United’s award chart will be devalued come February, award prices are going up, up up. Big changes at United have many flyers considering alternatives. But it would be a shame to jump to a new airline to accumulate points, only to find that airline devaluing its own points shortly thereafter. That uncertainty is what’s holding many people back, and helping United. I’m going to predict there will be some adjustments to American’s award chart over the coming year, but that we will not see a wholesale devaluation like what United has done — not even close. American’s Award Chart Isn’t That Much Less Expensive Now for Many Awards, So There’s No Need to Raise Most Prices United’s changes aren’t as bad as they seem for many flyers. Coach doesn’t go up, or up very much,…
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Delta Announces an Interim Devaluation for February Travel (Because Their June Travel Devaluation Was Too Far Away)
Delta Skymiles — already the least generous major airline frequent flyer program in the U.S. — has deservedly earned the nickname Skypesos. Nonetheless, the program leadership has announced that they believe the program is too rewarding today — notwithstanding that they already announced that they were making it less rewarding for travel June 1 oneward. (Delta announced award chart changes effective immediately, for travel beginning in June, back in mid-August.) Sure, the changes went into effect right away, but only for travel in summer 2014. The clear implication of announcing changes for travel beginning June 1 was that travel up until June 1 could be booked at the ‘old’ rate. And by setting the travel date about 9 months out, that meant that members could still earn miles and redeem them at the existing lower…
Lufthansa First Class Awards Available (Using United Miles) Next Summer
On the heels of United’s dramatic devaluation that goes into effect February 1, many folks are seeing their United miles are no longer so great for booking partner awards (although they’re still non-crazy for booking partner awards in business class). First class awards on partners are where the real changes come into play. A first class award, say Washington Dulles to Munich and back on Lufthansa, goes up from 135,000 miles to 220,000 miles. And of course first class awards on Lufthansa have become really tough to get. A couple of years ago they were everywhere, now they’re usually only bookable within two weeks of travel. Lufthansa has reduced the number of first class seats it flies and have severely restricted the ability for partner frequent flyer programs to book those seats. Since they’re tough…
United MileagePlus Has Devalued its “Standard” Award Chart, Too
Traditionally US frequent flyer programs offered to let members book any seat on any flight for twice the miles. That way if there wasn’t any “saver” award inventory, it would still be possible to use your miles. Now it wasn’t always precisely twice the miles. Sometimes it was less than double! Up until October 2006 United Airlines Mileage Plus offered awards from North America to Australia in business class at 90,000 miles roundtrip at the saver level — or 150,000 miles for what they called “standard” or rule-buster style awards where you could have any empty seat instead of constraining yourself to award space. At the time that award struck me as one of the best in the world. Delta and Northwest at the time both charged 150,000 miles for their capacity controlled awards to…
How Do United’s New Award Charts Stack Up Against American and Delta?
With all of the furor over United’s massive award chart changes, I thought it would be useful to put together some context and compare United’s new February 1-onward award charts against the offerings of their two major competitors in the U.S., American and Delta. (I exclude US Airways because it’s a smaller carrier and still may merge with American.) I’ve put travel between North America and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific side-by-side to have a look at United’s new award charts (for both United flights and flights on United’s partners) against the award charts of American AAdvantage and of Delta Skymiles as it applies to travel June 1 onward. Each airline has a slightly different definition of which countries are in which ‘zones’ but this is a pretty fair comparison of…
Play the Star Alliance Gold Game for a Chance to Win Elite Status
Star Alliance is running a game where you compete to test your knowledge of alliance elite benefits and answer questions quickly, with the prize being Star Alliance Gold-equivalent status in your preferred participating frequent flyer program. You have to answer questions like which frequent flyer card and program name corresponds to a given airline (e.g. “Sheba Miles” is Ethiopian Airlines) and also watch a video of someone going into a lounge and eating snacks, and identify which complimentary drink they had. The game runs through December 13, but you’re only supposed to enter once. The two people with the quickest times selecting each program will be awarded Gold status in that program. As such, it seems to me that there will be less competition to win status in more obscure programs. And that’s great because…
United Didn’t Just Change their Award Prices, They Changed Upgrades Too
Friday’s award chart changes at United were biggest for redemption of awards on their partners and especially for first class awards. Coach awards, and most awards in North and South America, saw modest changes. USA Today quoted me describing the crux of the changes: Frequent-flier expert Gary Leff described the changes as “really nasty,” adding in his View from the Wing blog that “the biggest bloodbath is to first class partner award pricing.” When the changes first came out they were myriad. I focused primarily on the way they added a new, separate award chart for redeeming miles (more expensively) on their airline partners as opposed to on United flights. While partner awards do cost MileagePlus more than awards on United flights, it still surprises me that they would charge more for award seats even…
United’s Frequent Flyer Award Prices are Going Up, Up, Up. Redeem Now (for Premium Cabin Partner Travel Outside the Americas).
United devaluation: I woke up this morning to an announcement of some really nasty changes to the United MileagePlus award chart. These changes don’t go into effect until February 1, so you will want to issue tickets you may be considering before then (and not make changes to tickets after that). What United has done is Announced an increase in the price of many of its awards Bifurcated its award chart so that partner awards will often cost a whole lot more than awards on United’s own flights There aren’t actually very many changes to awards in North and South America. There aren’t very many changes to awards in coach. The biggest bloodbath is to first class partner award pricing. Here are .pdfs of the current chart and the new chart. But to make it…
Is the American Express Centurion Lounge in Dallas the Best Airport Lounge in the United States?
American Express opened its second U.S. Centurion airport lounge this month. Dallas Fort Worth is the second location after Las Vegas. There are more lounges to come, including San Francisco. I visited the Dallas facility on a recent connection, and absolutely loved it. It’s the best U.S. airport lounge I have been to. I would make the claim that it’s the best U.S. airport lounge, period, but I haven’t been to the Amex lounge in Las Vegas and I haven’t been to the Virgin Clubhouses at New York JFK or San Francisco (I’ve been to the Virgin lounge at Washington Dulles). I can say that it’s a better facility than the United Global First lounge in San Francisco (generally regarded as United’s best) and the American Airlines Flagship lounges in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New…
How to Avoid Jetlag and Get the Most Out of Your Trip
When readers shared their own travel tips and several really stood out as worth highlighting. Kerry said, One of my travel rules is “always go into town the first night.” If you’ve been traveling all day, it is very tempting to just hang out at the hotel and go to bed early, but I made that rule after I found out the next morning that I had missed the annual summer fest at a little town on the coast of France. I have scored standing room at La Scala, the Munich Opera (Aida!) and a box seat at the Folk Opera in Madrid, by pushing on and checking out what was going on in town that first night. I see this as a jetlag tip more than anything else. My first international travel as a…
