This Flyertalk thread notes a bonus to celebrate bmi becoming a new partner with Wyndham Rewards: 5000 bmi miles per stay through February 28. The bonus can be earned a maximum of 4 times, doesn’t require registration, just choose bmi miles as your earning preference and provide your Diamond Club number. I guess I’ll be scouring the area for a cheap Knights Inn or HoJo’s that I can check in and out of four times this month for 20,000 miles… Update: From the comments, beaubo notes that bmi now allows household accounts, so “that 20K up to 6 people, amplifying to 120K BD which is a US-Asia Business Class roundtrip with no co-pay!!!”
ASIA
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Reader Email: So What ARE Delta Skymiles Still Good For?
With the Singapore Airlines redemption option going away, my favorite feature of the Skymiles program will be no more. Reader Gene wonders what good options are left, and points out that Delta and Jet Airways are partners. My thoughts are as follows: 1. Korean is still a partner. Don’t trust Delta website inventory, I don’t really see business class availability on the Northwest website anymore, either. The same thing happened to Air France inventory. The website is just wrong, business class seats still exist, you just can’t find them by limiting yourself to the online tools that the airline provides. Now, Korean doesn’t often make more than a single business class seat available at a time. But it’s a good option. 2. Air France/KLM do make business class seats available stil… 3. Northwest legacy partnerships…
1500 Mile Frontier Signup Bonus — Good for $6 at Starbucks
Frontier is offering 1500 miles for signing up for their frequent flyer program by December 31. (Hat tip Frugal Travel Guy.) Even if you’re never going to add more miles to your Frontier EarlyReturns account, it’s worth signing up. You can transfer your points out of Frontier and into other programs for free at Points.com. 1500 Frontier miles yields your choice of: 372 Air Canada Aeroplan points 311 Alaska Mileage Plan miles 329 American 637 Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles 296 Delta Skymiles 592 HawaiianMiles 348 Midwest Miles 637 Priority Club Rewards points 296 US Airways Dividend miles … or $6 in Starbucks.
A Case Study in Starnet Blocking: Booking United Awards to South Africa
As many of you know, I probably book more frequent flyer award tickets than anyone else in the world. So I get a lot of regular experience dealing with a wide variety of frequent flyer programs. After Delta, United is my second least-favorite to deal with (Singapore is no bargain, either). All for different reasons. Delta just offers the least amount of premium cabin international award availability at reasonable mileage prices, and has all sorts of hidden rules like too many segments bumping up mileage prices (when they’re the ones who force you to go looking for extra segments to find available flights in the first place). While United as a Star Alliance carrier has access to some incrediblle partners and award inventory, regular readers of this blog kow that they are the only Star…
A Mileage Redemption Wish List for the Holidays and the New Year
The holiday season sometimes brings so much joy that all my hopes, at least for award booking, seem possible. And with a New Year, there’s an unwritten future. So I dare to dream. And I’ll share with you, my dear readers, the content of my five wishes as we close out 2009 and usher in 2010. 1. An end to United Starnet Blocking I genuinely believe that United Mileage Plus offers the best top-tier elite level. But their award redemption is truly sub-par. They block award seats that their partners are making available, something that no other Star Alliance airline does. Their award chart isn’t cheap relative to the competition, in many cases it is more expensive than say the US Airways chart or the Air Canada chart. Both of those airlines let you book…
US Airways Announces Mileage Increases to Star Alliance Award Chart — And They Aren’t So Bad
One Mile at a Time points to changes to the US Airways Star Alliance award chart. While increased mileage costs are never good, I’m not sweating this one. Here’s the old chart and the new chart (both .pdf files). Last month US Airways announced changes to awards booked on US Airways flights. Those changes were not good, and Randy Petersen really took them to task over it. At the time I expected that US Airways would have to make changes to their Star Aliance award chart as well. It seemed unlikely that they’d leave awards booked on their own flights as significantly more expensive compared to awards redeemed on their partners. The archetypical example of what had to change was US to Europe in business class — going from 80,000 miles on the US Airways…
Chinese Human Rights Activist Living in Tokyo Narita Arrivals Hall
Wandering Aramean shares the story of Feng Zhenghu, a Chinese citizen who is living in the Tokyo-Narita international arrivals concourse. Feng has been denied entry to his native country eight times over the past month, four of them after actually arriving on the ground in China; the other four times Japanese officials denied his boarding attempt because they knew he’d be denied on arrival. Not good at all. So Feng has decided to live in the arrivals hall at Tokyo’s Narita airport, and he’s been doing so for over a month now. According to CNN, he’s a human rights activist and China won’t let him back in the country. Japan has offered asylum, but he won’t accept. Clearly he’s having some success calling attention to his cause. I’ve just followed him on Twitter.
Using the US Airways Holiday Shopping Promo to Get Business Class Tickets to Europe for $570
Frugal Travel Guy outlines how to take advantage of the US Airways 250% Shopping Bonus to effectively purchase miles at 7/10ths of a penny apiece. If you make 5 purchases or more (up to 10) then all of those purchases earn a 250% bonus. Fewer than 5 purchases and the bonus is lower. But one merchant in particular is crazy-valuable: TrackItBack which gives you stickers with codes on them to attach to things. In theory if you lose those things, people report the item to TrackItBack and they handle getting the item from the person and then to you. Purchases through them earn 40 miles per dollar normally, so you know it’s a high margin business they’re in. With this 250% bonus, purchases will earn 140 miles per dollar. Put another way, you’re buying miles…
Which is Worse for Award Redemption, Delta or Delta.com?
Hunter says Delta.com has gone off the rails. And he calls the Delta.com helpdesk “We’re a Bunch of Monkeys Chained to Phones.” Gee, Hunter is just realizing this. And he actually flies Delta. I do my best to avoid it, though in my case it’s because on Delta ful fare trumps status in the upgrade queue and the idiots treat cheap government fares as full fare. I live in DC, where everyone but me is flying on a government fare. But that’s beside the point. My beef with Delta.com is its award search. Delta occasionally publishes premium cabin international inventory for award booking without paying extortionate double or triple mileage pricing. But its website would never know it. Flights that actually have ‘low’ price awards will still price at the medium or high mileage levels…
Randy Petersen Calls Out US Airways For Egregious Changes to Their Award Chart
Randy Petersen‘s opening remarks in the December, 2009 Inside Flyer are on US Airways’ planned changes to their award chart going into effect in January. Bottom-line, Randy points out that US Airways is especially stingy in making awards available on their own flights to Dividend Miles members. They’ve gone from redeeming 9.1% of their miles flown as award tickets down to a meager 4% — less than half the rate of Continental, which has never been known as especially generous on awards. And already US Airways imposes transaction fees just for redeeming an award. Those fees are often as much as the cost to the Dividend Miles program of the award seat itself. Their change fees are uniquely high among their peers (think $250). Now that an award seat in business class to Europe can…
