Tag Archives for upgrades.
American Airlines is surveying some top elites on how they might reorganize systemwide upgrades, the upgrades American’s top elites and million milers receive that can be used to secure a seat in a higher cabin than what you purchase any time after booking. They’re looking at how they might replace at least one of these upgrades with other rewards. Here’s what they seem to be testing, according to reports I’ve seen:
World of Hyatt extended current elite status so that members who qualified last year are able to use the benefits that they earned through 2021. However there’s a hole in Hyatt’s approach: confirmed suite upgrades and free nights for those members – set to expire February 2021 – were not extended. Hyatt says expect to hear something in weeks.
Frequent flyers know the feeling of waiting for a ‘battlefield promotion’ at the gate. We have our elite status and upgrade requested, and we’re hovering waiting to see what our chances are.
Now you don’t have to wait until four hours prior to flight to begin refreshing the upgrade list obsessively in the American Airlines mobile app because it now shows your flight’s upgrade list 12 hours prior to departure.
Along with extending elite status by a year American Airlines is also extending systemwide upgrade certificates. Any systemwide upgrade expiring by January 31, 2021 will be extended to July 31, 2021.
But what about getting new upgrades when status is extended? And what about upgrades from last year that have been applied to 2020 travel?
Hyatt has already extended reservations flexibility through June 30, including refunds for prepaid hotel reservations for those who need or want to cancel.
They’ve also now worked through how to handle elite status, upgrade certificates, and free night awards. And they’re also announcing a further pause to expiration of points.
In coach you can have a tray for the drink you brought on board yourself, a tray for the sandwich, and a tray for your laptop or tablet. You can stay as far away from other passengers and cabin crew as you wish, more or less. In first class you’re packed in next to people.
Why on earth are people accepting upgrades now?
There’s not a lot of use bidding for upgrades today for most folks, though remaining Air Canada flights if you’re traveling may have seats available. In the future this will be a more useful feature.
Selling miles makes a ton of sense and it’s really strange that it wasn’t something Aeroplan had done. It doesn’t make any sense buying at regular price. What Air Canada – and every other airline – should be doing now is offering miles for sale at a deep discount.
Effective today United Airlines plans to stop offering some seats that used to be available for upgrade to members of their MileagePlus program, holding those back to sell to infrequent customers at check-in instead. This helps the airline generate extra short term cash now as they prepare for a drop in revenue of as much as 70%.
United’s new PointsPlus upgrade program – which replaces regional and global confirmed upgrade certificates – is scheduled to launch on Wednesday.
Overnight on Tuesday nights the ability to confirm upgrades with existing regional and global certificates will be frozen in preparation for this launch. Then upgrades should re-open on Wednesday with a bank of points replacing existing upgrade certificates, and the ability to use those points in a more granular manner.
When only one premium cabin seat is available do you decide that sitting together is more important, even if it’s less comfortable in back? Offer it up to your less frequent flying partner? Gladly take it yourself, you earned it?
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 »
