Pushing the Frontier

I received an email tonight from Frontier Airlines.

Text available below.

Please allow extra time at the airport when traveling.

Dear Sean,

We wanted to let you know about an important change at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that could affect your upcoming travel plans. Due to sequestration budget cuts within the FAA, your flight may experience delays due to non-airline airport staff reductions and longer lines at airports across the U.S.

As a result of these changes and to allow travelers plenty of time to get to the gate and onboard,Frontier has increased our minimum domestic check-in time to 45 minutes, effective May 1, 2013. Please allow yourself a little more time at the airport to get to your flight.

Remember to check your flight status on FlyFrontier.com or on our mobile app before departing for the airport.

Thank you for flying Frontier Airlines, we look forward to seeing you onboard soon. Sincerely, Daniel Shurz Sr. Vice President, Commercial

The gist of it is, "because of sequestration cuts at the FAA, we're requiring people to get to the airport earlier."  This sounds like helping the customer.  "Hey, we wanted to let you know that you need to be there earlier."

"That was nice of them," you might think.  Except, sequestration is resulting to staff cuts at the FAA.  Which means flights might be delayed.  That means, if anything, that you should come to the airport later, not earlier.

I suspect, however, that Frontier planned all along to require earlier arrival.  I applaud them for their efforts to communicate this to customers.  It even managed to make it through my spam filter!  Still, I feel that Frontier is not being totally honest about why they're doing this.  I'd love to be wrong!

California Zephyr

Today I decided to investigate the value of Amtrak's Guest Rewards program.

Amtrak divides it's rewards into "Zones," and there are only 3 major zones in the United States.  Divided vertically, crossing the country East Coast to West Coast or vice versa is most expensive, but travelling up and down each coast, or within the Midwest, is potentially an excellent use of points.  As are some normally expensive redemptions.

In the entire continental US, there are only 3 major zones.

As an example, Chicago to Los Angeles would normally cost at least $156 on the day I looked.  Booking the lowest end room for two costs an additional $433.  The $156 coach ticket is 8000 points, having crossed two zones.  The $589 all inclusive cost of a ticket and a low end private roomette costs 20,000 points.  That's 1.95 cents per mile (CPM) for the coach ticket (not a pleasant experience, but a decent redemption considering points "cost" 50 cents to earn), and it's ~2.95 cents per mile for the private, low end bunk.  That's up to a 5.9% return on your Amtrak spending just for having an account open with Guest Rewards.

Amtrak award chart

You probably noticed that the Northeast has it's zone.  That's unfortunate, but if you can stand the traffic, it appears that a few major cities made the cut to stay in both the Eastern zone and the Northeastern zone.  For example, it appears that New York City is present on both maps, suggesting it can be counted as a single zone if traveling from Florida.  However, hitting a smaller city like Springfield, MA may count as two zones instead of one.

So have a look at the chart and figure out if you can make this work for you.  Once you've found your redemption, it's time to start looking at ways to plump those points...

Right now, Amtrak is running a promotion offering double points earning on all routes.  That is, get registered, travel between September 5 and November 16 and you'll receive 4 points earned per dollar spent instead of 2 points per dollar spent.  Not an extra reason to travel really, but our 5.9% theoretical return would double to a fully respectable 11.8% return if we earned all our points through this program.  On top of that, we can earn points by simply paying with a credit card.  As a matter of fact, right now you can sign up for Amtrak's Guest Rewards credit card (I do not receive referrals on this link) which gives you a 12,000 point bonus with your first purchase and an additional 2 points per dollar on Amtrak purchases (1 point on everything else; I wouldn't use this card for everyday purchases).  Did I mention there's no annual fee?  There's really no reason not to get the card and keep it around for your Amtrak purchases (Chase, the issuer, does not let you earn sign up bonuses on cards you've had before).

You can get some amazing returns by using this all together.  2 points normally + 2 points promo + 2 points from Amtrak Rewards card = 6 points earned per dollar on travel until November 16.  With valuations easily reaching 2.95 CPM, you can get a return on cash layout of 17.7% (not counting the sign up bonus!).  Now that's what I call gold!

Note: There are some unanswered questions about the value in some situations.  In particular, I'm thinking about the cost of 2 award sleeper tickets.  Would Amtrak charge the full 20,000 points for each person?  The reason I ask is because the room is purchased normally at a flat cost up to full occupancy (so a room for 2 is $433 no matter if there's 1 or 2 people actually sleeping in it).  That could substantially alter the value proposition for those with traveling companions.  One way to get around this might be to get the second passenger a normal coach award ticket (8000 points) and just share the room "informally."  I don't know how the conductors would take to this though, as all my Amtrak travel is very short haul.

Give Thanks to The Dragon (Updated: This is not the MR you have been looking for)

UPDATE: This entire post is incorrect.  The CPM calculation was done incorrectly because of my inexperience using MileCalc.  Actual CPM is about 2x what's in this post and therefore NOT mileage run territory (rule of thumb is 3.5 CPM).  Lesson learned.

A trip that I wish I could take...  Have I ever mentioned how much I love Kayak's Explore feature?

Searching on Kayak, if you've got some serious free time or are completely mobile (e.g. you work completely online or don't have a job) and aren't afraid of spending some money on an adventure over the Thanksgiving holiday and then some... well, there are plenty of opportunities over the Thanksgiving holiday for mileage runs!

Today's run is from New York, NY to Shanghai, China.  As in, the People's Republic of.  Mileage?  Oh, only at least 29,500 miles.  On United's non-stop.  For $10 less, you can get on one of Air Canada's flights with 3 stops between the two legs (there and back again, of course!).  All inclusive price? $780 for Air Canada.  $790 on United's non-stop.  That works out to, at most, 2.67 cents per mile.  You can bring that down by paying with a mileage earning card, which makes this a pretty fantastic deal.  If you have the time and don't mind missing Thanksgiving in the States.

Personally, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I'd certainly love to celebrate it in Shanghai or Istanbul, but I'm not sure I could spend that much money just to spend time away from my family.  Thought someone might want to know about it though, as it's a decent mileage earning opportunity.

Maximizing miles

Having traveled to Europe several times during my teens with my father, I've come to appreciate long haul flights.  Yes, they're cramped, long, the food sucks, everything's overpriced, etc.  Anyone who's been on a long haul flight knows these things and has their own "opinions" (read: grievances) about the matter.  The thing is, I still enjoy being in that far off place, and giving myself 10 hours to do nothing while I'm getting there.  :)

That's why I'm going to show you an ongoing deal.  It's not quite mileage-run worthy, but if your goal is to see as much of the world as you can't afford, this is one cheap way to visit a new country and earn a TON of miles doing it.  What you want to do is find your nearest Major City (tm) and search on Kayak for the cheapest tickets and availability to Istanbul.  Now, the way I do it is to use kayak.com/explore, but I know everyone has their own strategies (Bing Travel, ISA software matrix...).  For the sake of this post, we'll use Kayak.  Go the website, click on "Explore from" in the upper left and fill in your Major City (tm).  It should update the page within a few seconds to show a map with prices from searches that Kayak users have done originating at your selected airport.

That tiny green plane?  That's Chicago.

Now, find a location that's relatively far out and start zooming in a little to find that diamond in the rough.  Or needle in a haystack.  Whatever.  Anyway, for me, that's apparently Istanbul.  I remember when people got excited about $500 fares to IST from New York.  Apparently it's a once a year thing.  From Chicago, it looks like there are $550 fares around Thanksgiving.  I love Thanksgiving.  And what more appropriate place to celebrate it than Turkey?  Go to milecalc.com, or any of a million similar sites, and figure out the cost per mile (CPM) to get from your Major City's (tm) airport to Istanbul (IST).  In my case, that means going ORD -> MUC -> IST.  On MileCalc, that automatically sets itself to a round-trip setting.  Plug in the cost of the ticket (this is why we use Kayak; it gives us the "all inclusive" cost with taxes, fuel surcharges, etc. built in) and voila!  You have a CPM calculation.

At 11,016 elite qualifying miles, you're well on your way to status.  Remember, as a member of the Star Alliance, you can give them your frequent flyer number from any Star Alliance airline and they'll credit the miles to that account.  At $544, my trip works out to 4.94 cents per mile.  Add in a couple of points per mile from a mileage earning credit card (e.g. the Zync from AmEx with the travel package!) and you've brought the cost down to 4.49 cents per mile.  Now, the "pros" are looking for 3.5 CPM or lower, but 4.5 is not bad at all!  Especially for all the travel you get!

Unfortunately, I already have plans to see my girlfriend graduate that week.  That doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking at nearby dates though.  We don't have plans for Christmas, after all.  :)

A Golden Opportunity

As a US citizen, I consider myself extremely privileged.  As a world traveller, all the more so.  I want to share my own tips and strategies for maximizing, and maybe appreciating, that privilege with the world.  Without further adieu...

This is Far From Gold: The blog of an infrequent traveller.