The Wall Street Journal ran a Scott McCartney piece on mileage runs. The value proposition is this: When the deals are good enough, mileage-runners can arbitrage airline tickets, paying less than two cents for each mile, but cashing them in for first-class tickets or upgrades that would cost far more per mile. Two carefully played mileage runs, costing a total of maybe $700 or so, can yield enough miles for a free business-class ticket to Europe — priced at roughly $7,000 these days. Nothing new to readers of this website, but perhaps to readers of the Journal. It’s a great ride we’re on, isn’t it?
Changing Criteria for Elite Status and Higher Prices for Awards
There’s an interesting article in the February issue of Travel and Leisure on the trend towards making elite status a perk for higher fare passengers and increased mileage requirements for award redemption.Naturally, in this fast changing, erratic world of frequent flyer programs, this article is already out of date: Top-level elite fliers on Delta will get free upgrades when buying tickets in Y, B, and M classes; these upgrades, if available, can be confirmed when reserving. Second- and third-tier elite Delta fliers will get free upgrades for tickets in Y and B classes, but will have to wait until 100 or 72 hours before departure, respectively, to request the upgrade. In mid-December, Delta announced that it was moving to a complimentary upgrade model for all elites.And the piece mischaracterizes upgrades on Northwest and Continental: Northwest…
Rewarding the loyalty of non-human passengers
JAL has introduced frequent flyer points for traveling pets. Believe it or not, this isn’t a new idea.As I noted last year, Virgin has a program to reward pets themselves. In contrast Continental just gives 1 frequent flyer mile per dollar spent shipping Fido as cargo.
Alaska expands partnership wtih American
Alaska Airlines and American Airlines are moving to expand their codesharing relationship. Alaska also partners with Continental and Northwest, as well as Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Hawaiian, KLM, LanChile, and British Airways.Normally I’d just interpret this as an expansion of their broad partnerships across the board. One item struck me, though. Alaska and American, which since 1999 have had reciprocal frequent flyer programs, also plan to co-locate certain airport facilities “wherever possible.” If “wherever possible” just means where they aren’t colocated with, say, Northwest then this would be nothing new. But does it signal that Alaska is becoming closer to American, to the exclusion of its other partners?
Thoughts on pricing and the Sony-United music download partnership
Tyler Cowen wonders why iTunes charges the same amount — 99 cents — for all songs.While there may ultimately be a good reason for it, I hope that Sony doesn’t fall into that trap with their new partnership with United that is said to allow redemption of Mileage Plus miles for music. The price in miles is as yet unknown. I hope they get creative and experiment with their anticipated spring launch.First, they could offer some sort of ‘introductory pricing’ to stimulate interest. Each song could be 100 miles (or 50 miles?) at the outset, perhaps for a week or a month or two. This should build a user base not just of mileage plus members but of mileage plus members that are both interested in music and technically savvy enough to be interested in…
United Express Plans at Dulles
United has a schizophrenic, love-hate relationship with Washington-Dulles airport. United and United Express have operated a majority of flights at the airport but United Express partner Atlantic Coast Airlines is going its own way, forming a low cost carrier. So speculation has been rampant about what the airline would do — replace Atlantic Coast or bail on the hub? Dulles has been United’s primary transatlantic gateway, and operations have been focused on late afternoon departures to Europe as well as substantial flights to the West Coast, especially the Los Angeles and San Francisco hubs. United’s Europe flights, though, are unlikely to succeed without regional feed. When the airline first went into bankruptcy there was speculation that the Dulles operation would be shut down entirely. That hypothesis was a far cry from the earlier attempt by…
Cheap Insurance for Emergencies
David Rowell also reviews a neat $5 gadget to give an extra hour of talk time to a cell phone with a dead battery.
Charter One Gift Cards
I’ve been relatively uninterested in a new mileage earning phenomenon discussed in the media, on Flyertalk, and in David Rowell’s newsletter. But perhaps I’m neglecting an important opportunity. Read David’s full and detailed account on getting virtually free points by buying and depositing gift cards.
JetBlue’s LaGuardia folly?
JetBlue wants to start service at New York’s LaGuardia airport. Their operations are currently focused at New York’s JFK airport.Assuming that the flights JetBlue would operate would be relatively short hauls (of, say, less than 800 miles) — long haul traffic is concentrated at Kennedy — and assuming that the routes compete against mainline carriers (a safe assumption, as the move is billed as a shot against American and Delta) rather than regional carriers, this strikes me as a bad move.As I’ve observed on these pages before, JetBlue’s great advantage in customer preference is on long haul routes where their leather seats and satellite television drive customer preferences (fares being equal). On shorter routes these advantages mean less. (JetBlue has competed successfully on short haul routes, primarily when their major competition is flying turboprops.) The…
At least the government *used to be* good at writing checks
The TSA has successfully settled only a few dozen (out of more than 15,000) claims for damaged baggage or items missing from baggage. The airlines want the job of adjudicating these claims back, and are willing to pay most of the compensation costs.
