Over the past week and a half AviancaTaca LifeMiles has made some modest mileage price increases in their award chart and increased the cash component of cash and points awards from 1.3 to about 1.5 cents per mile. These changes were made without any advance notice (as they’ve made earlier changes to their award chart as well). Some frequent flyers went rather ballistic on the LifeMiles Facebook page. Their social media reps were at first denying that any changes had been made. Now, apparently, LifeMiles has sent out an email acknowledging the changes. I haven’t received it, perhaps because I subscribe in Spanish (thinking I’d get more info out of them if they don’t have to first translate to English – guess not). Here, German frequent flyer site vielfliegertreff.de, with the aid of Google Translate:…
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Planning an Award Ticket a Year Out? Here’s When Airlines Load Their Schedules
There’s a persistent myth that the best time to book an award ticket is instantly when an airline’s schedule opens — and that the time is 12:01am exactly 330 days prior to travel. But this isn’t quite right on two levels. Different airlines publish their schedules at different times Different airlines load award seats at different times — not necessarily when their schedule loads Airlines want to release those seats as (saver / low) awards that they don’t expect to sell for cash. They may load some award seats when the schedule opens but ~ 11 months out they only have a rough idea of what seats are going to go unsold. They may not add a single award seat on a given flight when the schedule opens. As time passes, as the date of…
United No Longer Deceiving You With Lufthansa Award Seats That Aren’t There
Just yesterday I was musing that United.com no longer showed ‘phantom availability’ for Lufthansa, and I needed to write a blog post about that. But Lucky beat me to the punch. United and also at one time Aeroplan would show Lufthansa first class award space more than two weeks out, when Lufthansa seems not to release those seats to their partners more than two weeks out. While the seats would show up when doing a search online, you couldn’t actually book the seats and would get an error instead if you tried to do so. My working theory had been that the seats were available to Lufthansa’s own Miles & More members and that there was something wrong with the ‘point of sale’ settings when searching for these awards — United was displaying availability as…
Don’t Be Fooled By the Flawed ‘Award Seat Availability’ Study
IdeaWorks and Switchfly are out again with their study of award availability. They purport to show which airline frequent flyer programs are offering the best award availability. And they’re getting lots of attention for it, such as this Wall Street Journal coverage. This year the study even makes bolder claims. Here’s their press release title: Value Airlines Fill Top 7 Slots with Best Reward Seat Availability, and Among Global Airlines Singapore is Best Nowhere in the study do they account for the value or quality of what the low cost carriers like Southwest Airlines are getting you. And while Singapore Airlines does have excellent award availability for members of their own Krisflyer program, there’s no comparison of award chart pricing (Singapore’s chart is certainly more expensive for comparable awards than most US carriers) and no…
Piddling on the Weekend in the World of Miles and Points
Being home on the weekend without fixed appointments and obligations can be one of the simple pleasures. There’s a feeling of getting caught up, of moving slowly but ticking things off of a list, feeling productive even if you’re only doing things that themselves will allow you to be productive like buying paper products and doing the laundry. Several years ago I moved within walking distance of my office. I saved myself an hour and a half a day in commuting time. And it means that when I’m not flying, I’m always pretty close to home. I rarely drive. So my life exists around the world or within one mile radius of my front door (plus, occasionally, wherever DC’s metro will take me). Yesterday was a great ‘catching up day’. I set off on my…
Why the President is Wrong About the Skytrax World Airport Awards and the Need for Infrastructure Spending
A week and a half ago I reflexively dismissed the Skytrax World Airport Awards being discussed in frequent flyer forums, because it was downright silly. I didn’t even blog about it at the time. Only one airport in the top five is outside of Asia, and that’s Amsterdam’s Schiphol. The top five results are reasonable, Singapore and Seoul probably do have the best airports. But they’re major international connecting hubs and they are new facilities which didn’t face substantial red tape (compared to American counterparts) in their development. Beijing Capital was built in less time than an environmental impact study usually takes. There’s plenty that’s screwy about the study, too. London’s Heathrow comes in at number 10. Surely respondents are just thinking about terminal 5 there. I recently flew British Airways Dusseldorf – London –…
What Makes a Great Airline Lounge, and What are the Bare Minimum Standards?
A Boston Globe piece, tied partially to the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in Boston, outlines the different features that lounges offer. The piece begins with a description of what I see as the top two lounge experiences: When Gary Leff, cofounder of the frequent flier community Milepoint.com, departs from the Lufthansa First-Class Terminal in Frankfurt, his rental car is valet parked, and a personal assistant arrives to take his passport and process immigration, while he is escorted through a short and very discreet security line. The major stresses of flying now allayed, Leff can savor his waiting time before the flight. He can enter a cigar bar with a selection of 80 whiskies, lie on a comfy leather sofa in his own napping room, or take a bath in an oversized tub. “When it’s time to…
Which Loyalty Programs are the Best? 3 Million Frequent Flyers Speak their Minds, Here are the Results!
This evening the 25th annual Freddie Awards ceremony was held at USA Today headquarters in Northern Virginia, with several hundred frequent flyer loyalty program executives in attendance. The Freddies have been called the Oscars of the loyalty industry, and are certainly the most significant award for frequent flyer and frequent guest programs. I’ve had the honor of managing the nominations and voting process for the past several years, and I was thrilled this year to see nearly three million people participate in the voting — nearly double last year, an increase driven in part by the introduction of a mobile-friendly voting platform. The Freddies are voted on by the members of these programs, representing their selection of programs that provide them with the greatest value. That’s sometimes frustrating for me, because the choices of 3…
Air France KLM Flying Blue Raising Award Prices, Reducing Fuel Surcharges
Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program is increasing mileage costs for premium cabin awards and reducing fuel surcharges. Fuel surcharges are a convenient way for airlines to raise and lower prices quickly across an entire market without re-filing every single fare in that market — they save time and effort since they apply equally to all fares. Those charges also help airlines raise price on a bunch of discounted tickets, since these fees are on top of the base fare so discounts usually don’t apply to the surcharges. But for frequent flyers they are a pain because some airlines — most notably European and Asian frequent flyer programs, but also a handful of North American programs (Aeroplan on about half of its Star Alliance partners, American predominantly on British Airways, and Delta on several partners)…
Airline Arrivals Lounges, and American’s Offering at London Heathrow
Most airport lounges are places to wait before getting on a flight. Some are even designated as departure lounges only, which is to say that you need to show a departing boarding pass to get in (either a business class or above boarding pass, or a coach boarding pass and something else to demonstrate you’re entitled to access like an eligible elite frequent flyer card). But there are also designated arrivals lounges, usually places to shower up after a long flight. This is especially important in some markets where many long haul flights arrive in the early morning — business travelers turning up and needing to go straight to the office, a place to clean up and even have a suit pressed, leisure travelers who get into the city too early to check into their…
