Wow, this one almost makes me cring to post. A couple of years ago I wrote about Greyhound introducing a loyalty program. At the time I declared I had no interest in joining. And I still haven’t. After all, 16 Greyhound trips and you get… a free Greyhound trip. Ouch. And I cringe at the prospect of flying over 1000 miles in coach. When I come back from Asia, I even huff and puff at 5 hours in domestic first class, having gotten used to the charms of international premium cabin travel for similar stage lengths. Yet it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a Greyhound mileage run. I’m appalled. It might not be the right forum, but since GREYHOUND has some kind of loyalty program (see HERE and TERMS…
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US Airways Charges For Free Tickets and Sticks It To Their Elites
US Airways announced several changes today including charging for all checked bags beginning with the first, charging for coffee and water in coach, and closing some of their lounges. But the two changes that really hit home are: An “award redemption processing fee.” American recently announced a minimum $5 fee for redemptions made online, and that crossed a line for me — a fee to use your miles for a free ticket. US Airways takes this to a new level beginning on August 6th: $25 to redeem for US domestic and Canada tickets, $35 for tickets to Mexico and the Caribbean, and $50 for Hawaii and international. (No word yet what this would mean for a Star Alliance award intra-Japan, say. Is it $50 for Tokyo-Nagoya?) The end of status bonuses on top of flown…
Understanding Frequent Flyer Miles as a Proprietary Currency With No Central Bank, or What Unannounced Changes to Expect From Your Favorite Frequent Flyer Program?
Recently on Flyertalk there were dueling threads in the “MilesBuzz” forum (which I moderate) about whether miles were on their way to increase or decrease in value. The latter contained the usual arguments of doom and gloom, and perhaps it was just one member’s effort to be contrarian but the thread about miles increasing in value sought to turn the usual arguments on their head. It didn’t make the claims I’ve offered in the past about the relative ease of earning miles compared to the past and the advent of alliance awards that give you access to the award inventory of airline partners allowing you to travel across the globe in ways that didn’t exist in the “good ‘ol days.” Instead, the argument was that as the price of oil goes up, capacity falls, and…
Thai to Stop Flying New York to Bangkok?
Flyertalkers are reporting that Thai Airways is canceling its New York-JFK to Bangkok flights, effective July 1. Actually, the consensus seems to be that Thai isn’t currently selling any tickets on the route after that date, and that the flight is ‘under review’ with a decision to be made shortly, possibly next week. Asian long-haul flights clearly are gas guzzlers, they need really high load factors and high average fares in order to be profitable. My sense has long been that Thai has neither for this route, scheduled at roughly 17 hours of travel time. It’s sad to see flights like these disappear, they’ve long been some of the better award redemption values and certainly anyone who has booked their travel for dates beyond July 1 could be in a difficult spot. Thai will certainly…
Which Hotel Progam is Most Rewarding?
In response to a post on Starwood Hotels in-hotel points-earning, reader Greg wrote: Based on your comment about SPG not a great program based strictly on hotel revenue, which program do you think is the greatest value, and in turn, easiest to get rewards? My somewhat meandering answer: Easiest redemption is Starwood and now Hilton since they’re now advertising no capacity controls as well. (Starwood is going to have to come out with something new, at least for Platinum members, since Hilton has matched their unique selling proposition. I predict that they will.) Starwood has plenty of properties that I actually want to redeem at, much more so than Hilton, but that’s a function of my luxe preference. And Starwood is a great place to accumulate points via credit card spending in order to redeem…
American Ups Award Prices, Requires $5 Payment to Book Free Tickets Online
This is already being much discussed elsewhere, but American has imposed a $5 fee for website award bookings. The old argument was that reservation centers were more costly than web, an airline wanted to (a) push its reservations online to lower costs and (b) charge a fee for the ‘extra’ service of having a person handle the booking. Now, even the cheaper online booking will come at a fee. Why? Because they’re looking for revenue sources, and because they can. Online booking is still cheaper than booking by phone, and American has a captive market to some extent amongst AAdvantage members looking to redeem their miles. With millions of awards redeemed annually, multiply those out by $5 and they’re predicting serious revenue. Of course, AAdvantage members aren’t really captive at least in terms of their…
Award Chart Deal for Business Class to Europe
Cathay Pacific used to offer the best award value for business class from the US East Coast to Europe. You could redeem 60,000 AsiaMiles for business class on partner British Airways using their distance-based award chart. Then in October they bumped the mileage requirement to 80,000. Still a definite value compared to BA’s own chart (which requires 100,000 miles to London and 120,000 for several cities beyond). But not the mind-blower it once was. Many a time I had folks transfer 50,000 Starwood points to Cathay Pacific to get the needed 60,000 AsiaMiles and redeem for BA business class. The especially nice thing about that deal is that I’ve found availability on British Airways from the US East Coast to be excellent. One Mile at a Time points out another great redemption value across the…
Free Best Western Platinum Status
Ripped from Frugal Travel Guy: A bank is giving away BW status with a new account, but it seems you can sign up without a banking relationship. Here is the info you’ll need: Go to www.gcciasia.com/scb Enter promo code: BWSCB2008 First 6 Digits of Card: 486419 You’ll get room upgrades, bonus points and the right to buy points at $10 per thousand Haven’t done this myself, so your mileage may vary.
A Few Quick Thoughts on Last Night’s Freddie Awards
Just a few brief thoughts on last night’s Freddie Awards. Marriott did exceptionally well this year. I’m not sure why. There haven’t been any real improvements to their program that I can point to. I can only figure that it’s their get out the vote efforts (of which they did quite a lot) rather than a reflection of substantive improvements. Starwood did well in Asia Pacific and Europe, Middle East, Africa. But they really didn’t excel in the Americas. I’m not really sure why the split. Starwood didn’t even win for best award redemption in the Americas, which is just bizarre since they really do structurally offer the best award redemption. Hilton has introduced a system to match Starwood, but presumably too late to influence this year’s Freddie Awards. If the voting public is paying attention…
Air Traffic Delays Are Awful, Everything Else is Worse
Economic growth in general and deregulation in particular have brought about lower real airline ticket prices and substantial increases in passenger traffic. Infrastructure hasn’t kept pace and air traffic control hasn’t kept pace. And so we face congested airports and airspace. This frustrates travelers, who live in a world of tradeoffs but take what they have as given and long for what they’ve given up. Richard Posner is one such business traveler. And the usually sober, sometimes brilliant, and certainly prolific judge and scholar offers up an unusually misguided rant on why he believes “airline service is so bad” over at the Becker-Posner Blog, Becker rebuts. Posner lays out a myriad of unsupported gripes and mixes in blatantly incorrect facts, leading him to circle around some rather silly notions about re-regulating the aviation industry. Becker…
