British Airways is offering half-priced redemption on OpenSkies between New York-JFK and Paris-Orly for awards booked by August 22 for travel through October 15. It’s 50,000 British Airways Miles round-trip business class or 37,500 BA Miles round-trip in Prem+. If you’re like me, you get your BA miles by transferring Diners Club points during 50% transfer bonus periods, which equates to 25,000 Club Rewards points ultimately scoring a business-like product (Prem+) for transatlantic travel. That’s what happens when you start a new airline and loads are understandably light. So I’ll be looking at whether a weekend in Paris makes sense (I didn’t manage to arrange my schedule for the inaugural flights, alas). In order to get the discounted pricing you need to book at ba.com and choose JFK and ORY airports.
Fight for Your Right to Party (with a free cup of coffee)
Starting today US Airways is charging for non-alcoholic drinks. For most people. Those that get confrontational, flight attendants are allowed to give those passengers their drink for free. Just don’t get too confrontational or they may have law enforcement meet your plane on arrival.
Continental to Restrict “EasyPass” (aka RuleBuster/Standard) Awards for Non-Elites
Continental seems to be dribbling out their Onepass program changes rather than announcing everything at once. In July it was no more award holds and greater fees. Now they’re putting an end to last seat availability unless you’re an elite member of their program. Used to be that if you were willing to spend additional miles (and recently on Continental it’s been a lot more miles) you could get any seat on any Continental flight. According to Continental’s Scott O’Leary in a post on Flyertalk they’re taking this away. For non-elites, EasyPass Rewards will have some capacity controls and may not be available on certain flights where demand is high. In these cases, availability of EasyPass rewards on Continental will be based on R class availability for front cabin rewards and M class for main…
Delta Miles for Free Hair Loss Consultation
Through August 25th you can receive 20,000 Delta miles for a free hair restoration consultation. If you actually graft (the minimum required amount of) hair onto your head that’s another 150,000 miles. But the consultation is free, and over at Flyertalk there are reports of folks with full heads of hair getting the consultation done in 10 minutes without pushback (“I have lots of hair but a family history of hair loss, I’m worried and thought I’d should talk to someone early.”).
Delta Second Checked Bags Will Be $50
Joe Sharkey points out Delta’s announcement that they’re doubling the fee for domestic second bags to $50. Gee, maybe they’d make even more money if they increased the checked bag fee to $1 million. These changes will apply to customers who purchase a ticket on or after July 31, 2008, for travel on or after Aug. 5, 2008.
OpenSkies Kills Coach to Expand “Prem+” Cabin
OpenSkies, which announced plans to fly between New York-JFK and Amsterdam in addition to its Paris-Orly launch destination, is now planning to remove all its (30) coach seats. This makes it exclusively a premium class carrier — pulling 30 seats in back in favor of 12 additional “Prem+” seats which are akin to previous generation business class seats still being flown across the Atlantic by Delta (and others). Of course, their business class product is similar to the big brother British Airways’ ‘next generation club world’ lay flat seats. Every Friday, Flyertalk is giving away Prem+ tickets. Two OpenSkies inaugural flight trip reports can be found here. Personally I’m in favor of anything that increases international premium class lift. More supply pushes down price and make it more accessible, including spreading out demand and freeing…
Hotels.com New Frequent Guest Program
Loyalty Traveler outlines the new Hotels.com rewards program called Welcome Rewards. Basically one free night up to $400 for every 10 nights booked at an eligible property (each of wihch must be at a rate of at least $40). That’s pretty good value for folks who aren’t brand loyal. In most cases you give up in-hotel points-earning in a hotel’s own program for the rate booked at Hotels.com. So these can be either-or, Hotels.com program OR Starwood points/stay credit. Folks coveting elite status for the upgrades won’t find this useful. But if you bounce around chains, you may see a free room night more quickly via Hotels.com than from your various hotel loyalty programs. And you can chase the best rate, independent of brand loyalty now. Loyalty to the booking site matters under this program,…
More on Delta’s 3-Tiered Award Pricing
Jeff Robertson of Delta’s Skymiles program had this to say on Flyertalk about the coming introduction of three-tiered award pricing in the near future: We are finalizing all of the technology testing right now around the new award structure, and although we’ve had a few hiccups, it appears to be on target for an early September soft-launch. We also intend to announce the new award structure and award levels in the next 10-14 days, which will include three different levels based on availability. The first lowest level will be similar to the Saver awards today, the second tier will be expanded availability (varies by market but generally around 50% of all available seats systemwide), and a last seat availability level that goes back to “last seat on the plane.” American, United, Continental and Alaska have…
Alaska Increases Award Prices and Introduces Partner Fees
Following on recent minor cuts from the Alaska Airlines frequent flyer program (here and here, and admittedly most would find them minor..) Alaska has announced some pretty significant changes to their Mileage Plan program effective November 1. Here’s the bad news: Domestic coach awards will now cost 25,000 miles, even when booked online. The old award was 20,000 miles, which they recently limited to those awards booked online. Now at 25,000 miles they’re just like everyone else, no longer special. Unrestricted awards and first class awards get more expensive. Unrestricted coach is 55,000 miles! Unrestricted domestic first class is now 100,000 miles! Partner award fee. $25 to book on one of their many partners, they learned this trick from Delta. It stinks, but I can live with it, the Alaska partner desk really is helpful…
Garuda Indonesia to Join Skyteam Down the Road?
This is hardly a done deal. In fact, I’d be surprised if it actually happens. But apparently Korean Air is supporting Garuda Indonesia’s bid to join Skyteam. Garuda is banned from flying to the EU (Indonesian carriers in general are said to have questionable safety standards, though I recognitze that some of these decisions are made for show or other political reasons and may not reflect current safety issues — it’s surprising, for instance, that Ariana Afghan Airways is allowed to fly anywhere .. but then they benefit from US pressure. At least Garuda would give Skyteam members an additional option to Bali and Jakarta, since Continental Micronesia s pulling out of the former.
