Triangle Trip

A follow up to my earlier post, Continental Airlines has succumbed to the pressure from United and American by offering double Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) today. Here’s the link to register if you’re interested. Continental is upping the ante by not requiring a ticket be booked during the promotion period. You just need to be onboard during the promotional period which is now until June 30, 2009.

Since all these EQM promotions wont’ take affect (credited into your frequent flyer account) until after the promotion, we will have a bunch of fliers with “cheater” status come July 1, 2009. For the record, it was USAir (US-Scare) that started all this… For those of you who hasn’t registered for US Air’s double EQM promotion, here’s the link. You’ll have until the end of March to get your double EQM offer.

So … will ghetto Delta be next to join this pack?  I am hoping for a better offer than what I have seen so far. The Sky Team needs to step it.

I have been at least a Premier Executive for United since 1998 – was Premier Exec 1K four times. After 11 years of being a Premier Executive, I was about 8,000 miles short of making status for 2009. Instead of downgrading me from Premier Exec to Premier (or even the ghetto Premier Associate status), UAL sent me an email telling me how I can buy 8,000 more miles to be a Premier member again.

What ever happened to customer loyalty or even customer retention in this down economy? Perhaps this is why I have switched my allegiance to other airlines. There’s only so much abuse you can take from an airline when they show you no loyalty or service. UAL needs to learn from Marriott – look at Statusmonger’s post from earlier this year.

I received an email from Delta today telling me that I can link my Delta and Northworst (NWA) account. I clicked on the link and it took me to a page where I can enter my Skymiles and WorldPerks accounts with my PINs. After entering the information, I received instant confirmation that the accounts have been linked.

The Delta site brought to my attention that my emails were different between the two accounts and asked me to select my preferred email address. I also got an opportunity to transfer miles between my Skymiles and WorldPerks accounts. You will receive an extra 500 miles from Delta if you perform a transfer before March 15. I took advantage of this perk and emptied out my NWA account to focus on earning Delta miles.

The Delta Skymiles/NWA WordPerks accounts merger has been awesome experience compared to the US-scare (USAir) and AmericaWorst (AWA) merger. For US-scare, I’d to enter my personal information on both sites and had to make sure they were identical — as the two systems weren’t sophisticated enough to rationalize accounts based on first and last names plus address.

Huge kudos to Delta as it’s their system that is managing the process!

After merging these two accounts, I have successfully consolidated all my alliances with Delta (SkyTeam), United (Star), and American (OneWorld).