Apr 14 2015

Copa wouldn’t seem like the most important airline to most US-based frequent flyers. But they’re a lot more important than you think, in several ways. Copa used to be majority-owned by Continental Airlines, and Copa took on a variant of the Continental logo and joined the old Onepass frequent flyer program. Continental started selling their investment in 2005, and the airline is independent now, but they’re pretty well integrated with United. Even now that they’re launching their own frequent flyer program there’s reciprocal upgrade benefits between the two airlines. And of course Copa is a member of the Star Alliance. Their brand new frequent flyer program which is about to launch is making a statement — and they’re calling out United and Delta while they do it. They’ve just e-mailed out this missive: Russ Hinckley…

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Apr 14 2015

News and notes from around the interweb: American flight attendants publish an open apology to Nicole Kidman disassociating themselves with the broadside on the actress (meant as an attack on Etihad, in support of US airlines’ complaints about subsidies) put forward by their union. American Express no longer reports new cards to credit bureaus as though they have been open as long as your oldest Amex card. Minor point, but adding new American Express cards no longer increases your average account age, which is a small portion of your overall credit score. Many – though far from all – American Express cardholders have a sync offer in their account for $20 off $20 at Amazon. Log into American Express and check if you can claim the offer. All Silvercar rentals are $49 for the rest…

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Apr 14 2015

Last night Southwest teased the announcement of new seats. And as I expected they’ve gone with B/E Aerospace. The seats were unveiled at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg and beginning mid- next year they’ll be featured on new Southwest 737-800 deliveries. Key features: Adjustable headrest ‘Widest’ 737 seat in the market (based on cabin width, Airbus aircraft generally have wider seats than Boeings) ‘Enhanced’ cushion comfort (it’s not the barely-padded slimline!) ‘Sleek’ cover design in ‘eLeather’ (this new term frightens me) The B/E seats are certainly capable of more than Southwest is doing with them, sadly. However for customers things could be a lot worse!

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Apr 14 2015

Citi Prestige card – in addition to a new big 50,000 point signup bonus, $250 airline fee credit, American lounge access, and triple and double points-earning categories – comes with a variety of included benefits.

One of those is free golf rounds, which appears to be better and more useful than I would have expected. There are courses nationwide and even worldwide that you can reserve, up to three times per year.

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Apr 14 2015

Don’t think those enhanced pat downs are excuses for the TSA to get their jollies? At Denver they were.

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Apr 13 2015

Southwest tweeted a tease about a big announcement tomorrow, and it looks like new seats. Reading between the lines, though, there appears to be more to the announcement.

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Apr 13 2015

IHG Rewards Club – the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and related brands – will be introducing new elite benefits this summer. We know some of those now, and I’ll explain those.

They’re also introducing expiring points. Their points haven’t expired, now they’ll expire after 12 months of inactivity. Elite members get a longer expiration, though.

I go over the holes in the program, what they could do to fill those, and what we know they’re planning so far.

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Apr 13 2015

I’m looking at a flight later today that has only two first class seats for sale: (There’s one confirmable upgrade [A] seat and no discounted first class [P] seats that American will sell.) 11 out of 16 first class seats are open on the seat map: To be sure, the seat map is not a perfect approximation of availability. There can be people in a cabin without seat assignment. That’s more often true for international flights than domestic, and domestically in coach than first class, but it’s true. Today there was bad weather going through Dallas, including a ground stop. That doesn’t come close to explaining this, however. The flight showed up the same way prior to day. I frequently see American Airlines flights where they will not sell any first class seats (“F0”) but…

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Apr 13 2015

There’s a persistent myth that Delta’s new mileage program rewards its highest value customers, or at least those who spend the most on tickets. But that’s sloppy thinking. They’re actually rewarding most customers, including those with above average spend, far less than before. And that doesn’t even factor in the value of the miles which are being earned, which are among the least valuable.

While there are uses for SkyMiles (the value of their points is not zero), there are many reasons that a high spending customer might want to choose Delta — the mileage program is just not one of them.

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Apr 13 2015

Back in February the Puddle of Mud lead singer was arrested for riding the baggage carousel at the Denver airport. It always seemed like it would be fun to do that, but given the legal risk (especially riding it back into the ‘secure area’) I’ve never tried — the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. I do not know, however, how this happened — it seems like you wouldn’t even get the thrill of the ride this way: The man is at Moscow’s Domodedovoa airport and it’s sort of awesome that he’s just sandwiched in between others’ bags on the belt as the carousel moves in circles and delivers luggage to waiting passengers. Hat tip to Road Warrior Voices who notes that “Rod Stewart’s son Sean did the exact same thing at Miami International Airport…

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