Jan 16 2016

Reader Susan contacted me about a problem with an award ticket she had booked. She had business class awards flying Denver – Los Angeles – Honolulu – Sydney with travel to Honolulu on American connecting to Qantas.

She tried to rebook onto Qantas San Francisco – Sydney which was showing available. The agent changed her reservation and queued the award tickets for re-issue. When the tickets didn’t get issued, she called and learned that her reservation was cancelled.

Continue Reading »

Jan 10 2016

Whether the frequent flyer miles game seems to be historically rewarding, or in dire straits, depends on your perspective and time horizon. The game is different than it was 2 years ago, very different than it was 5 years ago, and orders of magnitude different than it was fifteen years ago.

If you got into the game any time since 2008, the current state of affairs must be downright depressing. You got in at one of the most generous times in history. Programs have gotten smarter, and loopholes close. But on the whole they haven’t gotten simpler, so outsized opportunities remain.

The programs are like the casino house — they set the rules, so over time and across the majority of their customers they’re the ones who should win. The game though is still fun to play, and a small percentage of players can still win. That small percentage, of course, is us.

Continue Reading »

Jan 09 2016

The indispensable subscription-only Airline Weekly ran numbers looking at year-over-year revenue and costs for various airlines in the third quarter, and the difference between those figures, rank ordering carriers.

United and American outperformed Delta by this measure — they saw their costs decline more (11% and 12%) than Delta (7%) though their revenue declined more (-2% and -4% versus -1%). American is certainly under revenue pressure from Spirit, which has it’s own problems — a 2% increase in costs despite declining fuel prices.

The gap between Allegiant – at the very top of the list – and stagnating Spirit underscores that there reaches a point where ultra low cost carriers are no longer well-positioned to cherry pick routes and must face serious competition from larger airlines.

Continue Reading »

Jan 08 2016

Delta has made changes to its secret award chart for travel starting October 1. Only they haven’t bothered to tell anyone about it.

Despite eliminating award charts, Delta does have an award chart. There is saver award inventory (all partner awards are saver awards), and the price of awards is fixed when it’s available. Delta just doesn’t publish the chart any longer.

Delta wants to go revenue-based on redemptions, but revenue-based redemptions are transparent…

Continue Reading »

Jan 03 2016

I’ll be in Bangkok later this month. I’d appreciate any food suggestions from readers.

When I was there about 14 months ago I sampled Thai molecular gastronomy, the new restaurant from Thailand’s Iron Chef and Thailand’s most celebrated restaurant as well as some fantastic street food.

Continue Reading »

Dec 28 2015

There are no hard and fast rules, only tendencies. And the tendency to devalue – which isn’t universal – is consistent with the trend towards rewarding less across the board, tying rewards to spending (while rewarding even high spend less), and then making tweaks to the less rewarding model as business needs dictate.

Business decisions made in isolation compound over time taking what was once a simple program and making it complex. Multiply that out over tens of millions of members that a given program is trying to serve and tweaks along the way get made which only add to the complexity.

Continue Reading »

Dec 25 2015

US Airways Dividend Miles as merged into American AAdvantage back in March. But did you know that your US Airways Dividend Miles number still works?

In fact you can even still enter it for American Airlines flights and receive credit. If you’ve included it on existing bookings into the future that apparently is fine. However you’ll only be able to enter it on bookings for the next week.

Continue Reading »

Dec 23 2015

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

Continue Reading »

Dec 18 2015

Through January 4 American is selling miles for as little as 1.8 cents apiece. That’s cheaper than they usually sell miles.

On average I value American miles at 1.7 cents.

They’re worth more if they put you over the top for a specific award. And they’re worth more if you redeem them for something you’d be willing to pay full or close to full price for otherwise.

Continue Reading »

Dec 12 2015

Earlier in the week I wrote about 3 Boeing 747-200 cargo planes that had seemingly been abandoned at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The airport had taken out an ad seeking the owner of the planes, indicating that if the owner wasn’t found the aircraft could be sold off to cover the costs incurred to the airport for having stored them there.

Continue Reading »