A week and a half ago changes to the AAdvantage program leaked. I broke the details, for instance, that American would be moving to revenue-based mileage earning for flights sometime in the second half of 2016.
I have new answers to outstanding questions that help fill out the picture of how the program will work and where they’re going. And they’ve also shared the changes they’re making to their award chart which fills out most of the rest of the picture.
American has come out with its award chart changes. These have been much anticipated, because we really haven’t seen changes to the saver award chart in a big way since the introduction of one-way awards in 2009.
While United and Delta were busy raising award pricing, American was focused on integration of two airlines. In some sense we had a couple of years where American AAdvantage was just more generous than their competitors. Now they’re making changes that narrow that gap.
For the past week or so American’s website has had intermittent issues when searching for and booking award travel. The site has frequently errored out, necessitating a call. Fortunately American no longer charges a telephone booking fee for awards that cannot be booked online (which unfortunately remains the majority of partner airline awards).
For the past few days there have been several reports of American’s phone agents unable to see Etihad first class award space that can easily be found on the Etihad site.
Air Canada’s Aeroplan, a Star Alliance member, is offering a bonus for transferring in points of up to 40,000 miles through December 21.
American Express Membership Rewards is excluded from this bonus. But Starwood points transfers (and most others) are eligible.
Last summer I attended ‘All Access Day’ at Gogo, the inflight internet provider, and shared a behind-the-scenes tour of how internet gets beamed into space so that an aircraft traveling at over 500 miles per hour can access the rest of the world (very slowly).
This week I was invited back to sample their fastest internet, and see their latest technology which had only just been announced when I visited last summer. They promised a test flight onboard the Gogo Boeing 737 equipped with ‘2Ku’. For avoidance of doubt, I paid my own way to the media event and covered my own hotel.
My single favorite card for earning valuable rewards points has just gotten better with an offer of 50,000 points as a signup bonus. These points transfer to a variety of airline miles and hotel points.
There was a brief targeted test of 50,000 points with a higher annual fee two years ago. But otherwise we haven’t seen an offer like this for the card since March 2012.
Through November 30 at 5pm Pacific, Plastiq will let you make any one-time immediate payment (i.e. not prescheduled future payment) with a MasterCard for just a 1.5% fee rather than the usual 2.5% they charge (which is still less than Paypal).
That way you can earn miles for your bills, even from merchants who do not take credit cards.
American Airlines was Down Under promoting their new Sydney service which starts next month, their joint venture with Qantas (which has yet to receive US government approval), and announcing new service to Auckland, New Zealand as well.
American AAdvantage President Suzanne Rubin was there talking frequent flyer programs, and the Sydney Morning Herald reports on several possibilities for the program.
Three Chinese firms were supposedly seeking government permission to make a bid to buy Starwood Hotels. Hyatt was rumored to be the lead bidder. There had earlier been speculation about a Starwood-IHG (or Wyndham) merger. Wyndham hired away enough Starwood talent that it’s recently been referred to as Wynwood.
Starwood’s CEO, whom I interviewed on stage earlier this year, made clear he expected to sell by the end of the year. And it looks like he made good on that promise.
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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 »
