Get more mileage out of your miles: upgrade

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Before you book your next award ticket, think about what you’re giving the airline. Yeah, you read that correctly; think about what you are giving them. In the Wall Street Journal, that font of all things financial, the secret to screwing the airlines a little harder is revealed: upgrade.

Apparently, the most common use of miles is the bland, vanilla domestic coach ticket. That’s it. While you delight in your free ticket and lament the absence of a meal, the airline truly gives you as little as possible. You get a whopping 1.2 center per mile for the basic domestic coach flight. At 30,000 miles (the average price of an upgrade in miles), which is usually the price of admission, that translates to around $360. Depending on where you want to go (and when), your $300 in “free” travel could be more expensive than just buying the ticket.

According to “experts” cited by WSJ, you can get four times as much bang for your virtual buck by upgrading instead of just cashing in. shell out the cash for the coach ticket, the Journal advises, and use those miles for the upgrade. You could pick up a few thousand dollars in value … and that’s just on the domestic side. Fly overseas, and you could shaft the airlines to the tune of almost 8 cents per mile!

Of course, the party isn’t going to last forever. Airlines are beginning to add “co-pay” fees to upgrade awards. United is planning to pull the trigger on this starting July 1, 2009. You already take it on the chin with American, which can slam you for $700 to upgrade a discount coach seat on a flight to Europe. On Continental, it can reach $1,000. Nonetheless, upgrading still delivers the most value per mile.

And, there’s one more factor that tips in your favor. If you haven’t noticed, we’re in the midst of a nasty economic climate. All those large, faceless corporations are forcing more of their employees – even those more accustomed to having a bit more legroom – to ride with the proletarians. That means more seats will be open up front, and you can cash in.

More ways to earn miles: Hilton offers 6x mileage bonus

by Grant Martin on

Mileage promotions from Delta are coming in hot and heavy, and those on the ball with some of their most recent promotions are set to make quite the killing in a pretty short time.

Their latest promotion is in collaboration with Hilton‘s points program, HHonors. From now until the end of February, each time you spend more than two nights at a Hilton hotel they’ll give you six times the miles that you would normally earn.

Right now, HHonors is set up on a tiered program where you can earn any variety of airline miles based upon how much you spend at their hotel — but most members earn a fixed 500 miles per stay at a hotel. With this new promotion, you’ll now earn 3,000, or, just under 1/8 of a domestic round trip ticket.

You might not immediately think that’s very much, but combine that with the partner bonus promotion or any other of the generous offers that the airline is currently putting up and your miles can accumulate pretty quickly.

Sign up for the promotion at Hilton’s website here.

OpenSkies and L’Avion announce codeshare, merge closer

by Grant Martin on

OpenSkies and L’Avion, two of the last remaining all-premium carriers (arguably, THE last remaining carrier as OpenSkies acquired their competitor earlier this year) just announced a codeshare agreement between the two airlines, effectively increasing the number of available flights serachable from each carrier at any particular time.

The step brings them ever-so-closer to a complete merger of the two entities, although there is still no word on when/if the L’Avion planes will be rebadged and integrated into the OpenSkies fleet.

The codeshare agreement also means that those flying on L’Avion can now earn British Airways Executive Club miles, a huge benefit for business travelers and frankly a former concern from many prospective passengers.

Note that this still doesn’t mean that one can earn OneWorld miles. On the phone with one of OpenSkies PR reps last week, I asked about when or if they would be looking into this. The rep said that she’d look into it.

A new tool for finding award tickets

by Grant Martin on

Like me, if you’ve ever accrued more than 25,000 frequent flyer miles you know how terrible it can be redeeming them for an award ticket. It seems like 95% of the time, the ideal flight that you want is completely sold out and that the next available flight for you is on a Wednesday. In February. On a tiny airplane with 17 layovers.

What many people don’t know though is that mileage award availability is a fluid system — seats open up and close overnight based upon how many people are booked and the amount of time before the flight. So to stay on top of whether or not seats are available for your particular itinerary, you really have to check every day (if not more frequently) to see if anything has changed.

This can be time consuming and difficult, and until now, only by calling or checking the web every day or subscribing to expensive software like expertflyer.com could you check availability.

Enter Yapta.com. The search engine known for refunding the value of your ticket if the price went down recently announced that they would be hosting award availability from several carriers carriers on their site. They’ve also included a tool that automatically notifies you if seats open up on your ideal flights. Brilliant.

For now the service is only available on Alaska, Continental, Delta, United and US Airways, but if demand turns out to be as strong as I predict, it could expand soon. Log onto Yapta.com and give it a try.

More free miles for Delta passengers

by Grant Martin on

If you’re a member of the Delta mileage program, this year has been good to you. From double miles promotions to generous partner rewards to easy status

Their latest promotion gives members up to 150% bonus on activity (on and off the ground) through year’s end. Rewards are tiered as such:

  • Earn 0-5k miles, get a 50% bonus
  • Earn 5-10k miles, get a 100% bonus
  • Earn 10k or more miles, get a 150% bonus

So you could fly to Europe once (8000 miles) then, say, fly a transcon (4000 miles) and bang, you’ve got 12,000 miles plus a 18,000 bonus, or 30k miles, more than a free domestic ticket. That’s downright generous.

Why would you do this? Conspiracy theorists among the Northwest crowd (who will soon be assimilated into the Delta ranks) claim that this is some sort of underhanded way to sleight the NW crowd and make the DL frequent flyers stronger.

Personally, I think that Delta have figured out that miles are starting to turn into a profit maker. With inherent fuel surcharges and checked bag fees on every itinerary, no flight is free anymore and the airline will still make a few dollars. And all of the time that we spend earning miles and digging around for nearly impossible-to-find award tickets? More time indoctrinating ourselves with the Delta brand. Is that worth a seat on a plane that isn’t even full? You bet.