many Northwest flight attendants don’t, either. (In addition to selling scrip at checkin kiosks, Continental gives these out to their OnePass Platinum members.) It’s confirmed by Northwest on a Flyertalk thread that the Northwest flight attendant manual is clear on this fact under amenity coupons (section 365.1.4 if feeling particularly confrontational about the subject). A very minor issue, to be sure, but something I never knew for sure. Drink up!