Airline Dining Programs
 

I have heard alot of negative stories about these programs-- posting last miles after numerous phone calls, etc.

However, if I sign up for four or five dining programs and register the same credit card # with all of them, will I get miles for all the airlines' programs??

If not, how do they decide which airline miles I would get?

Do all the programs have the same resturants or do they vary? I know the Northwest and American programs sounded like the same exact resturants.

Hard to know. I registered for both United and Delta Dining and most of the restaurants were the same. With United you register a charge card, with Delta you don't. They issue another FF card and you show it when you pay the bill. However, the place I tried to use it told me to save the receipt and send it in later and that was policy. Supposedly, their computer could not do this automatically.

american, twa, and united programs are administered by the dining-a-la-card company. they keep track of which credit card you use for each program, so you cannot use the same credit card for more than one of those airline's programs.

continental & usairways uses transmedia as their dining sponsor. they give you a transmedia card tied to one of your credit cards; so once again, you cannot get credit for more than one program per meal.

the one way to get points on more than one airline is to use one of the above programs in conjunction with delta's skymiles dining. delta is all alone with their program, so if you can find a restaurant that is participating in both delta and (dining-a-la-card OR transmedia), pay for the meal with your credit card/transmedia card and present your delta skymiles card.

this isn't as easy as it sounds, though, since delta only has about 1,000 restaurants participating nationwide, and the other programs have over 6,000.

Does the UA or AA program have a membership fee? I was just reading about the UA program, and I don't think it does, but I couldn't tell for sure.

UA dining program has no fees. I have also not experienced problems in UA's posting of miles to my account.

Given that there's no fee, I guess I should probably just go ahead and sign up for the program ... what do I have to lose?

Is it only limited to certain cards (Visa or Mastercard), or can I sign up my AMEX card?

they work with amex, discover, mastercard, and visa.

American's dining program is free.

ANd from my experience when I try to dine at places looking for UA miles, they end up being posted faster on AA.

So Justin I would say if it's free sign up for as many free dining programs as you desire and hopefully the miles will get credited before you are old and grey.

For an explaination of what I mean: read the past posts on the Mileage Plus dining program.

Personally, I've given up on the dining programs. They are so poorly managed that
I'll be lucky to get one in five dinners credited. But you may have better luck.
CATMAN

I just learned that Delta has a new dining program that is administered by Dining a la Card. Users will receive 10 miles per dollar spent, including tax and tip. This is a great improvement over the 3 miles per dollar spent on food and beverages only under their old program. Also the number of restaurants will increase significantly.

I believe this is the same company that administers the American program, and I have had little trouble getting the proper points when I dine at the participating restaurants. You do have to stay on top of who is participating in the program, though. The list changes frequently, and I believe there is only a 60 day window to receive credit for dining after a restaurant has dropped out of the program.

Call 1-800-232-4298 to register for the new program. You can register up to three credit cards, and the points are to be credited to your SkyMiles account within 60 days.

Thanks for the information on the new Delta dining program. Just out of curiosity I called all the restaunts in Manhattans Little Italy that were listed in the Delta 1998 Dining guide. Not one was a participant. The one Chinese restraunt in the east 40's. (No free advertising here) Great food by the way. could not process my request because the "network was down" They admitted it is a pain in the....when they have customers waiting 20 to 25 minutes for a Delta dining miles transaction to process. I hope this is a better outfit. 10 miles per $ including tip sounds good.

Mike

Well, I signed up for the Delta program on Thursday night. They took three credit cards (I used my corporate and personal AMEX card and a MasterCard for restraunts that might not take AMEX). I should be receiving a membership packet in 7-10 days.

Since I'm in San Diego this week, we'll see how it works (hopefully my membership is active). I had breakfast and dinner at Dining A-La-Card restraunts today (which I assume will be the same as in the Delta program ...). I got a list of restraunts off of the Dining A-La-Card website (http://www.dalc.com I think it was ...).

Whiskey ~ Do you know if Delta is running a bonus promotion possibly? I'm thinking since it's a new program they might try that ...

I'm registered for Delta's (old) Skymiles Dining... and let me tell you what a pain in the rear end that is! Some restaurants that were listed in the program no longer do so, and even so it was primarily the high-end restaurants that participated. Hopefully the new program will work out better in the long run.

I certainly do not expect getting FF miles for dining at McDonald's... but I wouldn't be surprised if that will ever happen! :)

Beckles--Sorry, but I don't know if Delta is running any sort of promotion with the switch in their dining programs. I haven't even seen them announce the change yet; I just happened to find out about it when I called the old program administrator to get a copy of their 1999 restaurant listing. I asked the agent at Dining a la Card about any sort of promotion when I signed up for the new program, but he wasn't aware of one.

My guess is there won't be a promotion, however, since American didn't have one when they made the same switch in dining program administrators at the beginning of 1998.

I had good luck with Delta Dining in the past, and liked it better than the AA program, because I could actually track it better, and there seemed to be more resturaunts.

December mileage got posted rather quickly, but toward the end of the month, I found that several establishments would not honor the card. Now I see why.

I suppose I now have to sign up for the new program. If it were not for this forum, I would have never known about the change.

I called the Delta Skymiles Dining Program tonight as I had not gotten the information they said they would send to me.
The woman who answered the call said that it will take 6-12 weeks to get any information about the program, but that I am enrolled.
She did give me a website that lists the restaurants that are supposed to be participating.
http://www.dalc.com/ which is the Dining a la Card website. She said to use the search = by city= and those are the participating places
She also told me that you could not use the same credit cards on the Delta program that you use on another program(United, etc.)
Floyd