Last week I speculated that an American Express Centurion lounge was coming to LAX. Following up with American Express I got something of a non-denial denial (“Nothing official,” emphasis mine).
Well, the airport is confirming it. In fact, per Brian Sumers, it’s in the airport’s October “Terminal Operations Center” newsletter.
Back in September, an online chat I hosted with Hyatt Gold Passport’s Jeff Zidell broke the news that Hyatt would be bringing the ability to search for cash and points awards online “sometime during the four quarter of 2015 or first quarter of 2016.”
That functionality is now live. They’ve also added the ability to upgrade paid stays to a Regency Club or Grand Club room using points.
Republican Governor Scott Walker, who dropped out of the Presidential race, pays 27% interest on his credit card debit.
We know that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put $1 million in travel spend on his state American Express card. That’s bonus category spend! But we don’t know the exact charges because a court ruled the statements don’t have to be released, since doing so could ‘compromise security’.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio has his own credit card problems.
In the simplest version, just know that the basic earning in a revenue-based frequent flyer program has required 20 cents a mile to break even with a mileage-based earning system. And passengers aren’t paying the airlines an average of 20 cents a mile to fly.
Of course, when airlines have switched to revenue-based mileage earning it’s been worse than this — fewer miles award on average, but they’ve also taken the opportunity to diminish the value of the miles you do earn. And that puts the lie to the idea that they’re “rewarding high value customers.” They’re not, they’re only devaluing high value customers less.
But let’s look at the actual numbers for American’s expected plan for a year from now…
You can make your own Donald Trump rewards credit card.. that earns double points on travel and dining!
Most rewards cards are weak and they’re ineffective. Nobody builds cards like Donald Trump, believe me. He knows all the smartest people. It will have the best benefits. And he’ll get the banks to pay for it.
A woman with dimentia arrived at her destination, but failed to get off the plane. Southwest Airlines didn’t notice. A next flight’s passengers boarded, the plane took off, and she wound up flying a total of 14 hours before winding up back in Greenville, South Carolina.
The passenger’s daughter says this incident is “national security biting the dust” but I think that’s somewhat hyperbolic…
There’s nothing sacrosanct about miles per se. Sure, it doesn’t make sense for a program that gives out points based on how much you spend to call those points ‘miles’. But Capital One does it, so why can’t Delta?
At best miles are a proxy for a loyalty relationship: more miles flown is more of one’s life spent in an airline’s metal tube.
But are miles even the best way to reward frequent airline passengers?
When you ride DC metro, the ads you see aren’t predominantly for consumer products. Most people riding the metro can’t afford to buy weapons systems, but you see ads for jet fighters anyway. The most expensive subway ads are in the Pentagon station and inside Capital South. They’re targeting very expensive ads to very narrow audiences: Defense Department procurement officers, and Congressional staff on just the right committee.
Since government bureaucrats can use their power to reward friends, to secure themselves future employment, or simply take kickbacks, there are a whole set of regulations constraining how government contracts should be awarded. Usually they have to go to the lowest bidder, but there are rules for selecting a higher cost bidder. Were those rules followed to the letter?
We now know much of the changes that American AAdvantage will implement right away (to earning status during 2016 for the 2017 program year) and in a year (to mileage-earning for flights). But there are still areas where we can expect changes and American hasn’t told us what to expect. How they handle those issues will determine the value of the AAdvantage program more than the changes that have already leaked.
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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 »
