Randy Petersen‘s opening remarks in the December, 2009 Inside Flyer are on US Airways’ planned changes to their award chart going into effect in January. Bottom-line, Randy points out that US Airways is especially stingy in making awards available on their own flights to Dividend Miles members. They’ve gone from redeeming 9.1% of their miles flown as award tickets down to a meager 4% — less than half the rate of Continental, which has never been known as especially generous on awards. And already US Airways imposes transaction fees just for redeeming an award. Those fees are often as much as the cost to the Dividend Miles program of the award seat itself. Their change fees are uniquely high among their peers (think $250). Now that an award seat in business class to Europe can…
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Possible Amazing Opportunity with Continental Miles to Redeem for Singapore Airlines First Class
According to this Flyertalk thread, Continental isn’t fully linked up with Singapore Airlines yet. In order to book award tickets they have to do a ‘long sell’ where they manually request award availability. And it seems like more often than not, that availability is coming back confirmed. Long-time readers of this blog know that Star Alliance members can look up award availability by signing up for an All Nippon Airways account and using their award search page. That gets you all except Air China, Shanghai Airlines, and Swiss. It seems that Continental is somehow managing to confirm awards that the ANA website suggests are not otherwise being made available to Star Alliance members for redemption. I haven’t tested this myself, but one hypothesis might be that Singapore — which offers expanded award availability to its…
Continental’s Entry into Star Alliance Makes United’s Award Blocking Even More Untenable
Today’s Washington Time “On the Fly” column offers kudos to Continental for their transition to Star Alliance — offering liberal award routing rules such as flying from the US to Australia via Asia and permitting both an open jaw and a stopover on an award (though not permitting US to Asia via the Atlantic, though there have been some rumblings that this may be permited, perhaps for additional miles, in the future). The major contrast drawn in the piece is to United. With Continental’s decision to make most Star partners available for award search online, it becomes much clearer when United is blocking award inventory — if United says a given flight is unavailable, isn’t being offered by the partner airline for an award, or doesn’t even exist, it may well be showing as bookable…
Am I Being Too Hard on Skyteam?
Jared Blank thinks that in my excitement over Continental’s entry into Star Alliance that I’m too hard on Skyteam. He agrees that Star will be better for Continental Onepass members in terms of “first class options, lounge access and choice of carriers ” And he agrees with some of the limitations of Skyteam Was it the best alliance out there? No. Did they have a large array of world class carriers associated? No. Did Continental and Delta have miserable – truly miserable – reward availability, especially in business? Yes. But he defends Air France, KLM, and Alitalia business class availability. And his priorities were “quick trips to Latin America, or a long weekend in Europe.” But I think the defense of Skyteam here is a bit of a straw man. I’m not saying it’s impossible…
The Benefits of Continental’s Entry into Star Alliance
Continental is a Star Alliance member now, and they’re promoting the news on Twitter with a sweepstakes. You just need to follow @Continental and tweet something with the hashtag #StarTreatment to enter. You can do this up to 5 times a day through November 3rd for more entries to with 2 business class tickets to any Continental destination or one of two $1000 Continental Vacations gift cards. The big news of course is Star Alliance lounge access, and earn and burn in the Star Alliance. Especially burn. Continental was miserable for redemption as part of Skyteam, but now members have access to the wonders of the Star Alliance — including first class products, something Continental itself doesn’t offer. A real kudos to the Continental IT team, they’ve made redemptions on United Airlines, US Airways, Air…
Reader Mail: Should I Get a Hilton Amex, Should I Redeem an Award to CDG?
Reader Robert writes: Hilton Amex talked me into upgrading from Hilton Amex Plat to “Surpass” mostly because of Gold status; it’s $75/yr + ~ 15k bonus miles?; I have Plat Amex and Plat Intercontinental (ambassador); I almost never stay w/Hilton. Should I back out? and just ask for a match? Should I use US Air winter discount (60k ea) for Envoy to CDG from BOS for my mom & me just to burn? we ea have ~65k dividend mi or is there something better? (membership rewards, CO, Delta, AA) So here’s my rather rambling reply, a bit off-the-cuff and unedited. The value in the Hilton Surpass card is $40k in spend gets you Diamond (top tier) status with Hilton. If you can put $40k in spend on the card, it’s great. Otherwise not worth a…
Continental is Liberated from Skyteam, Star Will Be Much Better for Onepass Members
Continental exited Skyteam last night. Or as I prefer to think about it, they were liberated. That’s because on Tuesday they join the Star Alliance. Continental has always been known to be stingy in offering award inventory. And this was a huge deal, because their partners were known to be the stingiest as well. Skyteam award inventory isn’t nearly as generous as Star or oneworld counterparts. Just try booking more than one business class seat at the same time on the same flights between the U.S. and Asia. Going forward I still expect Continental to manage its own award inventory in a similar way. After all, Continental offers relatively small international premium cabins and employs a strategy to actually sell those seats (at a discount) rather than offering them for redemption. Continental is also known…
The Practical Implication of the Hilton HHonors Devaluation, or How I’m Changing My Behavior
I’ve written about Hilton’s plan to devaluae their points here and here. Come mid-January many properties will require 25% more points, bizarre in a world where hotels are getting killed, rates are down and so is occupancy. One Mile at a Time‘s comments, “I have about 300,000 Hilton points I need to burn, so I guess it’s time to start thinking about where I want to go.” This got me thinking, how will I change my behavior as a result of Hilton’s gutting the value of my HHonors stash? The thing is that I’ve always found HHonors points to be situationally useful, especially for redemeptions in small cities on personal travel when I don’t want to come out of pocket. Or other pedestrian travels where the hotel is a place to sleep, rather than the…
Starwood Introduces Cash & Points Awards for Category 1 and 2 Properties
Loyalty Traveler Blog covers the news that Starwood has introduced Cash and Points awards for Category 1 and 2 propoerties in Asia, the U.S., and Canada (though he can’t find any category 1 and 2 properties in the U.S. currently offering cash and points availability). Starwood’s Cash & Points awards are useful because they stretch your points. And they’re almost always more valuable than a points-only redemption, it amounts to selling you the difference in points at a deep discount (usually just over a penny a point). Unlike regular award nights, cash and points awards are not always available when a hotel has standard rooms available. Starwood will reimburse a hotel its full average daily room rate on a regular award night when a hotel hits 90% occupancy. Not so with cash and points, Starwood…
United’s Unlimited Complimentary Domestic Upgrades: the Other Shoe Drops
As I posted yesterday, United is ending 500-mile upgrade certificates and going to unlimited complimentary upgrades. This change on its own is on the whole good for 1K (100,000 mile) flyers. They won’t have limited free upgrades, having to pick and choose which domestic flights to use them on. It’s not good for lower-tiered elites, who will now have to compete against 100,000-mile flyers (and Global Services members) on every flight. Unsurprisingly, though, this change comes along with some other tweaking which is not good. As speculated yesterday, confirmed regional upgrades go away. Currently 1K members get up to 8 of these a year (promotions aside) and they’re good for confirming a domestic (including Hawaii) upgrade at time of booking from any fare. While there are no more 500 mile upgrades to worry about, there…
