Loyalty Traveler reports another Marriott promotion for the fall, running not quite concurrently with their MegaBonus promotion.  Earning is limited to United, Delta, British Airways, Lufthansa, GOL/Varig, and LAN.

• The first stay earns a base of 2 miles per dollar.
• The second stay has a 1k mile bonus.
• The third and fourth stays have a 1.5k mile bonus.
• Subsequent stays have a 2k mile bonus.

The bonus is capped at 30k bonus points (or 17 stays).  The main advantage to this promotion is that it starts on September 1st.  If I stayed at Marriott hotels more frequently (or at least planned to this fall), this promotion would be a helpful addition to the MegaBonus promotion.  My offer was for a free night after two stays,  up to two free nights.  While a 4k mile bonus isn’t as valuable as two free nights, it’s a useful promotion (for the Marriott traveler) beyond that or before the MegaBonus promotion kicks in.

There’s plenty of anecotal views on how to best board an airplane.  A new paper showed up in the arXiv last week with experimental results (albeit with limited sample size) for different strategies.  Randomized boarding beat back-to-front and the block-based method.  Window-middle-aisle (“Wilma”) came in at about 30 seconds faster, but with a sample size of 1 it’s not necessarily statistically significant.  The “Steffan” method of boarding, which boards passengers at every other row together, came in slightly faster.

There’s a video on Youtube of their method.

Starwood announced its Triple Up promotion.  For stays involving a Thursday or Sunday night, there is a triple SPG point bonus; for all other stays, there is a double SPG point bonus.  There’s a few nonparticipating hotels as well. Registration opens on September 6th for stays booked between September 6th through December 18th.  Registration closes November 15th.

Priority Club has a brand diversity-driven promotion from September 15 through December 31.  Stays earn a 500 point or 100 mile bonus.  Staying at 2-4 distinct brands gives a multiplier for a bonus to appear at the beginning of 2012.  Registration is currently open.

Marriott has a targeted fall MegaBonus promotion for stays between September 15th through January 15th.  My offer was for one free night (at a Category 1-4 hotel) every second stay with a limit of 2 free nights.

I’m not thrilled by any of these in comparison to the three stays for a free night promotion that Starwood ran earlier this year, but alas, it’s better than nothing.

Hyatt announced their newest promotion on FlyerTalk: Every 3k eligible nights earns a 5k point bonus up to a total of 30k bonus points.  Registration opens on September 15.

For reference, the Hyatt award chart starts at 5k points per night for Category 1 hotels and works up to 22k points per night for Category 6 hotels.

I’ve been voluntarily denied boarding (VDB) four times this year on United, netting me a total of $1,800 in United travel vouchers.  Earlier in the year, I also turned down a $400 offer because the reroute involved a layover at ORD in the middle of a blizzard.  I’ve been offered two bumps with Continental, one at $400 to fly the next day and one at $250 to miss Penn & Teller.  Meanwhile, American’s never sought volunteers on any of my flights (although I’m 3 for 3 on same day standbys to earlier flights, possibly causing myself to miss out an unlikely chance of being bumped).

Apparently, my anecdotal data points can be confirmed with statistics; United’s VDB rate is bit over twice that of Continental or American.

I got an email this afternoon from Continental, advertising an auction for a 32GB iPad 2 and a Callaway Golf RAZR Hawk Driver.  Uninterested in either product (if I was, I would have bought one already), I ignored it.  Seth at The Wandering Aramean points out the senselessness of it:  The bid’s currently at 187,000 miles for a product which retails at $599, delivering a whopping 0.32 cents of value per mile.

While I wouldn’t personally bid that much, these auctions take a liability of United/Continental’s books.  A small part of me hopes that this might encourage the airline to sweep hundreds of thousands of miles away through cheap redemptions rather than jack up the award chart or slash award availability.  Of course, it’s possible we could experience the worst of all possible worlds, one in which bidding 187k miles on an iPad 2 is actually a good redemption value.

I, like many others, jumped in on the AAdvantage eShopping advertisement for 83,871 miles with a rather small purchase from the Verizon website.   Since then, there’s been a massive thread on FlyerTalk (now 212 pages).

I finally got my consolation email.  For my less than $5 purchase of a charger, Cartera is promising 2500 AAdvantage miles to be posted within 10 days.  With a second purchase in the next month, I’m supposed to receive an additional 2500 miles.

It ought to be fun  seeing whether these miles actually post.

Registration is now open.  The promotion runs from September 14th through November 14th.

The 40th tier requires having elite status on US Airways.  While it’s possible to buy a 90-day trial of the lowest tier  for $200 (plus 7.5% in federal taxes), the additional 10k of redeemable miles isn’t almost certainly not worth it at 2.15cpm.  I currently have Star Alliance Gold via United/Continental, so the prospect of having another Star Alliance elite card isn’t especially appealing.

I’m a bit late to the party, but American announced the official changes to their million miler policy.

Currently, all redeemable miles with American count towards the million mile thresholds.  This is inclusive of credit card bonuses, elite bonuses, and other promotions.  On December 1, 2011, further progress towards these goals will be limited to butt-in-seat miles flown on AA or earned on its partners.  Additionally, to further push the Citi AAdvantage World Elite Mastercard, cards opened by December will continue to earn miles which count towards million miler status.

The benefits are mostly unchanged.  Gold (low tier) at 1MM, Platinum (midtier) at 2MM.  The bonus for achieving 1MM is now 35k bonus miles, exchangeable for eight 500mi upgrade stickers.  Previously, stickers were awarded to those reaching the threshold with domestic addresses; those with international addresses were awarded four systemwide upgrades.

While United’s policy appears to be more “generous” by giving Premier Executive (midtier) status at 1MM, its miles must be earned from purely butt-in-seat miles flown on United metal.  Until the lifetime policy is clarified as the merger continues, Continental lfietime miles do not count towards this threshold.

As discussed last week, I applied for (and received) the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card with a rather paltry bonus for $1k of spending.  I sent a secure message last night to apply promotion 6661 (75k points for $1k of spending) and was turned down.  A quick call to Membership Rewards this morning got the bonus applied to my account; although it should be fun to see whether the points credit automatically.  I’m not counting on it.

In the past 24 hours or so, this appears to have become an increasingly YMMV situation.  Promo codes are being checked for targeting.  FlyerTalk has reported failures.  Online Travel Review suggests that this is par for the course.

With the closure of the US Mint Direct Ship program for credit card funded purchases, it should be fun to get the $1k of spending onto this card quickly to resolve whether I’m actually going to bonus.

The 30k signup bonus for the Starwood Amex ends today.  The bonus is split into two halves, 10k on first purchase and 20k more after $4.5k of spending.

SPG points generally transfer at 1:1 with most airlines (United/Continental are exceptions).  Additionally, for every 20k points transfered, there’s a 5k bonus.

I’m always hesitant to buy miles and points.  Airlines and hotels are profit-seeking entities; they wouldn’t sell the miles and points without some chance of making a profit on them.  As a testament to this, I have a hockey puck sitting my closet from the AAdvantage/Verizon snafu, just waiting to be returned as part of whatever settlement of miles I might get.

Before handing wads of cash to US Airways and its partners, it’s worth figuring out the value of a mile. US Airways has an award chart for itself and for its Star Alliance partners.  An off-peak (1/15-2/28) award to Europe runs 35k miles in coach and 60k in business.  A quick check of availability shows that there actually are some awards to Europe available for that little, even around President’s Day weekend out of Philadelphia.  If I value a trip to Europe (in the dead of winter) at about $550, this amounts to about 1.57pm.   Availability next summer on US for the lower tiers of awards looks minimal, so its hard to point to a hypothetical trip to the summer and compare it to a $1k revenue fare.

US also has a Star Alliance award chart.  US isn’t quite as generous with awards as UA/CO.  There’s a limit of one stopover at a Star Alliance hub or an open jaw.  The Points Guy and FlyerTalk both have guides to maximizing these awards.  Hong Kong and Japan fall into North Asia for 120k miles in first; UA puts Hong Kong in South Asia (140k miles) and Japan by itself (135k miles).

US currently has a promotion through September 15, 2011 offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles.  100k miles can be purchased for 1.478cpm.

The only official details about the promotion is its FAQ.  Discussions of last year’s implementation give a rough sketch of the award tiers.  I’m mildly curious about this year’s 40th bonus tier.

Online Travel Review details how to turn the current Amex Premier Rewards Gold card offer for 15k Membership Reward points for $1k of spending in 3 months into about 105k points for the same spend.  Membership reward points are transferable to several airlines, including several in each major alliance.

The process?  The first step is to apply and be accepted.  Then, calling and asking the customer service representatives to apply promotion code 6661 bumps the signup bonus to 75k points for the same spend.  A second call with promotion code 6664 in hand gives 10k points for every billing cycle with at least 15 purchases in it through November 15th.  Since there are three months from then to now, an additional 30k points are up for grabs.  Depending on what purchases are being made for the $1k of spending, the spending translates to 1-3k of additional points.

While I’ve been loathe to apply for cards offering points less tangible than direct hotel points or airline miles, I’ve been tempted by the distance-based ANA partner award chart.  105k MR points would transfer to 105k ANA miles, good for a trip of up to 18,000 miles in business class on ANA and one partner or ANA and a number of its star alliance partners.  Transfers to Continental are ending at the end of September, so this offer isn’t appropriately timed to convert all of the points into Continental miles.  Since I’m on track to finish the year with about 300k redeemable miles with United/Continental, I’m not especially concerned about turning these points into Continental miles.  Delta has frequent promotions for point transfers; in fact, there’s a 50% promotion available until the end of September.

As soon as Chase figures out on Monday what happened to my Hyatt card application, I’ll jump in on this offer myself.

Yesterday’s rumored changes have turned into a 36 page long thread (as of this writing) on FlyerTalk.  The lack of a complete denial by United’s representative on FlyerTalk isn’t helping.  A few other bloggers have written on the topic as well.

First, for some perspective, it’s worth considering my travel on United/Continental this year.  I’m attending StarMegaDo3, which is going to net 4720 EQM for $750, but since there’s a bit more to the program than earning a few EQM.  (If I were after the EQM, I’d fly a few transcons for that much.  Booking my DEN-LAX-JFK trip home from it came out to 3337 EQM for $77.55, or 2.32CPM.)  As a result, I’m willing to drop those segments and fares from my statistics.  Year to date, I’ve paid United and Continental a total of $3,692.66.  As a result, I’ve booked and flown 70,887 EQM, in addition to still holding $200 in travel vouchers.  This brings my average CPM to 4.93, after a few recent splurges for summer travel and a trip to Hawaii.  I don’t hop on airplanes for the sole sake of earning airline miles and travel almost exclusively on Friday/Sunday evenings, so spending 5cpm is acceptable to me.

At this rate, I fully expect to make the 1K tier by achieving 100k EQM for no more than $5k in cash spending.

According to the rumor, UA’s tacking on a mandatory revenue requirement to its elite tiers as well.   To qualify for the top tier, “Premier Diamond,” I’d need to spend $8k, which would be easily obtained by dropping my flying on AA (which, in light of this instability with UA Mileage Plus, isn’t going to happen) or counting my spent travel vouchers ($1.8k).   To defend the cents per mile target, I’d have to fly 160k miles, which is feasible for the time being.  It leaves me wondering what might happen in the future when higher revenues are desired or I spend slightly less with the airline.

The changes partition would-be UA fliers into a few groups.

There’s the whales who happily and consistently pay for full fare tickets, especially those buying tickets in premium cabins.  For those with significant spending with the airline, UA’s already taking “care” of them via the Global Services program.  For those making more one-off purchases, the loyalty program does little to build UA’s competitive advantage.  For the passenger consistently purchasing, say, international first class tickets, an upgrade certificate offers no added value and the miles little-to-none.  Service and product attract these passengers.

UA also has mixed-fare fliers who travel on their own dime for personal travel and have paid business travel as well.  While the shift adds significant priority to full fare tickets, a hypothetical mixed-fare traveler may buy revenue tickets for a family vacation.  The two-faced nature of treating passengers as their fare for the day of travel does little to build long-term loyalty.

Then there’s the bottom feeders found on FlyerTalk who seek to minimize their spending while maximizing the miles returned, parlaying them into valuable first class tickets.  While my tickets might frequently fail to cover United’s costs according to their published per seat-mile statistics, the seats could have gone empty.  The marginal cost of transporting me is close to that of printing a boarding pass, possibly serving a meal in first class, and providing me with some miles which I will redeem for future travel.  When a flight is oversold, I’m much closer to a real liability to the airline as involuntary bumps must be paid in hard currency rather than the travel voucher scrip that I readily accept for minor inconvenience to cut costs.

Standing around in a revenue management office hoping for the whales to fly to keep the airline profitable does not seem sustainable in the long term.  OpenSkies is an exclusively business class airline that has survived for several years, but it its flights from Paris Orly to Newark and Washington don’t have to connect to a substantial domestic network.  While increased fares would cull the ranks of the mileage running crowd, it drives away general members who would just as well fly Southwest for less impairing the route network further.

Meanwhile, access to Economy Plus, redeemable mileage bonuses, and checked bag allowances are being cut for lower tier elites, there’s little reason to hit the $2k/4k/6k spending requirements for these tiers.

To get back from Las Vegas, I booked a ticket with American for LAS-LAX-JFK.  While it seems odd to fly west to go east, the fare rule I would have used to get back to JFK on a direct flight covered transiting LAX as well (so the price was the same) and the last flight from LAS to LAX sufficient to connect to a LAX-JFK redeye left far later than the last LAS-JFK flight (so I got more time in Las Vegas).

American’s corporate parent, AMR Corporation, loves to issue press releases emphasizing its “cornerstone strategy.”  In layman’s terms, it means eliminating most nonhub-to-nonhub flying for the airline.  Due to thunderstorms in Miami, our aircraft was progressively delayed by about two hours in arriving in Las Vegas, delaying our departure.  While it’s hard to fault American for not having an “extra aircraft” to spare as any sensible airline attempts to run its planes at capacity rather than leave them idle, there’s a bit of irony in my choice of a 737 rather than an MD-80 to avoid potential mechanical delays (and a subsequent risk of a mis-connect).  At least with the MD-80, the plane would have been coming from LAX or DFW rather than MIA.

Prior to heading to the airport, I saw my flight was already delayed an hour.  Upon reaching the airport, I called the American elite desk and switched over to the later (11:45PM) redeye from LAX to avoid mis-connecting to my original, 9:30PM departure.

We pushed back from the gate and then started heading towards the runway, only to park parallel to it on the tarmac due to a ground delay caused by the weather at LAX.  Out of my eighty or so flights touching LAX, this amounted to my first LAX-triggered weather delay.  A call to the American desk once again protected me onto the last seats of a LAX-DFW-LGA routing in order to ensure I’d make it to New York by Monday morning.  Surrounding me in the exit row were a number of passengers who had to make progressively tighter connections onto Qantas flights to Australia, so my potential woes paled in comparison.

My upgrade to business class cleared for the LAX-JFK segment, so I wound up in seat 7D.

I found this seat to be inferior to United’s business class seats on p.s.  The seat seemed either a bit narrower or the armrests a bit higher, leaving me between two less-than-optimal choices of where to rest my arms while sleeping.  A quick glance at SeatGuru confirms that American’s seats are quantitatively narrower and have less pitch than those on p.s.

There are a few discount codes for travel on American Airlines floating around if you’re touching an eligible city.  (Hat tip:  View from the Wing)

The 10% off code, 5591AG, is good for travel to AMA, AVP, BMI, BNA, BOS, BUR, CHA, CLE, COS, CVG, DFW, EVV, EWR, FSD, FSD, GRR, GSP, HPN, ICT, JFK, LAX, LGA, MCI, MKE, MLU, ONT, ORD, PDX, PIA, SEA, SFO, SGF, SHV, SJC, SNA, TOL, and TUL.

There’s another 10% off code, 6881BN, good for travel to LAX, BUR, ONT, and SNA.

The 15% off code, 4681BX, is applicable to BOS, BUR, BWI, DCA, DFW, EWR, FLL, HPN, IAD, JFK, LAS, LAX, LGA, MIA, ONT, ORD, PBI, SAN, SFO, SJC, SNA.  A discussion on FlyerTalk suggests that this code may have been disabled.  There’s a targeted offer for a 15% code if you install AA’s DealFinder 2.0 application on your computer.

Given AA gift cards with a $300 face value can be purchased at Costco for $269.99, the gift card discount and the 15% code can be stacked to net a 23.5% discount on the base fare.  When plugging in the codes for some fall travel tonight, the code only discounts the base fare.  Any applicable taxes will be on the discounted fare but aren’t discounted themselves.

Lucky reports that there might be some significant changes coming to United’s elite program starting next year.  The scary bit:  Elite levels have revenue requirements associated with them.

Unlike my previous trip to Las Vegas, I had a slightly more direct trip to Nevada.  Originally, I was booked on the last flight of the night (CO1534) for which my upgrade had cleared 48 hours out.  Having checked on the inventory evening before and the day of to estimate my likelihood of scoring a bump.  (As the last flight of the night with no hope of connecting as well, it would have been rather inconvenient, but a substantial travel voucher could have made up for it.)  Both Co1534 and the proceeding flight, CO885, were rather empty.  For the earlier flight, first class was booked at 17 with a capacity of 24.

Once my train got to New Jersey, I called Continental and same-day confirmed changed to CO885.  Overall, my call time consisted of entering my OnePass number into my phone, telling the agent what I wanted, and waiting about 30 seconds for my United-ticketed flight to be re-ticketed on Continental stock on the new flight.  In contrast to the 45 minutes I spent with my last Las Vegas-related SDC, I was pleased.

My upgrade cleared to seat 6A.

Our predeparture snack consisted of a drink and prepackaged almonds

The vegetarian dinner choice was cheese lasagna with an optional mushroom soup (which I passed on).

The desert was an apple-topped cake.

On my DEN-SJC flight operated by United, the salt and pepper came in two small plastic pouches in a black United paper sheath.  While the Tulip is supposed to be endangered, it evidently lives on in the first class cabin of Continental’s planes (at least for the time being).

To top off my last stay with last quarter’s Starwood promotion, I stayed at the Westin Washington Dulles.

Two weekends ago, I was in Washington DC to visit and wrap up another three stays as part of SPG’s Getaway Free promotion.  For my second stay and night, I was at the aloft Dulles North.

The room itself was fine.  The shuttle could use a bit of work.  It’s scheduled to run until 11PM, but for a number of hotel guests and myself waiting around at 10PM onwards, it stopped running much earlier.

American announced end-of-year bonuses for its elite members who satisfy certain elite qualifying point requirements who register by December 15th.  For Platinum and Executive Platinum members, it is possible to gift Gold to another AAdvantage member.

The qualification cutoffs are 40,000-49,999 EQP for Gold members, 75,000-99,999 EQP for Platinum members, and 125,000+ EQP for Executive Platinum members.  For the two lower tiers, these cutoffs reflect nearly (although it’s a bit of a stretch on the bottom end) qualifying for the next tier up on elite qualifying points alone (50k and 100k respectively).

Since it works on points rather than miles (and I tend to buy deep discount economy tickets, earning 0.5 EQP per mile), I’m unlikely to earn anything from this promotion.  Nonetheless, here’s to hoping that United brings back its elite rewards for this year as I’m on track to make 1K.

I went hotel hopping with Starwood last weekend to combine a trip to Washington DC with picking up another free reward night during the last days of the Getaway Free promotion.

My match to Starwood Gold status from Hilton yielded a nice room on the 14th floor.  Tomorrow’s post will discuss the value of having a decent floor.

The desk had two sets of power outlets.  Two on the lamp and two in a retractable powerstrip that was embedded in the desk.

Delta is offering free wifi on its flights in August using the promotion code DIETCOKEGOGO (Hat Tip: View from the Wing).

Alaska Air is offering free wifi for smartphones and iPads in August and September courtesy of Visa Signature.

In the interests of maintaining elite status, being able to accumulate enough miles to actually book an award ticket, and having a good chance at a pleasant customer service experience, I’ve been flying American, Continental, and United this year.  There’s a limit to my loyalty, however.   When it came time to book my return ticket to New York last week, those airlines wanted about $400 for a one-way.  Amtrak would have been around $130 (Edit: One-way).  Jetblue was around $120 (Edit: One-way).  To see if I could do any better, I plugged in my entire roundtrip into ITA and found a Delta roundtrip for $157 all-inclusive.  In terms of cents-per-mile, it’s a terribly high price; but in terms of New York to Washington, it’s a respectable fare.

My Friday evening flight out of New York was canceled out around noon due to expected thunderstorms so I wound up on Amtrak anyways.

When I called Delta to cancel my segment inbound to Washington so I could get a refund and take Amtrak instead, I got a human being within a minute.  With American, I generally get a human just as quickly.  Sadly, with United and Continental, I’ve spent 30 minutes on hold a few times this year, even as an elite.  (Based on the discussion on a FlyerTalk thread, I shudder to think what non-elites face.)