Lufthansa currently offers a first class cabin on 94 out of 100 planes in its long haul fleet. They will be shrinking that down to 75% of their fleet. Already Lufthansa has been reducing the average number of first class seats in the cabin. Their 747s used to offer 16 first class seats and the retrofitted ones now only offer only 8 (albeit in the same amount of space on the upper deck, with a seat and separate bed for each passenger). Fewer planes with first class, fewer seats in first class. And they’ve been making efforts to sell those seats rather than letting them fly empty, offering discounted and two-for-one first class fares. All of which makes it more difficult to get those seats on points. And it has been tougher. Even on routes…
Bits ‘n Pieces for March 18, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: $300 of a Westin Heavenly Bed. Comparing like-to-like the W Hotels bed is a bit cheaper, discounts are larger and much more frequent. And shipping on the Westin bed isn’t free. But some prefer it.. Loyalty Lobby summarizes free signup offers for Regus Gold membership which gets you free access to cubicles at their office locations worldwide. Australian merchants widely add fees to credit card charges, and consumers there pay more for their cards, receive less in return, and haven’t seen lower cash prices as a result. Now new rules allow credit card companies to limit the fees charged by Australian merchants, and Visa plans to cap the fees at 1%. Fascinating that Australia is learning from experience, while the U.S. has been willfully blind to their example.…
In South Florida They Order Their Drugs By the Truckload
Driving down Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, I had visions of a rockin’ weekend.
5000 US Airways Miles for Every 3 New York/DC/Boston Shuttle Segments
Through May 31 US Airways Dividend Miles is offering 5000 miles for every 3 New York/DC/Boston Shuttle flight segments, registration is required. That’s three one-way flights which earn 5000 miles, three roundtrips would earn 10,000 miles. You can earn up to 50,000 miles (equivalent to 15 roundtrips). The bonus applies to all US Airways shuttle segments, even when they are part of larger itineraries, such as Phoenix – Washington National – New York LaGuardia generates credit for the DC – New York segment.
Do You Steal Hotel Bath Amenities?
Hyatt actually invites you to steal their bath amenities. This reminds me of Holiday Inn’s towel amnesty But presumably Hyatt’s permission here means ‘take the ones with you that are in your room’ and not, however, ‘raid the housekeeping cart which they’re in the supply closet’. Do you take hotel bath amenities with you? Which hotels offer the most theft-worthy ones?
The Airline Mobile App Features of the Future
American opened its travel API to developers at the SXSW conference earlier in the week. They hosted a contest for the best hacks that folks could come up with. This is what could be done in 30 hours, not an ongoing development project. But I was interested to see what folks would come up with, as a quick window into what creative folks could do if unconstrained by the corporate development process — and what might be possible for airline apps to deliver in the coming years. So I was intrigued by the winning entry: First Place – AirPing: Won $10,000 to split amongst the team and 25,000 AAdvantage miles for each member. AirPing provides users with live updates for flight changes or delays, and estimated travel time to the airport. The app also provides…
Doing Well By Doing Good: Making Microloans Available and Generating Credit Card Spend
Lots of folks have used micro-lending site Kiva as a way to earn miles and generate credit card spend to achieve signup bonuses. The idea is that Kiva lets you fund an account by credit card, and Paypal waives the processing fees. You may a microloan, and once it is paid back you withdraw the funds. You generate spend and get your money back. Of course there’s some risk of non-payment, but the vast majority of loans repay (and since those loans are generally small, each exposure is small). You do need to be able to float the funds though for several credit card statements. Now competing micro-lending site Zidisha is temporarily waiving credit card fees as well. There’s lots of discussion on Milepoint about Zidisha. I really like doing well (miles) by doing good…
What Are Your Rights When an Airline Calls You To Kick You Off Your Flight?
Reader Chris B. contacted the Department of Transportation and got a very clear discussion of this issue. Sometimes an airline will call you up — several days in advance – and try to move you to another flight. Uusally that’s because the flight you are on is overbooked and they’re trying o handle things before everyone gets to the airport. Do you have to accept being moved? What rights do you have? Normally in an oversell situation an airline makes offers at the airport to potential volunteers. Sometimes they’ll continually up the offer until they have enough volunteers that will take another flight so that everyone that’s confirmed for the flight gets to fly. If there aren’t enough volunteers (and this can be because the airline doesn’t offer enough compensation) then they have to involuntarily…
More Prurient Spectating in the Parker Meridien/Starwood Lawsuits
The lawsuit between Starwood and the Parker Meridien Hotels is fascinating not just because it’s a window into agreements between loyalty programs and hotels that we don’t often get to see the details of but also because it reveals a ton about how the programs work. In this case it’s alleged that because Starwood pays its hotels a ton more cash for award nights when hotels are nearly fully booked, the Parker Meridien hotels in Palm Springs and New York fudged their books to appear to be fully booked much more often — extracting more than an extra million dollars in reimbursements from SPG. Reader Seth T. emails, I did a little docket-surfing on Pacer and got the full set of filings; they were uploaded via the RECAP project into the Internet Archive for posterity…
Don’t Lose Out on the Best Deals and Frequent Flyer News
I don’t need a link to source the news that Google Reader is going away. I logged in yesterday afternoon and was faced with the bad news that’s been expected for some time. I’ve used Google’s reader tool for a long time to keep up on my favorite blogs and frankly even some of my ‘not-so-favorites’. I need to keep up on what folks are saying and finding in the world of miles and points so you don’t miss out on anything new by coming to View from the Wing. Google Reader has been an invaluable tool, I subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed and aggregate all of the posts so I never miss a thing. Fortunately it looks like there’s a good, seamless replacement for Google Reader: Feedly. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly…
