TSA Pre✓™ comes to United in ORD and EWR to Pre-Check You Out

The TSA has been experimenting with a new system called the TSA Pre✓, which allows trusted travelers to skip some of the annoyances of the TSA security process. Until now, the program had been limited to frequent flyers on Alaska Airline, Delta, and American Airlines, but the program will soon be expanding to travelers on United flying out of Chicago O'Hare (ORD) and Newark Liberty International (EWR).

Currently, the system is opt-in and limited to travelers who are frequent travelers or already members of a pre-screening travel program, such as NEXUS, Global Entry, or SENTRI. Once enrolled and screened, you gain access to a faster line where your shoes can remain on, your laptop can remain in the case, and you can keep your belt on while moving through security.

If you're interested in signing up, there's more information available on the TSA website or you if you are flying United, you can always try to sign up with the link that they sent me. Signing up does not guarentee acceptance into the program.

United Loyalty Program Downgrade Delayed

A bit of good news for those of who have been loyal United mileage members: The impending downgrade of benefits for the 2012 year, especially for Premier Silver members, has been delayed for a little bit. As a result, you will continue to enjoy the same benefits that you enjoyed last year and at the same level as last year for at least another month or two, until "late in the first quarter of 2012". You can read the announcement over here.

It's a little reprieve from the onslaught of bad news coming from the merger, but it's not enough to prevent me from looking at all of the programs with fresh eyes. The good news is that here on the blog I'll be sharing my analysis of the current programs with you when it's done. 

[via United]

Flight Report: To Sin City and Cheating on United

For the past few years, I've been a bit of a purist: United was my preferred airline, followed by Lufthansa. Continental was a good option because of the ARN-EWR flight, but overall I never really enjoyed them and I never experienced any perks with them except for a couple of lucky domestic upgrades. On Lufthansa, on the other hand, they once bumped me to first class for no apparent reason on a transatlantic flight and United   bumped me to business on my way back from Japan. That's very welcome.

However, now Continental has taken over United and there have been changes. Most notably, to the mileage program and as a direct result, I'm now shopping for a new carrier. Heading down to Las Vegas was a great opportunity to try out Alaska which is an airline I used to fly a lot with as a kid back in the late 80s and early 90s, but haven't used recently.

After the break, photos from takeoff and the flight, plus Mt. St. Helens.

Donate your Orphan Miles for Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day is a day to thank the men and women who have served our country. While we wish everyone in uniform a safe return to their family, many soldiers return only after sustaining injuries in the line of duty. For these soldiers and their families, relocating temporarily to be with their loved ones as they receive treatment at a VA hospital can be complicated by having to worry about where to stay and how to pay for their accommodation. For these families, there is Fisher House, which provides a comfortable place to stay within easy reach of the VA.

Their program helps make a a difficult time a little easier, and you can help by donating any orphan miles you to their Hero Miles program. Your miles help cover travel to and from the hospital where the soldier is being treated. Many of us have a mileage program we don't use that much or will never earn enough miles to earn a reward. These orphan miles can be the difference between a wounded soldier having their family with them in a time of need or not. Donate your miles today.

Tom Stuker hits 10,000,000 miles with United today

10,000,000 miles. That is an amazing amount of miles to rack up, and those are flown miles, not redeemable frequent flyer miles!

"As United's most-frequent flyer, Stuker is the airline's first customer since the program launched in 1981 – and perhaps the first traveler ever – to fly 10 million miles. To equal his feat, a traveler could circle the globe 400 times, fly to the moon and back 20 times, or fly roundtrip between United's largest hubs in Houston and Chicago about 5,400 times."

Crazy. In 2009, he flew 700,000 miles, and here I am working on 50,000 miles with my flight today from Ulaanbaatar back to Sweden. It gives you some perspective...

Via msnbc and United

What people do for miles: An Epic Mileage Run

I mentioned in an earlier post that the mileage game can work in your favor if you watch out for the pitfalls, but some people take this stuff seriously. In this post, I give a tribute to a FlyerTalk member known as "colonius" who decided he wanted to keep his top tier elite status with United in December of last year, but found that he was some 47,000 miles short. What to do?

A mileage run of epic proportions: 47,000 miles in 11 days.

SEA-DEN-HNL-LAX-SFO-SYD-MEL-SYD-SFO-LAX-HNL-SFO-ORD-MUC-CGN-MUC-FRA-SFO-HNL-SFO-SEA.

That's Seattle to Denver to Honolulu to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Sydney (Australia) to Melbourne back to Sydney back to San Francisco to Los Angeles back to Honolulu and back again to San Fransisco then to Chicago to connect to Munich (Germany) to Paris (France) to Frankfurt (Germany) to, once again, San Francisco and out to Honolulu one last time before heading back to Seattle via San Francisco one final time. All in 11 days. $3,000 for the tickets, all economy (before his upgrades). I don't even want to calculate how much time he actually spent on the plane and in the airports.

So why on earth would you do this just for honor of being "1K", or an upper tier elite? Does this sort of thing even make sense?

Well, maybe.

Consider:

• With his current elite bonus, he'll earn 94,000 redeemable miles. That's almost two tickets to Europe or two tickets to the Caribbean plus one domestic ticket or one and a half tickets to Asia or half of a round the world ticket.
• During his mileage run, he got several upgrades to first class due to his elite status. If he is flying a lot next year, he'll keep getting those upgrades.
• Those 47,000 miles go towards his lifetime mileage on United, which at 1,000,000 miles gets you free elite status for life. That's 4.5% of that goal done in 11 days. 
• In his case in particular, he did have business in Europe so at least PART of the trip was work related

colonius, I salute your tireless pursuit of miles and your truly epic mileage run.

The Mileage Game: Why I picked United Mileage Plus

This is a follow up to my earlier post about how to pick a mileage program, just to show how it happened in my case. I am an active member in two programs:

• United Mileage Plus (for Star Alliance)
• Alaska Airlines (for basically everyone else)

And here’s I picked them:

• Hub cities: Seattle (SEA) is Alaska Air’s Hub city, which means they are going to very attractive for the number of flights and pricewise, so major points to them. United is present at SEA, but so does Delta and Southwest, so on that end it’s a draw.
• Alliances and Who I fly with: A lot of my international flights are on Lufthansa (LH), Continental (CO), SAS (SK) or United(UA), so Star Alliance was a pretty obvious choice. Alaska (AS), Delta (DL), Northwest (NW), British Airways (BA), and American Air (AA) are all sometimes airlines for me, but BA and AA are in oneWorld while DL and NW are in SkyTeam while AS is in its own world.
• Earning potentials: Alaska brings in all of my random players under one roof: I earn miles on my AS account when I fly AA, BA, AS, or DL. That was a win because otherwise wouldn’t be able to pool my miles and I don’t fly any of them enough to really accumulate enough miles just on their own. With the Star Alliance side, UA makes sure that I get 100% of my flown miles more of the time than the programs with LH, CO, or SK.
• Bonuses and Redemption: Chase is hooked up with UA and Bank of America is AS’s bank. I have an aversion to Bank of America and their offer wasn’t as attractive as the 25,000 from Chase. LH didn’t have anything and while CO’s was similar to UA’s, UA still had more options to earn bonus miles through partners. In terms of redemption, I really didn’t know but it turns out that AS and UA are both pretty good about mileage inventory.

Final Verdict: UA due to partner airlines, destinations, bonus miles through partners, and redemption opportunities and AS for all of the other airlines that I usually fly just to get them in under one roof (since then they’ve also added Kenmore Air and Icelandic Air as partner airlines, so this was a big win for that role!).

The Mileage Game: How to pick a mileage program, step by step

Picking the right frequent flyer program is the first step towards bending the mileage game in your favor, and the choice goes beyond simply which airline you fly the most. Here is a step by step guide to picking your mileage program(s):

1. Find out which airlines are based in your city: If you live in a hub city for a certain carrier, that often determines what airline alliance you’ll end up in because there are more inexpensive flights on the carrier based there. If you’re not a hub city, find out which airlines are fighting for your city and consider joining one of those.
2. Research the alliances: Airlines form cooperative alliances which mileage can be earned and redeemed on partner airlines. This means that even if you’re flying Lufthansa, you can still earn mileage in your United or Continental mileage account. The three major alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam, and oneworld. For those of you in an Alaska Air hub city, Alaska has their own unique constellation of airlines which includes carriers from both SkyTeam and oneWorld, but with the draw back that if you achieve elite status there are fewer perks and there are some limitations on how you can redeem your miles. On the other hand, these one off airlines can open up unique opportunities. For example, Alaska Air partners with Kenmore Air, which operates float planes from Lake Union in Seattle. For 10,000 miles you can get a round trip to any of their uniquely northwest and often remote destinations, plus amazing views of the northwest thanks to their low altitude flights.
3. Take a look at your history and figure out who you usually fly with. Although this doesn’t bind you that airline, but again it gives you yet more insight on what alliance you should invest in.
4. Once you have an idea about what alliance would suit you best, it’s time to start reading through the frequent flyer sections of each airline. You want to pay special attention to what fare classes earn miles on what airlines (for example, for my United account if I fly SAS on some common discount economy tickets I earn 25% of the flown miles! Because of this, I usually fly Continental or, better yet, Lufthansa, where I earn 100% of my flown miles (and an elite bonus on top of that), even if there is an extra stop involved).
5. While you’re there, you’ll also want to double check the redemption section and learn about how many miles you need to get your free ticket. Some programs are simply better than others, but the average right now is about 25,000 miles for a domestic ticket and 50,000 - 55,000miles to Europe.
6. Don’t forget the bonus miles! If you are willing to sign up for a credit card, or jump through other hoops, you can land a healthy chunk of miles pretty quick. There are fees attached to these credit cards, so they're not free, but if you plan on closing the card or converting it down to a lower fee or no fee (if available) card, you can come out ahead. Other times, there are free miles for things like signing in online, or flying certain routes with that carrier. 
7. Lastly, (and perhaps most importantly) some carriers have better odds of redeeming miles than others, so be sure to do your research! If you have a million miles it doesn’t matter one bit if you can’t find a seat to spend them on! A fairly recent survey (at time of publishing) can be found here.

At this point, it’s time to decide: You will have to weight these factors yourself, but the best program will give you the most options to the most places with the most opportunities to earn 100% mileage and the greatest chance of redeeming for a seat. It’s also a good idea to sign up for a secondary account with another airline that covers the other alliance(s), so that you always have some place to put your miles just in case the fares are so much less that it doesn’t make sense to fly within your primary carrier.

The Mileage Game: Tips for Beginners

If you like the idea of free travel, then getting into the mileage game might be for you. There are, of course, lots of loop holes and restrictions that the airlines have put in place to make it difficult for you to actually redeem your miles, but if you’re willing to put some thought into it you can bend the game to your side. Some advice if you’re just starting your mileage addiction plan:

• Consolidate! If you have a mileage plan for every airline you fly, then you’ll never earn enough miles to fly for free. Instead, read up on which airlines are in what alliance and then pick one airline frequent flyer program to give every time you fly within that alliance. Your miles will pool and you’ll be flying for free much faster.
• Don’t let your mileage expire! This is one of the most common annoyances for the infrequent traveller: If you haven’t had any activity on your account (redemption of miles or accrual of miles) within a certain period of time (two years for United), all of your miles will vanish. It doesn’t matter if you have 5,000 miles or 500,000 miles: If you don’t keep an eye on it, you can lose everything. The good news is that any activity at all, even a single mile, will reset that countdown for all of your miles and most airlines have a “mileage mall” where you can buy stuff through a plethora of different websites (even gift cards on some!) and earn miles regardless of payment type just for starting your shopping session in their “mall”.
• Don’t let miles rule over your travel or purchases. All frequent flyer programs are designed to get you to spend more money than you might otherwise. If you see a higher fare or an offer that will give you miles for buying something from a third party, always make sure that the miles you gain is worth it. For redeemable miles, a conservative estimate of the value of your miles is around $0.01 per mile. That means that if you wouldn’t sign up for something or make that extra purchase for $5, then you also shouldn’t do it for 500 miles (although this doesn’t apply for things that you would genuinely buy otherwise: In that case, you can think of your miles as a 1% discount).

This may or may not be based on an actual conversation....*

First spotted on The Cubicle Hermit via Flyertalk

Heading back to Seattle (and then to Milwaukee)

My time here in Stockholm is almost up for this time around, and soon I'll be headed back to Seattle with Continental (lots o' miles, yes!), and then in Milwaukee the day afterward on AirTran for Christmas (no miles, boo!). It's going to be a white Christmas, although it'll also be that here in Stockholm.

I've got crazy routing again to reach the midrange elite status for 2011 on United, with a detour down to Houston both ways. With it, I will come in with just over 50,000 miles, which will renew my 1P status for one more year.

Also, I will be continuing my experiments with inflight meals with another Kosher meal on the way there and then a hindu meal on the return flights. My soggy sandwich as part of my last hindu experience left me wondering if that is a standard item for Continental or whether that was a ARN catering peculiarity, but I'll find out this time around. More pictures will, of course, follow.

Track your flight history!

Note: While flightmemory is still pretty nifty, I've grown much fonder of another service: openflights.org You can read more about some of their features here or, just click on my flight stats badge to the right!

You might have noticed my running tally of miles on the right side of the page and wondered how I keep the distances and fun information updated. The fact is I cheat. I use flightmemory.com to log and store all of my flight information and they do the number crunching for me! It’s actually a really good service for frequent flyers and produces some great breakdowns, as well as a per year summary and flight maps showing you where you’ve been. You can enter everything from your experience on that flight to the registration of the aircraft you flew on and keep it all in one neat place. Best of all, the basic flight tracking service is free.



My fights as of 10/06/2010