Last week I wrote that, as part of merging US Airways Dividend Miles into American AAdvantage within 30 days, we can expect Dividend Miles to start locking itself down. This is a major data migration project, it’s hard to imagine one larger. In advance of the integration — and as I would expect with a complex data migration project that will involve over 100 million separate database records once complete (!) — they’re going to begin to lock down their systems. They’re going to stop ‘linking’ accounts before the programs merge. This page says March 20. They’ll presumably stop allowing new enrollments in Dividend Miles before the date the programs actually combine. “Dividend Miles award bookings and mileage upgrade requests will be disabled a few days before we combine programs” They have to start locking…
American Express Launching New Coalition Points Currency ‘Plenti’
On Tuesday around late morning I posted some speculation about the launch of a new program by Plenti. Judging from the American Express trademark filings I guessed at an opportunity to earn and redeem Membership Rewards points across a variety of merchants. It turns out not to be Membership Rewards-related at all. Earn Points With a Variety of Retail Partners Plenti is a new ‘coalition rewards program’ where you can earn points across a variety of participating merchants. American Express already owns Payback which offers coalition rewards programs in Germany, Poland, India, Mexico, and Italy. Now they bring the model to the U.S. Inital sign-ons include:
Chef Announced for American Express Centurion Lounge Miami!
American Express has begun operating their own network of “Centurion lounges,” which are a step above what travelers have become accustomed to from US airline-operated lounges. I consider the American Express Centurion lounge in Dallas my favorite lounge in the U.S.. It’s one of the two lounges I visit most often. There’s a Centurion lounge already in Las Vegas and at New York LaGuardia as well and also San Francisco. There’s an additional known lounge in the pipeline for Miami, and a more modest lounge coming to Seattle. The Miami lounge will be most easily accessible to American Airlines passengers. The Miami lounge should be getting close to open especially because its celebrity chef pairing is now known:
The World’s Most Outrageous ‘Travel Hacker’… Evil, or Evil Genius?
Lucky at One Mile at a Time writes about Justin Ross Lee today, a character in frequent flyer circles who much amuses me. Lucky likes ‘JRL’, I know Justin Ross Lee pretty well, and while the “act” is no doubt pretty extreme, he’s actually a nice guy underneath it all. He genuinely gets enjoyment out of making people laugh & smile… I’ll concede that I’ve met him only once, at the first Frequent Traveler University event New York at the Sheraton LaGuardia in April 2011. So I don’t know him well enough to understand the man, I can only judge his public persona. I think he’s a smart guy who never grew up and who turned that into a persona for himself that isn’t who I would want to be. He’s a train wreck reality…
Weird Ideas I Continue to Believe
The End of Air Traffic Control. I’ve written about this going back at least 11 years. Allowing planes and pilots to operate in the skies much like cars, with technology and communications that allow them to direct themselves while coordinating with each other…offers some of the best hope for increasing the total capacity of the skies for air travel. I realize it’s so far afield from how we currently do things that it’s almost unimaginable. We’re already into the eleven figure range of spending on the FAA’s ‘NextGen’ air traffic control project, and have made only the smallest incremental improvements. Is a radical rethink possible? Will my thinking here have any more merit or traction in 20 years than it does today?
Elite Status Soft Landings And Meal Service Improvement at American
News and notes from around the interweb: Linens return to domestic first class on American starting April 1. Peter Chang — the elusive Szechuan chef who used to cook for the Chinese embassy in DC (and has a history of disappearing from restaurants where he works) — has a new place in the DC area. Check out this review and make a beeline there before Chang disappears again! 25% off sale for the Westin Heavenly Bed. There are frequent discounts for the W Hotels bed, but some ask about the Westin version and that one is rarely on sale. A couple of status updates, of interest to those curious about ‘soft landings’: My MegaDO-granted Club Carlson Concierge status has expired. They provided a soft landing to Gold. I was an Intercontinental Royal Ambassador (and thus…
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We’ve Already Fixed Aviation Security. And the TSA Had No Part In It.
United flight 1074 from Washington Dulles to Denver returned to DC last night after a passenger apparently charged the cockpit. Several other passengers restrained the man until the aircraft made it back to Dulles. Police met the aircraft and took the individual to a hospital for evaluation. Here’s video from the incident:
A Pilot Drew an Air Traffic Control Phallus in the Skies on Thursday, and Now Is Famous on the Internet.
To continue last night’s Spirit Airlines theme, per Flight Radar on Twitter a private pilot made an air traffic control drawing in the skies between Orlando and Tampa on Thursday. [Insert Cocky Pilot Joke Here] Of course this happened in Florida. While this was quite near Disney World, of course, no one would have been the wiser on the ground waiting in line for It’s a Small World. To borrow an excuse from RyanAir, “art isn’t this pilot’s forte, as they’ve clearly forgotten to draw wings on their ATC airplane.”
Spirit Launches a ’69’ Sale. And It’s Exactly What You Think It Is.
Spirit Airlines took delivery of its 69th aircraft. And then proceeded to go there. Here’s the sale narrative: We’ve been waiting to hit 69 planes for years. It’s our favorite number – ever since we were twelve and found that magazine under our brother’s bed (the one with the fantastic articles). #69 is perfect: just the right size, with a cockpit that’s in your face (because it’s bright yellow). Use your mouth to spread the word: Spirit is in an even better position to get you where you’re going. I always thought the thirteen twelve year old boy humor in their ads was the work of Barry Biffle. But he’s now left the Spirit to become President of Frontier. Yet the hits just keep on coming. This one fits nicely into the Spirit pantheon, alongside…
