Tag Archives for northwest.
I may have mentioned this before, but I don’t think so. Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Northwest’s co-branded Visa product is matching the standard signup incentives offered by United and American — 20,000 miles with first purchase (though US Bank won’t waive the fee for the first year like Chase and Citibank will). Still, if you’re going to sign up for a Northwest Visa this looks like the best offer.
Northwest is offering 500 bonus miles for shopping online through their Worldperks Mall and spending $150 or more between July 1 and September 15. Registration is required. See the details on the offer, because some of their participating merchants (eg hotel, car, flowers) are excluded from earning the bonus. All your online purchases should — of course — receive some kind of reward, whether it’s Northwest miles or something else. The best one-stop sources for learning about the best bonuses are the extensive RewardsDB charts and the Webflyer tool. It’s always worth checking out these resources before making an online purchase of any kind. (And it’s not just miles – you can earn cash rebates, too.)
If you enter promo code BTN06 while signing up for BizPerks, the Northwest Airlines small business program, you’ll receive 50,000 bonus Biz Perks points. These covert to, say, 5 free club passes and 5 free drink coupons or a domestic upgrade and a couple club passes. The offer expires September 30th. Update: To qualify for the points you need a flight in full fare coach (B fare) or higher by September 30th credited to the Bizperks account. Still worth signing up just in case, but no longer the gimme it first appeared.
Last month Northwest began charging $15 to pre-reserve its best (sic) coach seats. Now they’ve relented and decided not to charge this fee to elite members. One benefit has always been blocking the better coach seats for elites. There’s not really much in the way of ‘better’ coach seats on Northwest, unlike United which offers elites extra legroom at the front of the coach cabin. But all of a sudden non-elites could take these seats for $15, and even elites had to pay. (Bizarrely under the scheme, elites would get upgraded to first class but still be charged extra money for cruddy the coach seating they had pre-reserved.) Now Northwest says they’ll still reserve some of these seats exclusively for elites and won’t charge elites for ‘coach choice’ seating. It’s a small victory, a very…
Last week I mentioned that I didn’t think Northwest’s move to charge for ‘premium’ seats in coach (which, outside of exit rows, aren’t in any way actually better) was a big deal. For infrequent flyers it’s neutral or a positive, the opportunity to access seats — though not meaningfully better — otherwise were mostly available to Northwest elites. For frequent flyers it’s more or less a non-issue: if you’re regularly flying Northwest and spending much time at all in coach you should be changing airlines. The only positive Northwest has is its domestic upgrade program, which isn’t just complimentary but also something they regularly deliver on. Still, charging elites for something they used to get for free (without even anything new offered up in return) is never a good thing. But what really irks me…
Northwest is again explicitly targeting Asia-Pacific frequent flyers with offers of an elite status match. Details are rather scarce on the website, certainly they’ll match up to Gold (mid-tier) but I wonder whether they’ll go to Platinum since they’re looking for any possible incremental revenue while in bankruptcy. Presumably matched status will last through the end of the year. No information is provided on what documentation is required of your existing status levels.In all likelihood this will operate in a similar manner as when they offered it in 2005, detailed discussion of which can be found at Flyertalk.com.
Check out the quick Northwest Worldperks 101 and take the quiz (you really can’t fail) and earn 100 miles plus you’ll be registered to earn 2,000 miles when flying within 90 days. At the end of the quiz you have the option to move on to Worldperks 102 for another 100 miles plus you’ll be registered for 1,000 miles when making 2 qualifying purchases within 60 days.The 200 miles for the quizzes post instantly.
Northwest Vacations is offering airfare and two nights in Hawaii from $94. Choose one person. I’ve found travel between March 1 and March 31. You’re using promo code WVRQ400 and for the cheapest prices will want to pick Monday through Thursday travel. Cities other than Los Angeles for departures are slightly higher. And yes this deal earns Northwest miles. Thanks to Flyertalk. Update Jan 20: The cheapest deals are now gone and the promotion has been revised. No more $94 vacations. Here’s the new promotion in case anyone finds it useful.
Northwest is offering discounted award redemption from North America to Sydney for travel between February 1 and April 30, 2006. The offer is a 20,000 mile reduction in cost for coach travel (reduced from 100,000 to 80,000 miles) and a 30,000 mile reduction for business class (reduced from 150,000 to 120,000 miles) and applies to travel on Air Tahiti Nui one-stop flights from either New York-JFK or Los Angeles via Papeete. This still is an expensive award relative to competitors. United’s regular coach award to Australia is 60,000 miles and business class is 90,000 miles — 10,000 less than the usual Northwest coach award and only 10,000 more than the discounted coach award! But for folks stuck in the Worldperks program this is a good deal, and in my experience Air Tahiti Nui offers excellent…
Northwest now requires travelers seeking a bereavement fare to join its frequent flyer program first. Jokes about bereavement fares are probably in poor taste, so I’ll leave it at that.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
