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.

Who Wins and Who Loses in Delta-Northwest Merger?

by Josh Lew on

Gadling has been closely following the merger between air travel giants Delta and Northwest Airlines. The marriage of the two carriers was recently approved by the Department of Justice. But what does this mean for the people on the ground and in the air? Aside from seeing new color schemes on the staff and aircraft, there are all those frequent flier miles Northwest patrons have been saving. Jamie recently wrote about what to do with them. Customers stand to pay higher prices when the merger takes hold. Delta will be in a more dominant position than before. That usually means higher prices.

But what about the staff of Northwest Airlines? Here in Minneapolis, strikes by Northwest employees have been commonplace over the past few years. On the positive side, the merger will mean that Delta, which has recently been more stable than Northwest, will be in control. But job cuts are probably coming. Employees may find themselves cut from the company because their position has become redundant. Northwest will most likely see job cuts at their hub in Minneapolis, while Delta’s second tier hub in Cincinnati will lose out to Northwest’s Detroit base. So the airline’s employees will be working for a more stable company, if they can survive the job cuts. Because Delta has the upper hand in the whole process, most watchers expect Northwest workers will bear the brunt of the lay-offs.

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Watch a quick Bose video for 150 free American Airlines miles

by Grant Martin on

A few miles short on that dream vacation to Djbouti that you’ve been planning for the last 5 years? Afraid that your mileage account is going to expire due to inactivity? Force yourself to watch a video about the Bose QuietComfort headphones and they’ll give you 150 miles American Airlines just for your time.

I’ll bet you can even turn the video on, alt+tab over to failblog and return in a few minutes to get your reward.

If you’re really interested in milking the system, you can also go to the Bose store to check out the headphones in person, try them on and collect a voucher for an additional 350 miles. Once you get that you can return to the website, drop in your code and collect your miles in a few weeks.

You might laugh at the prospect of jumping through hoops to earn a paltry 150 or 350 miles (you would have to do a silly 150 point excursion 167 times before you earned enough for a ticket) but many of us have been saving for years and are just at the cusp of an award redemption. This bump could put you over the top.

You’ve got until the end of the month to sign up for the promotion and it’ll take 6-8 weeks for the miles to show up. Pull the trigger now, forget about it and you’ll get a surprise just in time for Thanksgiving.

Starwood Preferred Guest program integrates flight bookings

by Grant Martin on

Many business travelers hold a variety of memberships across the travel industry — a Priority Club membership for points towards Holiday Inn stays, a Skymiles number for miles towards Delta flights, an Emerald Club membership for National rental cars. All of these come in handy for that one time that you’re actually on vacation and want to reap some benefit for all of those days on the road with the company.

If you’re anything like me, you also might accrue your points unevenly; I have a zillion miles on NW but only a few Hilton Honors points because usually when I travel places I stay with friends. Similarly, others might have many hotel or car rental points because their trips are longer or they don’t fly places. Airlines realize this and want you to waste your miles in any way possible, so often craft up ways to purge miles irresponsibly (see our recent article on silly frequent flyer mile auctions).

In that guise, Starwood Hotels’ member program Starwood Preferred Guest has cooked up an engine to use their SPG points to book plane tickets in addition to hotel stays. The nice thing is that the number of points required is tied to the price of the ticket — it isn’t poorly determined by route or demand — so prices are somewhat tied to the open market.

The not-so-nice thing is that it isn’t a super value for your SPG points. Most SPG members I’ve lurked over are finding that it’s just more fiscially responsible to book expensive hotel rooms with points and pay for plane tickets with cash (or sell your SPG points for cash which, ooops, is illegal).

But hey, if you’re rife with miles and aren’t too anal retentive about them, this could be a way to get a few free plane tickets. Check out SPGflights.com for details on the promotion.

Whose miles are worth what where?

by Grant Martin on

The FrugalTravelGuy, a man that spends far more time in airplanes and is a member of far more frequent flyer programs than myself, recently spent some time musing about airline miles and what they’re now worth. With carriers making it more difficult to spend miles across the board, it’s becoming an increasingly valid question — nobody wants to get pinched out of their miles nor wants them to expire out from under them.

What Rick has done is taken a personal look at many of the airlines and ranked their quality as far as value of the current mile. Things like how many miles it takes to get status, book a ticket or redeem other goodies played into the equation and the results are fairly interesting.

His best value frequent flyer mile program? BMI’s mileage program. Who? British Midland Airways is based in the UK and has limited long haul service into the United States. More importantly, they’re also a member of Star Alliance, which means you can be a member of their program and earn miles flying domestically on United or US Airways.

Benefits of BMI’s program include 58k top tier elite qualification (versus 75k for most domestic carriers), access to airport lounges and other generous earnings.

FrugalTravelGuy’s top Domestic program? American Airlines‘ AAdvantage program. You can bore into the details in his article, but for now we’ll round out his top domestic carriers list:

2. United
3. Continental
4. Deltwest
5. US Airways

Note, his list isn’t compresensive across all carriers or nations and you do have to admit that he is one man compiling a lot of data so can be biased. But his arguments are largely on point and his reflections well thought out.

If you’re interested in entering the mileage game or making your miles last, give the article a read.