.. or at least airline tweets. Via Frequently Flying, the DOT’s enforcement unit is monitoring airline twitter activity for regulatory compliance. Sounds to me like an excuse for DOT staffers to spend all day at their desks on Twitter, but here’s what they’re after: if an airfare is mentioned and if any taxes and fees are not included, there must be a hyperlink “adjacent to the stated fare” that “takes the viewer directly to a place on a separate screen where the nature and amount of taxes and fees are prominently and immediately displayed. Likewise, if a roundtrip purchase condition applies to an advertised each-way fare, this must also be disclosed in the tweet.” However, HTML layout on this separate disclosure link matters — links taking the user to “a page or a place on…
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Aeroplan Adjusts Fuel Surcharges Again
Yesterday Aeroplan began adding fuel surcharges on several airline partner awards. Previously they had been adding those charges only to awards on Air Canada flights. Now they’ve dialed it back a bit, and are adding fuel surcharges only on Air Canada and Lufthansa flights. Awards on All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai are pricing out without fuel surcharges. Aeroplan has not made any statements about their intentions beyond that they are adding the charges to awards booked on Air Canada and Lufthansa — nothing about whether other airlines will be added in the future, or when. But they seem to suggest that fuel surcharges on other carriers may be coming down the pike. Effective November 9th 2011 at 7pm, Aeroplan began applying, at Air Canada’s request, fuel surcharges to flight rewards on Lufthansa. Members making voluntary…
Why the Introduction of Fuel Surcharges for Aeroplan Awards DOESN’T Change My Credit Card Advice
[Offers in this post are no longer current] Aeroplan has started adding fuel surcharges to many partner awards, including on Lufthansa, All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai. One of the common internet memes is that this is a real blow to American Express Membership Rewards. Because Amex points transfers was one of the key ways that folks in the U.S. were generating Aeroplan points. Certainly the change to Aeroplan with no notice whatsoever makes their program less valuable. And it means that points that might have been transferred into Aeroplan have a bit less value, since the transfer option is worth less. An equally big kick in the teeth to Aeroplan came in July with their massive award chart devaluation (and that wasn’t even the only recent cutback). Of course, American Express also lost Continental as…
Aeroplan Begins Adding Fuel Surcharges to Star Alliance Partner Awards
Aeroplan is a strange program, at least it has been, in that it has long been advantageous to book award travel on airlines other than Air Canada. Aeroplan has added fuel surcharges to Air Canada flights but not to flights on partner airlines. That practice has apparently changed, effective today. Aeroplan awards on Lufthansa, All Nippon, Asiana, and Thai are all now showing up with fuel surcharges. Fuel surcharges vary by airline and by route. A domestic coach award from New York to Frankfurt has a fuel surcharge over $400, so with tax and during low season it can be the same price to book an award ticket as to buy a paid, mileage-earning ticket. So far it appears as though awards on United, Swiss, and Singapore are not. Of course there are no guarantees…
How to Make Delta’s SkyPesos Work for You
After my talk on award booking at the Chicago frequent flyer seminar last month, I committed to putting together much of the advice that I shared in the form of blog posts. That takes a good long time, the reason I haven’t shared my talks here on the blog in the past is because I’ve never written them down, I tend to sketch out an outline and just talk. In order to keep things sufficiently interesting (for me, in the writing!), I won’t be writing up the different sections in order. But I’ll piece it all together in the end. Delta Skymiles are often referred to as “SkyPesos” because they are less valuable and more difficult to use than miles in major competitor programs. I’ve found this to be true for several reasons. Their pricing…
What Does a Pending Sale of bmi Mean for the Diamond Club frequent flyer program?
I’ve been watching the moves across the pond that Lufthansa has been making with british midland with some interest, bmi has been a money losing operation and Lufthansa wants to unload it. There’s movement along that front, what interests me most is what becomes of the Diamond Club frequent flyer program, all the commentary that I’ve seen to date says something along the lines of “we don’t know and I won’t speculate.” I’ll offer a slightly different formulation: we don’t know, but I will speculate. First came reports that Lufthansa was offloading bmi’s regional operation. My thought at that time would be sell off the pieces, and shut down what remains, transferring bmi’s Diamond Club members into the Miles & More frequent flyer program. There’s good and bad to that outcome, the good is that…
American Airlines Amazing Awesome Offers to Oneworld MegaDO Participants
In addition to generous mileage earning for the charter flight, American Airlines has two separate offers for participants: bonus miles for flying on American between now and the charter flight itself, and an ultra-relaxed status challenge offer for folks who are elite members of another loyalty program. Here are the terms and conditions for the American Airlines bonus offers (.pdf) made to MegaDO participants. First, bonus miles for flying roundtrips through January 13. Earn up to 55,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles for round trip travel flown on American Airlines, American Eagle or AmericanConnection® between October 9, 2011, and January 13, 2012. Each roundtrip earns a successively bigger bonus. One roundtrip is 1000 miles, two roundtrips is 2000 more, three roundtrips is 3000 more… up to 10,000 bonus miles for the 10th roundtrip (and 55,000 total bonus…
Excellent Award Availability and Excellent First Class: Etihad is Now an American AAdvantage Redemption Partner
Yesterday afternoon I got a tip from reader Abdou that Etihad flights were now bookable as awards with American AAdvantage miles. I meant to blog it right away, but looks like both Online Travel Review and One Mile at a Time beat me to the punch. While first and business class upgrade space (R and X inventory, respectively) are published through Sabre, and thus also searchable using the KVS tool and Expertflyer, the only way to search for award seats that I’m aware of is signing up for an Etihad Guest account and then using their website to search space. All reports so far are that American AAdvantage has access to the same award inventory that Etihad Guest members do. And that award availability is, so far, quite excellent. Like four first class award seats…
American Airlines Promos on Japan Airlines: Double Mileage Earning and Reduced Award Redemption Prices
Via DestinationDavid and JALPak on Milepoint come several mileage offers related to American Airlines’ joint venture with Japan Airlines. 50% off mileage redemption, San Francisco – Tokyo Haneda, for travel between November 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012. That makes makes business class roundtrip 50,000 miles and coach roundtrip 30,000. The same offer on Vancouver – Tokyo Narita Double miles on American codeshare flights operated by Japan Airlines and booked into a high fare class (K fare or higher) for travel between November 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012. Registration required. All of these are of limited usefulness, yet still interesting for what they signify. Winter is very much off-season for travel between the US and Japan. And the reduced mileage offers, while great for folks in or near San Francisco or Vancouver are appealing,…
Has Hilton HHonors Just Gutted Redemptions at their Best Properties?
Hilton has introduced several new features to the HHonors program recently, all at first blush sound great and some are even quite good. Cash and Points. Stretch your points farther, and you’re generally getting a higher value per point. Good on Hilton. I actually have an upcoming cash and points stay at two hotels in South Asia that represented remarkable value. I’m not all about the Cash and Points rather than traditional redemptions when available. As with Starwood, these awards represent real value. Premium Room Awards. One place where hotel chains can miss is with redemptions, you give them your room nights and earn your points and when it comes time to redeem you’re stuck in a base room. Intercontinental hotels won’t even officially honor elite upgrade benefits on award stays, which seems ludicrous and…
