My connecting flight in first class from Seoul to Singapore was included in my 95,000 mile award ticket. And while for this flight I wouldn’t have Korean’s new Kosmo Suites, I’d instead have their older open first class seats, I would have the entire first class cabin to myself.
Marriott will give you 1000 points for answering a simple question on Twitter.
And here’s the answer.
As costly as it was for American Express to lose Costco, it would have been more costly to retain Costco. As big a win as Costco is for Citibank and Visa, it’s a deal afflicted by the winner’s curse because Citi/Visa had to overpay to secure it.
But American Express lost 10% of its credit card portfolio overnight. And it signaled a huge change for the company’s business to Wall Street. It set in motion a huge set of changes at the company, at competitors, and in deals other banks made with other airlines.
While award tickets have gone up in price, they haven’t gone up 10-fold over the last 30 years the way that signup bonuses have, so maybe award chart devaluation isn’t so bad after all.
Thirty years ago when OnePass was formed out of the Eastern Airlines Frequent Traveler Bonus Program and Continental’s TravelBank, they offered a huge reward for members who flew one million miles between the two airlines.
It was called the MillionAir and it offered a trip for two every week for a year anywhere the two airlines flew and it included 52 nights of hotel and 52 days of luxury rental car.
JD Power released their survey of hotel loyalty programs earlier in the week.
The problem, though, is that their methodology doesn’t come close to supporting anything close to meaningful results. And their purported ‘takeaways’ completely miss the point.
American’s new 737 MAX 8 aircraft have a brand new interior that squeezes in more seats. They’ve gone from 150 seats on 737s 4 years ago to 160 seats on most 737s today and now to 172 seats.
American says they are spending “more than $3 billion in new customer products and services” making the mainstay product of their domestic fleet penny wise and pound foolish.
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I think of service to Delaware as what an airline does when they want to be able to claim they serve all 50 states. There’s no current commercial service to Wilmington, Delaware’s airport.
The last major airline to offer service to New Castle Airport was Delta.
This week Swiss made first class award space broadly available. Usually Swiss first class awards are offered only to Miles & More elite members, but a couple of times recently they’ve opened these seats to partner members who have had no issues with their bookings or travel.
However this time it appears reservations have been cancelled.
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 »
