Southwest Airlines: We’re Not Really About Cheap Flights Anymore – Time
I spoke with Brad Tuttle at Time as a follow-up to my column about Southwest’s new ad campaign.

Critics: United frequent-flier lawsuit is ‘absurd’ – USA Today – Today in the Sky
Ben Mutzabaugh picked up on the Plain Dealer’s piece as well as my blog post talking about Hongbo Han’s lawsuit over earning miles on United.

In the Trenches: Creating Value With Price Increases – Intuit Small Business Blog
We’re introducing priority assistance but it was tough to figure out the best way to do it.

Airplane Cabin Photos: KLM’s New Business Class Seats and Design – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
I put together a slideshow looking at KLM’s new business seats. It’s long overdue and a welcome change.

I received a request from Janet Cho at the Cleveland Plain Dealer to comment on a story last week about a man suing United for the way the airline awards miles. This lawsuit got me so worked up, that I decided to talk about it here on the blog.

Hongbo Han is an elite member in United’s MileagePlus program, and he’s not happy. I think we all know roughly how airlines award miles in their frequent flier programs when you fly, right? The airlines look at the number of miles it takes to go directly between those two airports (great circle route) and award those miles to you. Talking about United specifically, this is made very clear in several places.

If you book on the United website, you’ll get the exact number of miles presented to you before you purchase.

Even if you book elsewhere, you can always go to the mileage calculator to figure out how much you’ll earn.

Seems pretty clear and sensible to do it this way, I’d say. But according to Hongbo Han, United is screwing you. Yes, he thinks United has made a promise to award you the actual number of miles you fly on every single flight. Did you divert around some weather? Maybe that’s an extra 50 miles. Were the winds were too strong on the most direct route, so you went 100 miles further to shorten flight time? You should get those 100 miles.

What a logistical nightmare that would be.

How does Hongbo Han come to this conclusion? Well, according to the lawsuit, “nowhere in the MileagePlus Program Rules does United state that the mileage or miles credited are not actual miles flown by the member.” I think it’s important to note that United also fails to state that for every 10,000 miles flown, you get a unicorn ride. But I want one, so I’m just going to make that rule up. After all, they say the vagueness in the contract goes in favor of the party that didn’t draft the contract.

Let’s look at the two examples presented in the case. One is from Dulles to Beijing and the other is the return. This guy is saying that United under-awarded him mileage. They gave him only 13,840 miles when in fact he actually flew 14,319 miles. On top of those 479 extra miles, his 25 percent elite bonus of 119 miles means United should theoretically owe him 598 miles.

Naturally filing this kind of lawsuit this would be a huge waste of time and money for anyone who is halfway sane, but this lawsuit is shooting for class action status. My guess it that there are a bunch of lawyers sitting around thinking they can pull this off. With so many people being deprived of their little bits of miles, the lawyers figure just as any lawyer in a class action suit does… there’s a ton of money for them to make with very little benefit to the people who actually are supposed to benefit.

The solution going forward is that United will certainly just update its program rules to say what people already know: you will earn a flat number of miles equal to the shortest distance between the two points. But what about all those people who were “wronged” over the last few years?

If this suit goes as planned, then United will have to put together a team of people to connect two very different IT systems to somehow match up actual flight distance with each flight taken by each MileagePlus member. Then they’ll probably put together another team to go through Hongbo Han’s entire history to find a way to ban him from the program. (Ok, maybe not. But that’s definitely what they’ll want to do.)

I for one hope that this suit disappears quickly, because it’s pretty much everything that’s wrong with the court system. It’s a waste of taxpayer resources that will only provide a significant benefit for the lawyers involved.

If this does gain class action status, then I would certainly be eligible for a piece of the winnings as a member of the program who has earned miles on flights. But I will not participate. This is completely ridiculous.

[Read the whole lawsuit here if you have time to waste]

I don’t write about frequent flier miles too often, because a) there are plenty of others who focus on it day in and day out, and b) it doesn’t really interest me that much. But we do book a lot of frequent flier tickets at Cranky Concierge, and there’s one thing that comes up often that I thought was worth airing on the blog. What is a good and bad use of your miles?

The answer is… it depends completely upon you. Terrible answer, I know, but I’m going to explain it further.

A lot of mileage bloggers focus on finding the best value for miles in general. That might mean, say, earning Amex Membership Rewards points so you can transfer to Singapore Airlines and use them on the newly-available Suites over the Pacific. That is an awesome value, because even though you’re using a ton of miles, you’re getting one of the best experiences in the sky for a tiny fraction of what it might cost if you bought a ticket.

And while that is the most interesting stuff to write about, it’s not going to be the right way for everyone to use their miles. I assume you’d hear that if you discussed this one-on-one with each mileage blogger out there. But it’s not the kind of thing that you usually see in print.

Cash-Strapped
Let’s use a less aspirational example. Say you’ve been able to earn yourself 200,000 miles on United. You’ve heard great things about all the flat beds in business class to Europe and you think that you should be using those miles for something great like that. I agree, if you’re going to Europe.

What if you, however, have no plans to go to Europe anytime soon and don’t know when or if it’ll happen at all? We get some people like this who use our service. They may have a domestic trip coming up, but they don’t want to use their miles because it has to be the best value or they’ll just keep holding on to the miles. That may not be the best plan.

Now, it might seem silly to use miles to go from San Francisco to LA if the price is cheap. But if it’s a last minute ticket, you could be looking at a few hundred dollars. For some, that might be easy to swallow. For others, however, $400 is a lot of money. To be able to use miles to avoid that cost is a huge benefit for some people.

The bottom line is that everyone is in a different financial position and each person has different travel plans and abilities. For those with shallow pockets, you’re crazy not to use those miles so you can afford to pay rent.

The Truly Frequent Flier
On the flip side, there is another good reason to use your miles for piddly trips. If you fly a ton and just earn miles like crazy, why not burn some of them? There’s no reason to save those million miles for one special trip when you could end up taking 5 special trips and will probably never use them all.

There are plenty of you out there who fly all the time and earn more miles than you know what to do with. In that case, save a little cash and burn those miles. Or save money on buying a present and give some for others to use. You’ll never need them all anyway. (Just don’t sell them – that’s not allowed.)

I’ll take this even one step further. Heck, let’s go crazy here. Let’s say you have 100,000 miles and you need to take a trip from LA to Seattle because you have a sick family member. It’s only a couple hour flight but it’s going to cost you $600 roundtrip for a last minute ticket. Flights are full, so you can’t get a Saver award. You need a Standard award for 50,000 miles roundtrip.

Is it true that you could use those 50,000 miles to get to Paris in business class one way? Yeah, but you have a sick relatively and you need to be there. If you don’t have $600 lying around, use the miles. It’s a lot of miles, but you need to set priorities while still remaining solvent.

Bad Plan
So is there ever a bad use of miles? Oh sure. Just to take one example, British Airways coach awards come with such hefty fuel surcharges that you might as well just buy the ticket. It won’t save you much at all, if anything. But even then, it can be justified. Maybe it saves you $200, but that could be the difference between you eating three meals a day while you’re there instead of two. There’s clearly an argument that you shouldn’t be taking this trip at all if you can’t afford to eat, but hey, different people have different priorities.

And that’s really the point. Sure, there are better ways to extract more value out of a mile if you look at it in a broad sense, but on an individual level, it’s a whole different story. In short, don’t be afraid to use your miles if it makes sense for you individually.

In case you missed it between the 787 grounding and American’s new livery, Delta made a subtle but important change to its elite qualifying structure beginning in 2014. How much you spend will now be taken into account. While some won’t like this change, those are the people Delta wants to stop rewarding anyway. I like the idea, but there are some issues with how it’s being implemented.

The current method for qualifying will remain in place. You need to either earn a certain threshold of Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) or take a certain number of Medallion Qualifying Segments (MQSs). There will now just be an additional threshold of Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs) that has to be met. Here is how it breaks down for 2014.

The key here is in the calculation. What qualifies as an MQD and what doesn’t? That’s where we see some problems.

1. Only fares and airline surcharges count toward qualification. Government-imposed taxes don’t count.
2. Any flight sold under the Delta code counts. This includes Delta, Delta Connection, and any codeshare sold under Delta’s name.
3. Any flight on a ticket sold by Delta counts regardless of the airline. That means you can buy from Delta or the ticket can be issued by a travel agent under the 006 ticket designator. (You can’t just issue anything, like a United roundtrip, on 006 ticket stock – there has to be a valid Delta segment in there.)
4. Some consolidator and bulk tickets won’t earn any MQDs. Ancillary purchases (bag fees, change fees, etc) don’t count either.
5. You can forget about all this if you have the Delta Amex card and spend $25,000 in the year. Then the MQD requirement is waived.

That’s the basic structure, but it does leave some questions. What if you buy a ticket on another airline that includes a Delta segment but it’s a single fare? How will it be pro-rated? That may be a minor concern considering how many people do that, but there is a much greater concern.

The Joint Venture Problem
Delta has a lot of joint venture partners. That includes Air France/KLM and Alitalia in the Atlantic. Of course Virgin Atlantic will have one as well soon. And there’s Virgin Australia in the Pacific. I think there might be some others as well. A joint venture here means that Delta isn’t supposed to care which airplane you fly, the money will be the same either way for Delta. Yet if you buy a ticket from Paris to the US on Air France, that won’t count toward MQDs and that’s a bad, bad thing.

I’m going to assume that this is simply because they don’t have the revenue tracking systems to implement this properly, but this could present some real issues for travelers.

Time for Math
Let’s forget about that for a second and do a little math. The ratio here is that you must spend at least 10 cents a mile for the minimum number of miles required for each level. In other words, if you fly 25,000 miles, you better spend $2,500. But if you fly 45,000 miles, then you still only have to spend $2,500 to qualify for Silver. But since 50,000 miles qualifies for Gold, then you have to spend $5,000.

For most elite members, this shouldn’t be hard. I mean, if you’re silver, one roundtrip in business class internationally will qualify you straight away. Heck, it might qualify you for gold too depending upon how much it is. Let’s say you don’t fly like the big ballers, and you do a monthly roundtrip between New York and LA in coach. That’s about 60,000 miles assuming no bonuses and that qualifies you for gold. Now you need to spend about $415 per roundtrip plus taxes and fees to qualify, so let’s round up and call it $500 even though that’s probably too high. That’s not out of the ordinary by any stretch in today’s pricing environment.

Or let’s say that you fly weekly from LA to Vegas. Assuming you get the 500 mile minimum earning, then you’ll also be gold. And you’ll need to spend under $100 per roundtrip to qualify.

The Losers
Who gets left out here? It’s those people who are trying to game the system to get maximum value. Those crazy mileage runs that net a ton of miles for cheap? Those aren’t going to cut it anymore. People who are always on the lookout for some super cheap fare to earn a few extra miles during the year might find themselves out of luck. And that seems completely fair to me.

It also leaves people out in the cold who fly other airlines, even joint venture partners. That doesn’t seem to fair to me at all, and it should go beyond just joint venture partners. If you can earn MQMs on SkyTeam airlines, you should be able to earn MQDs as well.

Excluding the partner issue, will there be some corner cases who find themselves in trouble despite doing everything right? I’m imagine so. Hopefully Delta can look at those on a case by case basis. This goes into effect for the first time in 2014, so Delta will want to watch closely to see if there are any unintended consequences. But I don’t expect there to be many.

[If you have more questions, Delta has set up an FAQ with some answers.]

Over at Cranky Concierge, we’ve been booking a lot of so-called “mileage runs” for clients this month. This happens at the end of every year, but I think we had our most extreme this year where someone needed 36,000 miles and we sent him to Africa and Asia within a few days. Ever wonder how people get to this level of madness? And wait, what is a mileage run anyway? Geoff Fischer (read his previous guest posts) is back with a story about how he became a mileage-runner.

This week is going to be a light one. No post tomorrow, so this one is extra long to last you two days. Hah. Happy holidays.
–

It all started innocently enough in December 2004. I noticed that I was likely to end the year about 1,000 miles short of both Premier Executive status on United and MVP Gold on Alaska. I didn’t have time for another work trip or vacation, but it seemed a shame to let all the year’s flying “go to waste” by failing to reach those elite tiers. Even worse was the thought of entering 2005 as a lowest-rung elite on my two most frequent carriers, missing out on the upgrades and other perks that were so tantalizingly close. I’d heard about mileage runs – flying solely for the sake of racking up miles. These were the circumstances that first led me to contemplate doing one myself.

Year 1
It took a bit of searching to find a destination appropriately far away with reasonable one-way fares. I eventually found good deals on midweek flights to and from Vegas. I wanted to minimize the cost and time away from home and work, so a morning out, afternoon back day trip seemed best. It was $84 for Seattle-Las Vegas on Alaska, and $88 for the return via LAX on United. (I had to return via LAX instead of SFO not for the fare, but because I needed the extra 275 miles.) No, I wouldn’t hit a casino or see a show – I wouldn’t even leave the airport. I had two hours in Vegas to switch terminals and grab some lunch in between.

Flying just to turn around and fly back is surely a bizarre concept to some – probably even many – but it made perfect sense to me. The $200 I’d be spending (including parking, gas, etc.) seemed well worth the comfort of elite status for 2005. So I booked it for a Tuesday, took the day off work, and it went as smoothly possible. I got upgraded to First Class on the Alaska flight down, and had Economy Plus seats on flights back. I made it through a bunch of magazines and other reading material I’d saved up. The United agent looked at me quizzically when I showed up at the gate without a boarding pass, but I explained I’d come in on another airline. The biggest hassle ended up being the incessant slot machine noise by the Ted gates as I waited to board. (It’s a unique form of torture having to hear “WHEEL! OF!! FORTUNE!!!” a thousand times in a row.)

Year 2
A year later, I found myself in a similar position. I had qualified on Alaska but was going to be short about 2,000 miles on United. No time for vacation, and the nonstop flights from Seattle to SFO or LAX wouldn’t earn enough miles – so I had to get creative. I ended up finding that United had cheap midweek fares on connections via SFO to a few smaller Northwest cities. And so for $134 I landed a Tuesday day trip to Boise. I thought that seemed cool, since it was both an airport and a state I’d never been in. Never mind that the scheduled time on the ground in Idaho was barely 45 minutes, as I was flying the same regional jet SFO to Boise and back to SFO. Again, all went smoothly. I got to experience the bathroom and free Wi-Fi at the Boise airport, and secured status for 2006. Win-win.

Year 3
I started to get more selective and picky as I moved from novice mileage runner to intermediate. In March 2007 I was doing a “status challenge” on Alaska, where I needed to fly 8 segments in a certain amount of time to re-obtain MVP Gold status. Trips for work and pleasure got me six of the eight, so all I needed was a cheap, quick roundtrip “segment run”. I was able to find a few options for about $125, but all involved regional jets. While flying to Pasco or Walla Walla had some novelty, I convinced myself it was worth spending more for the comfort of flying a mainline 737-800 to Spokane. I’d never been there either, and with a first class cabin there was a chance I’d get upgraded even as a lowly (not for long!) MVP. So I laid out $165 for a roundtrip from Seattle to Spokane, and did another same-plane turn-around. Got the upgrades both ways and only had to take a few hours off of work.

It Gets Serious
Things got more complicated a few years later. My last business trip of the year was to LA, but a mere roundtrip from Seattle was not going to yield the 5,000 miles I needed no matter how I connected. This time it was United 1K status on the line – the stakes were higher, and more creativity (and spend) was going to be needed. Work obligations meant I didn’t have flexibility on the front end of the trip, but I could route myself however I wanted on the way home. I tried all sorts of circuitous paths via New York, Florida and hubs and spokes in between. It took a fair bit of searching before I honed in on Honolulu. It was a no-brainer: great weather, 767 and 777 widebody service, and upgrades that could be confirmed in advance. Work paid for the flight down to LAX and I paid $386 for LAX-Honolulu-SFO-Seattle. This time I even cashed in some hotel points and stuck around for two whole nights. I spent time on the beach, got to see the Pearl Harbor memorial, and had a pretty good time sipping Mai-Tais and knowing that my status was secure for one more year.

Going Intercontinental
Flash forward just a few months and things looked pretty dire as I looked at my mileage balance the next November. I wasn’t just a few hundred or thousand miles short of 1K. I was going to be more than 20,000 miles short. The rationalization began quickly. I’d worked really hard that year. Hadn’t splurged on anything in a while. I had vacation time to use, though I had been planning to spend Christmas and New Year’s with my family and didn’t have a big trip in mind. Well that changed quickly. Suddenly a trip to Thailand and Singapore seemed like a great idea. One big problem was that upgrades weren’t confirmable. Without giving it much thought I clicked the dropdown box and changed my search from “Economy” fares to “Business.” With that one click, the addiction grew to a new level.

It turned out that there were “discounted” Business class tickets available over the holidays. Not cheap by any means, but cheaper than the rest of the year. And they earn a 50% status mileage bonus, which meant that the 17,000 miles of actual flying would net over 25,000 status miles, getting me over the all-important 100,000 mile mark. I made a trip out of it. Well, as much of a trip as I could since I was forced to fly back before New Year’s in order for the miles to count toward that year. It ended up being seven nights. I had a blast. Turns out the beaches of Thailand are a wonderful place to spend Christmas, though mom still hasn’t forgiven me for being AWOL. It was also my introduction to Singapore, which I loved (and have since been back to for a more proper visit).

This Year, Qatar
So over a decade of flying with various levels of elite status, I’d resorted to mileage runs five times, at increasing levels of extremity. Which brings me to this year. Things are a lot different for me – I moved to a new city for a new job that doesn’t leave me with much time off, and my flying for work has sadly been cut down significantly. Any hope of qualifying for another year as a United 1K was pretty much gone by late springtime. It took a lot of creative weekend trips throughout the year to even get close to hitting the 50,000 mile threshold for mid-level Gold status. And while even my addict’s brain (eventually) accepted that 1K was out of range this year, that didn’t stop it from urging me on to see if I couldn’t find some way to at least get to 75,000 miles for Platinum status.

This year missing Christmas with family wasn’t an option, which meant I’d have to squeeze it in to just a few days. The most comfortable option I found was Tokyo, with several 747 flights on my dates with confirmable upgrades. But I’ve been to Tokyo several times. And I love it, but it isn’t exactly a great winter destination. And it was going to cost $2,200. That was less than the splurge trip to Thailand but more than I could justify this year. A sign that I was recovering from my airline status addiction? Not really. I kept looking (as much as it pained me to pass up flying on the upper deck of the 747), focusing on dots on the United route map I hadn’t been to.

I considered Istanbul and even Lagos before finding Doha. United flies it in a 777 as a continuation of its Washington DC to Dubai flight. I’ve never been there, and the late-December weather seems good. And in a quirk of airline pricing, the fares were even cheaper to go on to Doha than to get off in Dubai. Proving that my addiction is as powerful as ever, I booked it the other day despite having to waitlist for upgrades on the 7,069 mile IAD-DXB-IAD flights. (They did clear later, thankfully.)

When I do the math and say out loud that it’s 47 hours of total travel time for 50 hours on the ground in a random place halfway around the world, I realize that it’s crazy. Those were going to be looooooong flights in coach if they hadn’t cleared. Heck, they’re long flights even in Business class. But I’ll get to catch up on some movies I haven’t seen, and see a new place…. and I’ll have Platinum status next year!

But alas, I know too well that euphoria is short lived. Once that mileage counter resets to zero on January 1, the cycle starts all over again. Once you’re hooked on status, the thought – and sometimes necessity – of a mileage run is usually just a year away.

–
Geoff Fischer is an aviation and travel enthusiast currently living in the Dallas/Ft Worth area.

[Map via Great Circle Mapper]