Must-read Earlier Installments: Singapore, Cathay, and Qantas First Class.. Some of the Best Meals of My Life, and a Tour of Hyatts in Bangkok, Singapore, and Sydney Inside the New Oneworld Lounge at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal Cathay Pacific First Class, Los Angeles – Hong Kong Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge, Hong Kong Cathay Pacific Business Class, Hong Kong – Bangkok Grand Hyatt Bangkok: Suite, Club Lounge, and Facilities Thai Molecular Gastronomy at Sra Bua in Bangkok Getting Custom Tailored Suits Made in Bangkok at Empire Tailors Nahm at the Metropolitan: the Best Thai Food in Thailand? Thailand’s Iron Chef Cooks Ancient Recipes in a Deserted Top Notch Restaurant Eating The Best Local Thai Dishes in the Bangrak Neighborhood of Bangkok Louis Tavern CIP Lounge and Cathay Pacific Business Class, Bangkok-Singapore Grand…
United is Turning Customer Care Over to Their Lawyer (No, Really, They Are, I’m Not Even Kidding)
The Wall Street Journal covers executive changes at United. (HT: Reid F.) Jeff Foland, United’s Executive Vice President of Marketing, Technology, and Strategy, leaves for Hertz where he becomes Senior Executive Vice President and reports to former United President John Tague. Foland ran United’s MileagePlus program, and had been Vice President of sales, previously. As for what this means over at Hertz? Mr. Foland has decided to join Hertz “to optimize our many current and untapped revenue opportunities. I genuinely don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t seem like something I’d like. Here’s the re-shuffle over at United: Jim Compton (vice chairman and chief revenue officer) takes over marketing, loyalty, and digital. So Tom O’Toole, who has run MileagePlus as Senior Vice President of Marketing, will report to Compton (and become Chief Marketing Officer).…
Interesting Stuff to Be a Well-Educated Frequent Flyer: News about United, Starwood, and Using Twitter to Save Your Trip
News and notes from around the interweb: Turkish Airlines suspends all flights to Libya Starwood improves its best rate guarantee: choose 2000 points or 20% (rather than 10%) off if you find a better qualifying rate through a non-Starwood channel. (Here’s a tutorial on generating savings and even free nights with Best Rate Guarantee programs.) United starts installing wifi on regional aircraft. Did the Wright Brothers steal credit from Ancient Indians? I’m skeptical. Operation ‘Bad Gifts’ seized $450,000 of fake designer goods at New York JFK before the holidays. They claim they were protecting consumers, rather than protecting companies. Cathay Pacific is eliminating their thrice-weekly second Chicago – Hong Kong flight effective March 23. That’s too bad, as two Chicago flights was a boon for booking awards. Twitter provides toilet paper to desperate man on…
100 Free Virgin Atlantic Miles
Yesterday I noted an offer for 100 free and instant American AAdvantage miles, all you have to do is quickly sign up for hotel booking site PointsHound (no reservations are actually required). Via Frequent Flyer Bonuses, it seems that PointsHound also has an offer of 100 Virgin Atlantic miles just for joining. You have to choose which offer you want, and you are only eligible to join once. I can’t imagine a world in which I’d choose Virgin Atlantic miles over American miles, unless I suppose I needed 100 miles to top off towards an award and then cash out my full balance of Virgin miles.. (contrary to popular belief, however, there are great uses for Virgin Atlantic miles). The American offer will give you 2000 bonus miles with your first hotel booking. This Virgin…
Linking American and US Airways Frequent Flyer Accounts Will Go Live in a Few Hours!
When American AAdvantage announced details of their 2015 program, and how they would integrate with US Airways Dividend Miles we learned that: The programs would combine in the second quarter of 2015 Members would be able to link their American AAdvantage and US Airways Dividend Miles accounts before that But there wouldn’t be an opportunity to transfer points back and forth between the programs before the actual merger of Dividend Miles into AAdvantage They’ll launch functionality tonight so that you can link your AAdvantage and Dividend Miles account. And you’re going to want to do this, because it’s the way you’ll make super extra darned sure everything gets combined smoothly when the programs merge. Combining these programs is a monster data nightmare. Though I linked my America West/US Airways accounts, Delta/Northwest accounts, and United/Continental accounts…
Delta’s Award Pricing Really Is Broken: Charging Double and Triple for a Simple Domestic One-Way
Earlier I showed that Delta was charging more for some awards than their published maximum ‘level 5’ prices. Delta’s award pricing engine has long been broken, charging more for an award than their published pricing suggests should be required. In the example I gave, the driver of the issue was just internationally configured aircraft which Delta intended to charge more for. They hadn’t published their award chart correctly. And after I wrote the post they promptly fixed the issue (by increasing the maximum price their award chart allows them to charge, natch), without comment. But my point that Delta’s pricing engine is broken, and charges more than their published award chart allows, remains. This has mostly been, in the past, for partner awards. Some partners and some routes (that were otherwise ‘legal’) would never let…
100 Free, Instant American Airlines Miles
American AAdvantage will give you 100 miles for joining PointsHound, the hotel search website. I’ve written about PointsHound in the past, and used it when they had rates that allowed you to earn miles in the airline of your choice for making a hotel booking and still earn hotel points, elite credit, and receive elite benefits from the applicable hotel loyalty program. Those rates (‘DoubleUp’) have been unavailable due to technical issues between PointsHound and the system they were using to source the rates. However I’m told they’re working on a new approach to bring those rates back. Without earning hotel points and elite status credit, I don’t want to use sites like PointsHound and Rocketmiles for my own stays (though occasionally I’ll have to book outside of a chain where I care about the…
Delta Changes Award Chart Just One Week Into the New 2015 Program
Earlier I showed that Delta was charging more for some awards than their published maximum ‘level 5’ prices. I gave the example of West Palm Beach – Honolulu. The award chart showed a maximum possible price of 90,000 miles each way in Delta’s premium cabin. But I showed that itineraries were pricing at higher than 180,000 miles roundtrip. A reader had flagged a 235,000 mile price. I gave an example of 207,500. Rather than reducing the price Delta was charging for these awards, they’ve changed the award chart. They’ve added new higher pricing for their lie flat seats to Hawaii. Each Hawaii category now has two prices, whereas it had only one in the chart when I wrote the first post. In each category you will pay more for an internationally-configured (‘BusinessElite’) aircraft. As Frequent…
Airlines Crack Down on Inflight Photography… While Delta Now Officially Encourages It!
It’s common for airlines to have photography policies, even if they aren’t well known or publicized and even if they are ignored for the most part. They usually are something like “you may photograph your own personal events” (which is fairly undefined) but may not photograph crew or equipment. People break this rules every day without knowing it, the rules are mostly there to be enforced when the airline wishes to do so or when a particular flight attendant is having a bad day (reasonable people can disagree on the appropriateness of photographing people which in the US is generally fine to do in public out in the open, but I don’t think there’s much of an argument against photographing your seat, meal, or the inflight entertainment system). Last month extended their onboard photography restrictions…
Transatlantic Economy Awards From 13,125 Miles Each Way
If you book by January 22, you can redeem Virgin Atlantic economy travel for 25% off. Travel dates appear to work through the end of 2015. Here’s mileage pricing for flights between North America and the UK under this promotion:
