Alitalia is offering some significant bonuses: 2,000 bonus points after your first flight within 3 months of enrollment. 3,000 bonus points after your fifth flight segment by December 15, 2007. 5,000 bonus points after your seventh flight segment by December 15, 2007. Partner flights count towards the bonus. Now I’m much more tempted to credit my upcoming Alitalia flights to the MilleMiglia program, and continue to top off the account by crediting Skyteam flights there. I’ll need to decide before leaving for my Toronto-Larnaca trip later this month.
Undercover TSA Screener
I know I’m tempting fate flying USAirways this weekend, with the impending reservation system changeover from Sabre to Shares. I’m even flying back home tomorrow morning. Hope it goes smoothly. My travel rituals include collecting articles and documents to review in a folder that goes with me on my way to the airport, and I cruise through it in the lounge or when I board the plane. If it’s an evening flight I know I have to attack the folder right away, as the night wears on I may get too tired to read. Last night’s simple flight down to Ft. Lauderdale was delayed about an hour by a crew scheduling snafu, so I had a bit of extra time — and I made it past my work and on to pleasure reading (if you…
United Airlines Matches Varig — or Most Airline — Status
Feb
26
2007
Continuing my kick of linking to just about anything Upgrade: Travel Better has to say, Mark points to the Star Alliance offer to match status held with Varig. Varig went bankrupt and lost its membership the Star Alliance, so other Star Alliance members are jockeying to pick up the elite frequent flyers in the now-defunct Varig “Smiles” program. The Star Alliance webpage lists the different status match programs that are available to Smiles members until April 30, 2007. Air Canada, Lufthansa, South African, Swiss, and TAP are all granting status matches to Varig’s elites. BUT: United goes one further. Their rules doesn’t specify that the status match is only open to Varig flyers, either on the Star Alliance site or on their own page. So this is where it gets interesting. This is a good…
More on Credit Card Rental Car Insurance Coverage
Mark Ashley writes about rental car companies’ hard sells for collision damage waiver, the extra “insurance” (it isn’t insurance, it’s a payment so they don’t pursue you in case of physical damage to their vehicle) that drives commissions with many of the lower-end rental agencies. Here he discusses Advantage, my own experience is that the pushiest sales agents are with Enterprise. I’ve gotten stories like “What’s your deductible? You know that if there’s damage to the car you have to pay the deductible, in cash, when you return the vehicle. That’s California law.” It’s interesting that these rental car agents are such experts in law. Ashley points to the claim that credit cards which offer insurance won’t cover ‘loss of use.’ That’s the charge rental companies tack-on to make you pay rental charges on the…
Nominated for the Trevvies
The polls in Upgrade Travel blog‘s Trevvie Awards for best travel blogs are now open. Voting is here and opening through the evening of February 28. While I don’t expect to finsih particularly well, I am nominated in the category of BEST INFORMATIVE/PRACTICAL TRAVEL BLOG. So vote for me if you wish. Or not. But you can discover some new blogs you may not have been aware of in the process either way.
Delaying the USAirways Reservation System Changeover?
Feb
25
2007
I’m flying USAirways next weekend and was a bit apprehensive, because that’s supposedly when the airline cuts over from Sabre to Shares (and more specifically, to the America West implemention of Shares called Qik). A Customer Service Director for a USAirways call center details some of the difficulties that the switchover is going to cause in a thread on Flyertalk. It looks like the transition may be delayed because of a data error compromising the privacy of some frequent flyer members. It doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem, but it’s changed the priorities for their programmers. ”We’ve got our entire development team, which is supposed to be working hard on migrating our systems, pulled off and working on this,” Danziger said Friday. “And they are hoping they will have a solution to make an…
Hotel Key Cards and Personal Data
Kitty Bean Yancey addresses the myth that hotel keycards irresponsibly contain personal information, that you should never leave them behind. This has never been on my list of worries. I deal with giving my credit card information to low-paid clerks all the time. My personal information is available to a tremendous number of data center customer service reps. And there’s no such thing as privacy anymore, in any case. The real key is how you deal with situations — checking your own financial information on a regular basis, disputing inaccurate charges, etc. But the hotel key card thing, it just isn’t so.
Alaska Airlines Introduces One-Way Awards
Feb
18
2007
Alaska Mileage Plan is now offering one way awards at half the mileage of a roundtrip. This even applies to ‘award sale’ destinations, e.g. one-way San Francisco to Puerta Vallarta currently runs 7500 miles (subject to award space availability). This also means that “split awards” are now possible — used to be that award space needed to be open in both directions to get an award at the standard mileage price, if it was unavailable one-way you’d need to book at double the miles. Now you just book two one-ways, one at the standard price and one at the higher rule-buster price, in order to do a split award. (Their technology doesn’t seem to automate the pricing and you do need to do two separate awards if you want this option.). As always, more choices…
1000 Bonus Miles on Your Next United Roundtrip
Feb
18
2007
United is offering 1000 miles for a roundtrip costing $350 or more domestically ($700 or more internationally) through May 15. Earn 1,000 bonus miles when you register, then purchase and fly qualifying roundtrip travel in the amount of at least $350 domestic, or at least $700 international,** anywhere United, United Express®, or Ted(SM) flies between February 16 and May 15, 2007. Registration is required.
Delta Skymiles Head Posts to Flyertalk
Feb
09
2007
Jeff Robertson, who runs the Delta Skymiles program, is now participating regularly on Flyertalk. He’s only made six posts so far, but they’re excellent. By excellent I mean that he avoids the usual marketing speak. Explaining the change to Delta’s mileage expiration policy, he actually says [R]egardless of how “loyal” someone may be to us, anyone who hasn’t had activity with Delta in anyway in the last two years, is not all that valuable to us. Of course, I disagree harshly with Jeff’s assessment (not about the value proposition of customers hurt by mileage expiration, he has better access to the numbers than I do). Making the change essentially retroactive is inherently dishonest. This is a company that years ago advertised during the superbowl that their miles would never expire. Perhaps they now find they…
