Travel

Attention Shoppers, Frequent Flyer Miles in Aisle Three If you’re one of the many cost-conscious consumers who plan to cut back on travel in the coming months, there’s a way to keep your frequent flyer account growing without spending a dime on airline tickets or hotel stays: holiday shopping. All of the largest airline and hotel loyalty programs feature what I call mileage malls, networks of online retailers that award miles or points for purchases. And, in the run-up to Christmas, most of those mileage malls are offering extra miles. Here are some examples: Through December 31, members of American’s AAdvantage program will earn double miles for purchases at 21 participating AAdvantage eShopping mall merchants, including Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble.com, Bose, Cabela’s, Circuit City, Dell Home, drugstore.com, eToys, Gap.com, landsend.com, Macys.com, Overstock.com, Pottery Barn, RedEnvelope, Saks.com, Sears, Staples.com, Home Depot, TigerDirect, Victoria’s Secret, and
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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 opportunity. And this is no exception. Last week, Yapta.com extended its airfare alert service to include frequent flyer award seats. Sign up to receive an email notification when the price drops for
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Delta Admits Mistake, Rolls Back Seating Policy During the same week that US Airways rescinded policies that adversely affected its elite frequent flyers, Delta is reversing course on a recent move that has similarly disgruntled its best customers. In Delta’s case, the discontinued service is its Coach Choice Seats, introduced less than a month ago as part of integrating the operations of Delta and Northwest. Northwest already sold preferred seats—”select bulkhead, exit row and forward cabin-seating”—for an extra $5 to $25, depending on flight length. Delta began doing the same in late October. Those choice seats were already earmarked on a space-available basis for elite members of Delta’s SkyMiles program, and for those paying a premium for unrestricted coach tickets. So putting the seats up for sale reduced the number of preferred seats available to elite members. Those elite flyers are Delta’s most profitable customers. And they apparently made their dissatisfaction
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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 for a free round-trip domestic ticket. With the Southwest earning rate, you’ll have to spend $6,400—28 percent more—to earn the 16 Rapid Rewards credits needed for a free ticket. That’s
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We’ve been keeping a close eye on Thanksgiving travel, paying particular attention to demand (falling, due to the worsening recession) and ticket prices (also falling, reflecting the softening demand). The Air Transport Association (ATA), a trade group representing the airlines, has released its projections for Thanksgiving flights, giving us a glimpse of holiday travel from a slightly different perspective: the passenger’s. Picture this: full flights. During the three busiest days—Sunday, November 30; Monday, December 1; and Wednesday, November 26—planes will fly 90 percent full on average. And, warns ATA President and CEO James C. May, “Make no mistake—the airports will be busy and many flights will be 100 percent full.” Whether the plane is 90 or 100 percent full, holiday flyers should be prepared for long lines at security check points and at boarding gates. The ATA recommends that holiday travelers “Allow plenty of time for checking in and for security screening
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All eyes are on the Thanksgiving travel period as a harbinger of future ticket prices. While the sky-high fuel costs that were hobbling airlines have abated, the economy has gone into a tailspin, undermining demand for travel and other non-essential goods and services. Will the airlines respond by cutting prices? When? And by how much? Our recent survey of SmarterTravel.com readers’ Thanksgiving travel plans suggested that plenty of consumers will either be staying closer to home, traveling by car instead of flying, or not traveling at all this year. And that scenario would suggest that airlines will indeed be forced to scale back prices to keep cost-conscious flyers in the air. A recent report by Travelocity provides some hard data on holiday airfares, confirming that prices are softening. According to the study, “While airfares remain higher than last year, Travelocity’s Thanksgiving data report shows a decrease in domestic airfare over the past several weeks. On average, travelers
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Yesterday’s approval by the Department of Justice of the Delta-Northwest merger was the final hurdle in the long process of creating the world’s largest airline: Delta Air Lines, based in Atlanta, with about 75,000 employees. Travelers won’t see any immediate changes. According to Ed Bastian, Delta’s chief financial officer, as reported by the Associated Press: “It’s probably going to take us two years before we can really operate as a single carrier.” During that transition period—which some expect to take closer to three years—Northwest will do business as a subsidiary of Delta, as the two carriers’ various operations are gradually integrated. It will be a complicated process, at times messy, chaotic, and confusing. Naturally, there are many questions in the minds of travelers, many of which concern the future of the two airlines’ frequent flyer programs, Delta SkyMiles and Northwest WorldPerks. Here’s what we know, and what we don’t: First and foremost, no one will
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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 500-mile minimum. Note the word “restore” here. That’s because all Mileage Plus members routinely received a minimum of 500 miles for short flights until, beginning July 1, United changed their policy to
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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 first airline to scrap its minimum miles policy, effective this past May 1—denies minimum miles to all Dividend Miles members, making no exceptions for elites. United followed US Airways’ lead,
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“Effective October 31, 2008, NWA Cargo will reduce its fuel surcharges in certain markets in response to recent declines in the price of jet fuel.” That’s the lead sentence of a news release issued yesterday by Northwest’s cargo department. The reductions for domestic and transatlantic flights are just under 5 percent. Since the price of oil has plummeted by more than half—from $147 a barrel in July to less than $65 a barrel today—those decreases seem woefully inadequate. But that’s a quibble. What’s more important is the implicit recognition that fuel costs and fuel surcharges are fundamentally linked. Fuel costs have declined, therefore Northwest is lowering its fuel surcharges—which, after all, were imposed to offset a temporary spike in fuel costs. Indeed, that’s what a fuel surcharge is: A temporary add-on to the published price to cover an unanticipated increase in costs. That’s what ‘fuel surcharge’ means. So Northwest has proved that, at least in its cargo
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