In addition to the systemwide upgrade announcement, Continental also came out with the news that they’re introducing a new top tier status above Platinum, Presidential Platinum. They’ll have upgrade priority above platinums, clear their upgrades 144 hours before departure, and their reciprocal upgrade benefits on United will have them prioritized above United Premier Executives (but behind United 1Ks). Presidential Platinum members will receive a fee waiver for the Presidential Plus Mastercard that comes with lounge membership and additional bonus miles for flying. (Members outside the lower 48 and Alaska aren’t eligible, so they get 25,000 bonus miles.) Qualification is revenue-based, and the criteria is currently $30,000 in spend in a calendar year. Furthermore, Continental announced a new lifetime status benefit — 4 million flown miles nets lifetime Presidential Platinum status.
Continental Introduces Systemwide Upgrades
CO Insider posted the news on Flyertalk. United’s 100,000 mile flyers earn six systemwide upgrades, upgrades which can confirm an international upgrade at booking (or whenever the seats become avilable) from most fares. (United 1K flyers also get 8 confirmed domestic upgrades per year.) American’s top tier flyers get 8 international upgrades per year valid on any fare. Continental is a bit stingier — 4 confirmed upgrades per year valid intenrationally (as well as domestically) and good on any fare without co-pay. So while fewer instruments than United, there’s no fare requirement (perhaps a sign that United might do away with the minimum fare rules on their systemwides?). Each systemwide upgrade on Continental will be valid one-way on Continental metal (including Continental Micronesia and Copa). They’re transferrable, and are confirmed out of R inventory (F…
Free MegaBus Tickets
According to Dan’s Deals, anyway. Not checking this one out myself, I’m not a “Geryhound’s Upscale Subsidiary” Kinda Guy. Use promo code: GETAWAY -Free ticket promo valid for travel between 01/06-03/20. The cheapest Megabus tickets are for midweek travel bought a few weeks in advance. Here are details from the press release I received earlier today by email: Megabus.com, the first city-to-city express bus service offering fares as low as $1, today joined NYC & Company, the City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization, to announce that it is offering 100,000 free seats for travel between January 6 and March 20, 2010. Customers can begin booking today. Forty thousand of the 100,000 seats are designated for travel to New York, the nation’s largest city. The remaining seats are reserved for travel on megabus.com’s other routes…
5% Off Continental Airlines Bookings
According to Upgrade:Travel Better, promo code 9702533697 will take 5% off of bookings at Continental.com.
Hyatt Encourages Phantom Hotel Stays to Earn Faster Free Nights Credits
At the bottom of the Scott McCartney piece I linked to below, there’s an interesting add-on: Hyatt is fully aware of, and supports, the practice of booking hotel rooms just for the purpose of accumulating Faster Free Nights credits. Hyatt Hotels Corp. currently offers its Gold Passport program members a free night for every two nights at one of the chain’s properties through Jan. 31. The free nights come with no blackout dates but have to be used by March 31. Charles Witt, a facilities planner in Washington, D.C., stopped by a suburban Hyatt Place hotel on his way home from work several times this fall, swiped his credit card to buy a $50 room and went home, never opening the door to the hotel room. For every $100 he spent, he got a free…
Media Coverage for Presidential Dollar Coins Free Mileage-Earning Technique
Scott McCartney covers Presidential Dollar Coins. At least several hundred mile-junkies discovered that a free shipping offer on presidential and Native American $1 coins, sold at face value by the U.S. Mint, amounted to printing free frequent-flier miles. Mileage lovers ordered more than $1 million in coins until the Mint started identifying them and cutting them off. Coin buyers charged the purchases, sold in boxes of 250 coins, to a credit card that offers frequent-flier mile awards, then took the shipments straight to the bank. They then used the coins they deposited to pay their credit-card bills. Their only cost: the car trip to make the deposit. I’ve covered details on buying coins from the US Mint for loads of miles, such as here, here, and here. Flyertalk’s MrPickles certainly deserves his 15 minutes in…
British Airways Is Conspiring to Keep Me Out of First Class
I have a redemption booking coming up, a oneworld award using American Airlines miles. It’s a first class award, and I booked it with (4) Cathay Pacific first class segments and a final segment on British Airways from London to Toronto in First Class. One of the great frustrations of the American-British Airways partnership is that you cannot use American miles to book BA flights between the US and London, and vice versa. There really isn’t much lost for BA members, why would they want to redeem transatlantic flights on American? Award availability tends to be much better on BA, and BA offers a better inflight product. But for AA members it’s a big hole in the alliance partnership. The ‘workaround’ is to fly to London via Canada (Vancouver, Toronto) or elsewhere in North America. …
The TSA Puts Their Sensitive Security Screening Procedures Online For All To See (oops)
Wandering Aramean has details of the TSA’s bone-headed move to put their Screening Management Standard Operating Procedure document on the internet. Every page contains a “SENSITIVE SECURITY INFORMATION WARNING” and while they’d redacted parts of the document, they just put black boxes on top of text — the actual text is still underneath in the .pdf. Once you’ve downloaded the PDF you’ll see the black boxes. Simply highlight the text (start above and drag down to below the redaction area) so that you’re selecting all of the stuff in the “redacted” area. Copy the selection and paste it into the word processing client of your choice. (I’d link to the document directly, but the gestapo might track me down. Wandering Aramean included a link, so visit his site, he deserves the traffic in any case!)…
Sunday Morning Quote to Ponder
Discussing the silly requirement that we must continue to take off our shoes at security, but we’re no longer supposed to place our shoes in a bin as they’re run through screening, Flyertalk member reamworks says Just be glad Richard Reid didn’t have a pants-bomb.
US Airways Announces Mileage Increases to Star Alliance Award Chart — And They Aren’t So Bad
One Mile at a Time points to changes to the US Airways Star Alliance award chart. While increased mileage costs are never good, I’m not sweating this one. Here’s the old chart and the new chart (both .pdf files). Last month US Airways announced changes to awards booked on US Airways flights. Those changes were not good, and Randy Petersen really took them to task over it. At the time I expected that US Airways would have to make changes to their Star Aliance award chart as well. It seemed unlikely that they’d leave awards booked on their own flights as significantly more expensive compared to awards redeemed on their partners. The archetypical example of what had to change was US to Europe in business class — going from 80,000 miles on the US Airways…
