Since Delta and Northwest are merged, they are offering a bonus to link the two FF accounts and you can also transfer miles for free between the accounts. Also till Mar 15 there is a 500 mile bonus for just linking the two accounts.
If you have miles on either of those, it is worth creating an account on the other and then link them up to earn free 500 bonus miles. Since Delta and NW are merging they are offering this option, but it (bonus) is only till Mar 15 or something.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta-skymiles/917967-500-bonus-miles-link-your-skymiles-worldperks-accounts.html
http://www.nwa.com/worldperks/acctlink/
If you dont have a NWA Worldperks account you can enroll on on NWA site within 2 mins, the only annoying part is u have to type email add twice , a security question asnwer twice and make sure to UNCHECK the Credit card offer at the bottom (NWA cards have annual fee from 1 yr itself..)
Showing posts with label northwest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label northwest. Show all posts
Feb 17, 2009
Aug 4, 2008
Delta Nortwest Merger and Frequent Flier Miles
I recently read an article here about somebody's plan trying to book an award ticket next Spring for two people to Hawaii for the cost of $90. My first issue with that is this is a very very risky venture with a low chance of success. Why Skyteam you may ask? Many frequent travelers think that when it comes to award redemption, Skyteam is the toughest. I joined the ranks of those people with a first hand experience in that process recently!
Coming back to the issue at hand, saver economy tickets (35,000 miles per ticket on Delta) to Hawaii are the hardest to find because they are gone usually 330 days ahead of time. Or, the opening day of award seat availability for most airline ticket systems. The author's son is planning a trip in next spring, good luck buddy. I really wish you good luck but it's gonna be hard especially after the NW/DAL merger. However, if you ever read this post, make sure you read my story just below this post and make sure you look for availability on delta or continental websites and then call an agent with some probably date ranges - and do it the moment you get your miles in the account!
Additional notes
By the way the cost of $90 for 2 tix is far from accurate. Airlines are already imposing ($25-$50) fuel surcharges, $5 to book online award tickets e.g American, US Airways]. So while the thought is noble in the author teaching his son how to travel at a discount (yes that is what I can call it, not free travel), they need to be made aware of possible sticker shocks which could add up to $50-100 per ticket including surchrages and airport taxes and other fees). Of course this would still be cheaper than the $500-700 per ticket. Also to be noted is that sometimes, to book an award ticket for a relative/friend using your miles, you may not be able to use the website but have to call a reservations agent - which means an automatic $25-30 fee. I don't blame the airlines for the fuel surcharges, but a lot of other fees are the bane of air travel nowadays.
A small tip regarding award travel: to reduce your baggage fees try booking on Continental - it seems to be the one Skyteam airline as of now that is not charging a 1st bag fee. i wonder if this is due to the fact that CO's main market is Houston - where it competes with Southwest - which has not imposed a 1st bag fee yet. Otherwise be ready to pony up $15 to carry your nail clippers and shampoo bottle in checked luggage :).
There is one other option which the author could have elaborated. Even if you cannot book an award ticket directly, Delta might buy back your miles at the rate of 1c/mile if you use the Amer express Delta card and pay for your trip using the miles. This is similar to the Choices program by United. More details behind those links in the fine print. This way, a person could redeem some of the miles earned using the Delta card - note that the Northwest miles which convert to Delta might not work in this process - no guarantees. So given all these hoops one has to jump through it seems like a better idea would probably be to learn value investing or swing trading and make good money and then pay full fare tickets and use the miles to bump to business class. Disclaimer: Risks are a given in stock investing and trading which might include a loss of all your capital and maybe some more. There are also tax issues with capital gains.
[While the premise of flying free with DL miles is good, the author needs to back it up with past successful results with Delta/NW on getting free flights in this manner or they will get a serious reality check]
Coming back to the issue at hand, saver economy tickets (35,000 miles per ticket on Delta) to Hawaii are the hardest to find because they are gone usually 330 days ahead of time. Or, the opening day of award seat availability for most airline ticket systems. The author's son is planning a trip in next spring, good luck buddy. I really wish you good luck but it's gonna be hard especially after the NW/DAL merger. However, if you ever read this post, make sure you read my story just below this post and make sure you look for availability on delta or continental websites and then call an agent with some probably date ranges - and do it the moment you get your miles in the account!
Additional notes
By the way the cost of $90 for 2 tix is far from accurate. Airlines are already imposing ($25-$50) fuel surcharges, $5 to book online award tickets e.g American, US Airways]. So while the thought is noble in the author teaching his son how to travel at a discount (yes that is what I can call it, not free travel), they need to be made aware of possible sticker shocks which could add up to $50-100 per ticket including surchrages and airport taxes and other fees). Of course this would still be cheaper than the $500-700 per ticket. Also to be noted is that sometimes, to book an award ticket for a relative/friend using your miles, you may not be able to use the website but have to call a reservations agent - which means an automatic $25-30 fee. I don't blame the airlines for the fuel surcharges, but a lot of other fees are the bane of air travel nowadays.
A small tip regarding award travel: to reduce your baggage fees try booking on Continental - it seems to be the one Skyteam airline as of now that is not charging a 1st bag fee. i wonder if this is due to the fact that CO's main market is Houston - where it competes with Southwest - which has not imposed a 1st bag fee yet. Otherwise be ready to pony up $15 to carry your nail clippers and shampoo bottle in checked luggage :).
There is one other option which the author could have elaborated. Even if you cannot book an award ticket directly, Delta might buy back your miles at the rate of 1c/mile if you use the Amer express Delta card and pay for your trip using the miles. This is similar to the Choices program by United. More details behind those links in the fine print. This way, a person could redeem some of the miles earned using the Delta card - note that the Northwest miles which convert to Delta might not work in this process - no guarantees. So given all these hoops one has to jump through it seems like a better idea would probably be to learn value investing or swing trading and make good money and then pay full fare tickets and use the miles to bump to business class. Disclaimer: Risks are a given in stock investing and trading which might include a loss of all your capital and maybe some more. There are also tax issues with capital gains.
Jul 20, 2008
The Torture of (Skyteam) Airlines Miles and Redeeming for Awards
I can tell this to you in one line:
If you want to fly for free on Delta or Northwest or Continental airlines or any other Skyteam alliance airlines, it is very very hard to do so.
This post specifically targets Skyteam after my 6-8 day marathon in an attempt to book free tickets using my 31000 flying blue miles. The miles were up for expiry at the end of August, so I was calling around Air France at the end of July to try to book a ticket to the Caribbean or to Latin America (which cost 30000 miles and is a good deal). Of course since Air France is based in France, they do not offer an online booking option for booking on other airlines. This is standard industry practice so I don't blame them.
But the difficult part was trying to find booking on Continental or Delta or Northwest. I searched for several dates in March and in May, and the cheap 30000 miles economy class was not available on either the outward or inward legs for several day pairs that I tried. A word here about looking for award seat availability. Delta's website was by far the easiest which showed availabilty for 14 days before and after your requested date. So at a simple glance at the month you could easily figure out what dates were good. But often, the answer was none. Northwest's website was the worst to deal with. Continental was in between, in terms of searching for award seat availability.
I could not find any availability to (gasp) Puerto Rico (SJU), US Virgin Islands (STT), Santo Domingo (SDU), Caracas (CCS), San Jose Costa Rica (SJO), Honduras (TGP?). The only place with some easier availability was Panama City (PTY) but I was not too keen on Panama, especially compared to Costa Rica. So why do I have an issue with Skyteam: well while I was looking for flights on skyteam airlines, I was also checking on American Airlines, on which there was tons and tons of off peak availability in March and May - the times I was looking for a Spring break or early summer travel. The other reason apart from mile expiry for me was that Delta/Northwest fly out of my little town, but not American.
However, that incentive was removed once I called Air France - they ruled out award tickets from my obscure town's airport and also mentioned that come Jan 09 there wont be any skyteam flights out of here anyway. I spent 3-4 phone sessions lasting 20+ minutes each (burning valuable daytime minutes) looking for tix to Latin america, Hawaii (very hard even normally), or Alaska or even New Mexico or Arizona from the east coast.
At this point I was envisioning conspiracy theories that airline computers are programmed to reduce availability on returns within a week or two of outgoing flights to PR/latin america etc so I started searching in a different browser for awards from Latin America to US to check my theory. Fortunately in that search there was no availability from Latin America to US on my "originally planned return dates". So I felt a ray of hope that there was no evil programming against me. Also, in the past I have tried booking tickets on Jet Airways or Kingfisher airlines only to be quoted outrageous fuel surcharges of $105 per trip so I decided against doing those trips. I should add though that I have flown award tix on United twice without any hassle or major difficulty in finding seats.
So now after 3 phone sessions which did not lead anywhere, I did an aggressive search on Continental.com and finally found availabily in a nice 1 week window in May from JFK to Puerto Rico. That's it, I dropped everything and called Air France, reeled off the exact dates and times to the AF rep and bingo, the agent was happy to find me seats. Of course, little did she know that I knew exactly what was open. Then I had to pay up fuel surcharges and taxes to reserve my ticket so I ended up spending $78 immediately for a ticket next May to a Caribbean island. At least, I would not need to carry a passport on that trip, whew!
If you want to fly for free on Delta or Northwest or Continental airlines or any other Skyteam alliance airlines, it is very very hard to do so.
This post specifically targets Skyteam after my 6-8 day marathon in an attempt to book free tickets using my 31000 flying blue miles. The miles were up for expiry at the end of August, so I was calling around Air France at the end of July to try to book a ticket to the Caribbean or to Latin America (which cost 30000 miles and is a good deal). Of course since Air France is based in France, they do not offer an online booking option for booking on other airlines. This is standard industry practice so I don't blame them.
But the difficult part was trying to find booking on Continental or Delta or Northwest. I searched for several dates in March and in May, and the cheap 30000 miles economy class was not available on either the outward or inward legs for several day pairs that I tried. A word here about looking for award seat availability. Delta's website was by far the easiest which showed availabilty for 14 days before and after your requested date. So at a simple glance at the month you could easily figure out what dates were good. But often, the answer was none. Northwest's website was the worst to deal with. Continental was in between, in terms of searching for award seat availability.
I could not find any availability to (gasp) Puerto Rico (SJU), US Virgin Islands (STT), Santo Domingo (SDU), Caracas (CCS), San Jose Costa Rica (SJO), Honduras (TGP?). The only place with some easier availability was Panama City (PTY) but I was not too keen on Panama, especially compared to Costa Rica. So why do I have an issue with Skyteam: well while I was looking for flights on skyteam airlines, I was also checking on American Airlines, on which there was tons and tons of off peak availability in March and May - the times I was looking for a Spring break or early summer travel. The other reason apart from mile expiry for me was that Delta/Northwest fly out of my little town, but not American.
However, that incentive was removed once I called Air France - they ruled out award tickets from my obscure town's airport and also mentioned that come Jan 09 there wont be any skyteam flights out of here anyway. I spent 3-4 phone sessions lasting 20+ minutes each (burning valuable daytime minutes) looking for tix to Latin america, Hawaii (very hard even normally), or Alaska or even New Mexico or Arizona from the east coast.
At this point I was envisioning conspiracy theories that airline computers are programmed to reduce availability on returns within a week or two of outgoing flights to PR/latin america etc so I started searching in a different browser for awards from Latin America to US to check my theory. Fortunately in that search there was no availability from Latin America to US on my "originally planned return dates". So I felt a ray of hope that there was no evil programming against me. Also, in the past I have tried booking tickets on Jet Airways or Kingfisher airlines only to be quoted outrageous fuel surcharges of $105 per trip so I decided against doing those trips. I should add though that I have flown award tix on United twice without any hassle or major difficulty in finding seats.
So now after 3 phone sessions which did not lead anywhere, I did an aggressive search on Continental.com and finally found availabily in a nice 1 week window in May from JFK to Puerto Rico. That's it, I dropped everything and called Air France, reeled off the exact dates and times to the AF rep and bingo, the agent was happy to find me seats. Of course, little did she know that I knew exactly what was open. Then I had to pay up fuel surcharges and taxes to reserve my ticket so I ended up spending $78 immediately for a ticket next May to a Caribbean island. At least, I would not need to carry a passport on that trip, whew!
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