[Details in this post are no longer current.] American Express has announced that their relationship with Continental will end on September 30, 2011. Currently, the US Membership Rewards program offers the ability to transfer points into Continental Onepass. And the American Express Platinum and Centurion lounge benefit includes access to Continental clubs (when flying Continental same-day). Both of those benefits will cease. Two months ago when American Express added US Airways to its roster of lounges providing access to Platinum and Centurion members, I said that it meant the Continental relationship was dead in the water. When the United-Continental merger was announced, the end of the Amex relationship was almost a foregone conclusion. In many ways, United exists today in order to support Chase’s credit card business. The issuer of the United Visa provided debtor-in-possession…
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Etihad Guest 50% Off Redemption Sale
Steve Belkin (whose mileage exploits are chronicled in this Google Translate version of a recent Norway Sunday article) points me to Etihad Guest’s 50% off sale on all awards through September 15. I don’t know how I missed this, Steve says he simply saw it listed in the promotions section at the back of Inside Flyer. I need to scour that more often! Sadly I know of no way to quickly ramp up an Etihad mileage balance, at least starting from where I am. I see no transfer options from Membership Rewards (US), Diners Club (US), Starwood Preferred Guest, Hyatt Gold Passport… don’t these folks partner with anyone for mileage transfer? Since this offers the opportunity to redeem US-India in business class for 80,000 points, among other values. This could well be a winner as…
Finding Award Seats to Australia Using Delta Skymiles — V Australia Business Class Awards Are Pretty Available, Just Not Quite As Easy As It First Seemed
A couple of weeks back I posted that using Delta Skypesos to get to Australia on V Australia was easy. That isn’t quite true. It’s one of the best uses of Delta miles, to be sure, and the award space is much better in business class on V Australia than on Delta to be sure. But it isn’t the gimme that it seemed at first. V Australia uses the booking class ‘Z’ for business reward space. Expertflyer ostensibly was displaying Z inventory, but it was phantom inventory that appeared to cause “4” to be shown as available seats regardless of actual inventory. The KVS Tool appears to suffer a similar issue displaying ‘Z’ inventory on V Australia. Now, all hope is not lost. It does seem that Delta has access to the very same reward…
Genuineness vs. Plasticism in Flight Attendant Interactions with Customers
Tyler Cowen presents a reader question about flight attendant ‘fake pleasant speech’ — which questioner Robert refers to as “robotic beauty queen.” Tyler believes that the facade is important to maintain because a more relaxed, casual approach would belie true feelings of contempt for passengers amongst half of flight attendants. Certainly this is a common stereotype, the Wikipedia entry on flight attendants even references the old Saturday Night Live skit with David Spade and Helen Hunt, “Total Bastard Airlines,” where the flight attendants bid passengers adieu with a sarcasm-laden “Buh Bye.” (Here is the skit on Russian RuTube, the stereotype resonates with pilots as well, the old skit gets relatively recent reference at the Professional Pilots Rumor Network bulletin board forum.) I believe that on the whole though flight attendant interaction with customers is driven…
United ‘Starnet Blocking’ Still a Problem for Mileage Plus Members
United ‘blocks’ award seats that their partners offer when it doesn’t want to pay for those seats. They’re the only Star Alliance airline that does this. A Lufthansa seat to Europe might be available with Continental, US Airways, or Air Canada miles but United might claim the seat is unavailable. I’ve been beating this drum for quite some time, not just here on this blog but in other media like Inside Flyer and Conde Nast Traveler, and I’ve helped to drive coverage elsewhere such as in the Wall Street Journal. Now, blocking wasn’t much of an issue from early May through early August. It would creep up occasionally, but nothing like in the past. Take the end of April, for instance, virtually no Lufthansa space that the airline was offering was bookable with United miles.…
The Best of Airline Meals in Premium Cabins
CNN.com ran a piece today on premium cabin meals, the emphasis on first class dining options from Asian carriers. The opening picture is of one of my favorite features — dining opposite your travel companion as though in a restaurant. The example in the piece is Cathay Pacific, and I have much enjoyed moving over to the buddy seat to dine with my wife. Of course I don’t really like Cathay Pacific’s first class for traveling as a couple, the suites are too private and there’s no option to sit ‘next to’ each other in a meaningful sense. But dining together makes up for it. Cathay adds a table extender, the buddy seat has a seat belt, and it’s a lovely way to pass some time. Now, Cathay’s meal service isn’t my favorite (I much…
Why I Love US Airways Reservations Agents
Award from US to Kuala Lumpur and back, business class. Set up the reservation, agent gets ready to price. And contra Continental where the computers do everything, US Airways agents do a whole lot more fill in the blanks. Very helpful agent asks me about Kuala Lumpur, “that’s in North Asia, right?” Of course, business class to North Asia is 90,000 miles and to South Asia is 120,000 miles. Sadly, I am an honest man. Or at least I’m willing to own up to my geography. Still, I have to wonder (and I often wonder) whether US Airways made a really big mistake when they tried to save money by switching off of Sabre to SHARES. I flew them the weekend of the systems cutover, certainly I knew better but I had a great desire…
The Most Important Post on Flyertalk I Read This Week: Using Delta Miles for Business Class to Australia
I can’t seem to recall whether I’ve posted about this before on the blog or on Flyertalk, but award availability between the US and Australia in business class on V Australia is really quite good. In my experience the toughest two awards in all of frequent flyer-dom are North America-Australia and North America-Tahiti. In the latter case, the constraint is simply not a lot of flights and seats. Air Tahiti Nui, a Delta and American partner, offers decent availability but often only just a single business and first class seat per flight. They used to offer two first class seats on each flight, which is how I flew them as part of my honeymoon. But beyond Air Tahiti Nui you’re looking at non-daily Air France service from Los Angeles, and in the summer months it…
Announcing the Frequent Traveler Awards — the Answer to Which Program is the Best, as Voted on By Real Frequent Travelers
After 21 years, the Freddie Awards were retired. And that was sad news for those of us who follow loyalty programs closely. They were real awards voted on by large numbers of real travelers, focusing on what’s being done right by frequent flyer and frequent guest programs. These were awards programs wanted to win, and really did influence the thinking of program executives towards how to better deliver value for their members. Moreover, there really does have to be a way — beyond just reading this blog — of answering the question, which program is the best? Fortunately there’s going to be a new award stepping precisely into this space, the press release has gone out, so this is now public, the new Frequent Traveler Awards are coming. Voting will begin next month and the…
Why Your Choice of Frequent Flyer Program Needs to Match Your Award Goals
Continental’s generous routing rules are one reason why I’m not all that happy about the pending Continental-United merger. Wandering Aramean writes about his booking from the US via Europe and Asia to Australia. US Airways permits this, Aeroplan often won’t (though booking via Asia is perfectly doable). United on the other hand requires US-to-Australia awards take a much more direct routing, eg San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Vancouver to Sydney or to Auckland and on to Australia. (There are a couple of other permissable routings, such as via Hawaii and New Zealand, but those aren’t generlaly useful.) Continental offers one stopover and an open jaw, whereas both US Airways and United will allow only one or the other. But more importantly Continental doesn’t really have much in the way of routing rules. Like US Airways…
