Delta Offers Elite Qualifying Miles for Eating

by Gary Leff

delta-airline-plane
Oct 03 2007

iDine (aka Rewards Network) has a new Delta dining for miles bonus that offers both redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles (registration required). Four qualifying dines of $25 or more in October and November earns a bonus 1000 miles that even count towards status. Now, it’s just 1000 miles. But the notable thing is that the bonus offers the opportunity to earn elite status for something other than flying. Already increasingly common (and in some measure pioneered by Delta) is elite status through credit card spending. And last year USAirways offered its ‘Everything Counts’ promo at the end of the year where most miles (credit card spending excluded) counted towards status. Some Dividend Miles members became Chairmans Preferred 100,000 mile ‘flyers’ by sending a whole lot of flowers. So this is another step in that…

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Breaking the Value Proposition: a Nail in the Skymiles Coffin

by Gary Leff

delta-airline-plane
Oct 03 2007

Traditionally frequent flyer miles are redeemed for capacity controlled awards. Airlines offer a limited number of seats for redemption that they expect would otherwise go unsold. And some travelers are frustrated they can’t find the seats. But in general there’s always been the option to spend more miles in order to get any open seat. With United, it’s the “Standard” award rather than “Saver.” With Delta, this higher mileage option has been known as “SkyChoice.” But Delta has announced that as of December 1, spending double the miles no longer gets you any seat. Instead, it just gets you access to more award inventory. Now they’re not the only airline to do this. They’re following Northwest’s lead. But they’re still in the minority. Rulebuster, Standard — or whatever you want to call them — awards…

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Amtrak Small Business Program Signup Bonus

by Gary Leff

Amtrak’s new small business program allows you to earn points in addition to the standard Guest Rewards program both for your travel and those that enter your small business program membership number. Accounts in this program earn 25% of the base points earned on Amtrak by each traveler. Through December 31, 2007 enrollment code STR07 yields a 1500 point signup bonus. (I got a copy of the offer and ignored it, so thanks to Samit for beating me over the head with it…)

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Free Any Fare Companion Ticket on British Airways with BA Visa

by Gary Leff

british-airways-plane
Sep 29 2007

Through October 31, Chase has a new compelling offer for the British Airways Visa. In addition to 20,000 miles with first purchase, they throw in a companion ticket. They used to offer a free ticket with purchase of a full fare ticket, useless for most. The new offer is one companion ticket that is honored with purchase of any published fare. Full details of the companion ticket offer are here. The companion ticket needs to be booked by January 31, 2008 for travel commencing (and outbound flight completed) by May 31, 2008. The card comes with a $75 annual fee, and I’ve never seen a fee waived the first year offer for it, but for those who can use the companion ticket it’s well worth it. Update:Gary from Free Frequent Flyer Miles cautions: Looks like…

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New Starwood Amex Small Business Card Offer

by Gary Leff

As a companion to the best offer for the Starwood American Express (10,000 points with first purchase, 15,000 points for spending $15,000 in six months, and first year free), there’s a new best offer for the Starwood American Express small business card: free the first year, 10,000 points with first purchase and an additional 5000 points for adding free employee cards (1000 per additional card).That’s a potential 40,000 combined bonus Starpoints.

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The Internet Porn Defense

by Gary Leff

The internet porn defense, or “I was just safeguarding my AdultCheck account.” Prior to starting Hawaiian intra-island low fare carrier Go, Mesa Airlines considered acquiring either Aloha or Hawaiian Airlines. Now that Hawaiian is back in front of a bankruptcy judge, they’re claiming their failures are a result of ‘unfair’ competition from Go, that Mesa pretended to be interested in an acquisition in order to learn their business strategies and use the data against them. (Of course, Hawaiian’s track record underscores the value of their strategies, ahem.) But Mesa had to answer the charges, and apparently Mesa’s CFO destroyed some computer files relevant to the case. Mesa had to answer in court for this, explaining that the deleted files were an accident, their CFO was just trying to erase all the porn off his computer.…

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The Coming Spinoff of Airline Frequent Flyer Programs

by Gary Leff

Last week the largest shareholder of American Airlines publicly released a letter calling for the airline to spin off its frequent flyer program. Air Canada’s Aeroplan was spun off and is valud at about US$2.5 billion. The American program is ten times larger, but Aeroplan has a stronger relative position in its home market. Certainly, though, the AAdvantage program has to be worth nearly the $5 billion total market capitalization of the airline itself. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) covered the issue yesterday. United is also considering spinning off its program, as is Qantas. The Journal claims, though, that United in 2002 moved its 48 million-member Mileage Plus plan into a UAL subsidiary called United Loyalty Services LLC. Last year, the plan produced $600 million in revenue, though it isn’t a stand-alone company and…

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Scare An Annoying Seatmate

by Gary Leff

Via Joe SharkeyIf you are sitting next to someone who irritates you on a plane or train. Follow these instructions: Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case. Remove your laptop. Start up. Make sure the guy who is annoying you, can see the screen. Close your eyes and tilt your head up to the sky. Then hit this link: Click here: http://boortz.com/mp3/archive/countdown.swf

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