I often get asked about bereavement fares or other last-minute emergency travel discounts. My answers had previously been entirely academic, but this past week, I unfortunately had to learn about bereavement and compassionate airfares for myself.

It’s obviously a trip that I didn’t want to take: My grandmother passed away late last week, just weeks after celebrating her 99th birthday. I flew to her home — in Germany — and was fortunate enough to see her, talk with her, and bid farewell before she passed away. I am very glad I went. I will deeply miss her.

The trip was an education, in more ways than one. But thinking back to this blog’s modus operandi for the moment, let me share what I learned about booking flights under such circumstances. (more…)

Yapta, the online service that tracks airfares for you after you buy (so you can try to get reticketed with a refund or voucher), has rolled out a new feature: Tracking award availability for frequent flyer miles.

I like this idea. It’s a great start.

Right now, Yapta supports Alaska, Continental, Delta, US Airways, and United frequent flyer programs. You search for a trip, as if to purchase it. Then, you choose to track the airfare, and you tick a box to include award tickets in your tracking. You’ll get updates thereafter.

I don’t like that setup, with the requirement that you track the airfare for a particular route, and not just the award ticket availability. There are some routes that I’m not going to pay cash for — business class to Australia, anyone? — but I’m sure interested in award tickets. Why make me suffer through price-drop e-mails when the fare drops from $10,700 to $10,500, when all I want is award ticket info? (The answer, I bet, is that they don’t make any money off the award ticket information, but they’ll get a commission if you pay the cash fare by clicking through their site.)

Also, frustratingly, you seemingly have to select specific dates for your travels, and Yapta will check for award availability on that particular date. And on those particular airlines. If you’re flexible, and if you’re willing to choose multiple routings to get to your destination, it appears that you’re out of luck.

I’m also skeptical of the system seeing all real award availability. Few airlines make partner award availability available online, and even those that do limit the number of partners they’ll show online. So, at the end of the day, you’ll still need to pick up the phone. Yapta will help for simple itineraries, but for anything more complex — and those complexities make your miles worth more! — you’re not really ahead.

Bottom line: This is a great concept, but the execution isn’t quite there yet. I encourage Yapta to keep trying, though, and to offer flexible date searches and alternative routings. Then, if the airlines will play along, let’s get some partner airline searches in there.

Related:
- Track airfare before and AFTER you buy?
- Check in the mail: Orbitz refunds airfare price drops, but is it worthwhile?

Downgraded: Air Marshals
In a series of sting operations, several air marshals who were supposed to be protecting passengers inflight were using their free pass in American airports to smuggle cocaine, drug money, and child pornography. Lovely. My favorite part of this story: One marshal called himself “the Man with the Golden Badge.” Racy! Paging Roger Moore to take this guy out! Heck, paging Hervé Villechaize!

Upgraded: L’Avion lounge
When Tyler Colman reviewed the all-business class airline L’Avion for us last year, he commented on their lack of a real lounge at Newark Liberty Airport. That deficiency has been addressed, with the opening of a real lounge in Terminal B, shared by L’Avion and Jet Airways of India.

Upgraded: Thanksgiving Status Quo
Downgraded: Math
Just like last year, 39% of Americans are expected to travel for Thanksgiving, according to a recent poll. But the conclusion that travel will “mirror” last year as a result of comparable traveler numbers? That smells of bad math. Airline capacity is down from a year ago, with fewer planes in the air. Yet the same number of travelers? Look out. As we get closer to Thanksgiving, consider revisiting these holiday travel tips and these five ways to get an edge on fellow travelers.

Downgraded: Toilet paper supplies on Qantas
Here’s a horror story: Trapped on a plane for 24 hours, passengers on board a Qantas flight (from Singapore, diverted to Canberra) had their toilet paper rationed. Four squares per person. Not a square to spare. It’s a tale of absurdity: People on the ground, but unable to deplane, at government orders. But couldn’t they restock the plane’s supplies while on the ground? Bonus points to The Age for their punny headline, “Loo paper rationed on bummer of a diversion.” (rimshot) (Thanks, Rob!)

Upgraded: Concierges on television
“A concierge is the Winnipeg equivalent of a geisha.” So says Michael Scott on last week’s episode of The Office, whose plot centered on business travel. See the full episode here, where it’s available for online viewing until January 15, 2009.

While the mileage game isn’t as fun as it used to be, there’s something to be said for a boatload of miles, with relatively few strings attached. Two offers of to note for those looking for a fairly quick juicing of the mileage accounts:

1) 40K United Mileage Plus miles
Chase is rolling out another fat bonus with their Mileage Plus Visa: 40,000 total bonus miles, but you don’t get them in one shot. 20,000 up front, and more as you spend, and after one year:

20,000 bonus miles after first purchase
10,000 bonus miles after your first anniversary
10,000 bonus miles after approval and making $10,000 in qualifying transactions in the first six months

The first year fee of $60 is waived. One other caveat: The fine print says you can’t get the bonuses if you’ve had a Mileage Plus card before. (Hat tip to AskMrCreditCard!)

2) 25K American AAdvantage miles
A simpler, less-confusing offer. 25,000 AA miles from Citibank, with their MasterCard or Amex (yes, Citibank issues Amex cards now). Spend $750 on the card, get the bonus.

Again, the first year’s fee ($85) is waived.

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If you’re going to collect these miles, don’t hoard ‘em, spend ‘em. And consider canceling the card after you’ve collected the bonus.

Reader David writes in:

Did I miss the memo or is this old news? As plat elite on CO I got an email yesterday on my blackberry alerting me that I was upgraded on my IAH-LGA flight today. I didn’t read the details, but an upgrade to First is always welcome. Upon check in, and re-examination of the email, I was “upgraded” to the exit row! It’s nice but it’s not a real upgrade, is it? How long have they been sending these “upgrade” emails out?

News to me! It’s the first I’ve heard of this, but if readers have had similar experiences, I invite them to share their story in the comments.

Exit rows are generally nice, for the extra legroom, though some travelers dislike that the seats sometimes don’t recline. And they are an improvement, though not technically upgrades according to Continental’s own chart. They should count under the “preferred economy seating” benefit for elites. But that’s still not an upgrade.

I’ve sent a note to Continental media relations, requesting official comment, but it has gone unanswered. Is this a trend? Is it a goof? If they offer an explanation, I’ll post it here.

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This is genuinely a cool concept: Postcards are sort of old-fashioned, but there’s still something satisfying about getting someone’s written word from the road. A big problem is that many postcards just plain suck. They’re boring. The same photo you’ve seen a thousand times.

Enter a new site, HazelMail, which lets you upload an image of your choice, type in your message, and hit send. HazelMail prints it as a postcard, pays the postage, and mails it anywhere in the world for the flat rate of $1.50.

Sure, it won’t contain your scrawls or a cool stamp from a country your addressee hasn’t been to, but the postcard image will be yours and yours alone.

Clever!

Peter Greenberg says it’s time to dump your United miles. Why? He fears the airline is going under.

I worry that United Airlines, which has already wrung everything they could out of bankruptcy, will fail in the fourth and the first quarters—which are the toughest to get through. It’s not a coincidence that most airlines go under in March, because they just can’t get enough money to make it to summer.

I am not sure what other cuts United can make. So, if you have any miles accumulated on airlines like United, I suggest you figure out a way to redeem those miles on their partner airlines.

Peter suggests that United’s misguided hedging efforts, which led to a $500 million loss — outlined on this blog back in September — pushed him over the edge.

Peter is right that you should cash in your miles, but I would argue that you should be doing that, period. United is devaluing their Mileage Plus program (effective January 1), and you should spend ‘em while you’ve got ‘em.

Peter’s suggestion to book on United’s partners is also a good one, especially since the inflight experience is generally superior on non-US carriers. You can’t book those tickets on the United website, and you’ll pay a small fee to book them over the phone, but it’s money well spent.

But…

I wouldn’t single out UA for the deathwatch just yet — yet — but the key phrase is “single out.” None of the major airlines in the U.S. look all that healthy. The ten largest U.S. airlines posted $2.52 billion in losses last quarter, and hedging losses were a culprit for most of them. United may have locked in fuel prices at their peak, but they weren’t alone. By Peter’s logic, we should be cashing in all airlines’ frequent flyer miles.

Now THAT makes a bit more sense…

(Thanks for the heads-up to Sean O’Neill of Budget Travel!)

If you’re planning on flying within Asia, be sure to check Air Asia’s free-flight offer. They’re giving away 500,000 tickets, and not tacking on any fuel surcharges, either, so the only fees are taxes. A good deal, if you can get it, and if it works for you.

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this sort of thing. They had a 1-million free tickets deal back in January 2007, then again in April that year.

The current deal requires some advance planning:

Booking Period: 12 Nov 2008 – 16 Nov 2008
Travel Period: 22 Jun 2009 – 24 Oct 2009

With an offer like this, and with a substantial lead-time like this, there’s some risk of airline failure making those tickets worthless. Most travel insurance would only reimburse you for the purchase cost — not the replacement cost — of the tickets if a problem were to arise. Beware of making hotel reservations that can’t be canceled and refunded, if you get tickets in this deal.

But if you’re flexible, and if Air Asia flies where you want to go, good luck!

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For some time, traditional airlines have given the customers who provide them the most revenue a perk: early boarding. United, for example, started off putting its elite members into the first seating area. But at hub airports, there have been instances where nearly every person on board holds elite status. (I once flew from Chicago to DC and the gate agent announced that all but three passengers were in seating area 1… so they boarded old-school, by row.)

Boarding early has one single perk, increasingly important in an era of checked-luggage fees: Early access to the bins. If not for the bins, there would frankly be no reason to board early. You’ll be sitting in an aluminum tube for hours as it is, so why extend the torture? But the bins… the bins! We must win the battle of the bins!

So United is tinkering with its boarding order, beginning tomorrow, November 12, 2008. Via e-mail to customers:

Beginning November 12, our Premier Executive members and Star Alliance Gold guests will board before Seating Area 1 customers through the Economy Lane.

The new boarding order will be as follows: Global Services, 1K and customers sitting in United First will continue to board first through the Red Carpet Lane, followed by our United Business customers.

Our Premier Executive and Star Alliance Gold members will then be invited to board. After all of our most-valued guests are on board and getting settled, the regular boarding process of seating areas 1 through 4 will begin.

We strive to consistently reward you, our premium customers, for your loyalty. We hope that as a Premier Executive and Star Alliance Gold customer, you enjoy this added benefit.

Time for United to switch to letter-coded boarding groups… Obviously they decided they couldn’t downgrade those in group 1 to a different digit, but they now effectively have a group 0 and a group -1. Let’s switch to A through F, then.

In the meantime, the move isn’t garnering universal praise. The sticking point: the phrase “most-valued” in the e-mail above. Por ejemplo, Charles Cooper argues:

By favoring some customers more than others—I am not talking about nice club amenities but rather obvious distinctions being made at the gate—all you really accomplish is the raising up of a few in full view of the rest, and the rest is not going to be happy about it. If United’s goal is to keep their various levels of business and high-end travelers at the expense of their coach trade, then they are doing a great job. There are plenty of other airlines to choose from, enough so that flying United is quite optional.

Perhaps United is being particularly crass with their elitism — and the language they use to describe it — but name one airline in the United States that’s genuinely egalitarian. JetBlue gives their better customers better seats. Ditto Southwest. Seriously: Is any airline not rewarding their best customers?

The problem isn’t rewarding the rainmakers. But it could become problematic if non-elite customers feel slighted.

So has United gone too far in their multi-class system at the gate? Too far in their verbiage, as Cooper suggests? Or will anyone really care? Or even notice? Hit the comments!

Related:
- Faster boarding with an astrophysicist’s touch
- Magic carpet? United adds separate elite boarding area at gates
- Southwest guarantees A-group boarding passes to expensive tickets and elites

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Global warming has the residents of the Maldives worried. Their entire country has a maximum five feet elevation of over sea level. And their new government has a plan to fix it. But if you’re interested in experiencing the country’s pristine waters, you may want to make plans to visit now rather than later:

The Maldives will begin to divert a portion of the country’s billion-dollar annual tourist revenue into buying a new homeland – as an insurance policy against climate change that threatens to turn the 300,000 islanders into environmental refugees, the country’s first democratically elected president has told the Guardian.

…Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.

“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades,” he said.

Environmentalists say the issue raises the question of what rights citizens have if their homeland no longer exists. “It’s an unprecedented wake-up call,” said Tom Picken, head of international climate change at Friends of the Earth. “The Maldives is left to fend for itself. It is a victim of climate change caused by rich countries.”

Most of the population of the Maldives is concentrated on one island — Male — which contrasts with the rest of the resort-studded archipelago. Check out this density:

And for some scale, click here to see the island in context — next to the airport.

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