Why you should never buy frequent flyer miles

by Grant Martin on

Perusing your favorite airline’s frequent flyer web pages, you may have noticed that many of them offer a service to sell and transfer miles among friends. Points.com is a website that specializes in this task, and many programs from Jetblue to Delta to American Airlines participate in their miles purchasing programs.

Take heed before you get your wallet out and buy miles though: it’s a horrible horrible deal. Take a look a these prices for buying miles taken from the Northwest Airlines website:

2,500 = $95
25,000 = $725
30,000 = $865

Now, if you recall from your frequent flyer mile handbook, a domestic ticket costs 25,000 miles — so this basically equates to buying a ticket for $725. Any ticket, domestically in the US, whether this is between New York and San Francisco or New York and Detroit even if you’re having the worst day of your life, shouldn’t cost $725. And if it does, you can pretty well be sure that the flight isn’t going to have award availability either.

Similarly transferring miles is also expensive:

5,000 = $75
25,000 = $300

With a $25 transaction fee. And the airline isn’t even selling miles — it’s just moving them from column A to B in their spreadsheet.

Why would anyone take up this deal? Well, the least irresponsible excuse for buying or transferring miles is because you need to top up your account. You’re just short of that 25k or 50k award and need another 5k miles to book your ticket as soon as possible. But it’s important to remember the amount of cash you’re dumping into your miles just to make them work. If you’re dumping $100 dollars into a ticket to get it over 25k and your miles are valued at $0.02/mile (a common market ratio), you’ve just lost $600 in equity on a ticket. Was the market value of the itinerary that much? Could you have bought the ticket for $200 cash?

If you do find yourself in the above situation, try the following solution: take a deep breath, take your wallet out, hide it under the couch and take a good sharp look at your travel plans and finances for the next six months. There may be a time that you’re traveling in the near future during which you can accrue a few more miles and balance out that account.

Or you’re short on time and out of money, consider checking Gadlings guide to topping off your frequent flyer account.

Air One kicks off flights from Boston and Chicago to Milan

by Grant Martin on

When most people are asked to think of an Italian airline, they automatically think of Alitalia, the struggling national carrier known for mediocre service that was almost bought out by KLM and Air France earlier this year.

Few outside of Italy actually know of the nation’s second largest carrier, Air One, a privately held company that until now has flown mainly to domestic destinations. With the nation’s carrier stumbling though and the Open Skies Agreement in play, Air One (pronounced in Italian “heron”, as in the bird) is ready to make it’s move.

Starting this week, the airline is launching flights from Chicago and Boston directly to Milan on two Airbus A330-200 jumbo jets. They plan to offer a uniquely Italian experience, with catering from Chicago chef Phil Stefani, Italian movies and superior inflight service.

The interior of the cabin will be configured with 22 business class and just over 200 economy seats, although they tell me that they’re going to be expanding their business product by the end of the year. Each business class seat will have private video screens with a selection of movies, while there will be shared overhead screens in Coach.

For the frequent flyers out there, Air One has allied itself with Lufthansa and United, so you’ll be able to earn Star miles on your way to Milan. On the Italian side, connecting flights on Air One and Lufthansa will be available.

How different will the service be from the Lufthansa and United tranastlantic products? The top brass assure me that the “authentic Italian experience” will be enough to set the carrier above the competition, but I wasn’t able to get solid leg-room, inflight entertainment or operational data just yet. We’ll see how the first few flights go.

In the mean time, AirOne flights have already been loaded into the search engines, so you’ll pick them up when running a Kayak search. You can also check out their website for more details. Give them a try and tell us how it goes.

Internet: An airline extra that might be worth paying for

by Jamie Rhein on

American Airlines may have actually come up with a way to make more money without ticking people off. Instead of charging for a service that used to be free–did anyone say checked bags?–the airline is piloting a system to charge passengers for Internet privileges.

Yep, that’s right. While you’re winging your way through the skies, you can log on. Need to e-mail? No problem.

You’ll also be able to instant message, download videos, and connect to a smart phone through a secured network using your own laptop.

Passengers on one lucky flight today from Kennedy in New York to Los Angeles and a flight from Los Angeles to New York will be able to test the service for free.

In a couple of weeks, American will expand broadband to other flights on Boeing 767-200 jets. Flights to San Francisco and Miami are next.

These Internet capabilities are being developed through a partnership with Aircell LLC. Aircell’s network is large enough to handle a whole plane load of Web surfers.

Knowing that you need to diversify in business, Aircell is also working out details with JetBlue and Virgin America for similar services.

American Airline’s latest money scheme is one I like. Adding a new service and charging for it instead of wringing money out of folks who used to get the same thing for free seems smarter. The price isn’t bad either. Internet will cost between $9.95 and $12.95 depending on the length of the flight.

And in case you’re wondering about the chances of pornography showing up on the screen next to you–or on yours, not a chance–at least not much of one. According to the article, the flight attendant will stop the funny business. There are already policies against bringing pornography on the plane. The same applies to Internet, even though such sites won’t be filtered out . Blocking them might disrupt service. Mind your manners, and the skies will stay friendly. [via AP]

Gadling’s guide to topping off your frequent flyer account

by Grant Martin on

After 17 long years of flying America’s skies, you’ve done it. You’ve almost saved up enough frequent flyer miles for a free ticket to anywhere you want to go in the United States. Nice work. Most people who remember to put their frequent flyer number into the box before departure forget about their miles and let them expire.

But you’re just a couple of miles short. And you really really want to go see Aunt Ximena in Palm Springs over Labor Day. Distressed, you check the airline website and see that you can buy two thousand miles for sixty bucks. And you’re so excited about In-n-Out and Aunt Ximena’s Uruguyan Barbeque that you’re just about to cough it up. But you shouldn’t.

Hold on fellow passenger! There are ways to accrue those miles without wasting money straight from your pocketbook. At the very least you can use your money practically and earn the miles on the side. Here are a few great ways to do that.

  • Check the website for promotions. Several carriers host small promos for new program members to indoctronate educate newbies on the advantages of their specific product. These change every so often, so it’s helpful to go back and make sure that you’ve qualified for all of your excitement.
  • Go shopping. Many airline programs have deals with an online (or in air) mall that let you purchase goods from a regular retailer (GAP, Home Depot, etc) and earn miles per each dollar spent. So if you needed to buy dog food for Fido or flowers for your mother anyway, you can get 5 miles / dollar online at petsmart or 10 miles / dollar at FTD.com. Not all of them mark up goods either — most gateways go directly to the vendor website.
  • Go out to eat. Sites like Dining for Miles let you enroll your favorite credit card or visa/MC debit card in a program that earns miles per dollar spent at a restaurant. You can peruse about to see if any of the restaurants are near you, then next time you’re out to lunch with co-workers, pick up the bill and take cash from everyone else.
  • Transfer miles from another program. Points.com gives you a pretty serious shaft when transferring miles among programs (I equate them to the TravelEx money exchange in the airport), but they’re good if you’re in a pinch and haven’t got a ton of spare cash. There are too many participants to list them all, so check the website and see if your favorite points program is listed.
  • Take some surveys. Several online sites let you accrue points by taking surveys that you can cash in for miles. E-rewards has worked well for me a few times, although I no longer have the time to take their somewhat elaborate surveys.
  • Get a credit card. This is a little more risk-involved, but if you were prepared to get some plastic anyway, it might be worth looking into a signature or platinum card that gives you 25k miles or a free ticket upon enrollment. You’ll have to pay an annual fee of course, but that should be significantly less than a round trip ticket.
  • Beg. Yes, airlines do give away coupons for free miles that do (illegally) get circulated around the internet. If you’re ready to live a life of sin, check ebay, flyertalk or your local craigslist for people giving away or selling miles. Don’t tell them I sent you though.
  • Go on a mileage run. I know it sounds crazy, but if you need a few extra miles, it may be cost effective to actually fly somewhere just to reap the miles from the trip. Check out Gadling’s Guide to Mileage Running for more info on that.

Finally, the best thing to remember is to be patient. Award availability does dry up pretty quickly and I’ll admit, if you’ve found an itinerary that works, you want to book it as soon as possible. But you don’t need to do anything brash to get tickets before the end of the day. Have some juice, think about your options and find a good workaround. Your miles and your pocketbook will thank you.

Annoyance Alert: United resurrecting “Saturday night stay required”

by Iva Skoch on

This is not the first time I have complained on gadling about the uber-stupid Saturday night rule.

For those of you young enough not to remember the rule: airlines used to require passengers to stay Saturday night, in order for them to take advantage of the cheapest tickets.

Sometime in the last decade, more and more airlines stopped imposing minimum stays, because, well – how does one put it – it didn’t make any sense. Once those low cost carries started popping up, traditional airlines needed to be competitive.

Now, the Saturday night monster is back!

USA Today reports that United is not only raising fares, it’s also bringing back those minimum-stay rules that used to be the norm. The minimum-stay requirements will depend on an itinerary’s route and fare. For example travelers booking the cheapest seats between Chicago and Minneapolis or Boston and San Diego will now be forced to stay three nights or the entire weekend.

In other words, business travelers are the ones who’ll suffer the most. Hotels, on the other hand, must love it.

Start planning those long weekends, folks. The changes will go into effect for flights beginning October 6.