LoyaltyLobby reports that Marriott has changed the requirements for its elite status challenges. Marriott will offer almost anyone and everyone a status challenge just for the asking. They do not ask you to prove that you have any existing status. You just tell them, for instance, that you are a current top tier elite with a competing hotel chain and are interesting in moving some business to Marriott and it would be a lot easier to do that if they would match your current status. They won’t “match” status, they’ll usually tell you, but as an exception they will register you for a status challenge that will give you temporary status — the rest of the current month and then an upcoming three months. You can request the status challenge via telephone or e-mail. In…
New York City Government Cracking Down on Uber’s New Taxi On Demand Service
Earlier in the week The Points Guy wrote about car service Uber giving away free taxi rides in New York City this week. It’s to promote Uber‘s new service that lets you hail a cab with their app — solving the problem of how to available cabs connect up with riders, besides just driving around the city looking for people stepped half in the street waiting an arm in the air? Uber is a technology company. The have an app you download and they use GPS information from your phone to identify where you are. When you double tap, you order a car to show up. Cars for hire also have apps on iPhones given to them by Uber. When those cars have downtime, they can pick up rides. Basically Uber takes the very same…
Bits ‘n Pieces for September 7, 2012
News and Notables from Around the Interweb: American AAdvantage Transfer Bonus. American is offering up to a 25% bonus on miles transferred between accounts through September 30th. The airline based on a range of points transferred but roughly speaking a penny a mile plus tax and a $30 ‘processing fee’. The $300 is costs to transfer 25,000 miles will yield 31,250 miles under this promo. Good for topping off between accounts, but not worth it just to do it. Scoring Business Class Awards to Australia During High Season with Skypesos. Some folks will recall my pointing out that Delta’s Skyteam partner China Southern offers amazing business class award availability on its Los Angeles – Guangzhou, China route and the seats on its Airbus A380 look really good. Point Me to the Plane highlights that Delta…
Some Non-obvious Frequent Flyer Programs to Consider
Gabriel Leigh has a CNNgo column on 7 top frequent flyer programs — offering a perspective on the unique value proposition of each. For the most part, he’s spot on, worth highlighting and also some modest disagreement. Aegean Airlines Miles&Bonus. Easiest Star Alliance status, you get 1000 qualifying miles for signing up and 3000 more within the first year means Star Alliance Silver (so some boarding priority and a free checked bag on your domestic US flying on United and US Airways). 16,000 more qualifying miles to hit Star Alliance Gold which gets you lounge access. I outlined the pluses and minuses of the program when I became an Aegean Airlines Gold member, since then they’ve made it possible to change date and time on award tickets and also cancel awards and redeposit miles (both…
New United Passenger Service System Interface Rolling Out October 1
United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek presented today at the Deutsche Bank Aviation and Transportation Conference. Some key nuggets of his presentation (a .pdf of his powerpoint is available on the United website): They’re paying just 2% more for jet fuel than they were in 2008, and they’re profitable. I wonder what the point of ‘fuel surcharges’ is then, they should have been able to build ‘jet fuel’ into their base costs. Of course it’s partly just a convenient quick and dirty way of adjusting prices across-the-board for a market rather than filing whole sets of new fares in each market. Reducing capacity. Of course the merger was going to shrink compared to United and Continental, no matter what sorts of protestations were offered before the merger closed. 90 million members of MileagePlus. I had heard…
Bits ‘n Pieces for September 6, 2012
News, Notes, and Offers from Around the Interweb: US Airways is offering double elite qualifying miles on Shuttle flights (between Washington National, New York LaGuardia, and Boston Logan) through October 31, registration required. Aegean Airlines Miles&Bonus — an especially useful Star Alliance program because of how easy it is to gain and keep status — used to be somewhat difficult on the redemption side. They’ve eased up a bit and now allow changes to the date and time of an award after booking, and also cancelling the award and redepositing miles, for 20 euros. That’s especially important to me now that I’m an Aegean Airlines Gold member (for life?). American Express will give you $100 off a $1000 purchase on SAS. Book by November 30, registration required. Ryanair’s CEO probably burned up all the press…
Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Programs are Bad for the Airlines (and Consumers)
In my post about Delta’s slow lurch towards a ‘revenue-based’ frequent flyer program, commenter Ian asks Gary, your post has raised a question I would love for you to answer, especially considering JetBlue and Virgin America recently introducing frequent flyer/loyalty programs which are revenue-based. If you were running a airline would you advocate a revene-based program? Are revenue-based programs the future of all legacy airlines? It seems this might earn an airline more money. As a frequent flyer who mostly benefits on the margin I do not like revenue-based programs but don’t know if I can argue with the business case It turns out that this is actually easy. Revenue-based programs are a Very. Bad. Idea for an airline that already has a large, more traditional frequent flyer program. Understand that JetBlue has the revenue-based…
Delta Offers the Dumbest Excuse from a Frequent Flyer Program, Ever?
Delta made some (relatively minor) changes to its award chart this week, with no notice whatsoever, either before or after the fact. The price of some awards just changed, the award chart was updated with new numbers as though they had always been that way. Wandering Aramean flags that Delta has now offered an explanation for not giving their customers advance notice of the changes. It works like a pricing change, so legally, we’re not allowed to notify folks in advance. See, the government requires them to obfuscate changes and ensure that their customers are surprised to learn that the awards they’ve been saving up to redeem for have gotten more expensive! I have some questions that I would love for Delta’s Tai Hsuan Foundation College of Acupuncture & Herbal Medicine law school graduate attorneys…
Did You Win a $250 Fairfield Inn Gift Card?
Marriott’s Fairfield Inn & Suites offered up (2) $250 gift cards to give away to my readers in celebration of their Silver September national vacation giveaway. I posted this over Labor Day Weekend, about a slow a time for internet traffic as anything but Christmas, and yet still about 1000 entries came in. For each entry, folks were asked “What do you look for in a business hotel?” And two winners were drawn at random thanks to random.org. Chuan said, “Complimentary wifi.” Sam said, “Wi-fi and free breakfast.” Congratulations to Chuan and Sam, you’ll get a followup email shortly to make sure you each receive your $250 gift card. And thanks to Fairfield Inn & Suites!
Does Today’s Mileage Crediting Glitch Offer a Glimpse into Delta’s Future Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Program
Earlier in the year there were significant rumors that Delta would be moving to a revenue-based frequent flyer program. There have been job postings describing positions to drive a change to a revenue-based program, and a leaked memo about no longer displaying distances flown on trips and replacing it with a calculator of how many points a customer would earn based on the price of their ticket, along with eventually aligning the mileage cost of award tickets with the price that the tickets are selling for on a given day. I understand that when word of these potential changes leaked, that a firestorm was let loose in Atlanta. They were freaking out at Delta headquarters. And then things went silent. The rumors were that they were going to be releasing details on the new program…
