Frank Bruni packs a ton of complaints about aviation into a single New York Times column, which really is meant as an allegory for his complaints about society as a whole. He packs a lot of disparate complaints into one column! lack of infrastructure investment poor manners inequality The ‘rich get richer’ theme doesn’t especially work in aviation, at least in the US context he’s describing since airfares have gotten far lower over time in inflation-adjusted dollars, even after including all add-on fees and even with the run-up over the past two years. legroom hasn’t gotten materially worse, even with JetBlue adding seats and American adding seats. In fact US carriers have been adding extra legroom seating that offer a mid-range product between economy and first class, it’s easy to forget that “economy plus” is…
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Book a Stopover… Even When Your Frequent Flyer Program No Longer Gives You Free Stopovers
Just because your frequent flyer program no longer allows stopovers included free as part of an international award (American eliminated them entirely, Delta sheds them completely January 1), doesn’t mean you shouldn’t book a stopover. The point of this post isn’t that it’s possible to still trick a program into giving you a stopover for free, although some programs with distance-based award charts can give you cheaper awards with a stopover than without one. (British Airways, which prices each segment separately, can be an example of this.) Rather the point is that a stopover may cost you fewer miles than you think — certainly fewer miles than making an additional trip to another region of the world. So it may make sense to spend the miles to visit another city, even though it isn’t “free.”…
Another Star Alliance Program Devalues
tommy777 passes along two articles in Norwegian cover the details of SAS EuroBonus’ plans to devalue their program on January 1. Changes from January 1, 2015 in brief: Lower point earnings on the cheapest tickets in SAS Go and SAS Plus Europe will be 1 zone (not 3 as before) Higher point earnings in SAS Business to/from the US and Asia Lower point requirements for Gold status: 45 000 Basic points (previously 50 000) or 45 one-way trips* (previously 50) Lower point requirements for Diamond status: 90 000 Basic points (previously 100 000) or 90 one-way trips* (previously 100) *Valid on SAS flights and selected destinations on Widerøe. The new earning rates have fixed earn based on where you’re traveling. All of Europe has a single amount of miles earned based on the fare class…
The Airport Lounge Is 75 Years Old
Airline lounges are 75 years old. The first one was an American Airlines lounge in New York. American has a great online history of its lounges. The original club opened in 1939. New York’s Mayor LaGuardia was criticized for having too big an office at New York LaGuardia airport so he rented out some of the space to American. They couldn’t name it “Admirals Club” because a judge determined people might think it was for Navy Admirals only, so it was named “Flagship Club” (American’s current lounges are Admirals Clubs while their first class lounges are Flagship Lounges). The second club was at Washington National airport. They weren’t allowed to serve alcohol, so they stored bottles for members. This practice continued until liquor laws were changed in 1970. American’s sales department gave out memberships, with…
Should I Book an Award Ticket, or Buy a Ticket and Upgrade With Miles?
Reader Megan asked, What’s the best way to travel first class to Asia? Buy a ticket and upgrade, or go with miles? Great question, because it gets at understanding several key issues about international airline travel, and about miles and points. First of all — although once upon a time American Airlines used to allow double upgrades — no airline is going to permit upgrading from coach to first class. Business class is a different story, although many people use the terms interchangeably. If you want first class you need to buy a business class ticket (say, $3000 to $8000) and upgrade. So for the rest of this post I’m going to read the question as, “should I book an award ticket, or buy a coach ticket and upgrade to business class?” If you’re an…
What You Can – and Can’t – Take from a Hotel Room. And a Naked Man Falls Through the Ceiling at Boston Airport…
News and notes from around the interweb: Woman dies after airport scanner interferes with her pacemaker Naked man falls through ceiling of Bostom airport’s terminal C and attacks 84 year old man AirAsia launching $148 all you can fly air pass Choice Hotels double points for booking through their mobile app. Promotion runs through December 17 and registration is required. Larry Ellison’s Island Air wants pilots to return their Christmas bonuses. Presumably they’ll get the bonuses paid out again next month. What you can and cannot take from hotel rooms (HT: Alan H.). You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter…
Korean Air Gone As a Transfer Partner From the Chase Website!
Korean Air Skypass has disappeared off of the Chase website as a points transfer partner. Here are the airlines I currently see listed: Friday night is the worst time for this, for me, since I can’t reach anyone at Chase in real-time to confirm the meaning of the change. Korean Air has been one of my favorite uses of Chase points. First class awards have been so darned easy to get. There are real sweet spots in their Skyteam award chart They offer cheap awards to Hawaii Although they are of course very Korean and their processes for redeeming awards are unique. If Korean is indeed gone as a Chase transfer partner, I’m personally frustrated. I have 185,000 miles in my Skypass account, and likely need 190,000 for what I’d do with the points (2…
Delta Releases Full New Worldwide Award Charts for Travel After January 1
Back at the beginning of the year Delta announced half of how their frequent flyer program would work in 2015. They released changes to mileage earning but told us nothing about how miles would be spent. They explained that miles from flights would be based on spending. We learned that there would be a 5 tier award chart for each of economy and business class — 10 prices rather than the 4 that airlines historically had (and United continues to have) and the 6 that Delta introduced with Low, Medium, and High pricing. But we needed know what those prices would be, so we were missing a big piece of the puzzle about the value of the 2015 program. After continually calling Delta out for their ‘secret award chart’ — telling members the program would…
100% Bonus on Citibank Transfers to Hilton HHonors Through January 8
Over the summer Citibank drastically improved the value proposition of its Thank You Points program, making the points transferable to a variety of airline mileage programs. Two years ago they introduced the program’s first transfer partner — Hilton. But transfers to Hilton are normally a really poor value at 1:1. Doubly so because Hilton massively devalued their program a mere month later. Current transfer partners are: Air France-KLM Asia Miles Etihad Airways Guest EVA Air Infinity MileageLands Garuda Indonesia GarudaMiles Hilton HHonorsTM Malaysia Airlines Enrich Qatar Airways Privilege Club Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus The Air France KLM Flying Blue program is useful, and so is Asia Miles… their distance-based chart though gets expensive for long distance premium cabin flying. Singapore Airlines is my favorite option here — for cheap US domestic…
Five Good Reasons to Choose Delta
I give Delta a hard time frequently on this blog. I’m pretty transparent about my travel patterns and choices, and how I go about making those. Delta hasn’t been my choice and I think I’m justified in that. I’m not going to rehash all of the reasons here. Instead I thought I’d take a contrary position for this post, and offer up five good reasons why someone would want to choose Delta and/or Skymiles as their primary air carrier/loyalty program. See what you think, and whether any of these reasons apply to you. You’re a super frequent flyer. American and United both have top tiers at the 100,000 mile level. Delta, like United, requires minimum spend for elite status. If you’re flying more than 125,000 miles a year and spending more than $15,000 on airline…
