Triangle Trip

If you have not merged your United MileagePlus account with your Continental OnePass account, you should do it soon. It’s important that the first and last name and your addresses on your of your MilagePlus and OnePass accounts are identical – mine weren’t, so I called Continental OnePass to change my name to match my United Mileage Plus account.

The Continental OnePass agent suggested I should change my United information instead. Her rationale is that the combined airline will be using Continental’s OnePass system after the two frequent flyer programs have merged. The OnePass agent also told me our United number will be going away as the new system will be using the Continental OnePass number.

I also asked how lifetime miles will work in the new program – the agent didn’t have an answer for me because of how United and Continental currently counts lifetime miles. United only gives its members credit for lifetime Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) when it is a United coshare, while Continental counts all partner miles toward your lifetime miles.

In hindsight, I should have banked all my Star Alliance miles with Continental instead of United.If you’ve not merged your accounts, I suggest you do it now (here’s the link)!

In order to stay competitive with American, United and Delta’s double elite qualifying (EQM) miles offers, USAir is offering a super fast track to Preferred status. All you need to do is fly 7,500 miles (or 10 segments) between October 1 and December 25, 2009 to get Silver Preferred status. The normal way to qualify for Silver Preferred is the airline industry standard 25,000 flight miles or 30 segments.

This USAir promotion is the best fast track program out there! Assuming you haven’t flown a single mile in 2009, all the Double EQM programs require you to fly 12,500 miles to get Silver (vs. USAir’s 7,500). FYI, here are links to the other three promotions:

*  American’s Double Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM)

*  Delta’s Double Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQM) + Delta MQM Rollover

*  United’s Double Elite Qualifying Miles or Elite Qualifying Segments

This is USAir’s way of saying: “we screwed you and thank you for being loyal all year round” to its most loyal customers like the Coach who has been flying on USAir all year. To soften the blow, this is what USAir posted on their website:

Don’t worry, the miles you fly will also count towards the total miles you flew for the year – you’ll be awarded the highest status between the two. So if you fly 55,000 Preferred miles for the year but only end up flying 8,000 Preferred miles during the promotion period, you’ll still earn Gold status for the year.

The Coach definitely has enough actual miles or segments to qualify for Platinum Preferred in 2010 but probably won’t have enough flight miles between October 1 to December 25, 2009 to get 30,000 miles to qualify for Chairman. The end result:  Coach won’t benefit from this promotion but someone else may trump him and get Chairman Preferred status with much lesser flight miles. Coach will probably have 92,000 flight miles at the end of the year and 23,000 flight miles during the promotion period which means he’ll be stuck at Platinum.  I should take six (6) coast to coast round trips and make Chairman just to piss off the Coach.

Here’s how the rest of the fast track to Preferred status promotion works:

• Fly 7,500 miles or 10 segments and earn Silver Preferred status
• Fly 15,000 miles or 20 segments and earn Gold Preferred status
• Fly 22,500 miles or 30 segments and earn Platinum Preferred status
• Fly 30,000 miles or 40 segments and earn Chairman’s Preferred status

FYI, below is a chart showing the USAir Preferred status benefits:

Delta introduced two major changes to the 2010 SkyMiles program: 1) Rollover Medallion Qualifying Miles (Rollover MQM) which lets you build status toward the following year; and 2) a new Medallion class: Diamond which requires you to have 125,000 MQM. We are extremely pleased to see this change as it is definitely ground breaking for the airline industry.

I have been traveling coast to coast on United and Delta for the past six months. The Rollover MQM along with the free/complementary upgrades clearly made Delta my carrier of choice for the rest of the year (see previous post regarding Delta as the best for coast to coast travel). I would be surprised if United or American follows this promotion as they have most of the corporate customers locked into corporate travel plans/accounts such as 25 to 30% discount plan.

Marriott launched their Elite Rollover Nights program in late spring and none of the major hotel chains followed. Marriott’s move to offer Elite Rollover Nights doesn’t surprise me since they require 75 actual nights to obtain Platinum status which means Elite rollover doesn’t begin until your 76th night. With 50 to 60 nights at other hotels like SPG, Hilton respectively, you’d be at their highest level.

Delta is extremely generous with its rollover plan. You can practically begin rolling over miles after making silver – or your 25,001st medallion mile. For example, if you earned 45 MQMs this year – 20,000 MQM more than the Silver Medallion requirement – the 20,000 MQMs will automatically roll over to next year’s balance. This means for 2010, you will only need to get 5,000 MQM to get Silver Medallion. This is actually a great perk as Delta didn’t devalue its mileage program with the Double/Triple MQM scam (see previous post) – I only earned 1 double MQM from all my trips.

Captain G will go on record to endorse Delta despite the fact that Delta JFK’s customer service should all be overhauled (see previous post).