American’s Big Announcement About Their Future in Los Angeles

by Gary Leff

Jan 20 2016

There’s been a great deal of speculation about the announcement that American Airlines would make today in Los Angeles.

American has been building up Los Angeles, with a real play to the entertainment community to be the preferred carrier there. It’s a highly competitive market. United has retrenched somewhat, but Delta’s made a strong play for the city.

They have a new Sydney flight, and are adding Auckland and Tokyo Haneda. There had been strong speculation they’d announce Hong Kong service. But they didn’t. They didn’t announce plans to consolidate operations currently spread across 4 terminals, either. Instead we got…

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United Now Gives Complimentary Food to Top Elites Sitting in Coach

by Gary Leff

Jan 20 2016

United spokesperson Rahsaan Johnson just shared with me a new policy, in effect starting today: 1K and Global Services members receive both a complimentary beverage and complimentary food item when seated in economy.

The snack and drink benefit, I can say as a top tier elite with American, is something that really improves the coach experience. It takes it from mass transportation (‘cattle car’) and helps to personalize it, because even when you don’t get upgraded there’s still a benefit to your status and individual recognition. Together with a complimentary extra legroom seat, flying coach as a top elite really isn’t bad.

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Sometimes the Miles Just Aren’t Worth It

by Gary Leff

Jan 20 2016

There are those who would argue that awards are earned One Mile at a Time and so 100 miles should seem like a really appealing reward. I’ll certainly earn my 100 miles here and there, from the smallest online purchase to the occasional online surveys (most useful for extending the life of miles, or generating partner activity in all-too-rare partner earning promotions).

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Starwood Just Changed Their First Quarter Promotion and Made It Better

by Gary Leff

Jan 19 2016

Starwood’s first quarter promotion was really disappointing when it came out — but they’ve made it better with additional threshold bonuses for staying 15 and 25 nights during the promotion period.

Register of course, because earning double points if you happen to stay 2 nights at a Starwood hotel during the promotion period — or at a 250 bonus point per night participating hotel — is better than not earning those points. And if you’re spending a bunch of nights with Starwood the quarterly promo got reasonably rich.

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How Much Are Miles Really Worth? Valuations for Each Program

by Gary Leff

Jan 19 2016

What is the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program? Miles used to be thought to be worth 2 cents. I think that conventional wisdom developed out of the idea that a cross country flight cost about $500… or 25,000 miles. 20 years ago that was generally true, and award availability wasn’t really a problem either.

I’m going to share my own rough and ready number for several different programs. And I’m going to explain how I think about the value of miles — why they are different for different people, and for different circumstances of how you plan to use them.

Here’s how to think about the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program.

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Has Delta SkyMiles Finally Devalued to the Point That It Will Hurt the Airline?

by Gary Leff

Jan 19 2016

Delta’s astonishing arrogance is covered in a piece by Benét Wilson for Airways News that basically asks whether Delta CEO Richard Anderson is an evil genius.. or just evil?

While frequent flyer programs may have been overly generous, especially coming out of the Great Recession, and no longer need to be as rewarding to fill incremental seats on planes — and Delta could extract surreal amounts of cash from American Express after their co-brand issuer lost its deal with Costco — research suggests they may have wrung out way too much value from the SkyMiles program and could be on the verge of hurting themselves by it.

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