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This isn’t living up to the blog motto of living the first class life at coach prices, but it IS living the first class life at business class prices…

If you’re flying to London, American Airlines is offering a complimentary upgrade to first class from semi-discounted business class fares. Full details here, with instructions on how to book it on aa.com.

The fare basis code for this fare is DUP — much like the Y-UP fares that seat you in first class under an economy class booking code on domestic flights. But be warned: these aren’t the cheapest fares you’ll find, so the value proposition is questionable. But if you’re booking a business class trip anyway…

(Thanks Todd!)

Related:
- Reader mail: Why are there no Y-UP fares to Europe or Asia?
- More tips on finding discounted first class fares (Y-UP, Q-UP, etc.)

The war on runway safety
Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi Airport hasn’t worked out as everyone hoped, with cost overruns, insufficient bathrooms, and shoddy workmanship. But now, by virtue of its failure to renew its safety certificate, it’s officially unsafe. Runways have been plagued with cracks and debris. (You’ll be pleased to know that the airport is still operating as normal. Nice. Wouldn’t want to let safety get in the way of the schedule!)

The war on skycaps
Skycaps at Boston’s Logan Airport have filed a class action lawsuit against American Airlines. The suit alleges that the airline’s policy of charging $2 per bag for curbside check-in is cutting into the skycaps’ tips. Indeed, many people assume the fee goes to the skycap, but it actually goes to the airline. The fees exist at plenty of other airports and with plenty of other airlines. Will more skycaps organize and sue?

The war on horse meat
I really don’t know what to make of this. “American Airlines and Delta Air Lines said early Thursday afternoon that they had suspended transport of horse meat to overseas markets – mainly France, Belgium and Japan – where it is consumed.” Horse butchers are angry. It’s a long story.

The war on fusion cuisine
Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture will soon travel the world, inspecting Japanese restaurants and certifying their authenticity. I realize that this is as much cultural nationalism as it is a marketing device, but it’s moronic. California rolls aren’t authentic to Japan, but they’re a standard of sushi restaurants in America. Deal with it. It’s a globalized world, and the notion of a “pure” cultural product is a sham. And it’s been a sham for some time. We’ve been globalizing for hundreds of years. (The spice trade, anyone?) But if the Japanese taxpayer wants to pay for this culinary boondoggle, have at it. (Thanks Dr. Vino!)

The war on broken in-flight entertainment
I get as irritated as the next guy when the audio-video system is broken on a long flight, but attacking the staff is probably not the way to go. Customers on board several Qantas aircraft that have been experiencing technical trouble with their video system “are becoming openly abusive and threatening” to flight attendants in flight. Not cool. Better bring a book.

The war for Delta
US Airways really, really, really, really, really wants to buy Delta. They’re now offering to raise their offer by another $1 billion if the creditors agree to postpone a meeting to discuss Delta’s in-house restructuring. Wake me up when this is over.

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Back on December 29, passengers on board American Airlines’ flight 1348 from San Francisco to Dallas experienced the textbook definition of airline hell. A delayed takeoff due to a mechanical. A weather-related diversion to Austin, where no one was allowed to deplane for nine hours. Overflowing toilets. Minimal food. All trapped on board an MD-80. Scott McCartney’s account of the flight is the definitive treatment.

Passengers on board that flight, and their equally angry compatriots from other flights, are still fuming. Their lawyers claim that the airline has never apologized for the treatment. Now, they’re calling for the U.S. Congress to pass a passengers’ bill of rights.

The European Union already has a passenger bill of rights in place. Most famously, it calls for cash payments when the airline delays you for reasons other than weather or acts of God.

See below for the complete Passenger Bill of Rights proposal. Remember, this is just a proposal, as written by a law firm representing angry travelers, and some of it may be pie-in-the-sky. (Do they really think they can control codeshare partners? Good luck with that!) But are they on to something? Read below, then sound off!

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Passengers miss flight because a Northwest crew wanted donuts
Since when do pilots call the shots on the ground, too? A flight crew convinced a hotel shuttle bus driver to go for donuts instead of heading to the airport, causing other van riders to miss their flight. Full story via Chris Elliott.

Wisconsin Dells loses its Wonder Spot
Ah, the Dells… The klassic kitschy Chicagoland weekend getaway. It has now lost one of its treasures, the gravity-defying Wonder Spot. While Tommy Bartlett’s Thrill Show remains, the Wonder Spot will be missed.

My bag is happy to see you
A “vibrating bag” was discovered unattended at Chicago O’Hare. (It contained a sleep apnea machine, so wipe that smirk off your face!)

I came for the transportation, I stayed for the haircut
Virgin Atlantic hires more in-flight beauty therapists.

Love at first sting
Two separate flights, two separate incidents of scorpions stinging people on a plane. Flight one: Chicago to Burlington, Vermont. Flight two, Miami to Toronto. Forget Samuel L. Jackson. Bring me Klaus Meine!

Singapore Airlines’ new business class… reviewed!
Remember Singapore Airlines’ major upgrade to its business and first class cabins on selected routes? The Global Traveller has sat in the business class seat, and offers his review. Live vicariously.

Charlie Trotter and United Airlines reunited and it feels so good
This is where the cost savings from eliminating pretzels in coach must have gone. United Airlines is jazzing up the food in business and first class. They’re bringing back uber-chef Charlie Trotter, whom they ditched after 9/11. Bet you a bag of savory snack mix that it’ll still taste like airline food… (Thanks to Mark L.!)

Oasis coming to Oakland
Oasis, the Hong Kong based discount airline, famous for it’s $128 tickets to London, is coming to the United States. They’ll start flights from Hong Kong to Oakland in June, with 4x weekly service to start, moving up to daily service in August. No word yet on the fare.

Avoid the TSA by shipping yourself in a crate?
This isn’t living the first class life, but it’s first class by shipping container standards: The Travelbox, a crate designed for shipping a person. Bonus: It has its own running water supply.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car adds hybrid SUVs in California
Enterprise will rent you one of 160 Saturn VUE Green Line SUVs in the Bay Area, LA, or Sacramento. Yes, only California. What, no other parts of the country care about fuel consumption? Hybrids: good. Hybrid CARS, and not just SUVs, would be even better… It’s a start.

American Airlines spurns Expedia
If you’re looking for American Airlines’ international fares or premium cabin fares on Expedia, you’re out of luck. The airline is apparently having a little spat with the online agency, and yanked its fares from the site. We’ll see how long that lasts…

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Update: From recent comments, it seems that this offer has been pulled. Sorry to those who missed out.

United Airlines is playing Santa a little late. (Or maybe they’re tipping their hat to the Orthodox calendar?) United is making it ridiculously easy to obtain elite status.

For some time, American Airlines has offered their so-called “challenges,” whereby you obtain elite status for a full year by flying a fraction of those miles within 90 days. Most airlines have been loath to offer such shortcuts to elite status. (American’s challenges measure qualifying points, not just miles, so be sure to understand the rules. A basic overview is here. An old but generally still correct primer on the subject of AA challenges is here.)

Now United is following American’s lead and offering a similar program. This is different from United’s earlier “pre-paid” status. Last year, and perhaps earlier, United offered prepaid “gift cards” for $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000, that came with Premier, Premier Executive, or 1K benefits, respectively. But the airline’s adoption of fast-track challenges is new.

According to this thread on FlyerTalk, you’ll need to call the United Mileage Plus (1-800-421-4655) and ask to participate in the challenge. Mention offer code MPP557.

The terms: Pay $100 to participate. Then earn 6,250 elite-qualifying miles within 90 days of registering to earn Premier status. Earn 12,500 elite-qualifying miles on United within 90 days of registering to earn Premier Executive status (which gives Star Alliance Gold status). All paid United tickets qualify, and higher fare classes and premium cabins give a bonus. Only United/United Express/Ted flights count, so no codeshares or alliance flights. If you want to go all the way to 1K, however, there are two caveats: 1) You need to have been 1K in 2006 and failed to requalify for 2007, and 2) only tickets booked in the more expensive fare classes (F, A, P, C, D, Z, Y or B) will count for the challenge.

Status obtained through such a challenge will last through February 2008. Thereafter, you’ll have to earn it the hard way. Unless, of course, another challenge crops up…

If you’re going to be flying anyway, and you don’t already have the elite mojo, this might be worth your while. A mileage run (flying for the sake of miles) might be worth it, too, if the price is right. 12,500 elite-qualifying miles aren’t really that hard to obtain, and this is a really cheap route to elite status.

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Using frequent flyer miles to upgrade on American Airlines? The company is making those miles worth less by increasingly requiring cash co-payments.

For international routes, the co-payment goes up $50, but more importantly, they’re introducing a cash co-payment requirement for upgrades on flights between Hawaii and the mainland. This is something they never did before.

Here’s the official line:

Effective March 1, 2007, a nonrefundable co-payment of $150 will be required to claim Upgrade Awards used with most Discount and Deep Discount Economy fares when traveling between the Continental U.S. / Canada / Mexico / the Caribbean and Hawaii. Additionally, effective March 1, 2007, the co-payment that applies to Upgrade Awards between North America and Europe, India, Japan/Northern China, and Deep South America will be increasing to $300.

Even with a co-pay, Upgrade Awards provide AAdvantage members with exceptional value since they can be used with deeply discounted tickets. With fares so low, the disparity between Discount and Premium Class fares is too great to be offset by miles alone. Rather than limit Upgrade Awards to full-fare tickets only, the addition of a co-pay will allow members to continue to use their miles to upgrade even if they purchase discounted fare tickets.

Gary Leff expressed his disdain for this change, especially regarding the Hawaii fees, and I agree with him. American has been charging money for international flights for some time (boo, hiss) but they’ve been getting away with it, so it’s no big change. Sure, money is money, and $50 each way is not nothing, but the new fees for Hawaii are the bigger issue.

From the airline’s point of view, this is understandable, since there are bound to be plenty of people (say, honeymooners) willing to pay. But why stop there? Sure, demand outstrips supply for upgrades to Hawaii, but the same could be said of flights between L.A. and New York. Why not charge fees for those, too? Heck, charge for every upgrade!… Sadly, it could happen.

Full details of AA’s new upgrade policy are here.

‘Pods on a Plane
Apple announced a deal with United, Delta, Continental, Air France, Emirates, and KLM to link inflight entertainment systems with iPods. “Available starting mid-2007, the connections would power and charge iPods in flight. It would allow travelers to watch and listen to videos and songs of their choice, instead of having to watch airlines’ programming. Instead of using the small iPod screen, passengers will be able to watch TV shows or movies on larger seatback monitors.” No word on whether you’ll be able to download songs in-flight.

Cells on the Seas
All sorts of attention is paid to the possibility of cell phones on airplanes, but no one has expressed horror at the thought of getting calls on a cruise ship. The time has come. “I’m on a ship! A ship!” Yay.

Fondue on a plane?
Molten cheese, is there anything better? Swiss style fondue, Besides being social and delicious, can now earn you miles. Select prepackaged fondue cheese can earn you 500 miles on American Airlines. See here. (Beware the bombastic and loud audio/video that plays upon opening…) Alas, we can’t enjoy fondue at 35,000 feet yet. Via Gary Leff’s View from the Wing.

Delta guarantees you’ll be late
Delta Connection flight 5283 from New York-JFK to Washington National: late 100% of the time in September. Jeez. Book the earlier flight.

Marriott goes electric
Marriott hotels will now let all guests receive their final bills (”e-folios”) via e-mail. Saves trees, and provides an electronic record. As long as the accounting department accepts this for expense reports, then we’re good to go.

Reader Trey, occasional flyer but frequent upgrader, sings the praises of American Airlines’ upgrades for purchase at check-in and asks:

I travel with relative infrequency, say 3-4 times per year. When I do, I /always/ fly American Airlines because I like their planes, I like their service, and, usually, I like their price. The latest factor keeping my business with them, however, is the availability of $30 500mi upgrades when using Kiosk Check-In. I LOVE it. It’s cheap, fast, and the only way I’ll ever qualify to upgrade from the N or Q class fare I normally book. My question is this: is there any online tool which will let me view historical loads so that I can book flights which normally have room left up front?

The upgrades-for-purchase at check-in can be a decent deal, especially if you’re on a super-cheapo ticket. To maximize your odds of being able to buy one, you want to be on flights with 1) lots of tickets for sale in first class (which is hard to predict, but you can see tickets for sale up until a few hours before the flight) AND 2) with the fewest possible number of top-tier elites on board. These elites might be automatically upgraded by the airline, so they’d jump ahead of you, Trey. But unless you work for the airline, there’s no way to know who’s booked on a flight, though you can expect super-elites to travel to business destinations from main hubs, say, Dallas-New York.

I’m afraid I don’t know of any online service that offers reliable historical information about how many actual seats were available for upgrades into first class. The closest thing out there is UpgradeSuccess.com, which I’ve mentioned here, but the information in their database is pretty thin.

Other sites like ExpertFlyer let you subscribe and see loads for FUTURE flights, but that doesn’t tell you how these flights filled up in the past. FareCast collects this sort of information and gathers it in their database to make predictions about future fares, but again, this isn’t necessarily data that would help you in picking an easily-upgradable flight.

But maybe I’m missing something: Someone out there will surely correct me if I’m wrong. Any ideas?

Upgraded: Coach Seats on Cathay Pacific
You don’t hear much about economy class seats improving much. Sure, there’s lots of talk about upgrading business and first class. But it’s good to see the back of the bus being considered for upgrades. Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, considered by many to be one of the best rides in the sky, is installing new seats that function much like business class pods: hard-shell seats that recline within the shell, not by pushing back into the space behind you. The tinkering extends the legroom without technically increasing the seat pitch. Sounds great! (via RoadGladiator)

Upgraded: Economy Snacks on American Airlines, at a Price
American Airlines will start testing a new program this week — and ONLY this week — to sell snacks in flight. Flights between Dallas and LAX, Dallas and Miami, and JFK and San Francisco are included in the test. Klondike Movie Bites ice cream, Otis Spunkmeyer Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Lay’s Stax Crisps or Twix ‘4 To Go’ candy bars will run you $3. Dannon bottled water (how many ounces??) will be $2 per bottle. Cookies, etc., fine. I wonder if the $2 bottle of water was devised before the latest airport security rules were relaxed. Not sure how many people will bite. Can’t you just get a cup or two poured for you for free?

Downgraded even more: The Ryanair Experience
Sensory overload! Ryanair is adding advertisements on the underside of the tray tables, so you’ll be staring at the ad for the duration of the flight. Yay. It just keeps getting classier. (via The Cranky Flier)

Upgraded: Continental’s Reputation
Boston’s Logan Airport wanted to make a buck by providing wi-fi access and charging everyone for it. Problem was, Continental’s clubs already provided wi-fi for free. The airport tried to shut down the free connection, but Continental resisted, took it to the FCC, and won. Hats off to Continental for defending the interests of their customers. (And if you want free wi-fi, hang out near the Continental Presidents Club and try to pick up a signal…)

tags: travel | airlines

Upgraded: First class meals on American Airlines
If your upgrade clears, your inflight meal may improve. Artisan breads, Ghirardelli chocolates, and the option of an antipasto/cheese snack in lieu of the ramekin of mixed nuts. Alternatives to the hot nuts? Blasphemy!
(Thanks, Benet!)

Downgraded: Gay travelers …also on American Airlines
Accusations of homophobia on board AA flight 45 from Paris to New York are percolating through the internet after the New Yorker’s article on a gay couple whose cuddles and smooches were met with flight attendant intervention. An attendant with “Texas hair, like from the nineteen-sixties,” demanded that the couple cease and desist. Ruckus ensued.
(Thanks, Stephen and John!)

Upgraded: Business class seats on bmi
Britain’s Star Alliance member, bmi, which operates a Manchester, UK hub for its international flights, is going fully lie-flat with its business-class seats.

Upgraded: Hotel bathrooms
Beds are better, furnishings nicer, and now, nicer hotel bathrooms, too. And missing? Tubs!

Upgraded: Passport photos
Downgraded: British security
A British man used his two-year old daughter’s passport to travel to the Netherlands. I guess he’s a young-looking fella.

Upgraded, maybe: Connexion inflight internet
Intercontinental internet junkies can hold out some hope: Panasonic is trying to step in and take over as provider of airplane broadband, after Boeing announced the forthcoming shutdown of its Connexion service. But it won’t just transition seamlessly, and will run on a different network, so don’t celebrate yet. As long as it works. Wonk out on the details here, if that’s your fancy.

Downgraded: Wine bars in Portland Airport
I love wine bars in airports, like the Vino Volo at Washington-Dulles. But if you’re going to have one, put it AFTER security… Portland, Oregon’s airport wine bar has been put on the deathwatch.

(image of hot nuts: ejpm99)
tags: travel

There’s escalation in the Discounted First Class War.

Yesterday’s post about Y-UP and Q-UP fares brought in a few e-mails. Including this one:

Have you seen that United now goes beyond Y-UP and Q-UP and now features M-UP and B-UP fares?

It’s true. Confirmed. Whoo.

Pulling up a list of fares (on Travelocity’s fare tool) between, say, Washington and Los Angeles on the arbitrary date of October 28, I see these “discounted” premium fares:

Delta USD 983.00+ F06C booking code F
American USD 1159.00+ YUPP7ZN booking code P
United USD 1159.00+ QUA7UPN booking code A
United USD 1159.00+ QUA7UP4Z booking code A
American USD 1533.00+ YUPPMZ booking code P
United USD 1533.00+ QUAUP4Z booking code Z
United USD 1533.00+ QUAUP booking code A
American USD 1933.00+ YUPMZ booking code A
United USD 2433.00+ MUAUP booking code P
United USD 2433.00+ MUAUP4D booking code D

Notice that the Delta fare that doesn’t play these -UP games is actually the cheapest of the discounted premium fares. Go figure. (FYI, the fares with booking code D or Z are business class fares on 3-class planes… hope you’re keeping score.) And none of these fares come close to the discounted economy class prices that most people look for. -UP fares shine when you’re traveling at the last minute and all fares are sky high.

This is getting silly. We have Yuppie and Quppie fares, and now Muppies and Buppies. It’s getting too hard to keep track of all these options. My brain is going to explode.

Last week, American Airlines reinstated the seasonal short-hop award. For flights with a one-way distance of 750 miles or less, the roundtrip economy saver award ticket costs 15,000 miles instead of 25,000. A first class ticket costs 30,000 instead of 50,000 miles. This is a limited-time offer, valid between September 1, 2006 and February 28, 2007.

This is particularly good news for short flights to smaller airports, which are often ludicrously expensive given the distance flown (and given the inability to upgrade, since it’s often on an RJ). A purely arbitrary example: A 224-mile flight from Chicago to Traverse City, Michigan costs $372.60 cash or 15,000 miles and $5 in taxes. That’s 2.45 cents per mile, which is pretty good. (Sure, it’s not 10 cpm on a first-class ticket to South Africa, but still…)

While American’s offer is for a limited time, United is making the short-hop award a permanent feature of Mileage Plus starting October 16. EDIT: They killed it. While making it appear permanent when they first announced the reduced-mileage award, United put a February 28, 2007 expiration on their awards as well, just like American. Boo!) But there’s a tradeoff: United’s mileage limit on these short flights is a frustratingly small 700 miles. (See my earlier comments on United’s revised rules here.) Those 50 miles can make a big difference.

tags: travel | AMR Corp. | frequent flyer miles | American Airlines