Travel&Vacation

The subject line of yesterday’s email from United may as well have been intentionally designed to send a chill up the spines of millions of members of the airline’s frequent flyer program: “Mileage Plus announces 2009 program changes.” Recent history suggests that any changes to an airline mileage program are almost certain to be bad news. And while these three from United are a mixed bag, the overall impact is unquestionably negative. 1. Minimum Miles for Elites First, let’s consider what United is characterizing as the good news. According to the email, “The 500-mile minimum accrual on United flights will be restored for elite members effective January 1, 2009.” And it will be reinstated retroactively, so elite members’ flights for the entire year will be recalculated to earn the
(Read the full post about ‘United Will Raise Prices of Many Frequent Flyer Awards’…)

Coming to Your Inbox: Frequent Flyer Award Alerts It’s never been easier to accumulate thousands upon thousands of frequent flyer miles. Finding a free seat to redeem them for? Not so easy. The process of locating and booking an award seat remains an exasperating one. Because airlines continually add and delete award seats from inventory—from 330 days before the departure date until the flight pushes back from the gate—finding a frequent flyer seat is a hit-and-miss process at best. While there’s no seat available at this moment, one may turn up later today, or tomorrow, or next week. The only way to know is to keep checking back with the airline, day in and day out. Most people have better things to do with their time. Generally, where there’s a problem, there’s a business
(Read the full post about ‘Coming to Your Inbox: Frequent Flyer Award Alerts’…)

Southwest Puts Miles-for-Dining on the Menu Southwest announced that Rapid Rewards members can earn credits by dining at more than 9,000 restaurants participating in the Rapid Rewards Dining program. To participate, Rapid Rewards members register up to five credit cards on the Rapid Rewards Dining website. Thereafter, whenever they use a registered card to charge a meal at a participating restaurant, they will earn a quarter credit every time their cumulative expenditure reaches $100. There’s also a quarter credit enrollment bonus awarded after the first $25. Miles-for-dining has been a standard feature of larger airline programs for years. In most programs, the miles-for-dining feature awards five miles for every $1 spent. That means you’d spend $5,000 to earn the 25,000 miles required
(Read the full post about ‘Southwest Puts Miles-for-Dining on the Menu’…)

Concerned about the price of your next airline ticket? Then make like an economist—consider supply and demand. In this case, supply is the number of flights operated by the airlines and available to travelers for booking. And demand is a measure of consumer interest in purchasing seats on those flights, at the prices currently in effect. How the airlines manage the balance between supply and demand has real world implications. If demand falls faster than flights can be cut, the airlines will find themselves with a surfeit of empty seats and be forced to discount ticket prices to attract a shrinking pool of increasingly price-conscious travelers. Alternatively, if the airlines can reduce capacity more or less in lockstep with slowing demand, they will be able to maintain full planes
(Read the full post about ‘U.S. Airlines Will Cut 265,000 Flights in 4th Quarter’…)

When American announced, on June 20, that the next day it would begin collecting a $5 fee for issuing most AAdvantage award tickets, it seemed like the beginning of the end for airline mileage programs. It wasn’t the dollar amount—$5 isn’t a deal-breaker for most travelers. What was shocking and dispiriting was that American had blithely compromised one of the core principles of loyalty programs. As I opined at the time, “The new policy marks the end of widely available, truly free travel awards at the industry’s first and largest mileage program.” Here we are, four months later, and the fee has unaccountably disappeared. The original announcement on American’s website now reads: “We’re sorry, but the page you have requested could not be found. It may have expired.” The charge is no
(Read the full post about ‘The Mysterious Case of American’s Disappearing Frequent Flyer Fee’…)

When is a dining-for-miles promotion blog-worthy? We routinely see offers for double dining miles—pretty good since most frequent flyer program members normally earn five miles per $1 spent. Upping that to 10 miles, for doing something you’d do anyway, is a solid deal. But because such offers are relatively common, they don’t typically merit special mention. Today’s featured deal does. Members of the Delta SkyMiles Dining program who spend at least $200 at participating restaurants by December 15 will earn 1,000 bonus miles. (To qualify, you must register and agree to receive marketing emails.) So far, that’s an extra five miles per $1, double the normal earning rate. Good, but not exceptional. What makes this offer noteworthy is the type of miles earned: They’re elite-qualifying
(Read the full post about ‘Delta Offers More (and Better) Miles for Dining’…)

Frequent travelers are no strangers to the slippery use of language. Surcharges that have nothing to do with service or convenience are labeled “service fees” and “convenience fees.” Advertised prices fail to disclose the full price. The friendly skies are anything but. So let’s begin with what I take to be a simple truth. To most travelers, “No Blackout Dates” means restriction-free. In the realm of travel loyalty programs, where that promise most often appears, it means there are no barriers to booking an award flight or a free room night. Technically, it can be argued that it’s a lesser claim—namely, that there are no pre-established days, as in a published list of blacked-out days, on which awards are not offered. Capacity controls may remain in place, limiting access to
(Read the full post about ‘Marriott Will Shed Blackouts but Not Limits on Award Availability’…)

Here’s the policy change announcement from American’s website: Effective for travel beginning January 1, 2009, non-elite status members traveling on flights currently governed by a minimum mileage guarantee will accrue the actual base miles flown or the applicable percentage* of base miles flown, and any associated bonuses will be calculated accordingly. A few sentences later, readers are treated to a more intelligible formulation of the new policy: “Members will no longer receive a minimum of 500 points for each eligible flight.” Non-elite members, that is—elite members will continue earning 500 miles, plus the associated elite bonuses, for short-haul flights. This is hardly an industry first. Nor is it the harshest version of the no-minimum-miles policy. US Airways—the
(Read the full post about ‘No More Minimum Frequent Flyer Miles for American Customers’…)

Today, Delta’s new three-tier award chart takes effect, giving SkyMiles members a choice of three combinations of price and availability. The low-price award (as it’s called on Delta’s award booking widget) requires the fewest miles but also offers the fewest available award seats; the medium-price award is more expensive and gives the program member expanded seat availability; and the high-price award requires the most miles but also guarantees access to any unsold seat. Award bookings can mix and match award types, combining more and less expensive awards for a round-trip as availability dictates. So, for example, the most popular award, a domestic coach ticket, is now priced at 12,500 miles each way at the lowest price level, 20,000 miles for medium, and 30,000 for high. Compared to
(Read the full post about ‘Delta’s New Award Scheme Faces Reality Check’…)

More than a year after launching its frequent flyer program, Virgin America is finally allowing its 500,000-plus Elevate members to cash in their points for free flights. That’s certainly a milestone for Elevate members. Is it a milestone for airline loyalty programs, as Virgin America claims? The program has two features which make it a potential game-changer. First and foremost, awards are free of the blackout dates and other capacity controls that so frustrate members of other programs. If there’s an unsold seat, an Elevate member has as much chance of booking it for points as a paying passenger has of purchasing it. Secondly, rather than earning miles according to the distance flown, Elevate members earn points that reflect the price paid for their tickets: five points for every $1
(Read the full post about ‘Virgin America Rewrites (Some) Mileage Program Rules’…)