Last year the Prince de Galles hotel in Paris had a mistake rate of 52 euros per night (they intended to load a 520 euro rate). It was only available for up to 4 nights, the week of Thanksgiving. I’ve just returned from the hotel, and had a lovely stay. On check-in I was upgraded to a deluxe room on the top floor with a large balcony looking out over Paris (and if you crook your neck and look right, a view of the Eiffel Tower). I did check availability, figuring that the hotel wouldn’t provide much of an upgrade – as a result of the rate and of this being Paris, after all. The hotel wasn’t offering any suites at all online, for any of the four nights of our stay. And they were…
Which is Worse for Award Redemption, Delta or Delta.com?
Hunter says Delta.com has gone off the rails. And he calls the Delta.com helpdesk “We’re a Bunch of Monkeys Chained to Phones.” Gee, Hunter is just realizing this. And he actually flies Delta. I do my best to avoid it, though in my case it’s because on Delta ful fare trumps status in the upgrade queue and the idiots treat cheap government fares as full fare. I live in DC, where everyone but me is flying on a government fare. But that’s beside the point. My beef with Delta.com is its award search. Delta occasionally publishes premium cabin international inventory for award booking without paying extortionate double or triple mileage pricing. But its website would never know it. Flights that actually have ‘low’ price awards will still price at the medium or high mileage levels…
Department of Transportation Rules British Airways Is Responsible for Mistake Fare
Last month I said that Wandering Aramean was going a bit far in suing British Airways over their failure to honor a mistake fare to India. Apparently the Department of Transportation disagrees with me. Wandering Aramean posts an update with a Department of Transportation ruling: “We believe that all airlines should accept some responsibility for even the erroneous fares they publish.” The DOT contends that British Airways should compensate consumers to make them whole. And British Airways is offering to reimburse customers for expenses incurred as a result of the mistake fare. British Airways is prepared to reimburse you for penalties imposed by an airline or ground service provider as a result of your cancellation of air or ground arrangements in reliance on your cancelled British Airways booking. British Airways will also reimburse those passengers…
US Airways Holiday “Big Bonus” – Up to 250% Bonus on Shopping Purchases
Through December 30, US Airways is offering their “Big Bonus” promotion. Participating stores are listed on the promotion website. Each purchase you make earns you a progressively larger bonus on all of your purchases. Stores shopped at: Bonus earned: 1 50% 2 100% 3 150% 4 200% 5 250% If you make 5 purchases from eligible merchants by December 30, then all of your purchases earn a 250% bonus. The bonus will apply to a maximum of your first 10 purchases (based on posting date of those purchases). No registration required. If you’re already going to make several purchases, which will qualify you for the maximum bonus, great. If not, just make a handful of small purchases to get up to the 250% bonus level. For instance, if you don’t already have one create a ThanksAgain…
Randy Petersen Calls Out US Airways For Egregious Changes to Their Award Chart
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…
The Extremely Limited Use Rate for Inflight Internet
Runway Girl makes some assumptions about AirCell’s inflight internet usage and costs, thinks they’re doing very poorly — people just don’t want to pay for inflight internet — but projects they’ll break even in three years. She thinks they’re getting six users per flight on average, even with all of the giveaways going on. On short hops I suspect usage is quite limited. It’s a real step forward on mid-cons or longer, for sure. But it is interesting that paid adoption continues to be so low, whether Runway Girl’s numbers are plausible or not.
Flyertalk is Down Again, Hopefully Back Up Soon
Stay tuned. I pinged the Internet Brands folks this morning, their tech folks are working on the outage, “Hopefully fixed in minutes” though that was 15 minutes ago. Hyperventialting… Update: as of 10:20am Eastern, Flyertalk is back online for me.
How Many Mileage Millionaires Are There?
According to this CNN.com article (disclosure: yes, I’m the lead for the piece) 300,000 people have earned at least 1 million miles in a frequent flyer account. I’m surprised the figure is that low, actually.
Win “Up in the Air” Tickets In Exchange for Your Questions about Frequent Flyer Miles
No, I don’t actually have tickets to give away. (Although I did post an offer last week for free tickets…). Rather, Wendy Perrin is running a contest. Not only are we giving away ten pairs of tickets to the movie screening but, in keeping with the spirit of the film, we’re also going to solve your most frustrating frequent-flyer-mile problems. It’s actually the Flyertalk Challenge: you pose your questions on Wendy’s blog and ten questions will be picked as winners. The people posing the questions get free sneak preview tickets to Up in the Air in New York City and Flyertalk founder Randy Petersen will answer the questions. Now, Wendy says that the questions will be answered by Randy “his team of mileage magicians over at Boarding Area.” So, umm, perhaps you’ll get my answer…
United’s 2010 Elite Choice Rewards
United elites can read the good news over at Lucky‘s blog about the 2010 Elite Choice rewards being offered to folks who fly more next year than their current status level required. As a 1K, for example, I could get 25,000 redeemable miles for passing 125,000 elite qualifying miles and another 25,000 redeemable miles for passing 175,000 elite qualifying miles. That’s quite an incentive! Other options include nominating someone to Premier or Premier Executive (yes, you heard me right) status. The benefits get even better for those at lower status levels. There’s even the opportunity for really high mileage flyers to nominate gift 1K status. Update: The Global Traveller lays out just how lucrative this promo could be for an “extreme mileage runner.”
