(Photo: Jim Glab)
AIRLINES
United offers bonus miles to elites. Matching a similar move by American Airlines, United has come out with its own offer of bonus miles for MileagePlus members who buy tickets in premium cabins. The longer the flight and the higher one’s elite status, the more bonus miles United piles on, up to 12,000 for Premier 1Ks on long-haul flights of more than 3,000 miles (and p.s. transcontinental flights). Unlike American’s promotion, which is good all through 2015, United’s only applies through the end of February. That’s because on March 1, MileagePlus switches over to a new regime of earning based on money spent rather than distance flown. Delta made that same switch January 1, which is why it felt no need to match American’s premium-cabin mileage bonuses. For details on United’s plan, go to www.united.com/newyearbonus.
JetBlue’s double miles. JetBlue has come out with its own seasonal bonus promotion for members of its TrueBlue loyalty program. The carrier is offering double base flight points on all flights booked and flown by March 8. The promotion requires online registration.
Delta’s Asian Situation. Could it be a coincidence? Just days after American Airlines asked the Transportation Department to take away Delta’s Seattle-Tokyo Haneda authority and give it to AA to launch Los Angeles-Haneda service, Delta filed for approval to operate Los Angeles-Shanghai Pudong flights starting July 9 — a route already served by American as well as United and China Eastern. Delta said LAX-Shanghai was the route “most requested by our corporate customers.” The airline will use a 777-200LR with BusinessElite, Economy Comfort and regular economy seating.
Taking a lean back in Cathay Pacific’s premium economy seat on a B777-300
Cathay Pacific will expand San Francisco-Hong Kong service effective June 12 from twice-daily departures to 17 non-stop B777 flights a week. These new planes are outfitted with Cathay’s new(ish) premium economy cabin (pictured above), business class and regular economy class– no first. The third flight will depart SFO at 1:40 a.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays with an early-morning arrival in Hong Kong. Check out Chris’s SFGate.com post about a unique Cathay Pacific “delivery flight” from the Boeing factory in Seattle to Hong Kong. And check out the plane’s roomy crew rest area in this short video.
Miles stolen at AA, UA. Cyberthieves have used stolen usernames and passwords to access AAdvantage and MileagePlus customer accounts, in some cases securing free flights or upgrades, according to the Associated Press. The airlines reportedly notified affected customers in recent weeks — just a few dozen at United, but some 10,000 at American, the report said — and have frozen their accounts. The airlines noted that their own systems were not hacked, and that no customer credit card information was obtained. Readers: Do you take any special steps to keep your frequent flyer account access secure? Post comments below.
INTERNATIONAL
Google Translate uses you phones camera to translate signs.
What language problem? Do you get frustrated on overseas trips because you can’t read the local signs or understand conversations? With the newly updated Google Translate app, you can simply point your phone’s camera at printed words (as long as they’re in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian or Russian) and see the English translation on the screen. The app will also translate spoken words into English (and vice versa), and with the new update it can automatically detect which foreign language it is hearing. Since I’m usually more baffled by signage in Japan or China than in Europe, I’m looking forward to the day that Google makes it work across the Pacific! In the meantime, the app does a nice job with Russian– watch me speak it in the video below.
In Case You Missed It…
- United has new limited-edition amenity kits in commemorative tins, offered to premium cabin international customers through the spring.
- Ever wonder how touchscreens work? read this.
>>Take a peek at what you may have missed on TravelSkills.com this week! <<
What are the two best all-around credit cards? Both currently offer 40,000 mile sign up bonuses!
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Judy Serie Nagy says
January 22, 2015 at 9:18 pmI am grateful to all my “blogging friends, forums et al” for the warning about FF points/miles disappearing from accounts. I look at my accounts now as often as I check my credit card statements. I’m putting together a monster miles/upgrade/cash deal for a year from now and if some of my points disappeared it would ruin my life!
Chris McGinnis says
January 18, 2015 at 12:11 pmThanks, Dan! Good to hear.
Chris McGinnis says
January 18, 2015 at 12:11 pmGreat to hear! Thanks to your wife. –chris
Salvatore Johnson says
January 18, 2015 at 12:09 pmSorry to be so negative but this United deal is for those with expensive tickets. I was in the process of doing a flight from D.C. to San Francisco and in order to qualify for any points the ticket would be $780 instead of the cheap $360 round trip fare. Since the flight is under 3,000 miles and since I am a silver holder, the grand prize is to get 250 bonus miles for the addition $400 cost of the ticket.
Again there are no more bargins or good ways of making miles unless you are willing to fly full coach fare or a first class ticket.
Of course many have a United credit card that they charge things on and get mileage that way but for me the United frequent flyer plan is not a loyalty plan anymore, it’s just a way for folks to spend more on tickets because that’s the only way to get miles anymore.
A shame, I hope this plan backfires for United and they lose thousands of flyers who will go to Southwest, Virgin, JetBlue and other airlines that treat their customers like they are important.
Rick Christman says
January 18, 2015 at 2:38 amHi, Chris, my wife speaks Russian and says the translation from Google Translate is quite accurate.
DJLSFO says
January 17, 2015 at 8:49 pmI use American express miles that I move into Air Canada Aeroplan; so I can use “star alliance” international routes out of SFO to/from Europe. Imagine my shock right before the Holidays when I was going through my early morning email to find an award ticket that Aeroplan had issued for travel that same day from Abby Adis (Eithiopia) to Nigeria…I was on the phone to Aeroplan at 5am (waking up the serenity and sleep of my entire household)….Luckily they stopped the person from boarding….the miles were returned to my account 48 hours later….Aeroplan is a wonderfully run operation….I can only imagine how another mileage program might have treated this….
Dan says
January 17, 2015 at 7:46 pmRussian speaker here… I was pretty surprised at the translation, Google did quite well. Obviously not perfect, but definitely got your point across correctly. Awesome update on their end.
Canon Perdido says
January 17, 2015 at 6:47 pmIf American Airlines really wanted to protect user accounts, they would allow long password. ‘User accounts can only have a maximum 12 character password. Ideally, passwords would be at least 16 characters.