Raise your hand if you’ve memorized the frequent flier number, login, and password for every single rewards program you belong to? That’s what I thought. Many of you may know one or two (I still remember my AAdvantage number because it was also my login for eAAsySabre long ago), but that’s about it. For that reason, I highly recommend AwardWallet.

As long as you don’t have concerns about storing your numbers and passwords elsewhere, this site is just awesome. I started using it a couple months ago and it’s been fantastic.

You set it up program by program, entering your frequent flier number or web login along with your password. Then it goes in and pulls out your balances and expiration dates so you can monitor them all from one place.

Even better, when you have any activity, you get a weekly email update with the details. It also sends you an update when new travel plans are added to one of your accounts. If your expiration is coming up, it’ll tell you that too. The home screen shows your frequent flier number and logins so it makes for an easy reference point. It can even log you in directly to the websites for those programs and take you there.

It’s also not limited to airlines or even travel even general. Yes, I can follow my Starwood, National car rental, and Amtrak balances on there, but I could also look at credit card rewards, and more. Some I’ve never even heard of.

What don’t I love? The pricing plan is really goofy. You get a lot of functionality for free, but the premium version, which includes some bells and whistles, costs, uh, whatever you want. Seriously. You decide what you think it’s worth and pay it. Strange, I know.

But forgetting about that quirk, this site is great. I never remember my frequent flier numbers, so this is an easy way to bring them up. For example, I was flying on Frontier recently and my number wasn’t in the reservation. I looked it up and put it in when I checked in.

It’s also helpful when you’re trying to log in to the different programs and can’t remember your information. This stores you login info even if it isn’t your frequent flier number. So you really can’t lose this stuff anymore.

It also sends you updates when there’s a change to your award balance as well as reminders to check-in and more.

Kudos to AwardWallet for putting this together. It’s a great tool to have.

Let me make something very clear: Never, ever book one way award travel on Delta. Not only is the value poor compared to other airlines, but their screwy system overcharges you above and beyond that. It’s so misleading, that I’ve decided it’s Cranky Jackass-worthy. Now, let me explain.

We had a Cranky Concierge client last week, let’s call her Dr Ann Elizabeth Amanda, who needed to go from Portland to Providence one way just a couple days later. The fares were in the $600 range and she just wasn’t going to pay that. Dr Ann Elizabeth Amanda has a lot of miles on Delta, so she figured she would just use them for the one way trip. She called Delta and was told it was 40,000 miles, so then she called us.

Now, I would rarely if ever suggest using miles for a one way trip on Delta. See, unlike American and United, Delta doesn’t actually offer one way awards. You have to pay the full amount as if it were a roundtrip. As a casual program member, you might not realize that because on the Delta.com website, they give you an option to look up one way awards. They just don’t tell you the cost is the same.

Sure enough, when we looked up award availability for the one way trip, it showed 40,000 miles which is the equivalent of what they call a “medium price award.” There were no low price seats available, which would have cost the industry standard 25,000 miles. Here’s a screenshot:

So at this point, it’s only mildly shady in that those who don’t know the program may be duped into thinking this is actually a one way award. But here’s where the shadiness goes off the charts.

To get a one way award, Delta simply looks at the award level you’re in and uses the roundtrip value. In this case, that’s 40,000 miles for a medium award. But Delta actually lets you combine award levels to make a complete roundtrip ticket by using half the amount of each award. We knew this so we pulled up the award calendar and opted for a roundtrip flight. When would the return occur? It would just happen on the first day that a low price award was available. That, unsurprisingly knowing Delta’s availability levels, wasn’t until September.

What happened now? The price magically dropped to 32,500. That’s right. Half the medium award (20,000) plus half the low price award (12,500) saved Dr Ann Elizabeth Amanda 7,500 miles and she got an extra return flight out of it that she could either throw away or use at a later date. Don’t believe me? Here’s the screenshot:

Now that is downright wrong. You can understand now why I say never, ever book a Delta one way award. I would say it’s not worth using your miles for a one way award on Delta in nearly all circumstances, but on those rare occasions when it needs to be done, you might as well book the roundtrip because it may very well save you miles.

Pretty awful stuff, Delta.

There had been plenty of speculation that Jetstar’s next long haul move would be Singapore to both Europe and North Asia. It looks like they’ve decided to put that on hold in favor of more Oceania flying. I wonder if Air Asia X has anything to do with this decision?

Here’s a map of how Jetstar is running things in Singapore these days.

You can see there is a substantial short haul presence along with that long haul trip to Perth. Other long haul has been focused out of Australia so far. The expectation was that we’d see some Jetstar really open up Singapore long haul into Europe, maybe Japan and Korea, etc. But no, they’ve gone the other way.

Starting December 17, there will be a single daily to Melbourne and on March 17, a single daily to Auckland. These are interesting routes. Singapore to Melbourne is not exactly a less-traveled route. Singapore flies it three times a day, once on an A380, and Emirates flies it once a day as well. Qantas has a single daily mainline flight that doesn’t appear to be disappearing at this point. It seems that Qantas simply sees an opportunity to go to the low end of the market with its Jetstar product since the high end is already covered quite well.

Auckland is an even more interesting one. Only Singapore flies the route today, up to two times daily depending on the season. Air New Zealand isn’t on the route, so they are likely to only have cautious concern at this point for potential future expansion.

What this allows Qantas to do is take Kiwi passengers and funnel them into the Southeast Asian network. Even though it’s a low cost product, it’s going to still provide good competition with Singapore and other Asian carriers for those travelers heading to southeast Asian destinations.

So maybe this was an attempt to simply shore up defenses in Oceania before taking on Europe and North Asia, especially with Air Asia X flying from Kuala Lumpur to several Australian cities. Or maybe Jetstar simply wasn’t excited about what it was seeing in those markets. Air Asia X, Air Asia’s long haul operation out of Kuala Lumpur, has a great deal of trouble since its startup.

Sure, the airline is profitable, but look where its growth has been. China, India, and Australia see nearly all the flights from the airline. The only exception is the inaugural London route. A foray into Abu Dhabi ended three months after it started.

There have also been all kinds of seat problems, and Air Asia X learned that people didn’t like the premium economy product and instead wanted a full flat business product. The airline had to change out all its seats.

So with no entry into Japan and still only a single European route, Air Asia X hasn’t exactly shown the strength of those markets, and it has faced a lot of headwinds in delivering the right product. That doesn’t mean these routes can’t work, but it may have been a sign for Jetstar that other things can work much better.

One of the more laughable rumors in recent memory has come to the surface in recent days. The rumorville is buzzing with the possibility of a Delta hub in St Louis. What a stupid idea. This rumor is either completely wrong or Delta is a lot dumber than I thought. My guess is that this is just being completely blown out of proportion.

Watch this news report and then come on back for more discussion.

The rumors say that Delta is looking to establish up to eighty flights a day in St Louis. The Mayor confirmed that Delta was in town to talk, but he didn’t say anything about a “hub” per se. The local media seems to have jumped on that and run with it when in reality, Delta may just be looking for a few additional opportunities, if that.

St Louis isn’t a tiny operation for them. When LaGuardia starts in September, they’ll be up to 34 flights per day as follows:

• Atlanta 8x
• Cincinnati 3x
• Detroit 6x
• JFK 1x
• LaGuardia 4x
• Memphis 3x
• Minneapolis/St Paul 6x
• Salt Lake City 3x

Is it a huge stretch to see that number get up to 80 flights per day? Yep. I can’t see it. Where are they going to go? American still covers a few of the other major local traffic destinations with Southwest ramping up as well. But the news reports focus on how St Louis lacks service to Europe.

Ah, there’s a possibility. Delta is not shy when it comes to subsidies. In fact, they launched a mega-money loser in Pittsburgh by connecting the city with Paris. But the money is being lost by the city, not the airline, so it’s an easy one for Delta to do. That flight, however, is flown by a 757 while anything from St Louis to Europe is bound to require at least a 767 unless they feel like stopping somewhere along the way to fill up. (Which, by the way, is a sure-fire way to make this lose even more money.)

So why was Delta in St Louis to talk? For the same reason every airline talks to every airport. They’re always looking for good opportunities. St Louis isn’t going to be one of them, I hope, but it won’t be because of something the airport did wrong. The report mentions the lack of terminal space as a possible impediment. This is a joke, right? Pittsburgh may be the only airport in the country with more empty gates. If Delta wanted to come in and set up a hub, you know they’d bend over backwards to find space that Delta likes.

The other issue mentioned is the fact that the airport is expensive. This is true, but they aren’t really looking at the right metric. The cost per enplanement was in the $10 range a couple years back and that’s the metric to look at. It’s likely to rise a few dollars more before things get better. This isn’t a surprise. As the airport loses service, the costs have be spread over fewer enplanements. It’s ugly.

The report compared St Louis to Memphis, Delta’s closest hub. Memphis runs in the $6 to $7 range per enplanement, so it is a significant difference, but that doesn’t mean that Delta will go running to St Louis if costs come down.

Northwest found a way to make Memphis work, and Delta has done very little to screw that up . . . yet. That’s why while we’ve seen Cincinnati get slashed, Memphis has remained fairly stable. But what’s a great way to ruin a good thing like that? Open a new hub 250 miles north. You throw a bunch of flights into St Louis and you undoubtedly hurt Memphis, something that works well.

In the end, we might see a few more flights and even a Europe run if St Louis wants to subsidize it, but a hub? We won’t see it. (And if we do . . . wow . . . that will be just an awful move.)

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Of course, if you had plane tickets on Spirit, it was far from it. The pilots went on strike in the wee hours on Saturday morning and flights were canceled from that point on. As this now stretches into day 3, it is becoming more clear that the next time Spirit flies an airplane, it may not be quite the same.

The fight is your standard labor brawl. The pilots want more, management doesn’t want to give it to them, and now everybody is pissed. So far, management seems to be doing a better job of stating its case to the public. The PR team has been issuing relatively frequent updates with specific details of contract proposals, a far cry from the lack of even a mention on the website before it started (which is just so wrong). So where are we now?

Well, flights are canceled through Tuesday at the very least and people are stranded. If you’re flying Spirit this week, give us a shout at Cranky Concierge via phone at (707) 797-7474 or via email at info@crankyconcierge.com and we will do our best to help.

But what exactly has been offered? Spirit says that it will give a substantial pay increase, increase the amount of money matched in the 401k, offer a signing bonus, and more. But what’s an increase without knowing the base value, right?

Right now, an 8 year captain on the A319 makes $122 an hour. A 15 year captain on the A319 makes $138 an hour. After signing, this would instantly jump to $134 and $152 respectively. By the end of five years, those would rise to $170 and $186.

The pilots are speaking more generically and less frequently about what they want – a “fair and equitable” contract – which effectively means they want something that’s comparable to others in the industry. Of course, we have to figure out which airlines are the right ones for comparison purposes. How about JetBlue and AirTran, since they have the most similar networks and models?

JetBlue eight year A320 captains pull down $151 an hour with 15 year captains making $159. AirTran 737 pilots make $132 an hour at eight years and $153 at fifteen.

So this contract is quite comparable with AirTran from a pay perspective, but that doesn’t mean it is from a benefits and work rules perspective. Clearly, there’s something here the pilots don’t like, but my requests for more information on that have gone unanswered so far.

Regardless of what they want, they might be underestimating the fact that they could end up getting nothing but a pink slip. The airline has been around for a lot longer than you might think – 30 years in some form or another, in fact. So there are some senior pilots flying around making a decent living at the airline.

Meanwhile, Spirit has made it clear to the world that the airline lives solely to offer insanely low fares (plus a ton of fees and ancillary products). The combination has turned a money loser into a profitable airline. So they’re riding high, but now what?

One way to be able to reduce fares is to lower your costs. Hmm, replacing striking pilots with cheaper, greener pilots seems right up their alley, doesn’t it? Sure, it hurts to go through a strike, so they have clearly made an effort to settle this in some way. Some would argue that they haven’t made enough of an effort, but there obviously has been an effort. Offering more pay for pilots is worth avoiding the pain, and it’s the right thing to do.

But guess what? The airline is now already feeling the pain. The strike has happened, they’ve made a strong offer, so what’s their incentive to cave? Not much. They’re already taking the revenue and PR hit, so now it becomes a different calculation for them.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see this end badly for the pilots. Oh, Spirit won’t come out smelling like roses at all, but they can still survive. As for those pilots, well, that may end up being a much harder landing. That’s why I say that the next time we see Spirit flying, it could be a somewhat different airline.