Webflyer.com wrote up details of Delta’s new pay with miles feature. Skymiles members with a co-branded American Express card can now use their miles to pay directly for tickets rather than searching award availability. I haven’t previously mentioned that this was coming (I don’t think) mainly because it doesn’t merit much attention. As I expected, the best you’ll ever do by using miles as cash for a ticket is one cent per mile in value. Now, Delta miles aren’t generally worth much more than a cent, I use my United and American miles to redeem (with ease, relatively speaking) for premium cabin international awards. In recent years I’ve booked international first class tickets on tons of airlines including Qantas, Air Tahiti Nui, Asiana, United, Thai, ANA, and Lufthansa (not to mention business class on many…
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Is SeatGuru on the Decline?
For years I’ve recommended checking SeatGuru when making airline reservations. There really are better and worse seats on most aircraft, and SeatGuru always seemed to be ‘in the know’ and their advice was generally spot on. But more and more I’m noticing that their recommendations are flawed. Either the information is outdated, or I just disagree with it. And when it’s outdated, submitting feedback doesn’t seem to get it corrected. Take, for example, Asiana’s 747s. There’s no indication on the website that Asiana offers both an old-style first and business class, and a refitted version. (The refitted 747 is handling most of the New York-JFK – Seoul flying these days.) All they show is the passenger and combi old-style. My personal pet peeve, though, is that SeatGuru says there are power ports onboard the old…
Choosing Frequent Flyer Programs to Belong To
Tim Winship offers his advice on how to choose which frequent flyer programs to belong to. On the whole it boils down to: choose the program of the airline with the most service at your home airport. Not terrible, but there are much better answers. Winship thinks you should pick a program and stick with it: Since it doesn’t cost anything to enroll in a frequent flyer program, the temptation is to sign up for them all, in the interest of being ever-ready to earn miles for any and all flights. The problem with that approach is that you will find yourself spread too thin. The most-requested frequent flyer award is the free round-trip ticket within the continental U.S., offered in most programs for 25,000 miles. That’s 25,000 miles in one program. Banking hundreds of…
I Don’t Trust TripAdvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Award Picks
Frequent readers of this blog likely know the general disdain in which I hold most hotel ranking lists. The various ‘best of’ compilations are usually written by people who haven’t been to the properties, and many of the lists seem influenced by advertising buys. TripAdvisor has issued its new 2008 Travelers’ Choice Awards, which represent a slightly different take… it amounts to an amalgamation of traveler opinions. And while I find TripAdvisor to be a useful site for picking up very specific comments on properties and looking for consistent themes across reviews, picking the best properties from the masses of opinions on the internet doesn’t work very well in practice. Here are just a few of the oddities which show up at a quick glance: The Signature at MGM Grand is supposedly the best luxury…
$100 Rates at the Fairmont Empress, Vancouver Island
The Fairmont Empress Vancouver Island has $100 room rates bookable through 2008. They’re capacity controlled, of course, and you must book by January 31. But this represents an excellent deal, especially in summer when room nights can go for over $400. The rate is fully prepaid, but you can cancel 45 days or more prior to stay to receive all but one night’s accomodation back. Update: Yes, yes, of course, commenters are right, this hotel is not in Vancouver, British Columbia but rather in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Good deal nonetheless, I guess “Canada” is just “Canada” to me (funny, since I can pick apart the nuances of geography across South Asia. Heh).
New Year’s Resolutions for Miles and Points
I’ve seen several New Year’s Resolution stories, most of them are silly, and none are worse than the median piece on New Year’s resolutions for managing your miles, points, and travel — because anyone who would actually use the advice likely knows far more than the person writing the piece. So here’s my brief attempt at a set of New Year’s Resolutions. As always, your mileage may vary… And for many of my readers, even these will seem utterly pedantic. Keep track of your miles. A free tool like MilePort is my preferred method. It’s a program on your computer, you enter your frequent flyer numbers and passwords, and it updates your balances with a single click. And since they’re all in one place it’s easier to keep track of what miles you still need…
Redeem Continental Miles for Helicopter Flights?
Continental has started offering complimentary helicopter flights to Newark for business class passengers flying to Europe, Asia, and select other destinations. Paid business only, no upgrade or award customers need apply.That’s a good perk when the helicopter schedule matches your schedule, and when the two helicopter departure locations are convenient. The interesting thing for me, though? The moderator of the Flyertalk Continental forum adds this nugget: You can tack a helicopter flight onto a reward ticket for 10k miles each way. Interesting way to add a bit of a more unique experience to an award redemption! I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere though, so anyone with experience please chime in!
Who to fly, which program to earn with?
For top-tier elites, those that fly 100,000 miles a year or more, the best benefits are with United and American. United’s 100,000 mile flyers get (6) international upgrades a year valid on most fares and confirmable at booking (subject to award space availability). In addition there are up to (8) confirmed domestic upgrades a year, and that’s on top of the upgrades earned by lower level elites (4 500-mile upgrades per 10,000 miles flown on United or United Express). American’s 100,000 mile flyers get (8) international upgrades a year valid on most fares and confirmable at booking (subject to award space availability, but most importantly these are exempt from American’s required ‘buy up’ requirement to pay cash in addition to miles for international upgrades). Unlike at United, domestic upgrades are ‘unlimited’ with no upgrade coupons…
Dinner at The Source
Last night I had dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s new restaurant in DC, The Source. It’s attached to the Newseum in Penn Quarter, which hasn’t opened yet, and it’s across the street from Capital Grill. Brand new place, I don’t think it’s even been reviewed in the Washington Post yet. Verdict: outstanding. Not quite in the league of CityZen, either in terms of service or quite the same heights of cuisine. But really excellent nonetheless, especially with so many good trendy places having fallen recently (IndeBleu and Zengo are classic examples of the phenomenon).There really is something to the idea that the best places seem to burn out quickly, perhaps after six months or a year, so it’s best to go to good new places early. Don’t know whether the excellence here will last, but the…
Slaying the StarNet Dragon
Last week I described United’s system for denying awards on its partners, StarNet. Airline partners offer award seats, United won’t book them, and its representatives say the award “isn’t available.” I didn’t manage to get United to book first class award seats between Bangkok and Europe. But Lufthansa seats were easier to secure. I knew the flights I wanted, the ANA award search tool showed them as available. And when the United outsourced customer service rep said she couldn’t “see” the flights I gave her the flight numbers and she entered the request — they came back confirmed. The best hint, it seems, that United is ‘filtering’ an award for a given flight is that the rep won’t just say “there aren’t any award seats on that flight” or “all I have is coach on…
