American Express Platinum has a new benefit, Silver status with Virgin Atlantic. (Centurion gets Gold status, and Virgin is an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner, so this relationship isn’t suprising.) Since the signup offer is online, it’s unclear to me what kind of verification takes place that the person signing up is an actual cardholder. I imagine there’ll be a file sent by Virgin to Amex of those who have signed up, and some matching process will likely occur in the future, but all this remains to be seen. Silver status comes with 2 free upgrades each for the Heathrow and Gatwick Express, a mileage bonus on Virgin Atlantic flights, and Premium Economy checkin privileges when flying Virgin in coach. Not a ton, but better than a hole in the head.
On Lufthansa’s Newly Acquired Stake in JetBlue
Joe Sharkey suggests a motivation for Lufthansa’s purchase of a stake in JetBlue: slots at New York-JFK in advance of Open Skies. It’s not clear to me how partial ownership gives Lufthansa access to these slots, though. Lufthansa may well get a board seat or two, but they still have to act in the best interests of JetBlue shareholders writ large. And it’s non-obvious how that means Lufthansa will be able to transfer or buy slots that they couldn’t otherwise have come up with an arrangement for. But then I might just be naive in the ways of international airline finance. Me, I’d never put $300 million into an airline even if I was an airline. (The old joke rings true, “What’s the quickest way to become a millionaire? Start out with a billion dollars…
Slaying the StarNet Dragon
Last week I described United’s system for denying awards on its partners, StarNet. Airline partners offer award seats, United won’t book them, and its representatives say the award “isn’t available.” I didn’t manage to get United to book first class award seats between Bangkok and Europe. But Lufthansa seats were easier to secure. I knew the flights I wanted, the ANA award search tool showed them as available. And when the United outsourced customer service rep said she couldn’t “see” the flights I gave her the flight numbers and she entered the request — they came back confirmed. The best hint, it seems, that United is ‘filtering’ an award for a given flight is that the rep won’t just say “there aren’t any award seats on that flight” or “all I have is coach on…
The Chase Churn is Over
For years frequent flyers got mileage-rich signing up for the United Visa fee-free the first year, scoring the signup bonus, cancelling, and then signing up again. Chase, which issues the card, finally closed that opportunity. However, lesser known to the frequent flyer universe, other Chase cards could continue to be ‘churned’ — the Priority Club, Marriott, British Airways, and Southwest Visas, for instance. That appears to be no more. There are confirmed reports with the British Airways and Priority Club Visas that Chase is sending repeat cardmembers a letter saying that they won’t be getting the signup bonus miles. I assume this extends to all Chase products, or at least to all Chase mileage products. It’s a sad day, indeed. Chase joins American Express at (quite reasonably) refusing to give out signup bonuses more than…
Korean Air Skypass Introduces Expiring Miles
Miles earned on or after July 1, 2008 will expire after five years. Previously, miles never expired.The announcement claims that miles in the majority of international programs expire after 18 months or three years. What they don’t say is that any activity in an account with most of those programs will extend the validity of those miles another 18 months or three years.That doesn’t seem to be the case with this new change to Skypass. Instead, they’ve gone the route of programs like Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles — use ’em or lose ’em.
Hyatt Elite Status Double Credit Promo
Hyatt is offering double credits towards elite qualification on stays during the first three months of 2008. Registration required.
The Final Word on Amtrak to Choice Points Transfers
Randy Petersen puts the smack down and gets the straight story on Amtrak transfers to Choice Hotels. I recently reported that Amtrak reduced the value of transfers to Choice Hotels with no notice and then removed the option altogether.From NotiFlyer[Members are] again be able to transfer points from Guest Rewards to their Choice Privileges account at a rate of 5,000 to 15,000 points, and transfers will be completed for members who were in the middle of a transfer when the closure occurred. According to Blakey, the exchange option will remain in effect through the end of 2007, at which time changes to the program will be instituted. As of Jan. 1, 2008, the Guest Rewards exchange program will only be available to elite members (Select and Select Plus) and members who hold an Amtrak co-branded…
Singapore’s New First Class
Singapore’s A380 really is amazing in first class, as this trip report from the recent inaugural flight clearly shows. Good luck getting an award seat, though. Singapore isn’t an easy redemption in first class to begin with. Their premium product is near impossible. And it’ll be awhile until there’s a full A380 fleet as well.
USAirways Adds Surcharge for USAirways.com Bookings
Dec
12
2007
USAirways has apparently added a $5 surcharge to flights booked on its own website. CrankyFlier has the goods. This seems inconsistent with USAirways’ own policiesThere is no booking fee for tickets purchased or redeemed on usairways.com. However, when CrankyFlier confronted USAirways with evidence — that the website was pricing out itineraries $5 higher than the airline’s published fares — they acknowledged it, but refuse to call it a booking fee. [T]he $5 increase you’re seeing is essentially a fare increase to fares booked at usairways.com.” Regardless of the semantics, it is now $5 more expensive to book tickets at usairways.com than it is to book at some other online engines such as Priceline.com (their traditional airfare booking site, not the name your own price site – Priceline doesn’t add booking fees). Even booking through Expedia,…
StarNet: United’s Weapon of Mass Award Destruction
Dec
10
2007
Back in July, I wrote up a primer on securing Star Alliance awards. In it, I alluded to Starnet, the system that United uses for booking these awards for Mileage Plus members. Its search capabilities are primitive (you often can find better availability searching segment-by-segment that you can telling the agent your origina and destination, simply because it doesn’t search many possible connections). But most vexxing for frequent flyers is that the system filters availability. That is, a partner airline may be offering a seat for award redemption — but United’s system will still tell you it’s unavailable. The agent will usually blame the partner (“they aren’t offering any seats”) when that isn’t true at all. Instead, United doesn’t want to pay for the seat. United is known to ‘filter out’ availability especially of Luftansa…
