Last night I posted about the old ‘Chairmans’ offer of 40,000 miles after first purchase, no annual fee, and 10,000 miles at renewal no longer being active and that it left the standard 40,000 mile offer (my referral link) as best (no fee waiver, no promise of additional miles at renewal). UPDATE: Commenter ‘A’ shares a link (with no landing page, straight to the application) that appears to still offer 40,000 miles after first purchase, no fee the first year, and 10,000 more miles at card renewal. If the offer works, it’s the best available (similar to the old ‘Chairmans link’). Save the terms and conditions if you decide to use the link. Update 2: this new link doesn’t appear to be working, “We apologize for the inconvenience, but our website is experiencing technical issues.”…
40,000 Bonus Points Before US Airways Becomes American
Key Link: The US Airways Premier World MasterCard® On Monday, in response to a number of reader questions, I wrote Should You Get the US Airways and American Credit Cards Now Before Any Merger? My conclusion was that a merger would take money months to close. These cards aren’t going away right away. But you should still take advantage of the opportunity now. The US Airways Mastercard isn’t going to last, regardless of which bank issues co-branded credit cards after the merger closes — since the US Airways brand is going to go away. Those bonus miles won’t be around forever. Historically it has been possible to get the signup bonus for the US Airways Mastercard more than once. If you get it now, it seems likely there will be time to get it again…
Sometimes I Wish Descriptions Could Be More… Descriptive.. When Miles Post
The US Airways Mastercard provides lots of interesting targeted bonuses, in addition to the signup bonus that many folks have found to be churnable. I know I’ve gotten many signup bonuses for the US Airways co-branded credit card over the years. Having recently reviewed the agreement between the airline and credit card issuer I learned that the bank buys bonus miles at a lower rate than the miles for everyday spend, and also that they’re incentivized to bonus annual retention. The card’s behavior makes a great deal more sene to me now. A couple of months after getting the card last time I was targeted for a 15,000 mile bonus based on minimum spend for 3 consecutive months. And subsequently I’ve been incentivized with quintuple miles in specific spend categories, most recently the bonus was…
Merged American Should Keep American Service Levels and American Reservation System
Some tidbits of interest to me from this morning’s merger announcement conference call. The merger is expected to close in the third quarter. In the meantime the airlines remain separate entities. Single operating certificate expected within 18 months of closing the merger although operational integration will happen earlier on. They claim they’ll adopt American service-levels. I’m skeptical and predict some sort of splitting the difference, at least over time. But as I said earlier, US Airways elites are hungry given no meals on 3 hour flights. They don’t know yet which co-branded credit card partner with remain with the merged carrier. Sounds like they’ll be playing Barclays and Citibank off of each other. Combined loyalty program will have over 100 million members. Doug Parker says he learned a lesson from the integration of reservation systems…
Basic Principles for Earning Free Travel Through Credit Cards
Scott Mayerowitz has a good, basic piece out of the AP on earning travel rewards from credit cards. Lessons boil down to what should be familiar to most readers of this blog: Many credit cards offer big bonuses for signing up that can be used for free or inexpensive trips. I blogged last week the Best Current Credit Card Signup Bonuses. Flexible points which transfer into the currencies of several airlines — like Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest points — can be the most valuable. Then you don’t have to know what award you want up from (for choosing the right program for you) and can move the points where you’ll be most likely to secure the award space when it comes time to redeem. Not included in the…
A (Very Brief) Moment of Recognition and Thanks: American and US Airways
As we all start to figure out what a merger of American and US Airways will mean — for travelers generally, for frequent flyers, for investors, for employees — it’s worth noting just how far we’ve come. Of course, in the immediate term I think we have little to worry about, as I told USA Today. “In the short-term, frequent flyers will benefit from more routes and more choices, and a management that will likely want to reassure them that the benefits they’re used to won’t change,” says Gary Leff, co-founder of the frequent flyer community Milepoint.com and author of the ViewFromTheWing.com blog. The actual work to integrate the airlines — culture and IT — will be hard and likely painful. And over time some of the value we’ve come to enjoy in each program…
Whether or Not You Like the US Airways-American Merger Depends on Who You Are…
Lots of folks are going to be complaining about this merger — consumer activities who will say that fares are going to go up, frequent flyers worried about losing their benefits. Most of the scare stories won’t come true. Fares probably won’t materially change as a result of the merger although once the merged airline shrinks relative to the size the two airlines would have been on their own the reduction in supply may have an effect on price. But it’s important to realize that mergers are both good and bad, and which arguments you find persuasive probably depend on who you are and how you will interact with the changes. American frequent flyers. Nervous because US Airways has fewer first class seats on their narrowbody aircraft and doesn’t provide meals on 3 hour flights.…
American-US Airways Merger Reportedly a Done Deal. Good or Bad?
The Dallas Morning News aviation blog sums up the deal, pretty much as expected: [I]t looks like this is the way it’ll go down: – 72 percent for AMR creditors and other interests, 28 percent for US Airways shareholders. – Doug Parker will be the chief executive officer. – Tom Horton will be the non-executive chairman, for only a limited period before he departs post-merger. – The plan is to announce the deal in the pre-dawn hours Thursday, followed by a 7:30 a.m. CST call with the analyst community, a Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport press conference in mid-morning, a 1 p.m. Dallas/Fort Worth Airport presentation to AA employees, with the video and audio broadcast to other locations. – After that Parker and his entourage will return to Phoenix to meet with US Airways employees. The…
Alaska Airlines-Icelandair Partnership Ending June 1
Via Wandering Aramean, the partnership between Icelandair and Alaska Airlines will terminate June 1. Which is surprising, since Icelandair just re-instated the ability to use their miles for Alaska Airlines travel last month. Back in August lots of folks were hitting Icelandair pretty hard with their partner redemptions on Alaska Airlines. Over the summer you could straight up buy miles and redeem them on Alaska for first class to Hawaii for about $350. So this was certainly a useful partnership. And it continued to be worthwhile, albeit not as lucrative, once Icelandair increased the mileage cost of award travel on Alaska… both because Icelandair still sells miles at a little over a penny apiece and because it was a good use for miles earned from actually flying Icelandair (redemption options in their program are otherwise fairly limited) Sad to…
United Guts Ability of Top Tier Elites to Upgrade on Lufthansa
United is changing the way its systemwide upgrades — the upgrade instruments that are given to 100,000 mile flyers which can be used internationally — (“Global Premier Upgrades” but I can’t quite get myself to call them that with the ‘new’ United) — can be redeemed for a higher class of service on Lufthasna. Instead of just requesting a paper certificate that can be used by the holder on day of departure, United top elites will now have to request their electronic certificates be issued as paper for a specific flight with name of passenger, city pair, flight number and date of travel, and even confirmation number of the booked tickets. If the upgrade doesn’t clear, members can either return the paper certificates to United (and once re-deposited, request new ones for other flights) or…
