It came as a surprise to me when I saw the sign pictured above in the parking lot of a Country Inn & Suites in Asheville, North Carolina this weekend.

I admit that I’ve never become intimately familiar with the Goldpoints frequent guest program from the Carlson family of hotels (Radisson, Country Inn & Suites, etc.), largely because I’ve never been a fan of their properties and rarely stay there. (Needless to say, I wasn’t pulling in to that spot…) There is also no reference to a parking benefit on the Goldpoints website, so I don’t know if this is a property-specific offer or a policy across the chain.

The spot itself was located next to the handicapped spaces, near the front of the lot. It’s not like it was a covered space with complimentary car wash and detailing. Frankly, it’s not a big deal.

And yes, “it,” not “they.” Singular. There was only one space labeled for elite members, so either the hotel doesn’t get much business from frequent guests, or the signage was purely symbolic.

So what say you? Nice perk, or superfluous? Obnoxious, or a nice recognition of repeat business? Hit the comments…

Upgraded: Hassles for the obese Canadian traveler
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled recently that obese passengers could not be forced to buy a second seat. The court reaffirmed the Department of Transport’s “one person, one seat” directive. Air Canada and WestJet, Canada’s top airlines, in turn decided that passengers would need a doctor’s note declaring the passenger “disabled as a result of their obesity,” and not simply too large to feel comfortable in an airline seat, if they wanted the exemption from paying a second fare. Now Canadian doctors are complaining that the airlines are overburdening the medical system with the requirement for notes. I smell a lawsuit brewing.

Downgraded: Parking lot firepower
Not so smart: Driving to LAX with a trunk full of guns and ammunition. 16 firearms, 1000 rounds. Including one assault rifle. To the driver’s credit, the weapons were locked in separate containers from the ammunition, and he claims he was licensed for everything, but what kind of genius brings that kind of firepower to the airport?

Upgraded: Florida deals for DC residents who dislike inaugurations
Barack Obama is being sworn in as president on Tuesday, January 20, and Washington, DC will be mayhemic. Plus, hotels in the area are gouging their customers booked with record rates. (2-star hotels fifty miles away from the district for $550/night? Get real.) But rooms are marked down in Amelia Island, Florida, where hotels are trying to attract residents of the DC area who either want to avoid the congestion — or who just don’t like the new president.

Downgraded: United elite status duration
United has shaved a month off the validity of their frequent flyer elite status. Reader Craig writes in:

I opened up my new [United Airlines Mileage Plus] premier exec card yesterday and noticed that instead of expiring at the end of February 2010, it expires at the end of January. Also looking at the brochure that accompanies the card they have eliminated the Elite Choice reward at 40k miles. These are minor things, but still.

Indeed. Status used to last 14 months — January 1 through the next year’s February. Now, it’s 13 months. Lucky, lucky 13.

United Airlines, intent on proving that anything — anything — is for sale, is starting sell a package of elite-esque services for $25 a pop.

“Premier Line” is the latest in the “Travel Options by United” series of a la carte services available for purchase. Premier Line, starting at $25 per passenger each way, will let passengers:

• check in at the (generally shorter) business class line;
• use the (generally shorter) elite/first class security line;
• board in Seating Area 1, earlier than non-elite coach passengers.

Notably not included: Economy Plus seating.

Once again, United proves that it is willing to sell its lower-level elites down the river. Fly 25,000 miles, and you’ll still have to compete with those willing to pay a handful of bucks. Awesome.

There’s nothing that was once only available through loyalty which can’t be bought for one-shot cash payments. Nothing. They’ll sell you Economy Plus. They’ll sell you early boarding. They’ll sell you bonus miles. It’s all for sale.

On the flip side, United is offering infrequent travelers the opportunity to pay a little extra to get a little more service. Is it worth $25?

So, is this a slap in the face of lower-tier elite members, or a brilliant business decision? Hit the comments. Weigh in.

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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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Tired of people with elite status boarding before you, or getting into separate security lines? Wish you could get double miles on every flight, and your very own extra-special customer service phone number that routes you to the same Indian call center as everyone else, but with a separate greeting? Want to get on the loyalty train while others are getting off? Upset that you’re not getting blamed by travel writers for ruining air travel? Well, you might just be in luck.

MileMaven.com’s Boaz Shmueli writes in to offer up an interesting offer on United: Free Premier Executive status. Free. No flying 50,000 miles. No “challenges.” Just… free. But there’s no guarantee this will work: The offer may be targeted. Still, the worst you can end up doing is entering your account number on a website. Big whoop. Why not try it? Just do it by June 30.

Premier Executive is the middle tier of elite status on the airline. It offers Star Alliance Gold privileges (free lounge access anytime you fly internationally), a (pointless) “priority” tag attached to any checked luggage you might have, free Economy Plus seating, midrange rank on the upgrade list, and a number of smaller benefits (such as reduced fees) that could add up over time if you fly enough. See here for the full description of the status.

Act quickly.

The headline reads: “Frequent criers: Elite fliers are ruining air travel.” And while I have long enjoyed Chris Elliott’s columns and blog, this one piece is way off base.

(Nice linkbait, though! Whether Chris Elliott or his editor is to blame for the title, he had to know he’d be getting a response from this blog. Chris, consider your bait snapped up and devoured.)

But Chris’ blame-the-frequent-flyer attitude makes me want to flick my loyalty program cards at him like Chinese stars in a Bruce Lee movie. Even with his caveat that a few bad apples may be to blame, it’s still not clear to me how the most frequent flyers are at fault for the mess we’re in.

But let’s hear it from him. I’ll agree with his first point, as it’s essentially a fact:

No, what irks me are two important issues. First, it’s the way airlines today are adding amenities to their premium cabins while quietly removing basic services from their economy-class sections. Food is a good example, but such additions and deletions are taking place across the board, and it shows up in every aspect of air travel, from reservations to boarding.

It’s true, the class division in flight is getting wider, much like CEO pay has been rocketing up while most workers’ wages are stagnant. There is an amenity arms race in the air, especially in international premium cabins, and the back of the plane is losing out. That’s a reasonable gripe.

But let’s continue:

The other issue? The attitude of elites. I mean “elite” in several senses of the word: not just elite-level frequent travelers and the well-to-do who can afford to pay full price for the good seats, but perhaps in a broader sense, passengers who think they deserve preferential treatment.

So you’re conflating “elite” with “elitist,” merging “first class” with “frequent flyer,” and redefining “elite” to your own purpose? This is the Humpty Dumpty Fallacy, if you’ll allow me to be an educated elite (or is it elitist?) and whip out the Lewis Carroll:

`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master – - that’s all.’

Well, “elites” in the aviation world are generally those passengers who clock 25,000 miles a year or more with an airline or its alliance partners. Calling others “elites” is muddying the waters.

The remainder of the argument offers anecdotes of Travelers Behaving Badly: Naomi Campbell throwing a fit after her luggage went missing. Self-important jerks who refuse to buckle up and hang up the phone. And That Guy who demands a free drink because his upgrade didn’t clear. These are all real, undisputable examples of people being grade-A assholes. But why would you assume that all “elites” are like this?

Is this handful of bad apples “ruining air travel”? Or are the perpetual delays, overcrowded flights, BS fees, arbitrary imposition of rules when it’s convenient to the staff, (justifiably, but still unpleasantly) ticked-off crew, regional jets, increasing prices, and declining value proposition to blame for the malaise in air travel? I’ll pick the latter.

Most people with a silver, gold, platinum, or black loyalty program card in their possession aren’t the self-important traveling jerks Chris describes — or if they are jerks, they keep it civil in the sky. Most are regular folks who spend more time seated in a plane than they wish they had to. They know the rules: They take off their shoes and pull out their laptops at the security check. They stow their roll-aboards in the proper direction. They ignore the safety announcement because they can recite it in their sleep, but they pay attention to crew member instructions when so directed. And yes, they buckle up.

Elites aren’t ruining air travel. The airlines are. It’s the airlines’ world. The elites are just flying in it. Just like everyone else.

The recent downgrades to frequent flyer programs and air travel in general have a lot of people ticked off, if my inbox is any indication.

Several people are threatening to jump ship from their current frequent flyer program of choice and get their status matched by a competitor. (For regularly-updated info on status matches, see this FlyerTalk thread.)

Others are throwing in the towel on loyalty entirely. (This is especially prevalent among the low- and middle-tier elites who are writing in.) As reader David suggests:

Maybe this will mean that “elites” won’t feel so elite anymore, and will just buy tickets where it’s most convenient. I know that’s my plan. And maybe people won’t worry about miles as much anymore, and we can ditch this “status” crap and all go back to just being customers. Is the bulls&@t the airlines are feeding us really democracy in disguise?

Well, I don’t think this means the end of elite status, but here’s my prediction:

If anything, top-tier elite status will be even more entrenched as a result of these changes. If only the top tier of flyers will really feel the benefits, then it’s likely that lower-level elites could become “free agents,” basing their purchasing decisions on price, schedule, and service, and not on mileage accrual. But the top-tier folks will maintain their loyalty, and the airlines will, in turn, continue to reward them. Everyone else can apparently go to hell, but since that attitude seems universal, across programs, it will be distributed equally across the market, and the net effect (from the airlines’ perspective) is nil.

But what are you thinking? How has the consistent downgrading of frequent flyer programs and the air travel experience changed your views on loyalty? Are you cutting up your airline credit cards? Are you changing your buying habits? Or are you locked in, and not giving up? Hit the poll below, and hit the comments.

(image credit, and no, I have no idea what the heck that sign is for, but loyalty and fidelity to your produce are honorable and just)

Boaz Shmueli of the excellent MileMaven.com website sends in this tip:

For those Alaska Airlines frequent flyers whose 2007 travels were insufficient to meet the threshold for MVP or MVP Gold, the airline’s elite status tiers, there’s a shortcut that can help you catch up.

If you want to requalify for MVP status, you can fly four paid segments on Alaska or Horizon between January 15 and March 15. Registration is necessary. Click here for full details.

To requalify for MVP Gold, you can fly eight paid segments during the same timeframe. Click here.

These links are “hidden” on the Alaska Airlines website, i.e., you won’t find them on the homepage or the MVP program promotions page. Completing the required flights will extend your status until December 2008.

Related:
- My mom is doing a mileage run
- Alaska Airlines (aff)

In just a few days, my mother will get on a plane (with my dad dutifully accompanying her) and fly to Florida. It’s not a vacation they really planned to take. They’re doing it for the miles.

For those who don’t know, a mileage run is the process of taking a trip just to get the miles. (Usually this means elite-qualifying miles, and not redeemable miles.) For the mileage-running purist, your destination is irrelevant. You might not even stay there — you just fly there, and fly back, to collect the miles. (Wired Magazine’s Dave Demerjian recently jetted around the US just for the miles and lived to tell about it. Even crazier, The Global Traveller recently went on a one-month-long mega-mileage run to establish lifetime elite status.)

Is her son to blame? Perhaps… Indeed, like the dealer helping a junkie get one more high, I pointed my parents to FareCompare’s search engine for mileage runners. The tool searches for flights on a cost-per-mile basis. It turned out that Florida was both inexpensive and desirable.

Yes, my mom has gotten hooked on elite frequent flyer status. She was a few hundred miles short of making status again for next year, and while she wasn’t enjoying the mega-uber-perks of top-tier status, she still appreciated the shorter check-in with business class at crowded airports, the dedicated security lines, and the bonus miles.

Maybe we should call their trip a comfort run. They’re leaving the airport, after all. And they’re actually staying at the destination for a few days. They also used some Starwood points for a Westin and lowballed an Avis rent-a-car via Priceline. In this instance, I think my parents were looking for an excuse for another vacation. And the elite status that results is collateral damage. So this trip isn’t just for the miles…

So is a mileage run really worth it? Elite status is still worthwhile, if you travel enough with one airline (or within one alliance) and if you’re going to take advantage of the perks. If the price is right, and it gets you the perks you want, that mileage run may be an investment worth making.

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Southwest took another step away from its rebellious past and another step toward being just another legacy carrier today. But if you’re traveling last minute on the company dime, there may be a silver lining: Expensive fares, usually bought very close to departure, will now come with a guaranteed “A”-group boarding pass, assuring early boarding and seat selection under Southwest’s open seating model. Plus, you get a free cocktail.

Unclear from early reports is how the number in one’s boarding group is calculated for these passengers. (Southwest recently started numbering boarding passes within the A, B, and C groups, and requiring passengers to board in sequential order.)

Many Southwest fans will be outraged. The airline is gradually moving away from its democratic model, and going with a “money talks, BS walks” approach.

But at the same time, loyalty will be rewarded, too. Much like elite frequent flyers at United, Northwest, or US Airways get access to “premium” economy seats, Rapid Rewards members with 32 flights under their belt in one year are guaranteed an “A” boarding pass.

And in a marketing spin, those expensive last-minute fares would now be termed “Business Select” fares.

(Ooooh, “select”… Isn’t that a grade of beef? Select… choice… prime… The old-style “cattle call” may be gone, but the bovine metaphors live on.)

So, to recap: Expensive tickets get more perks and better seats. Frequent flyers get “upgrades.” And the marketers are spinning tales about how revolutionary and great this all is.

Sounds like a “legacy” airline. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. But the low-cost revolutionary hype is not in tune with reality any more.

They’ve grown up, perhaps. But Southwest is turning into the airlines it once mocked. Welcome to middle age!

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