Tagging Miles

Southwest Companion Pass and Corporate Responsibility

By 22 Comments





Today we learn of news of Southwest’s changes to the Southwest Companion Pass, and how the needed 110,000 Rapid Rewards points are calculated, or rather, what points count, and what points do not count. I can’t say that this surprises me. While many would like to blame Bloggers for killing the deal, I would rather ask the question of Corporate Responsibility. 

Lets accept the fact that many bloggers blogged about the Southwest Companion Pass and the different ways you can get it. I won’t even bother to link to such posts because they were a dime a dozen. It was a great deal, it really was. But lets look at the others side:

Timing

Ok, so, lets think like a Southwest Rapid Rewards program executive. I’m seeing tons of different posts about how people can get the Southwest Companion Pass without flying my airline. I need to put a stop to this! 

I’m thinking that if such an executive were to believe this, that they would’ve made either (1) a no-notice change, or (2) an announcement now and change to come, right?

No, instead, they choose to make the changes at the start of the new year. While this is probably logical, in that, it doesn’t hurt Southwest by leaving the door open until 1 January, it probably hurt others.

Lets look at a few data points:

I did a single search and here’s what I got:

Southwest Corporate Responsibility

Ok, that’s not necessarily the point I was getting at, but, let me play things out further.

For example, Deals We Like blogged about how you can buy Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) points at 50% off, and then transfer them to Marriott (getting 3 Marriott Rewards Points per 1 SPG point), and then get a Marriott Points and Hotel Vacation package, including getting 100,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points.

And Deals we Like is not the only one who blogged about it! Many discussed the idea of buying points specifically for the purposes of getting the Southwest Companion Pass.

Getting to Corporate Responsibility

What I’m getting at is the fact that anyone at Southwest that saw how much press their Companion Pass was getting, would similarly see the different ways that one could accrue sufficient points to get that Companion Pass. It seems to me that it is very irresponsible of Southwest to make a change on 1 January, when in fact many people would have already made significant purchases in order to have sufficient points for the new year.

So while we many will argue that Bloggers kill deals.  But, on that logic, if the airlines and hotel companies are reading these blogs, then shouldn’t they be responsible too? Sure, kill a deal. But have some Corporate Responsibility. Don’t leave a deal out there until just before everyone wants to jump on it. Southwest likely didn’t gain anything by waiting. SPG-Marriott probably got a ton. Chase maybe even some, but Southwest, the primary offender in this case, got nothing. Whereas, they could’ve probably saved many people some angst by announcing significantly earlier.

What do you think? Should Southwest get some of the blame here?

Your 2014 American Airlines Business Extra Points Expire Soon!

By 3 Comments

I think we all enjoy double or triple dipping. The American Airlines Business Extra program is a way to do that, if you fly on American. That said, if you’ve been using American Airlines Business Extra for a few years, your points earned in 2014 will expire soon! You see, points expire 31 December, 2 years from earning them.

American Airlines Business ExtraA

How to tell what American Airlines Business Extra points are expiring

The interface is actually really good for Business Extra. Just log in–and you can use your AAdvantage number–then go to Account Summary. Then you’ll have a nice little message like below:

American Airlines Business Extra

As you can see, I’ve got a handful of points ready to expire on 31 December 2016, luckily, though, the majority of my points are good for another year or two. As I look at the amounts per year, it definitely seems like I’ve been spending more and more with American over the last couple of years. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes next year with the new AAdvantage changes. 

Redeeming Business Extra Points

Now you’re probably thinking – “what am I going to do with these points?” well, here are a few things you can use them for, such as: 

American Airlines Business Extra Awards

I for one, will be getting a few Admirals Club passes myself. In fact, regular readers might even see a give away when the Admirals Club passes actually arrive to Tagging Miles HQ! Just be advised, they actually mail out the passes, so, make sure you have enough time to receive them. Full disclosure – I have not tried to use any of the other awards, like domestic or international, so if anyone has any experience with how readily available those are–considering how stingy American is with saver awards–, please share in the comments.

How many American Airlines Business Extra points do you have expiring?

The Basics of Searching for Award Space

By 2 Comments

It is very easy to get into intermediate and expert territory when it comes to finding award space and booking awards. That can sometimes be intimidating. This is my attempt at boiling down the very basics of searching for award space

I’ll start with a couple of assumptions:

  • You know where you want to go, at least roughly.
  • You have sufficient miles.
  • I’ll use Chicago, O’Hare to Bali, Indonesia (a nice aspirational destination) as the example.

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 1 – Know what airlines fly to your destination

Identify the airlines that fly to your desired destination. You’d be amazed at how many times I decide to go to a particular place, only to find out that while I wanted to fly on a particular airline (or miles), they prove to be difficult because either (a) the partner airline that flies charges fuel surcharges, or (b) no partner airlines release space, or (c) no partner airlines fly to that particular airport / city (like Star Alliance abandoning Cambodia)

To identify what airlines fly to your desired destination, I recommend using OpenFlights, which I’ve written about before, but be aware that it may not make the distinction between seasonal and regular flights (or what specific days an airline flies).

Below, you can see, for example, all of the routes that you can take to get to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Routes to/from Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia, courtesy of OpenFlights.org

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 2 – Know what airlines fly from home (or close by)

You’re probably noticing the trend here. I always recommend that you break your award search into each leg. The key to any award travel search is to break a trip up into its component pieces, assuming you cannot fly non-stop. Then I usually search for the over water portion first. Now this logic may not necessarily work when booking on some airline sites, like United’s new routing rules and engine. But for the most part, you’ll notice that overwater flights are the hardest to find.

So for getting from Chicago to Indonesia, you will for the most part be looking for TransPacific (TPAC) flights. 

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Trans Pacific (TPAC) options via gcmap.com

 

The exception, of course is United, which might come up with an option via Europe.

Basics of searching for award travel

United via Europe Option

Your chosen airline or alliance will limit your options—unless you have plenty of miles in various transferrable currencies). 

Basics of Searching for Award Space: Step 3 – Connecting the Dots

So now you know how you can get from Chicago to Asia, and you know what options you can connect onward to Denpasar-Bali, Indonesia.

The most logical option, if you have the flexibility, would be to focus on those one-stop itineraries, which would be:

Basics of Searching for Award Space

Chicago to Denpasar with different alliances: Blue: OneWorld, Red: Star Alliance, Gold: SkyTeam

Now, logically that’s easiest to work with. If you have to work with connections, well, now you start to run up against the risk of agents telling you that what you want is a multiple award trip. That would be leaning more toward an intermediate level. So, we’ll go ahead and leave things here.

Please, share your questions – how can I improve this first level basics of searching for awards?

The Secret to United’s New Award Search Tool

By 3 Comments

If you’ve attempted to work with United’s New Award Search Tool, you know how much of a pain it is.

Perhaps the most prevalent screen is this:

United's New Award Search Tool

United’s New Award Search Tool

Now, some in the software industry would call this a feature. I would call this one of my most vexing customer experiences.

What causes the issue with United’s New Award Search Tool?

The easy answer is, if you do a search, then you chance anything but the date, you get the above error.

So how do you fix it? 

You can’t.

But, in the software development industry–at least the one I work in–we like to offer mitigation techniques, or even better, workarounds.

So, your workaround for this particular issue is going back to the united.com site and starting again. The good news is, that United.com should retain the itinerary you were trying to find. So when you go back to the home screen, it should have pre-populated like this:

United's New Award Search Tool

The positive news is that if you go back to this “home” screen, you should be able to click “search” and get what you were looking to search before the error message.

united-hell-4

Overall, there are significant challenges to consistent, easy searches on United’s New Award Search Tool. While this post doesn’t lay out a solution to avoid the errors all together, hopefully the mitigation strategy offered is at least something that reduces your frustration.

American AAdvantage Program Updates – November 2016

By 3 Comments

American Airlines continues to release AAdvantage Program Updates, as we move toward the “go live” of a few new aspects of the program, previously announced in June.

Just a brief summary of the AAdvantage Program Updates announced in June:

AAdvantage Redeemable Mileage went Revenue Based (for the most part)

AAdvantage RDM earn rates as of 1 August 2016 - courtesy of American airlines.

AAdvantage RDM earn rates as of 1 August 2016 – courtesy of American airlines.

Of course, we’ve learned subsequently that there are a handful of ways that you can accrue mileage based on miles flown, rather than the price of your ticket. For example, revenue tickets booked with Citi Thank You Points (TYP) categorize as a “Special Fare” and receive miles flown.

A New Status Level and I don’t just mean Platinum Pro

American AAdvantage previously made this chart available, highlighting their new mid-tier Platinum Pro, which will no doubt make many legacy US Airways elites happy.

Four AAdvantage Status Levels in 2017. Courtesy of American Airlines.

Four AAdvantage Status Levels in 2017. Courtesy of American Airlines.

Except that when talking about upgrade windows, AAdvantage snuck in the ConciergeKey level, as essentially another level of status, at least for upgrades.

AAdvantage Program Changes

More visibility for ConciergeKey

Time will tell, as to how much more information will become publicly available about ConciergeKey membership, but I think we’re seeing the early vestiges of a 5th status level.

Elite Qualifying Dollars (EQD) – The best part of these AAdvantage Program Updates!

We knew before what the required Elite Qualifying Dollar (EQD) requirements would be for the various status levels, those are here:

AAdvantage Program Changes

The interesting piece that AAdvantage highlights in the most recent update, is that it is possible to earn EQDs by spending with their AAdvantage Aviator Red, Blue, Business, and Silver cards. These are all issued by Barclays, however, not currently taking on new applicants. Gary Leff reports that will change.

AAdvantage Program Changes

Barclay Aviator Product Line

Here are the details from American with respect to earning up to $6,000 EQDs:

Reach elite status faster

AAdvantage® AviatorTM Red, AviatorTM Blue and AviatorTM Business MasterCard® accounts can earn up to $3,000 EQDs by spending $25,000 on qualifying net purchases during the calendar year.

AAdvantage® AviatorTM Silver MasterCard® accounts can earn up to $6,000 EQDs by spending $50,000 on qualifying net purchases each calendar year. They’ll earn $3,000 EQDs after spending $25,000 on qualifying purchases and another $3,000 EQDs after $50,000 on qualifying purchases.

I find it very interesting, that Citi, who has long had a very strong co-brand partnership with American, has absolutely no play in the EQD game. Recall that American did not make an exclusive credit card deal the last go-round, I assumed this was just a negotiating strategy. But for Barclays cardholders to be the only ones to accrue EQD’s through spend, that, sends quite the message to Citi, and not a good one.

Wrapping Up

American’s AAdvantage Program Updates are mostly positive, in my opinion. They’ve clarified things where we definitely had questions. American has also provided more insight into ConciergeKey, though I think there are still questions, as it starts to become as public as United’s Global Services. The real positive here is the way to earn Elite Qualifying Dollars (EQDs) through spend on your Barclaycard Aviator cards. I think this is a huge positive, but it leaves open the big question: What about Citi AAdvantage card holders? I suppose only time will tell, whether Citi balks at this slight, or if there is something bigger in the works.

What do you think about the updates? Does the EQD announcement change your strategy for next year?

Is Elite Status Becoming Unobtainium for the Frequent Leisure Traveler?

By 6 Comments

I’ve held top tier elite status in hotels and airlines for the better part of the last decade. While I started out earning status mostly from business travel (aka Other People’s Money), I came to appreciate the top tier status at Marriott, then Hyatt, and United, then American. As I came to appreciate that status, I was more willing to spend a little extra to get that extra elite qualifying night or stay, and even have done a crazy mileage run or two.

Changing Tides – Airline Elite Status

The trend started in 2013, when Delta introduced their Medallion Qualifying Dollars requirement. United quickly followed suit, with their Premier Qualifying Dollar requirement. Both have programs tweaked their spend requirements over the years, but they remain largely intact. Starting in 2017, American will have an Elite Qualifying Dollar requirement. It has long been clear that airlines prefer passenger’s money over their loyalty. Gary Leff has often stated: “I am not my fare” yet the airlines clearly don’t care how many of us say it. They’re more thinking:

Airlines and Hotel programs say "Show me the Money" for Elite Status

Thus my point – Airlines are essentially telling us, that unless you are wealthy enough to spend significantly, or have access to Other People’s Money (OPM), you aren’t valuable to them. How much do they want you to spend? $12,000 or more. Wow.

Changing Tides – Hotel Elite Status

In 2012, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) introduced a bunch of new benefits, many geared toward members that qualified via Nights rather than Stays. They didn’t take anything away, necessarily from those Platinum members who qualified via 25 stays, but they certainly added benefits for members who stayed 50 or 75 nights. A year or two later, they introduced a 100 night level, where you get Starwood Ambassador status, including access to a single point of contact with SPG for all of your needs. This was and continues to be a positive.

Well, today we learn of rumors of Hyatt changes that I think people with OPM will like, however, for leisure travelers–and even folks who travel a bunch but are hamstrung by Hyatt’s smaller footprint–are sure to be disappointed. This new program, World of Hyatt is reported to have four membership tiers. For the top tier, what once required 50 nights or 25 stays to qualify for, will no require 60 nights or 100,000 base points. How do you earn base points? Well, you get 5 for every dollar spent. So, you can get World of Hyatt’s Top Tier Globalist status for either 60 nights (figure $6-10k if you vary it up), or $20k spend at Hyatt.

I think on the surface, this is a big indication that earning status through stays is likely going away as soon as the Marriott-SPG merger figures out things.

What does this mean going forward?

These developments hurt the frequent leisure traveler the most. For those that don’t have a business travel budget, and are not independently wealthy, the idea of having and maintaining status becomes significantly more unobtainium. To simply maintain airline status and Hyatt status, one would be looking at $20,000 in travel spend per year, and that doesn’t even include the time commitment that is also required — e.g. 100,000 equivalent miles flown, and 60 nights in a Hyatt.

The fact is, the economy is doing well–for the time being–and loyalty programs see that this is the time where they can make changes, and identify and best reward their absolute highest spenders. From a business standpoint, that’s great. My concern though, is that all of these negative changes will no doubt turn off loyal customers, who go out of their way to fly the airline that they’ve been loyal to for so many years, or who consider a destination based on the hotel chain they have loyalty to.

Loyalty may not be dead for the frequent leisure traveler, but, it is not for lack of trying.

What do you think? Do you still stay loyal to an airline or hotel?

 

Delta’s 20 Minute Guarantee works even when you don’t pay to check a bag!

By Leave a Comment

Last year, Delta introduced a 20 minute guarantee for checked bags, called “Bags on Time” or “Bag-to-Claim Guarantee” (I’m not quite sure, based on the Terms, so lets just go with Delta’s 20 minute guarantee). The concept is very similar to Alaska’s similar guarantee,

The concept is that Delta will have your checked bag to the baggage claim within 20 minutes of the plane door opening at the gate. If they don’t make that happen, then you either get a $25 voucher, or 2,500 SkyMiles (perhaps SkyDrachma’s, nowadays?). You only get one per flight, so if they are late on 3 bags, you still only get a single $25 voucher or the 2,500 SkyMiles. It’s an excellent idea, which I think other airlines should adopt, as it would really enhance the passenger experience.

Well, I came to learn from reader Aaron, is that the guarantee works for gate checked bags, in addition to those checked at check-in. This is cool, because it means, if you are inconvenienced with having to gate check your bag, you still get the guarantee!

Delta's 20 minute guarantee

Bags on Time Bonus – Courtesy of Aaron.

Reviewing the terms and conditions, there is no distinction as to where the bag is checked, just that it has to be on a paid flight. so for some, this may not be a big surprise, but I still think it’s interesting.

I hope this little bit of positive news offsets all the pain from yesterday’s no notice devaluation

Have you used Delta’s 20 minute guarantee to get a voucher or SkyMiles? 

A great benefit of being an American Airlines Executive Platinum

By 2 Comments

I’ve been an American Airlines Executive Platinum for a few years now. Ivy enjoyed a bunch of the benefits, like complimentary domestic upgrades, and no charges for redepositing award miles. But the benefit that I find especially valuable, is the ability for same day standby. Now, don’t get me wrong, American devalued this benefit significantly a couple of years ago. It used to be that as long as you got to your ultimate destination, you were good. Now it has to be the same exact routing, which I think is a significant challenge.

Anyway, I write this from seat 28B, enroute to DCA. My wife and I are on our way home from Costa Rica, and our flight got into Miami early. Not crazy early, but early enough. We landed at 5:40, and the flight we wanted to make was a 6:30 departure. Of course, we needed to get bussed to the terminal, then walk half a mile to the tram, then get through customs, and security, then walk another half mile to the gate.

We ultimately got to the gate about 6:12 or so. The gate agent told my wife no (she is in better shape and faster than I am, something I am trying to change). I got up there and said that I saw there were empty seats on ExpertFlyer, probably not the best thing to say, but my brain was operating on less oxygen than it is used to. Then it occurred to me, that this could be one of those times to make it known that we were both members. The gate agent grumbled a little, but started taping at the keyboard, as I was pulling out my iPhone, either to check ExpertFlyer again, or DM the @AmericanAir twitter team. I honestly don’t know.

A few moments later, we had our boarding passes, for 28B and 28E. I’m not used to being this far back, but, boy am I happy to get home two hours earlier!

Here’s a view from my seat:

American Airlines Executive Platinum

Wow, I can’t even see the First Class cabin from here!

Where should you credit your miles and points.

By 8 Comments

With American’s move to revenue based earning, the three legacy US carriers all award miles based on your fare, not miles flown anymore. So, where should you credit your miles and points for miles flown?

Enter a great new tool – Where to Credit

I learned about this awesome tool from Jonathan Khoo yesterday via twitter. Where to Credit asks two questions: What are you flying, and what booking class is your ticket booked in? In fact, you don’t even need to populate the booking class, but you should. Why? Because airlines are increasingly awarding fewer miles for some heavily discounted fares.

For example, check out what Where to Credit says about this flight on United to Australia. First enter in the details:

Where should you credit your miles

Where to Credit a United “G” Fare.

Next you get the results — they’re a bunch in this case:

Where should you credit your miles

Where to Credit a United “G” fare – part 1

And

Where should you credit your miles

Where to Credit a United “G” fare – part 2

If you don’t want to scroll through the whole list, you can also sort by Rate, which would put Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program up at the top:

The answer to where you should credit your miles for a United "G" Fare - courtesy of: Where to Credit

Best Frequent Flyer Program to credit a United “G” Fare – courtesy of: Where to Credit

Wrapping Up – Where you should credit your miles may vary

While more miles are being accrued from credit card sign-up bonuses and credit card spend, rather than flying, its still good to get the most when you do fly. Where to Credit can help you do that. Of course the caveat is that if you are flying on an expensive ticket, and/or have status on the airline, you may need to do your own calculation, as it doesn’t look like Where to Credit incorporates status bonuses.

Have you ever wondered where you should credit your miles? Have you credited flights to a different program to earn more miles?

Asiana A380 First Class – My First World Problems

By 1 Comment

I just ended a whirlwind round the world trip with my father and brother, which was awesome. Our last long haul flight was in Asiana A380 First Class, a flight I was very much looking forward to. Unfortunately, I encountered some of those pesky first world problems.

In Flight Entertainment (IFE)

Asiana In Flight Entertainment

Asiana In Flight Entertainment – when it worked.

Of the three of us traveling, my father  in 1E got the worst experience. In the first 3 hours of the flight, the crew attempted to reset his IFE system ~20 times. My brother, sitting next to him in 1F had his system reset a number of times as collateral damage.

The crew, trying their hardest, even resetting the entire plane wide IFE system multiple times.

Asiana In Flight Entertainment

Asiana In Flight Entertainment when it wasn’t working

As far as the usability of the system itself, it was nice to have a touch screen controller however it didn’t have the functionality to do two things at once, e.g. Watch the airshow on the handset and a movie on the beautiful 32″ screen.

Service

Maybe I’ve been lucky, but this trip and most recently have for the most part had fast post-departure service.

My Asiana A380 First Class flight on the other hand didn’t follow suit. It was a half hour or longer before I had my first beverage in the air. Lunch took more than 2.5 hours, and I only had 4 courses. Part of this was no doubt due to the fact that I didn’t have the opportunity to order my entrée until at least a half hour in.

Later in the flight, I requested a refill of Ice Wine, the flight attendant first came with an empty bottle, disappeared and returned 5-8 minutes later with an alternative bottle. Apparently 7 hours in, Asiana had run out of the first class ice wine. I didn’t ask how many bottles they had been provisioned with. In general, however I found the white wine and champagne to be not as chilled as I would have like.

My father–you’ll recall that his IFE didn’t work quite well–had a different but similarly lackluster experience. You see, since the  flight attendant call button is on the IFE controller, that didn’t work either. As a result, he made a handful of trips to the galley to request coffee and other beverages. You would think, the crew–who tried what they could to fix the issue–would realize the lack of a call button and check in with him every so often. But alas, they did not.

Galley Noise

Asiana’s first class cabin is 3 rows. I was seated in 3E, and thus closest to the galley. Multiple times I was awoken with rather loud clanging of dishes.

Perhaps providing on-ear (not over ear) Bose Noise-cancelling headphones means that you don’t have to attempt to be quiet, perhaps not. But I just felt the overall noise level in the cabin was quite high. I think this was primarily because of the location of the galley, which was right behind First Class — and it was a pretty big galley. I didn’t want to impose, so I only got a small snap of it.

Asiana Galley aft of First Class

Asiana Galley aft of First Class

Wrapping up – First World Problems

I realize these are true first world problems, and in reality, only one of these might have been acceptable, but the collection of them together is unacceptable for a world class first class product. We did post request a gesture of goodwill from Asiana, given the inconvenience of the non-functional In Flight Entertainment. The initial offer was 5,000 miles, either Asiana miles or United miles. This was double what they offered for economy. I kindly informed the agent I spoke with that had I paid market value ($4,700 US), I would have been much less pleased, and asked her to go back for additional consideration. She returned with an offer for 7,000 miles. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but is 7,000 miles really a sufficient compensation when a major component of the hard product is nonfunctional?

Again, this was a bit of a rant, but I want to stress: these are small things in the big scheme of life. Of course, writing trip reports means that you highlight the minutiae at times. The fact remains, this trip — which I’ll get around to writing soon — was truly special for all of us. But I could not go without sharing our experience, for fear of others redeeming 130,000 or more of their miles for a product that lacks some of the refinement that you would find on other airlines.

Note: Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline, or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. The owners of this website may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links and advertisements posted on this website. For more information, please see our Legal Notice.