Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for September 2009.

I Loved This Paean to Me, Even If It Presaged a Critique…

Wing and a Prayer Blog began a post thusly: We here at WAAP love blogger Gary Leff, writer of View From the Wing, mostly because of his unapologetic commitment to the tony lifestyle, luxe hotel rooms, and the numerous shout-outs to the W Hotel line of bedding products couched as subtle reminders that, well, your bed is not as nice as his. Of course, as Keri so astutely observed, the point is not that my bed (or anything else) is nicer than your, but precisely that with a bit of attention paid your travels and other accoutriments can be easily as nice with little cost.

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Frequent Flyer Miles are a Profit Center, Not a Tax on the Airlines (Again!)

I’ve said it before, and will keep reminding everyone until the world stops saying ‘frequent flyer programs are going to end’ and ‘airlines need to cut costs by chopping from their frequent flyer programs.’ It’s important to understand the frequent flyer programs are the most profitable part of airlines. Airlines aren’t just about transportation. In some cases they aren’t even primarily about transportation. Their loyalty programs in particular were huge innovations. And I’ve written in the past about how United Airliens continued to fly through bankruptcy, that it needed to stay in operation, so support the underlying credit card business(!). That’s why the issuer of the co-branded United Visa provided its debtor-in-possession financing, and also provided its exit financing, not to mention prepurchased blocks of miles to provide additional liquidity. I’ve given examples of this…

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Intercontinental Hotels Friends and Family Rate For Everyone Through the End of the Year

The Intercontinental Hotels Group Friends and Family Rate, open to everyone, has been extended. Through December 31 you can book the Friends and Family Rate at Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and affiliated brand hotels. The rates are prepaid, nonrefundable and technically shouldn’t earn points or stay credit but in practice usually do. You need to print and fill out the friends and family rate voucher, but it doesn’t need any aprovals or verifications. The hotel doesn’t always ask for it, but be sure to have it ready. Here’s an ongoing Flyertalk thread on the subject, now nearly 375 posts long. The offer was set to expire September 30, and I was on the verge of having to book a whole bunch of non-refundable reservations through next year to lock in the savings. Glad to…

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15% Off JetBlue Tickets

JetBlue is offering 15% off of tickets purchased by September 20 for travel through December 15 when you pay with American Express and use promo code AE15OFF. Travel must originate in New York (JFK), Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Long Beach, Orlando, Washington-Dulles, San Juan, Oakland, or Austin. And roundtrips are required, no one-ways. Travel from November 20 through November 30 are blacked out for the discount.

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500 Free Priority Club Points

Priority Club is apparently offering 500 free points for answering four basic easy questions about its program. They’re multiple choice and if you get them wrong you get another chance. But you won’t get them wrong. Hint: it doesn’t take much to get benefits, all good benefits they list of course you get, they’re a big program. The offer was mentioned in this Flyertalk thread and says it was “posted on the PC Visa Chase community forum” — I don’t see any refernece to the offer being targeted, and when I took the ‘quiz’ I was then promised my 500 points. We’ll see if they post, but in my experience with Priority Club they usually do.

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1000 Bonus Delta Miles for New Account Signup

Delta is offering 1000 miles for new members signing up for the Skymiles program. A good reason to sign up for an account if you don’t have one. And if you’re a Northwest Worldperks member without a Delta Skymiles account, sign up for one now and then your current Northwest miles will be merged with this new Delta account — and you’re 1000 miles richer.

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US Airways’ New International Business Class Seat

Cranky Flier has the details on the new planned US Airways business class seat. It’s not best in class, but is certainly appears to be a huge improvement. It’ll be installed on the A330-200s over the next year (we’ll see if they keep to that schedule). The 767s will never get a retrofit, we’ll see when those get retired. And the A330-300s will get a slightly different seat, at some point, when they figure out what that means they’ll tell us. And the seat on the A330-200 will apparently not even be quite unform Now that picture above doesn’t look completely flat to me, but according to US Airways, the seat will go down into a 6′4″ or 6′8″ 180 degree flat bed depending upon which seat you have in the cabin. The seat width…

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