FREQUENT FLYER NEWS
ELITE CHANGES AT AIRTRAN.
AirTran has added new software that will track elite
status. Starting in ’09, if you don’t fly 20
segments in 90 days, or 50 segments in a year,
you’ll lose your elite status.
Elite Expiration Details here
NIFTY NEW WAY TO TRACK AWARD SEAT AVAILABILITY.
Last year, yapta.com came onto the travel scene with
an airline booking site that would monitor your fare
after you bought the ticket, and let you know if you
qualified for a refund if the price decreased. But
recently, they’ve added a much more valuable e-mail
alert service that will monitor the number of miles
required for award seats on specific routes. Just go
to
www.yapta.com
and sign up. Then do an online search for airfare,
and they click the “include award tickets” box and
yapta will send an email alert if award seats open
up or if the number of miles required for the trip
declines. Nifty neato!
SKYMILES+WORLDPERKS.
Delta seems to be making all the right moves as it
merges SkyMiles with Northwest’s WorldPerks program.
First off, SkyMiles members will once again have the
ability to earn Medallion status based on segments
flown. (30 segments for silver, 60 for gold, 100 for
platinum.) In the last month or so, it’s announced
the ability to transfer miles between SkyMiles and
WorldPerks accounts in early 2009 and the ability to
receive complimentary upgrades on both. Plus, Delta
says that members of both programs will continue to
earn a minimum of 500 MQMs and base miles per
flight, making Delta the only major airline to
maintain this minimum for all customers. Full
integration/merger of the two programs is expected
in late 2009.
BIG MEDALLION PROGRAM CHANGES COMING?
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune recently quoted
Delta officials as saying the carrier will introduce
a new elite program effective in January 2010 with
"new sets of benefits and new elite qualification
parameters."
6X MILES.
Hilton HHonors members who book and stay two or more
consecutive nights at any participating Hilton
Family hotel between Dec. 1 and Feb. 28, 2009 can
sextuple their SkyMiles or HHonors points. Details
and registration here:
www.HiltonHHonors.com/sixtimesthemiles
ARE WE LOSING OUR PASSION?
There’s an excellent article in the WSJ that
examines something we’ve been battling with over the
last few years…. we are simply losing our passion
for frequent flyer programs. Why isn’t
it
as fun anymore? Here’s a clip from the article: “The
percentage of online buyers who say they are loyal
to particular travel companies fell to 25% this year
from 31% in 2006, according to a recent Forrester
Research Inc. survey. Customer loyalty for airlines,
whose mileage programs once often swayed
ticket-buying decisions, are worse than for hotels
and cruise lines. And travelers buy tickets based on
price and schedule more than ever instead of
choosing to fly a particular airline. ‘Airlines are
shooting themselves in the foot,’ says Henry
Harteveldt, Forrester's principal analyst for
airlines and travel. ‘Their loyalty programs are
just not worth what they once were to consumers.’” (full
story, WSJ subscription required) What do
YOU think? Have you lost your passion for frequent
flyer programs?
LET US KNOW.
BUYING INTO ELITE.
United is now allowing non-elite members to pay $25
each way to get elite level line-breaking benefits
at check-in, security screening and boarding.
Similarly, Priority Club Gold membership is
available for purchase ($50), too, which offers 10%
more points for each stay, priority check in, a
special member services number and better
recognition (and maybe more likely upgrades?) at
check in at Intercontinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne
Plaza, StayBridge Suites and others in the IHG
chain.
DID YOU KNOW…
THE FIVE CHEAPEST TIMES OF YEAR TO TRAVEL.
Check out TICKET editor Chris McGinnis’s new blog
for Best Western International and you’ll learn how
to use timing to get the most bang out of your
business travel bucks! See it here:
Youmustbetrippin.com
INTERNATIONAL
DELTA DIVES DOWN UNDER.
Finally! Delta has announced new non-stop Boeing 777
flights between LAX and Sydney, Australia starting
July 1, 2009. Delta’s release boasts, “With the
addition of Sydney, Delta will become the only U.S.
airline to fly to six continents, enhancing its
position as the premier global airline.” We checked
SkyMiles redemptions for trips down under in July
(low season…July is winter in Australia) and found
coach round trips at 145,000 miles, most business
class seats going for 195,000 miles (but a handful
of deeply discounted business class seats for
150,000 miles.) Bonuses: Delta says it will employ
its new fully flat business class seat on the route.
Plus, the U.S. dollar has strengthened remarkably
against the Australian dollar making trips much more
affordable than in recent years.
DELTA PLANE CHANGES.
Now that Delta has merged with Northwest making it
the world’s largest carrier, CEO Richard Anderson is
saying that it will no longer be an exclusively
Boeing operation.
"Delta will be an opportunistic purchaser of
airplanes, and that will include both Boeing and
Airbus," he said in the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer. "Given our size, the breadth
of our network and the variety of places that we
fly, we will be customers for all the major
suppliers." Speaking of Delta planes, the carrier
recently slapped its livery on a Northwest 747,
which will begin flying nonstop between ATL and
Tokyo-Narita starting on May 4.
DELTA ADJUSTS ATL-LONDON SKEDS.
TICKET reader S. Gaskins noticed some funny business
when booking winter flights from ATL to London and
asked if we could get to the bottom of the changes.
Here’s what we got from Delta: “We have reduced the
second daily Atlanta-to-Gatwick flight in January
and February to adjust to seasonal demand. We will
continue to operate once daily to Gatwick from
Atlanta (the 5:35 p.m. departure) and once daily to
Heathrow (the 10:45 p.m. departure). Delta remains
committed to the London market but is making
adjustments to our winter schedules to trim
frequencies where warranted while maintaining our
broad global scope. We will re-adjust
schedules before the peak summer season. Also, of
note, on certain dates this winter when the 8:10
p.m. flight to Gatwick already had high customer
bookings, we will continue to operate on those
select dates.”
DELTA TO BRING SOME LIGHT INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS.
Delta’s moving into the African market in a big way,
annou
ncing
new flights between ATL and Nairobi, Kenya; Cape
Town, South Africa; Monrovia, Liberia; Abuja,
Nigeria; Luanda, Angola; and Malabo, Equatorial
Guinea. In addition to the ATL flights, it is adding
a Kennedy-Lagos nonstop and an Atlanta-Johannesburg
nonstop. These are very light routes--- none are
daily…most are one or twice weekly using smaller
757-ERs with international configurations.
NEW JET LAG CURE?
CNN.com reports that help may be on the way in the
form of a new drug that has proved successful in
resetting the body's natural sleep rhythms. In two
clinical trials, the drug tasimelteon helped
volunteers whose sleep pattern had been delayed by
five hours to fall asleep quicker and to sleep for
longer. The drug mimics the effects of melatonin.
Melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone in humans
that regulates the circadian rhythm, or the natural
human clock, that is partly controlled by daylight.
(full
story)
e
through Dec 31 of 2008. After that, you’ll pay from
$10 to $13, depending on the length of your flight.
Throughout 2009, Delta will continue to add
in-flight Internet across its entire domestic fleet,
first on MD-88, MD-90, Boeing 757 and Boeing 737
aircraft, expanding to the remaining domestic fleet
of Boeing 767-300 aircraft by late 2009. We are
skeptical about the enormity of this task, but are
hopeful Delta will do what it says.
se
of your personal vehicle for business from 58.5
cents to 55 cents. Many companies use the IRS figure
as the amount for which they will reimburse
employees for the use of their personal vehicles.
