May 02 2015

UFB Direct’s American AAdvantage-earning debit card will reduce earnings effective June 1. Instead of 1 mile per $2 spent on the card, it will offer 1 mile per $3 spent on the card. In addition they will no longer reward miles for “supermarkets, grocery stores, super stores, wholesale stores, discount stores, USPS, and financial or money transfer institutions.” I already found the card and account not to be especially compelling at 1:2. This effectively takes it off the table in my view. That isn’t surprising. Debit cards are no longer financial windfalls for banks. It’s no longer worth incentivizing transactions since the Durbin amendment to Dodd Frank financial reform eliminated the profit for banks from debit transactions. The rewards debit card is almost entirely a thing of the past. Oddly, though the Suntrust Delta debit…

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May 02 2015

Hyatt Gold Passport is offering up to a 40% bonus on purchased points through May 31. It doesn’t appear to be one of their usual tiered offers: instead it’s a 40% bonus on purchases of 10,000 points or more. You don’t have to max out the offer to get the highest bonus. With a 40% bonus Hyatt is selling you points at 1.71 cents apiece. I personally value them at about 1.4 cents apiece so this doesn’t make me a buyer (points would have to be priced at less than 1.4 cents for that). You can get more than 2 cents apiece out of your points so if you were going to pay cash for a room anyway buying points can be used to get a room discount. And topping off an account could make…

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May 01 2015

Dr. John Frankie O’Connell of Cranfield University is not happy with the white paper issued by US airlines arguing that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar receive huge subsidies.

The paper cites his work and, he says, fabricates quotes.

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May 01 2015

I had been told by Barclaycard that my Aviator Red wasn’t scheduled to arrive until July. Yours may come sooner. But if Barclays needs to replace your current card for any reason, they’ll replace it with Aviator Red — not another US Airways MasterCard. I now have my Red card, and that positions me to upgrade to Silver.

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Apr 30 2015

Restaurants are like airlines in that they have seats which – if unused at a given meal – can never be resold. It’s spoiling inventory.

And they want to earn as much per table as possible, a diner spending less than they might is money foregone that can’t even be made back.

So like airlines they should want to vary prices with sophisticated yield management… varying prices based on time of day, day of week, whether or not it’s a holiday, weather, and overall demand.

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Apr 30 2015

Mistake fares pose tough moral and ethical questions. Here’s why I think it’s perfectly acceptable to book them, but that airlines shouldn’t be required to honor them.

Nevertheless there need to be guidelines that airlines follow if they choose not to honor these tickets. The Department of Transportation hates the rule they adopted three years ago that pretty much says mistake fares have to be honored. They’ve found ways to ignore their own rules as a result. That’s not good.

Instead I propose a new approach to mistake fares that protects consumers, is fair to airlines, and allows for smooth functioning of the nation’s air transport system.

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