Category — Airlines

The days of free travel are numbered. It is becoming more and more dificult to get miles; airlines want more miles for flights; and some airlines (USAirways and Delta, in particular) are changing the rules about how long miles can lie dormant before they expire.

With this in mind, I decided to use up my Delta miles on a trip to London. Booking using Delta airlines, it seemed as if I would have to take a very circuitous route to get to London. (From Washington, one route involved going from BWI to Atlanta to Cincinnati to London’s Gatwick airport, which is inconvenient for me.)

But there is an alternative. In the end I got a much better route — Washington to Paris to London for exactly the same number of miles on Air France. Plus that puts me into Heathrow. And, Air France still serves free drinks in Economy.

When you are using your miles, consider using an alternative carrier. Delta belongs to Skyteam, and you can use the Skyteam site (www.skyteam.com) to figure out what your options are. Delta alternatives include Alitalia and Korean. With United miles, you can fly on Swiss, Lufthansa, Singapore, Thai, and SAS!

Picture this scenario. You live in the Washington area, and next summer you would like to spend a few days in London, and then you would like to fly on to Greece. The plan looks like this. You will leave Washington on July 14, 2007. Then you will travel to Athens on July 21. You would like to stay there until August 5. There is a late flight out of Athens on August 5, and you can take the onward leg back to Washington on August 6.

Using the BA site and selecting the lowest possible and most restricted fare, This journey will set you back $2,294, and that includes $341.81 in taxes. Quite a lot!

Now there is nothing you can do about these dreadful taxes, but there are a few tricks you can do to play with the fare. Try this. Still using the BA site, book the Washington to London flight as one trip picking the very same flight, and the trip to London will cost $985.71, including taxes of $288.71. Then buy another ticket and book exactly the same flights to and from Athens. The total fare for the Athens trip will be GBP (British Pounds) 168.20 or $328.64 in US dollars. So the total for your trip will turn out to be $1,314.35 — a total savings of 979.65!

And if you worry that British Airways will use their computers to track you down and hate you for ever, you could always use another airline for the London to Washington leg. There are all sorts of airlines offering low cost trips out of London to many European airports.

For example, using EasyJet (www.easyjet.com), the trip to Greece from London’s Gatwick airport would cost GBP 150.52, and that includes a travel insurance policy as well as taxes.

Good luck searching for cheap flights. And remember that two tickets are often cheaper than one!

This posting is probably useful only to British Airways Executive Club members who live in the United States.

Back in the “good old days,” it was pretty easy to rack up miles on British Airways.
First, they had household accounts, which allowed people living at the same address to pool their miles into a single account. As a result, even people who hardly ever traveled could collectively earn a free ticket.

Secondly, it was pretty cheap to buy tickets with miles. For example, 40,000 miles would buy a ticket from anywhere in the United States to anywhere in Europe. I once went from Washington (IAD) to Istanbul forjust 40,000 miles. I also once had a fabulous trip in First for 120,000 miles. My route was Washinton to London; London to Dubai; Dubai to Tehran; Tehran to Dubai; Dubai to London; London to Manchester; Manchester to London; London to Washington.

Third you could accumulate miles really fast using a Diners Club card. For every dollar you spent, you earned a mile. And every summer, British Airways used to have a two-for-one offer.
These happy days are over. British Airways now gives you only 25% of miles flown if you use a discount ticket. The number of miles required has risen massively. And the Diners Club offer in the summer gives you only 1.5 miles to the dollar. We are going to book some tickets to southern Europe sometime this summer (probably Athens), but each ticket is going to cost 65,000 miles.

It almost looks as if British Airways wants to hide free tickets on its web site. They advertise deals that allow you to pay part cash and part miles, and these are easy to find. They also seem to hid the chart that tells you how many miles you are going to need.

So here is the link for members (with a number/userID and PIN/password) wanting to get free tickets for their miles.

I read recently in the Financial Times that Boeing has decided to stop its Connexion service on flights.

This service, which is offered by several airlines (including Singapore Airlines, Lufthansa, El Al, Korean Air, All Nippon Airways, Scandinavian, and JAL) allows passengers with Wi-Fi on their computers to connect to the Internet during a flight. And, based on my experience, it was wonderful. I am so disappointed that they have decided to discontinue the service. And I am surprised that they cannot make money out of this service. (According to the Financial Times, it costs $500,000 to equip a plane for this service.)

I was even able to write on this blog while in the air!

Passengers on British Airways should note that BA will be reducing the amount of luggage that passengers can take with them free of charge. To see the new policy, click here.

The policy, which becomes effective on October 11 of this year, includes a charge of GBP 120 for extra bags on long haul flights. These charges are reduced by 20% if you pay in advance on line.

Whenever companies begin to offer less service or want to charge more, I find the way they sugar coat the changes especially irritating. Here is their expanation:

British Airways is introducing changes to baggage policies to make them easier for passengers, reduce queues at the airport and to bring them in line with Department for Transport recommendations and requirements of the UK’s main airport operator, BAA.

And, just in case you were hoping for a free upgrade on your next BA flight, there is a new notice at the check-in desk that advises passengers looking for extra comfort to ask about an upgrade. This makes it very clear that BA is willing to upgrade — but for a price.

I recently proposed a scoring system for rating airlines on their wine service. The system is based entirely on price, and, although it is certainly flawed in many ways, it should give the traveler a sense of whether the airline considers offering top wines to first and business class passengers a priority.

For example, if a wine lover has a choice between flying United and Singapore Airlines, the fact that Singapore spends more than twice as much on its wines should help.

I ranked a few airlines, but a reader recently discovered a silly mistake I had made when trying to rate Singapore Airlines. The score, which is the simple sum of the value of its Champagne, its leading white wine, its leading red wine, and its dessert wine should have come to USD 280 rather than USD 250.

With this correction, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific are equal in spending more on wine for their first class passengers than any airline I know of.

I would love to hear from readers, who have airline wine lists so that I can add to the airlines I have scored. (I wonder what kinds of wines Emirates is offering these days in First Class!)

To see my scoring system, click here.

To see my score of Singapore Airlines, click here, and for Cathay Pacific, click here. And click here, for my report on United’s First Class.

This report uses the approach to scoring airline wine service described here.

These were the leading wines served in Business Class on Continental during June, 2006.

Champagne: Charles Lafitte NV $30
White wine: Chateau Lapugeau $14
Red Wine: Chateau Lalande, 2002 $8
Dessert wine: Quinto do Noval $10

Total Score: 62

I must admit that I have not flown Continental in years, and I based these scores on information on their web site. I had not heard of many of their wines and could not get prices on them. Usually, I regard an airline’s Bordeaux wines as their “leader” but I could not get any information on their red Bordeaux.

This is the lowest score I have made since looking at this issue, and, based on this information, I would avoid flying Continental.

Incidentally, Continental uses the spelling Bourdeaux on their site. Everybody has typographical errors, but I suspect that this one reflects their interest in wine.

This report uses the approach to scoring airline wine service described here.
Dashboard
A more complete description of this flight can be found by clicking here.

These were the leading wines served on Flight UA925 from London (LHR) to Washington (IAD) on February 12, 2006.

• Champagne: Duval Leroy NV $30
• White wine: Laboure Roi, Chablis (Vintage not written on menu) $15
• Red Wine: Chateau Lalande, 2002 $23
• Dessert wine: Sandemans Founder’s Reserve $17
• Total Score: 85

This is in line with the score given to Virgin Atlantic, which got 82 for its Upper Class product. I had some difficulty figuring out the price on the Lalande, which I disliked. Also, the Chablis (delicious) was hard to price.

On this flight, I really did not like the Lalande very much, and find its description very strange:

“Bordeaux remains the emblem for elegant red wine and finesse is its hallmark. The 2002 vintage is a far better example of that ability than the more famous 2000 and 2003 vintages, and Chateau Lalande has crafted a powerful but stylish wine.”

Despite the higher score, I think the wine experience on Virgin would have been a better one because I think the wines seemed more cleverly and imaginatively chosen. It just shows the limitation of numerical scores!

Also, compare the scores with Singapore Airlines, which got 121 for its Business Class product.

This summarizes the wine served aboard a flight from the United States to Singapore (stopping in Frankfurt) in December, 2005. The class of service was Raffles, Singapore Airlines’ brand name for its Business Class.

The score is based on the criteria described in this post. Over the next few months, I hope to collect data on more of the major airlines.

• Champagne: Charles Heidsieck, 1995 $50
• White Wine: Laboure Roi, Montagny, 2002 $26
• Red Wine: Chateau Cissac, 1998 $28
• Dessert wine: Taylor’s Late Bottled Vintage, 2000 $17

• TOTAL SCORE: 121

I found it a bit difficult to price the Montagny and the Cissac in the United States so I used figures from wine merchants in the United Kingdom. (This is not an exact science!)

I have often heard it said that the quality of Singapore Airlines in Business Class exceeds that of United Airlines in First. This score seems to support that position. United scored 116 in First Class while Singapore gets 121 for its Business Class. Singapore’s First Class got 250.

I originally posted this with a silly mistake in the total. A kind reader corrected me. The revised score of 280 positions Singapore Airlines equal in first place to Cathay Pacific.

The following report is based on a flight SQ25 from New York (JFK) to Frankfurt (FRA) which I took on December 7, 2005. Comments on this flight can be found by clicking here.

Again, I am applying the same approach that I described in my earlier post. (Click here to see the approach.)

Champagne: Krug Grande Cuvee $140
White Wine: Joseph Drouhin, Meursault, 2000 $30
Red Wine: Cos d’Estournel, 1998 $60
Dessert wine: Warre’s Twenty Year Old Tawny. $50

TOTAL SCORE: 280

Singapore Airlines, which is often regarded as the “gold standard” for a First Class airline product scores a very good 280 This is oustanding, and it places SQ in first place equaling Cathay Pacific’s score.

I really appreciated being offered Dom Perignon and Krug on this flight and enjoyed tasting them side by side. I concluded that I much prefer the Krug.