Changes You’re Going to Like

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Chris

In March, Jeff Smisek of United Airlines was mum about upcoming changes to United’s Mileage Plus and Continental’s OnePass programs.  United launched its “Mileage Plus Explorer” card.

As far as benefits go, it mostly resembles the legacy OnePass Plus card that I recently applied for to grab a 50k bonus mile sign-up while it lasts.  The headline benefits are a “40k” bonus mile sign-up bonus, a free checked bag, priority boarding, and two United Club passes a year.  To actually obtain the “40k,” one has to add an additional authorized user to the account (for 5k miles) and hit $25k in spending in a calendar year (for 10k miles).  With targeted 50k mile sign-up bonuses floating around for both the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature and the Continental OnePass Plus cards, the effectively 25k sign-up bonus is meager.

As a United 1P, I can already check three seventy pound bags for free and I get to board over the red–soon to be blue–carpet.  Like the OnePass Plus card, the card extends upgrade benefits for elites on domestic award tickets.  That said, since my miles are already destined for international travel in premium cabins, I’m unlikely to use this perk.  In terms of mileage earning, it’s a step-down from the United Mileage Plus Select Visa Signature card with its 3 miles (and 1EQM) per $1 spent with United, 2 miles per dollar for Star Alliance and “every day” purchases, and 1 mile per dollar for everything else.

What’s more telling of the changes to Mileage Plus to come is an official company representative’s post made on FlyerTalk.  Standard awards are being eliminated for those Mileage Plus members without the card or elite status.  While the standard awards can often be horrible values, especially for domestic travel, they at least give options to Mileage Plus members.

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Airlines, Codeshares, and Passengers

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Chris

Someone at work was looking to get to Europe later this summer and asked my advice for how I find cheap fares.  I pointed out ITA in addition to my paid ExpertFlyer account.  A quick search later turned up an Air France -marketed, Delta-operated flight that was significantly below the prices they had seen elsewhere.

They went ahead with booking, but overlooked that it was a Delta-operated rather than Air France-operated flight.  Coincidentally, The Cranky Flier had a piece about the downsides of codeshares for passengers.  I’m not that thrilled by them either.  As United and Continental merge, I’m frequently placing bookings from one carrier operated by the other.  Even as flight numbers shift around, the two haven’t been brought in line with each other.  UA1 is a flight from Sao Paulo to Houston right now and CO1 is a flight from Houston to Guam via Honolulu.

 

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Sheraton Sunnyvale

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Chris

I’ve been busy with other posts up until now and I’m going on another trip this weekend, so it’s time to post a few photos from my stay at the Sheraton Sunnyvale.   The stay rounded out three stays under the stay three times, get a night free promotion that ends at the end of the month.

Courtesy of a match over from Hilton, I’m currently at the midtier with SPG.  When I asked about whether I could receive an upgraded room for having status, the front desk clerk declined to do so.  The second desk clerk pulled up my reservation and informed me that I had an interior-facing room rather than an exterior one (facing part of the near by expressway).

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Book First, Ask Questions Later

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Chris

It’s an often repeated mantra on Flyer Talk.  For a brief bit today, JetBlue was offering $4-5 fares (each way, all-inclusive) for their one-day only LGB-BUR service in “celebration” of Carmageddon (Hat Tip: The Wandering Aramean).

I already have travel plans for this weekend, so I hesitated as I thought about how I’d get from there to Los Angeles and back in time to pick up the rest of my itinerary.  For deals like this (where most of the value comes from the entertainment value), I really should have booked without thinking first.  Worst case, I’d be out $16 (all four of the one-ways).  Best case, I’d have a good story to tell.

It’s worth remembering that “new” DOT regulations require:

Requiring airlines to allow reservations to be held at the quoted fare without payment, or cancelled without penalty, for at least 24 hours after the reservation is made, if the reservation is made one week or more prior to a flight’s departure date.

While I’d be less concerned about getting my $16 back from JetBlue (and since it’s 3 days out, it’s ineligible anyways), but it’s certainly a way of choosing to book first and ask questions later when good deals come up.  AA offers a 24 hour free hold (with upsell opportunities to extend it longer for a few dollars) and United/Continental offer 24 hour refundability.

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AAdvantage Email Promotion

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Chris

AA sent me a link to their email “Appraiser,” which offers bonus miles for subscribing to various email lists.  My address appraised for 2k miles after being offered signups for mailing lists I thought I was already on.  If the miles clear, I won’t complain too loudly.

A discussion on FlyerTalk suggests that it’s accessible from a non-targeted link.

Hat Tip:  Mooper on FlyerTalk.

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p.s. Business Class

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Chris

To get back to New York, I traveled along SJC-LAX-JFK.  Once again, booking myself onto the p.s. redeye to New York.

United leaves SJC-LAX service to SkyWest.

 

Having noticed that my p.s. flight was looking a bit empty a week out, I chose to upgrade to business class with miles.  While award tickets to Europe would constitute a better redemption value, the p.s. economy to business class is one of the few values for domestic redemptions available.  Since I was in a T fare, the upgrade required 20k miles with the $75 copay waived for being an elite on United.  In contrast, the fully paid upgrade offer made a week out was for $375, giving me a 1.875 cent per mile redemption value.

Ordinarily, domestic passengers do not have complimentary access to airport lounges operated by the US-based carriers.  That said, p.s. business class passengers get access to the RCC at their departing airport and first class passengers the First Class lounge.  With a roughly three hour layover at LAX, I stopped by the RCC to take a look.

I seated myself near the windows and had a view of gate 70A and most of Terminal 8’s gates:


Back at SJC, my flight looked overbooked so I got added to the volunteer list there and headed to the gate to wait for the agent to arrive an hour before departure.

Volunteers weren’t needed for the flight, so I took my assigned seat as ticketed:  5B.  (The other emergency exit row on p.s., row 9 of business class was unavailable when my upgrade cleared.)

The redeye served a snack choice of either a fruit and cheese plate or a cold chicken sandwich.  I opted for the cheese plate:

The only inconvenience on my return segments was check-in.  Since I used my miles to explicitly upgrade for the p.s. segment rather than the entire direction of travel, risking burning 20k miles to only clear for a 45 minute long, regional jet flight rather than p.s., I could not check-in online.  Even as an elite, I had to spend about an hour on the phone with United Web Support the morning of my flight, first on hold, then waiting while they diagnosed the problem, and ultimately, until they realized they had to remove me from the UDU list for SJC-LAX, allow me to check-in, and then restore me to the SJC-LAX upgrade list.  Reservations with UA/CO seem surprisingly fragile.  Due to how my standby and volunteer listing went for my IAH-LAS segment on Memorial Day weekend, Continental’s agents had to spend longer processing my Same-Day flight change.

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Cleared to First Class

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Chris

Around 3AM Eastern, my upgrade for my DEN-SJC segment cleared 11 hours in advance.

Seat selection didn’t happen until I got to JFK in the morning due to some computer glitch, so I wound up in 1F.

In contrast to my memory of 1F on an A320 for a LAX-ORD redeye, this seat came with a small cutout in the bulkhead to improve the legroom a bit.

Our predeparture beverage choices were water and orange juice:

Our just over two hour flight came with lunch service, opened by warm nuts:

Since my upgrade cleared only 11 hours out before the flight, I couldn’t place a vegetarian meal request by the 24 hour cut off.  I ended up having the mushroom soup being served with the normal catering’s choices of chicken sandwiches and turkey salads and a snack box from economy as my lunch.

The audio jacks in seats 1EF weren’t working, so I didn’t have the chance to catch Channel 9.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty good short-haul flight.  The purser stayed attentive to the small first class cabin.

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And they put your name on the side of a plane…

Posted on July 10, 2011 by Chris

In the movie Up in the Air, Ryan Bingham describes the rewards that come with accumulating 10 million American Airlines miles.  As in the movie, American counts all mileage for lifetime status purposes including elite bonuses and credit card miles, at least for now.  Yesterday, Tom Stuker put the finishing touches on flying 10 million butt-in-seat miles with United Airlines.

United named another plane after him.  Previously, N770UA, a Boeing 777-222 was painted with “Thomas R. Stuker, Customer.”

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Washington Dulles

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Chris

From Dulles, I trekked to Denver.  With a scheduled departure time of 8:38AM from the C concourse, I didn’t have time to stop by the Lufthansa lounge in the B concourse as it is scheduled to open at 8:20AM.

Even with a 767-300’s thirty first class seats early on a Saturday morning,  I finished in the top ten of the waitlist for first class upgrades.  If it’s any consolation as a 1P, the 1K next to me in the exit row didn’t clear either.

Our 767-300 was still in the old United “Battleship Grey” livery:

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A Trip Out West

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Chris

I’m traveling to San Jose today out of New York Kennedy, stopping by Washington Dulles and Denver along the way.  JFK is a relatively small base for United, compared to even New York LaGuardia let alone Continental’s Newark fortress.  p.s. flights to LAX and SFO fly out of here, along with small regional jets–like the one I’m on today–traveling back and forth from Dulles.

While demand for extensive premium seating justifies United’s p.s., American’s Flagship, and Delta’s BusinessElite flights between New York, I haven’t quite placed my finger on this flight’s niche.  There’s international Star Alliance flights to catch from JFK and a vast swath of United destinations out of IAD. Judging by the number of passengers presenting passports while boarding, my speculation probably isn’t idle.

18 hours out from my departure, ExpertFlyer was showing “Y0” for all of these JFK-IAD flights today.  A full fare, one-way economy ticket runs $877, but with no full fare inventory remaining, United is not even willing to gamble that it might have to bump someone.  Yesterday’s New York weather waiver probably didn’t help.

At check-in, I added my name to the volunteer list as the flight was, in fact, overbooked.  At the gate, they were checked-in even but asked me to wait around a bit more.  For a passenger wanting a bump off a small regional jet, hearing gate agents count up the number of checked and carry-on bags about to go on the plane is music to his ears.  Smaller planes are prone to weight and balance issues, requiring the airline to send the plane out with empty seats. While these sorts of issues don’t require compensation to be given, United tends to do so for the sake of good customer service.

They ended up not needing my seat so I took my flight as scheduled.  As far as viable reroutings go out of JFK, there were a few p.s. flights to the West Coast with only business and first class seats left:  Not a bad way to get to my destination in addition to some travel credits in-hand had I gotten bumped.

The CRJ200 exit row seat even came with a palatable amount of leg room given the short duration of the flight:

Our CRJ200 at IAD:

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