American Express is offering a 20% bonus (up to 10,000 bonus miles) on spending with their Delta card from March 1 through April 30, 2006. Registration is required by April 30, and bonus miles should post eight to twelve weeks after that.
Sir Freddie Laker died today. May he rest in peace. My thoughts are with Lady Jacqueline and his family. A true pioneer and a gentleman, whom I had the pleasure to meet in Colorado Springs in 2003 and again in New YOrk in 2004 at the Freddie Awards. Update 2/11/06: The London Times ran a nice obituary on Sir Freddie Laker yesterday.
Register to receive 1000 bonus miles on a roundtrip flown on United’s low cost subsidiary, Ted. The bonus can be earned twice between February 12 and May 12, 2006. The bonus is meant to “Wish Ted a Happy Birthday.” Personally I wish the operating gurus in Elk Grove had smothered him at birth. RAR!
FTD offers 30 United miles per dollar spent. It’s an old offer that’s been around a long time, I’m not even sure who there realizes it’s still active. And it says it’s for United’s top-tier elites only. But it still works and it works for anyone — elite or not. Truly a great offer.
Jared Blank points to $598 + tax ($786 all-in) fares from New York to Auckland, New Zealand on Air Tahiti Nui. Tickets must be purchased by February 22 for travel between March 27 and June 10. A stopover in Tahiti is permitted. The explanation for fares like this is simple. Air Tahiti Nui’s service out of New York is failing miserably.[T]he New York and Paris trips are clear disasters with passenger loads of only 25-35%, way below the 70% minimum needed for profit.
Pursuant to Regulation FD, United filed its presentation to the JPMorgan Annual High Yield Conference with the SEC. It makes for interesting reading. United has cut labor costs per available seat mile by 32%. Only USAirways — which went through two bankruptcies — has gone further. Northwest, just entering the bankruptcy process, has only cut their labor costs 3% over the same period of time. Northwest has the highest costs of any major carrier. Shocker — United has far less debt after bankruptcy. The reduction is all centered around rejecting pensions, retirement benefits, and some leases. Playing with numbers — United compares its operating margins with Southwest’s by removing Southwest’s fuel hedges. Going forward United plans to de-peak hubs (more continuous flow of aircraft so they don’t pay people to sit around, people wait for…
Lincoln is offering American Airlines miles — 250 miles for watching a short online promo video, 2500 miles for test driving a Lincoln Zephyr, and 25,000 miles for buying or leasing one. Here’s the video (or just skip the video and give them your mileage number). Here’s the test drive certificate. And here’s the purchase certificate.
My greatest fear is that the awards offered by airlines and hotels will go away, that the great values will disappear. What if I can’t use 60,000 Cathay Pacific miles to fly British Airways business class to Europe anymore? What if 90,000 United miles no longer buys a business class ticket from the US to Australia? I have this recurring nightmare, I hope speaking it aloud doesn’t make it more likely to come true, and fortunately it’s just my worrying and not something based on insider information. United’s award chart is so much better than any of their U.S. competitors’. Many other airlines devalued their award charts in the past few years while United was in bankrupty (the Qantas term for it was ‘rebalanced’). United didn’t make award chart changes, I assume they didn’t want…
I’ve mentioned Fare Alert before, a website that sends out emails when amazing travel deals like $51 tickets to Fiji shows up. Now there’s a new entrant into the mistake rate game. Free Traveling posts hotel deals, some of which are outstanding and others of which are just plain odd … like $5 a night for the Travelodge in West Dennis, Massachusetts. Still, this is the place to go for truly great hotel rates, even if a large number of them will be in obscure places or available only for a small set of nights. I just wish they either emailed out their deals or set up an RSS feed so I didn’t have to keep hitting that refresh button!
KLM was an Alaska Airlines partner. Then it wasn’t. Now it is again, along with Air France. And Alaska is giving out double miles for KLM and Air France flights credited to an Alaska Mileage Plan account through April 30. Best part is that this seems to apply to all fares. So fares where the Flying Blue program would only award 25% of miles, through April 30 Alaska will be awarding 200%! Naturally, registration is required.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
