USA Today‘s Charisse Jones has a piece on the things you can do with your miles besides taking flights. There are the obligatory examples of using miles to purchase “Tumi luggage and MacBook Pro computers” as well as spending them at auction for experiences like Rod Stewart concerts. The piece offered two of my thoughts. “More options are good for frequent fliers,” says Gary Leff, co-founder of the frequent-flier community Milepoint.com, who’s noticed the trend building over the past three or four years. “Not everyone wants to fly throughout the year for business and be rewarded with another flight. Sometimes they’d just like to stay home and use their miles for a retail treat.” … Unique experiences, however, could be perceived as a better deal, Leff says. “When you’re leveraging the connections, the sponsorship, or…
ASIA
Search Results for "ASIA".
Alaska Airlines Now Has One-Way Awards on All But Two Partners — Cathay Pacific Becomes Possible!
Back in March Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan introduced the ability to book one-way and mixed partner awards online and for some partners. Initially you could book one-way awards on American. You could also book one-way at full roundtrip price on Delta, or mix and match American and Delta in a roundtrip. Then in April they introduced one-way and online booking for British Airways awards. Most partners were added earlier in the month, with online booking possible. I just noticed at the end of last week that one airline not previously on the list — Cathay Pacific — could now in fact be used to book one-way awards only those awards require calling Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. Cathay Pacific awards are not bookable on the Alaska Airlines website. Here’s their one-way and roundtrip award chart for…
And the Award for Worst Frequent Flyer Program Name Goes to…
Lucky thinks new Star Alliance member EVA Airways’ frequent flyer program has the most horrible name out there — Infinity MileageLands. And it is, no doubt, a bit bizarre and probably the result of a bit too literal translation from Chinese. That’s something that gets brands in trouble. There are famous stories that I’ve never checked out myself because I don’t think I want to know if they’re apocryphal. Like Frank Purdue’s “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken” being translated as “It takes a virile man to make a chicken aroused.” Or “Pepsi: the Choice of a New Generation” becoming in Chinese, “Pepsi will bring your dead ancestors back to life.” An of course nothing tops the Chevy Nova in Spanish: “no va”… But I’d like to challenge the assertion that…
Bits ‘n Pieces for June 19, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Hertz still hasn’t solved the Jerry Seinfeld problem: When taking the reservation doesn’t actually hold the reservation. US Airways is rolling out online pre-order o paid meals in coach. You’ll no longer need to game their IT system to be able to have this. You can comment on my blog for a chance to win a Samsung Chromebook. Taipei-based EVA Airways has joined the Star Alliance and is a truly awesome ‘get’ — business class award availability is really, really good and thy fly to Toronto, Vancouver, New York JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Another great way to get between North America and Asia and with a really stellar inflight product. I’ve found the Aeroplan website good for searching space, along with the ANA website. I…
Cathay Pacific Getting New First Class Cabin Next Month
Cathay Pacific has my all-around first class, though it certainly isn’t the newest product. Their food is good enough, though not fantastic. I always choose the Chinese entree, I do love having dim sum for breakfast, and the smoked salmon and caviar is good. Singapore probably does a better job with main meals, and they serve both Dom Perignon and Krug rather than just Krug. But Cathay does a better job with mid-flight snack options. (I think Asiana and ANA do a better job with food than either Cathay or Singapore does.) Their lounges in Hong Kong are fine. I like The Wing’s first class lounge, and I haven’t been there in the past few months so haven’t seen the refresh. But there’s no real special ground service — such as escorts to and from…
American AAdvantage 30% Bonus on Transferred Miles Not a Good Deal
American is offering a bonus of up to 30% when you pay to transfer miles from one AAdvantage account to another. The offer lasts through July 1. Limited time offer: Earn up to a 30% bonus for friends and family, when you share miles Know someone who needs American Airlines AAdvantage® miles or could you use some extra miles to reach a travel award faster? You can share miles between family, friends or colleagues and the recipient will earn up to 30% in bonus miles. Sharing miles just became more valuable, so make the most of this limited time offer, now through July 1, 2013. The bonus gets progressively larger the more miles you transfer: Let’s take the biggest possible bonus as an example. If you transfer 50,000 points there’s a bonus of 15,000 —…
Crying Babies on Planes and the Social Sciences: Economics Tells You to Just Deal
Art Carden takes a Coasian law and economics approach and tells people who complain about crying babies on a plane to just deal. Of course, he’s more subtle than that, couching it in all social sciency language, [T]he bundle of rights you purchase with a plane ticket includes the reasonable expectation that there will be a crying baby or two on the plane. As one of his readers explains, “Your tickets are cheap because crying babies fly too.” Which isn’t quite true, in that your tickets might not be cheap especially coast-to-coast or internationally at the last minute. But in the limit this seems more right than it does wrong. Carden reframes the question not as ‘babies are a disturbance’ but as each side staking out a possibly valid position. There wouldn’t be a conflict…
Once Again, Things That Could Have Been Brought to My Attention YESTERDAY!
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:…
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…
