In October, United announced that they were moving to an “unlimited” upgrade system from their electronic certificate system. But as readers chimed in, one of the biggest complaints came from top-tier 1K members. The quarterly allotment of confirmed upgrades within North America was going away, and with that, a big perk of upgrade security.

United must have gotten a lot of complaints, as they’re reinstating the so-called “regional” upgrades:

1K® members will continue to earn Regional Upgrades
Sometimes no change is good news. After our last announcement, we heard from our 1K members how much they value their Regional Upgrades. To thank them for their ongoing loyalty, we’ve decided to continue issuing Regional Upgrades to 1Ks, even after the Unlimited Domestic Upgrades program launches.

That gives top-tier elites the best of both worlds: A reserved upgrade if booked in advance (and if United releases seats for upgrade early…) and the top of the free-upgrade list if they’re sweating it out at the gate.

And entry-level elites don’t really lose anything here. The 1Ks would be ahead of them in line, anyway.

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Separately, United and Continental announced that reciprocal “unlimited” upgrade privileges will roll out in mid-2010. No word yet on what the hierarchy will be; I assume that, in a tie, UA 1Ks will still outrank CO platinums…

And on the semi-upgrade front: Continental elites will also have free access to the Economy Plus section on United flights — a privilege which United hasn’t been extending to other Star Alliance partner travelers.

Upgraded: Continental Airlines BusinessFirst seats
Continental Airlines’ international business class seats are getting a facelift. Initially promised back in August 2008, the first of the new 180-degree lie-flat seats finally debuted last week. (They call them “BusinessFirst,” but let’s be real, it’s really business class.) The new seats are four inches wider than the old seats. The interactive tour of the seat is here.

Upgraded: Frontier Airlines, front half
Downgraded: Frontier Airlines, rear half
Frontier Airlines is reorganizing the seatmap to put in an extra-legroom section in economy, a la United’s Economy Plus. The section, dubbed “Stretch,” will have 36 inches of pitch between seats. Seats in the rear will have between 30 and 32 inches. 30? That is tight.

Upgraded: The Expedia-Choice Hotels War
You may recall the spat between the Choice Hotels chain and Expedia. Expedia demanded numerous draconian terms of Choice, and Choice said no. But now… As of this evening, Choice is back in. But no details yet on what the deal actual consists of. Stay tuned.

Upgraded: Ways to share your miles with veterans
It’s not new, but on this Veteran’s Day (or Armistice Day in the UK), you may be interested in the Fisher House Foundation’s program that accepts frequent flier miles to share with “military (or DoD civilian employees) hospitalized as a result of their service in Iraq, Afghanistan, or surrounding areas, and their families. These tickets can not be used for R&R travel, ordinary leave, emergency leave, or other travel not related to a medical condition.”

Downgraded: Continental and US Airways add international luggage fees
Following in the steps of American Airlines and British Airways, Continental and US Airways have now also added a fee for a second checked bag on international flights. US Airways also bumped up the fee for domestic luggage fees by $5 per bag.

Upgraded: Japanese car rentals
Travelers renting a car in Japan can now reserve a wireless enabled netbook for about $10 per day. The company, Oryx, includes the cost of the wireless service.

Downgraded: Blaming the victim
A Stamford, Connecticut franchisee operating under the Marriott name stupidly and offensively blamed one of its customers, saying she “‘failed to exercise due care’ before she was raped at gunpoint in front of her children in a hotel parking garage.” Stay classy, Stamford Marriott! Now, the Marriott mothership is distancing itself from the words (and legal strategy) of its franchisee.

Upgraded: JetBlue-Lufthansa partnership
It took a while — I blogged about the possibility of an alliance partnership back in December 2007 — but JetBlue and Lufthansa are finally talking about codesharing. The consequences will be interesting. I’m particularly interested to see if Lufthansa will be selling JetBlue segments on tickets to destinations served as well by Star Alliance members United and US Airways.

Downgraded: SkyEurope
SkyEurope, a European (duh) discount airline, has ceased all operations. This was the airline that at one point offered to pay its customers to fly with them. R.I.P.

Downgraded: Enterprise Rent-a-Car
Rental cars typically don’t have a great reputation, and this doesn’t help: Enterprise saved money on its rental fleet by requesting that GM delete safety features — features that were otherwise standard. The savings per vehicle: $175. 66,000 Chevrolet Impalas without side curtain airbags were rented out, and then subsequently sold as used vehicles.

When Continental leaves SkyTeam this fall, it won’t join Star Alliance the next day. Rather, there will be a period of transition as the airline shifts from one global airline alliance to another.

“With our final flight on 24 October, we will leave SkyTeam,” said outgoing Continental CEO Larry Kellner. “We will be in Star just as fast as we can be after that. We just can’t do anything until we get out of SkyTeam to jointly market with Star partners. It won’t be seamless; it will be a couple days in transition.”

Extracting itself from SkyTeam for Continental involves ending loyalty program and airport lounge reciprocity with Air France, Delta, KLM, Northwest and other soon-to-be former allies.

It also requires ending codeshare flights and joint corporate programs. On the former, some code shares with Delta and Northwest already have been discontinued, Kellner said, and “all drop off [by] the end of July.” On the latter, he acknowledged that “we have some joint contracts, but we don’t think that’s a significant risk for us. It’s a very small risk.”

How much time passes between the wind-down of the old partnerships and the initiation of the new ones is another open question.

The transition period may be a bumpy one for Continental loyalists — or for those planning on flying Continental and hoping for benefits via one alliance or the other. Stay tuned.

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Downgraded: Bangkok airport duty-free
If you’re in Bangkok, you might want to skip the duty-free shop. Customers have been falsely accused (better: framed) of shoplifting. And thanks to an apparently collusive agreement between the police, the duty free operator (King Power), and individual “translators,” all working in cahoots, travelers have been forced to pay up thousands of dollars in order to leave the country. “The British Embassy has also warned passengers at Bangkok Airport to take care not to move items around in the duty free shopping area before paying for them, as this could result in arrest and imprisonment.” Absurd! Read the whole convoluted story of the “zig zag scam” here.

Downgraded: OpenSkies
British Airways is looking to sell its all-business class OpenSkies subsidiary, only a year after buying L’Avion and merging the two operations. The airline-in-an-airline is still operating, though, and there are some pretty sweet deals for premium class travel. If you’re flying between New York and Amsterdam or Paris anytime soon and looking for a relatively inexpensive upgrade, this could be the ticket. (~$1230 all-in roundtrip for a 140° cradle seat, or ~$2100 for a 180° flat bed.) But I wouldn’t book more than a month or two out.

Upgraded: Inflight internet overseas
Lufthansa is reportedly exploring ways of restarting the now-defunct Boeing Connexion satellite-powered inflight internet service. The receivers are already installed on many of their planes (a process which was undertaken at a hefty cost. Panasonic is the most likely provider of the services to the airline.

Downgraded: The St. Regis Monarch Beach
Upgraded: Irony
You may recall the St. Regis Monarch Beach in California as the site of controversy — Weeks after accepting a huge federal bailout, AIG executives spent nearly half a million smackers to host a swank affair at the resort. Now the resort itself has gone into receivership: Creditor Citigroup has foreclosed on the property, taking possession from the franchisees, Makar Properties. (Perhaps not surprising if reports of 15% occupancy rates are true.) But foreclosure doesn’t mean closure. The property remains open, albeit under new ownership.

Upgraded: Exotic inflight vermin
Paging Samuel L. Jackson! A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight departing Phoenix was stung by a scorpion in flight. The creature fell out of luggage in the overhead bin, where numerous other scorpions were residing.

Downgraded: Budget Rent-a-Car’s ethics
Budget Rent-a-Car is still working with Trilegiant, the shady operators who send out “checks” you shouldn’t endorse. Signing the back commits you to an expensive membership in a “consumer club” with minimal benefits — all billed to the credit card you used when you rented a car from Budget. I reported on this back in January. I just received a similar solicitation this week, offering me a $10 check in exchange for a $219.98/year membership in “HealthSaver.” Shame on you, Budget, for pimping out the credit card data that your customers trusted you with.

Downgraded: Airline fees
Another week, another hike of airline fees. Continental, as part of its earnings report, is raising the cost of checked luggage by $5, bringing it to $20 for the first bag and $30 for the second. Also: Delta is adding a $5 in-person luggage fee for bags not checked in in advance online.

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Downgraded: Baggage carousels
I realize that airports are looking for ways to make money, and I admit I’m surprised this hasn’t been tried earlier, but the checked baggage conveyor belts will now display advertising at select airports. Yet another reason to carry on instead of checking bags…

Upgraded: Global travel
Downgraded: Swine flu
Good news on the swine flu front: A vaccine for H1N1 should be ready by mid-October. If true, that could have huge implications for the movement of travelers across borders.

Downgraded: Laptops at airports
How many laptops are lost at US airports weekly? 12,000. WEEKLY. And of those, 1200 are at LAX. Most are left behind at security checkpoints. Only a third are ever recovered. That’s horrible, and embarrassing for everyone involved.

Upgraded: Star Alliance
Continental gets the final nod to join Star Alliance. It will be departing SkyTeam.

Upgraded: Upgrades to Hawaii on Continental
Perhaps in the spirit of joining a new alliance, Continental is changing its rules to allow its elite-level OnePass members to upgrade free on flights to Hawaii. Jared Blank has more.

Upgraded: Traveling like a Dolphin
For the person who has everything, and wants to travel a little deeper: A personal submarine based on a dolphin. Promo video below. Bizarre.

Downgraded: Irony
Every time you try to make a cynical or snide remark about the state of the airline industry, griping about how unpleasant it’s become, Ryanair meets or beats that cynicism. The airline now wants to ban checked luggage entirely. Seriously. They claim — and I say “claim” because I’ll believe it when I see it — that they’ll be implementing this by 2010, the same deadline for offering inflight gambling and pay toilets. Are they that desperate for attention that they need to keep floating these increasingly annoying ideas?

Upgraded: Republic Airlines
Downgraded, eventually: Midwest Signature Service
Republic, best known for providing regional jet services to a range of carriers, has bought Midwest and Frontier Airlines. In the case of Midwest, they’re getting rid of the Boeing 717s and replacing them with Embraer 190s. That’s a narrower tube. Translation: Expect cuts or elimination of Signature Service seats at the front of the plane.

Upgraded: Holding TSA accountable
Remember the traveler who was harassed by the TSA for carrying $4700 in cash? He refused to answer questions until the TSA agents explicitly told him he was required to respond, and caught it all on tape. Now he’s suing the TSA, with help from the ACLU.

Upgraded: Continental miles
Well, not upgraded much, but here’s a quick way to earn 100 miles for “learning about” Continental-branded credit cards.

Downgraded: Boeing
Not only is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner delayed again, but some significant redesigning is necessary in order to get it airworthy. That’s bad news for the company’s management (or shareholders), or the airlines that have to wait even longer to receive their orders. As a passenger, I’d rather have a safe plane start flying late than an unsafe plane on time. Nonetheless, some are accusing Boeing of a coverup.

Downgraded: SkyEurope
SkyEurope, the Bratislava-based discount airline perhaps most famous for paying you to fly them, has declared bankruptcy. They’re still flying while they restructure.

Upgraded: Flight tracking
Visually cool, though not completely practical: Lufthansa has commissioned a neat representation of their flight traffic. Watch a fancy demo below. Be warned, the sound has some crazy-high-pitched sounds, which detract from the experience.

(Update: The designers deleted the video. No idea why. I’ll leave the embed up in case they bring it back. In the interim, have a still/screenshot instead.)

(via Dvice)

Downgraded: The word “guarantee”
A week ago, I argued that it was worth looking at Mexico for some good travel bargains, especially 6 or more months out, when H1N1 flu scares will hopefully be behind us. In the interim, Mexican tourism is suffering tremendously. For example, hotel occupancy in Cancun has dropped from 77% to 23% in a matter of two weeks. Cost-cutting has ensued, and one chain, AM Resorts, has rolled out a somewhat misguided “flu-free guarantee” for 10 of its 11 Mexico hotels, beginning Friday: “The company will give three free vacations over the next three years to any customer unfortunate enough to pick up the H1N1 flu virus at one of its Mexico resorts.” It’s hard to vacation — even for free — when you’re dead.

Downgraded: Colgan Air
The National Transportation Safety Board has released transcripts of cockpit conversations before the doomed Colgan Air-operated Continental Flight 3407. The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 went down in icy conditions. More disturbing: the cockpit recordings showed that one of the pilots felt under-trained for the experience. The quote, minutes before things got a lot worse: “I’ve never seen icing conditions. I’ve never de-iced. I’ve never seen any — I’ve never experienced any of that. I don’t want to have to experience that and make those kinds of call[s]. You know I’d have freaked out. I’d have, like, seen this much ice and thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, we’re going to crash.’” Pilots who haven’t had de-icing training? Flying to Buffalo?? In February???

Downgraded: Your luggage… because it’s been sucked into a jet engine
Passengers on board Japan Air Lines flight 61 got a treat as their plane began its taxi to the runway. Engine number 1 of the Boeing 747 sucked in a misplaced luggage container. Passengers and ground personnel were unharmed, but it made for good imagery.

Downgraded: Embassy Suites’ notion of the suite
Embassy Suites is considering shrinking the size of its rooms, but keeping the current price. Then, they’ll charge a premium for the current suite configuration. Somehow, they’ll try to spin this as an improvement, I’m sure.

Upgraded: Opaque booking of hotels
Travelocity is rolling out opaque booking for select hotels. Interspersed with named hotels, you’ll find “secret” hotels whose identity is only revealed after purchase. This sort of sale is typically associated with Priceline and Hotwire, but it’s hardly new. GTA Hotels has done this for ages. EasyClickTravel used to offer “off the record” hotels, but they have discontinued the practice. A company like Travelocity might be able to get this to work alongside its named offerings, because of its size, but the competition from the established opaque booking specialists seems to be pretty strong. We’ll see if it lasts.

Upgraded: Passenger discontent with frequent flyer miles devaluation
A miffed Continental customer is suing the airline for charging him fees and higher mileage levels when trying to book an award ticket with his OnePass miles. He’s suing for “levying an illegal penalty, breach of contract and unjust enrichment,” technically. The details:

According to the lawsuit, Simon tried to book a flight in January from Los Angeles to Cleveland for 25,000 miles, which was the number of miles needed to earn an economy-class round trip within the lower 48 states when Simon joined the airline’s OnePass frequent-flier program several years ago.

The airline demanded 50,000 miles even though reservations officials said there were empty seats on some flights, said Simon’s lawyer, who described his client as a semiretired man in his 60s who “travels a fair amount.”

As much as the fees and continued mileage devaluation irk me, and as annoying as it is to be party to a contract where the rules are so prone to shifting, I don’t think he has a leg to stand on, legally. He may travel a fair amount, but Continental’s OnePass program is notorious for “selling out” tickets at the “EasyPass” level…

Downgraded: Expedia users’ web histories
Expedia is tracking your browsing habits and selling those data to advertisers, who may target you based on your purchases on the travel site. It’s cookie based, so it’s targeted to the computer you’re using, and allegedly doesn’t include personally identifying information, but your computer may be betraying information about you that you don’t want to share.

Downgraded: Homonyms
On the show “24,” the plot has turned to a private corporation that is plotting to use biological weapons against American citizens. That fictional company, clearly inspired by Blackwater (which is now renamed “Xe”…) is called “Starkwood.” I barely heard the “k” in the name when they first mentioned it on-air. My first thoughts: Why would Westin and Sheraton want to kill people?… (And yes, my wife makes fun of me for watching “24,” which she oh-so-lovingly derides as a “boy soap opera.” Guilty as charged!)

Downgraded: Digging to China
Ever wonder where the exact opposite spot on the earth is from where you’re standing? Too lazy to find a globe? The Antipode Map website is for you. And just so you know, if you want to “dig to China,” you’d better be standing in South America.

Upgraded: Pilot air rage
Downgraded: 37 people’s on-time travel
Sure, it’s amusing that a pilot got so frustrated at having to pass through security at London City Airport that he pulled down his pants, exposed himself completely, and demanded, “‘Do you want to search THIS?” But if I were one of the 37 passengers waiting to fly to Zurich, I might be a little ticked that someone got all high and mighty at the prospect of being searched at an airport. Yeah, it’s security theater. We all have to do it. Get in line, skipper.

Upgraded: Continental (gasp!) removes fees from the OnePass program
Continental, which is joining Star Alliance (and leaving SkyTeam) as of its first flights on October 25, is going against the grain and (gasp!) removing fees and restrictions from frequent flyer tickets in their OnePass program. Gary Leff points to a FlyerTalk thread, in which a Continental representative spills the beans. Changes made to frequent flyer tickets, if initiated 21+ days before the start of travel, will be free as long as the departure and destination are the same. Now, if only you could actually get tickets at the SaverPass level…

Upgraded: JetBlue cuts a break to the unemployed
It started in Europe, now it’s hit North America: If you lose your job, JetBlue will give you a refund.

Upgraded: Bump scheduling
Downgraded: Bump compensation
Air Canada will let you put yourself on the bump list in advance, in case a flight is overbooked, but in terms of cash, it’s a lousy deal. At best, they’ll let you earn up to $57 CAD or USD per one-way flight, including connections. That’s at least half of what you’d be getting if you were bumped at the gate. the tradeoff: You get to choose your alternate flight in advance. Maybe that works for you. They’re upgrading the options, but downgrading the payment. (via Cranky)