On my way back from Frequent Traveler University in Los Angeles at the beginning of December I turned up at LAX and found that my Los Angeles – Washington Dulles flight was delayed by about 4 1/2 hours. Already if the flight was on time I wasn’t going to get home until nearly midnight. Now I was looking at closer to 4am, and I was supposed to be at work in the morning. I thought about sitting in the lounge — as a British Airways Gold I have access not just to American’s Admiral’s Club but also their first class Flagship Lounge — and then taking the delayed flight home. But I never sleep more than 20 minutes at a time in near-upright domestic first class seats, so I figured most of my next day…
American Airlines Pilots Approve Transition Agreement for Merger with US Airways
Former American CEO Bob Crandall told the pilots they needed the details of a transition approved in advance. It had to be clear how the pilot work groups between American and US Airways would be merged, how seniority would work, and — he suggested — even what would happen to their pilot bases. They made clear that they agreed, it did need to be sorted in advance, and that was seen as a barrier to a merger happening prior to American exiting from bankruptcy. After all, US Airways’ pilots weren’t able to agree on these issues amongst themselves after the America West merger. The work groups still haven’t merged. Was this all going to be universally agreed-upon in the coming weeks? Apparently it looks like that may have already happened. The American Airlines pilots union…
Free Checked Bags and Priority Boarding on Delta if You Have Status with Another Airline
Three weeks ago Hack My Trip wrote about Aerolineas Argentinas offering status matches in their program. The reason this is interesting — because why would you care about having elite status in the Aerolineas Argentinas program unless you’re actually going to, like, fly Aerolineas Argentinas, right? — is that they are a Skyteam airline. Which means having status in their program confers certain benefits when flying other Skyteam airlines. Like Delta. This is even a published offer from Aerolineas Argentinas. You have to join the Aerolineas Argentinas program first. You have to have status in a competing program that you can demonstrate. You aren’t allowed to already have elite status in a Skyteam frequent flyer program (but how would they know?). How to Get the Status Match They’ve published a chart to illustrate what status…
Reducing the Cost of Delta Skymiles One-Way Awards
While we’re on the subject of getting the most out of Delta Skymiles, I wanted to point out that it’s possible to get one-way awards for less than the published price on their award charts. First, some context. United, American, and British Airways (among other programs) offer one-way awards for half the cost of a roundtrip. Alaska Airlines and Aeroplan offer one-way awards for half roundtrip cost only on their own flights and not on partners. US Airways and Delta do not.allow one-ways at all for a discount, they charge the full roundtrip award even if you only fly one-way. Different programs have different features, and this in and of itself isn’t an indictment of the program. But I do find it to be a real drawback, since I can’t combine Delta miles one-way with…
Bits ‘n Pieces for December 29, 2012
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Jet Airways JetPrivilege is offering 2500 miles just for signing up. Lufthansa’s Miles&More has an award sale. American Airlines pilots seem to agree with Bob Crandall: they believe that they and US Airways pilots need to come to agreement with management on new contract terms before a merger. And that’s no uncomplicated matter, since US Airways own pilots haven’t managed to do that with each other since the airline combined with America West. Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus is going to quarterly (rather than annual) expiration of miles unused after three years and changing the qualifying period for status (.pdf).
Morgans Group’s The Hudson: So this is What a Normal Hotel Room in New York City is Like?
A few weeks ago I went up to New York to tape a segment for The Colbert Report. It won’t run for awhile, if it runs at all, but doing the taping was a blast. They first thought we’d get started in the early afternoon and were going to arrange the train up and back same-day. But when they went to schedule crew and studio time they ran into some snags, and wanted to schedule a first thing in the morning start time so I headed up to the city the night before. I go to New York all the time, living in the DC area and 10 minutes from the airport it’s almost like going to the exuurbs for me, and I do it with greater frequency. I’m pretty much always given towards staying…
Alaska Airlines Miles Will Be Able to Redeem Awards on Emirates Starting January 16
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members will be able to redeem miles for Emirates flights beginning January 16. Alaska’s award chart for Emirates has not yet been published. And to date — I’ve long expected this to change, but no luck so far — Alaska requires roundtrip awards on partners (no one ways), and the roundtrip must be on a single partner (plus Alaska flights optionally), no mixing and matching partners in an itinerary. Still, depending on award pricing, this could be outstanding. For now Japan Airlines miles (which can be obtained via Starwood Preferred Guest) remain the best way to score awards — including A380 suites awards — on Emirates.
What Won’t Actually Happen to Travel if We Go Over the Fiscal Cliff
First of all there is no ‘fiscal cliff’ — there’s a series of changes in law as well as fiscal circumstances that cluster around the same time. And the analogy is misleading because in most cases nothing irreversible happens on January 1; tax rates if reset can be done so retroactively to the start of the year, program spending put on hold a few days can still be greenlit, etc. But even if we go past December 31 under current law, none of the Really. Scary. Things.(tm) being predicted in travel will actually come to pass. At least not the bad stuff leading this USA Today piece. The big threat is that if Congress and President Obama can’t reach an agreement on spending cuts and tax increases, automatic spending cuts are scheduled to hit the…
Top Eight Best Uses of Delta Skymiles
What do Delta Skymiles redeem for? I give Delta Skymiles a hard time, and deservedly so. I’m known as the guy who coined the term ‘Skypesos’ for their currency, on the whole their miles are worth less than miles in the United, American, and US Airways frequent flyer programs. They’re harder to use. They don’t permit one-way awards for half the cost of roundtrip (neither does US Airways). Their agents are clueless, their award booking website offers limited partners and is generally quite broken. International first class awards aren’t allowed. But because I give such a hard time to Skypesos, I also feel like I have a special responsibility to help figure out how to make the most of them. And I’m the first to say that the miles you should collect and use very…
Online Travel Agencies Provide Just as Bad Customer Service to Hotels as They Do Travelers
LarryInNYC posted a story on Milepoint about a small hotel owner’s experiences working with Expedia. The hotel owner reports: Expedia takes a 25% commission. I’m actually surprised it’s that low, I’ve heard of small independent hotels paying as much as 40% with commissions in the 20’s reserved for the big chains with negotiating clout. Expedia made several mistakes in describing the property and its rooms. The hotel kept asking Expedia to make updates and corrections, but the process was a mess and corrections didn’t get made properly. Guests were getting rooms that were different than what they thought they had booked as a result. Website links stopped working, the hotel no longer came up on Expedia, and the hotel owners couldn’t get Expedia to fix it while the problem got passed around between the travel…
