Thanks...
 

THANK YOU!!!

North America to Europe is still 50,000
 

U.S. 49 (excludes Hawaii)/ Canada/ Central America/Mexico/Caribbean - Europe:
Coach: N/C...Business: 100,000...First: N/C

Europe - North Asia/ South Asia:
Coach: 80,000...Business: 120,000...First: 160,000

Unless you reside in North or South Asia, EXM, the award level in coach to Europe from the US is still 50,000.

N/C = No Change

Based on an email I just got back from Russ Hinkley, I don't anticipate any "sweetening" of the changes -- in other words, the only changes to the program are the increased award costs.

Short version: too many people are RuleBusting into WBC and they needed to raise the price so fewer people could redeem awards.

Of course, one might argue that this is an expected result of making people RuleBust -- rather than making standard awards available and funnelling people to less popular flights (and after all, people have a fixed number of vacations they take each year), once they've driven people to RuleBust, people obviously choose the most convienent flights for their schedule -- with those invariably being the flights where revenue seats are at a premium. And Plats, with no redeposit charges, making changes and/or holding and releasing seats, become the worst culprits.

I also think it's funny that promotions are being labeled another culprit...I thought the point of the promotions was to make up for the already poor award availability that was making people have to RuleBust -- but now it appears the promotions are another reason the cost of awards must go up.

2005 remains in question for me -- I will have to look at my projected travel.

Steve

promotions = inflation

There were too many too good promos in last couple of years. I'm a silver, spend on tickets on NWA about $2500/year. And every year I go to Europe on an award ticket in WBC at least in one direction. That's taking away about $1,000 (1/2 of ZRGO4FUN class ticket TYS-VIE) from NWA if (very big IF) they can sell the seat. Appears that they can, otherwise they would not be increasing the award travel "prices".

The increase in award travel "prices" had to happen.

Silly me, I thought the promotions were making up for poor standard award availability. Because that was the excuse given every time someone complained about poor standard award availability.

2005 will definitely not be an NW year for me unless I am back to flying almost exclusively on cheap domestic tickets.

Steve

That's too. Every stick has 2 ends :)

Hey AWESOME! You are correct, I have misread it. Thanks!

No more M-fare upgrades?
 

Whoa, did anyone else notice this? I just saw it while looking at NWA's upgrade policies (for another thread).

http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/travel/compan.shtml

• Effective March 1, 2005, WorldPerks mileage upgrades for trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific itineraries are only available on Northwest Y and B type fares and Continental Y and H type fares.

Currently we can upgrade from M fares for non-China trans-Pacific itineraries. I just looked at that NWA page recently, and I could have sworn that new item wasn't there. I looked at Google's cached version of the page at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache...l/compan.shtml (which was retrieved a week ago on 11/30), and sure enough, the new item wasn't there. Looks like we've been enhanced :mad: :td:

edit:
Hmm, it seems http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/memrules/general.shtml hasn't been updated yet, since non-China M fares are not excluded: Upgrade options are valid on most published fare types ... except for the following: ... U.S. point of sale trans-Pacific fares beginning with H/K/V/Q and H/K/V/Q/M for flights between the U.S. and Hong Kong/China ...

I am not happy about these changes either. It was also my initial reaction that the changes in Award levels to Australia and throughout Asia were probably a directive from KE. Another reason not to set foot on a KE aircraft...who I have never had much time for in the past.

I don't want to be an apologist for the increases, because they are going to severely affect me - however, what many posters really have not acknowledged is that NW still provides the elite mileage bonus for all Skyteam carriers. I recently took AF (for the first time) and got my full 125% platinum mileage bonus for all the flights. Apart from the UA/LH/US relationship, and AA, do any other major alliance airlines provide such the elite bonuses when travelling on all other carriers in that alliance?

Certainly, when I used to fly SQ, the only time I qualified for a bonus (as a gold) was getting 25% bonus for SQ and VS flights. And their award levels are *still* higher than the new NW ones.

I've seen nothing from NW to imply this. Delta, for example, is still at lower redemption levels and has been a Skyteam partner from the beginning.

Everything I have been told leads to the same conclusion: too many people Rulebusting and taking away valuable WBC seats from prime flights. So to reduce redemption, they raised the mileage requirements.

Steve

That only explains the increases in Rulebuster redemption levels. Inflating the cost of standard awards does nothing to make rulebusting less attractive.

One possible explanation for the increases in standard awards has to do with which routes and classes of service customers are redeeming. The increases seem to be predominantly on int'l routes, and more for WBC awards than for coach. Looks to me like NW thinks they can convince more of us to just buy Z tix rather than using miles to take our transoceanic vacations, which seems like a reasonable goal for them. I don't like it, but I understand it.

What other "major alliance airlines" are there left to name besides UA/LH/US, and AA?

With regards to elite bonuses, the comparison is basically limited to US carrier programs as many non-US carrier programs don't offer elite bonuses (or offer them in a different/reduced manner).

Rulebusters are twice standard. To keep the rules from being convoluted (i.e., some Rulebusters are 2x, some are 3x), it's obviously easier to raise the award level for the WBC awards. Rulebusters become less attractive because now they take even more miles.

Steve

Not all are 2x. Right now standard WBC USA-MiddleEast/India is 120k, while rulebuster is 200k. They are, however, raising the rulebuster to 240 without changing the standard on that route.

I checked the new award schedule again, and there is still no mention of awards between Hawai'i and South Asia or Hawai'i and South Pacific. Does anyone know something about these forgotten categories?