uastarflyer

A thread search came up empty.

The past year or so I've been using SWABIZ and getting 4 credits per RT. Is there a SWABIZ bonus in RR2.0?

toomanybooks

You must have been grandfathered in in some way I wasn't. I used to get the 4, but they stopped that years ago for the SWABIZ account I was using.

Have heard nothing about SWABIZ for 2.0.

nsx?

toomanybooks

No, in your example you should transfer on 1/1/13 and get CP extended through 12/31/14. Then again on 1/1/15 and extend to 12/31/16. 2 years each time.

"The rest of this calendar year and all of next calendar year" is my rephrase of the policy. Same as airline elite programs in general, I think.

You'd have a short gap at the very beginning of the odd-numbered years where if you had travel planned for your Companion, you will have had to make a reservation for cash/points and cancel it when you requalify for CP, and rebook as CP. For flights early in the year, there may not be time.

toomanybooks

Has there been confirmation about what happens with "TTFs" under RR 2.0 Awards? I seem perhaps to have missed something.

Under the new change to RR 1.0 taking effect later this month, cash TTFs stay with the booked traveler. One assumes that under RR 2.0, "TTF points" will do the same, if the reservation was originally booked (and paid with WN points) by a different person.

If this is true, will a passenger who doesn't fly often have to worry so much about "TTF points", since if he acquires more within 24 months they all remain in the account and never expire?

Or will there be different attributes for incoming new WN points and "TTF points" from changed or cancelled flights?

Or do the "TTF points" go back to the original points holder, and, if so, will there be a distinction as in my previous sentence?

lougord99

I do not see why TTF's would not remain as cash with exactly the same rules under 2.0. Why do you think they would be points?

rove312

I think the question is about bookings made with points under 2.0. See in the summary in post #1:

toomanybooks

"With an award ticket, the points go back into your account regardless of who the (non-) traveler was. "

Well, that is good news. Is there an explicit link to that? I searched newrapidrewards.com and did not see it.

pshuang

I did some math to see what the conversion prospects look like for the hotel programs in which I have a sufficient balance of points to matter -- same list as yours, not too surprisingly. Since points have different values, I tried to normalize the points across programs, and this is a tricky part (where your mileage may vary significantly). It's not easy to pick the hotel category in each program that offers roughly equivalent value and reasonable availability at the destinations you are likely to go to and want to redeem hotel awards.

• IHG Priority Club (extra caveat that PC/WN conversions are discontinued as of February 24 semi-independent of RR 2.0): 10,000 PC points = 2 RR 1.0 credits. One night at a 25K/night Holiday Inn is equivalent to 5 RR 1.0 credits.
• Hyatt Gold Passport: 5,000 GP points = 2 RR 1.0 credits. One night at a 15K/night Hyatt Regency is equivalent to 6 RR 1.0 credits. If you have enough GP points to convert 50,000 points in a single transaction, there's a 25% bonus. In that case, one night at a 15K/night Hyatt Regency is equivalent to 7.5 RR 1.0 credits.
• Hilton HHonors: 10,000 HH points = 1 RR 1.0 credit. One night at a 30K/night Hilton is equivalent to 3 RR 1.0 credits.
• Marriott Rewards: 10,000 MR points = 2 RR 2.0 credits. One night at a 15K/night Marriott is equivalent to 3 RR 1.0 credits. There are options with perhaps better conversion ratios for those with a sufficiently high balance of MR points. I don't, and therefore didn't do the analysis.

Loosely speaking, amongst these four programs, PC and GP are good conversion values in my view, whereas HH and MR are poor conversion values. That also happens to fit my own circumstances well, in that historically I find PC points easy to earn in huge numbers (nutty promos), my primary program is GP so I favor revenue stays at GP properties in order to re-earn status, and when I normalize my point balances in each program into the number of nights I could stay at a reasonable hotel in that program, I have the smallest balances in HH and MR, and keeping enough points so as to be able to redeem for a few nights (for when I end up in the middle of nowhere and the only reasonable properties are HH or MR) is a good plan. That leaves me without enough additional points in HH and MR to get enough RR 1.0 credits to be interesting.

I also have commentary for those who are racing to pile up RR 1.0 credits before the RR 2.0 epoch and who are looking at earning or re-earning CP. It seems to me that Freedom awards are really appealing at this point. If you're worried about what the availability of Standard awards will be after the RR 2.0 epoch, having a pile of Freedom awards and a CP leaves you in an amazingly good position. You can fly yourself and your CP companion anywhere you want to go, any time (except for Freedom black-out dates), as long as the flights aren't completely sold out.

ftnoob

The generic 2x credits for SWABIZ ended long ago, but bonus credits still exist under negotiated contracts. Because those contracts are not made public by SWA, there is no reason for them to be mentioned in the general RR 2.0 rules. Refer to the contract to figure out whether the bonus can be changed with the transition, or whether it will remain in place for the life of the contract.

uastarflyer

Interesting - thanks for the feedback, (and making me feel special )

I'll check with our travel dept at some point and find out...if they themselves even know at this point.

ftnoob

Could RR 2.0 be unsustainably generous to some passengers?

With all the talk of devaluation, there's been almost no attention paid to the folks who are going to make out like bandits. There are going to be quite a few perma-A+ passengers. When they fly BS they'll be earning 24 points per dollar, essentially forever. Consider someone who flies 4 BS OW flights per month at $300 each. That's $14,400 of "airfare", and at 24 points per dollar, 345,600 points per year. At 60 points per dollar for WGA redemptions, that's enough points for $5,760 of "airfare," a 40% "rebate." Even if used on $320 RTs, that's the equivalent of 18 Standard Awards. Under the old rules, that passenger would have earned between 60 and 96 credits, so 3.75 to 6 RTs. That person is at least 3x better off under 2.0. There are going to be people who have points out the wazoo.

Corporate travelers in circumstances like this won't care much about the redemption rate for international and Hawai'i travel, they'll have more points than they can possibly use. I think most of us, however, will find those redemption rates horribly unattractive.

pshuang

I was thinking the same thing and came to this thread to post, only to see that you've beaten me to it.

I'll slightly simplify. Suppose I'm a business traveler who has qualified for both A+ (I love the shortcut abbreviations we've adopted for A-List and A-List Preferred...) and CP. That requires a certain amount of investment ("loyalty") to WN already. But let's look at the marginal benefits of flying some more on WN. Tomorrow I fly a single round trip, BusinessSelect, $600 round trip fare. That earns approx. 14,400 RR 2.0 points (7,200 base points for the BusinessSelect fare, 7,200 bonus points for A+ members), good for a $240 WGA fare. Armed with a CP, I can take a companion with me on that leisure trip (in addition to having brought my companion with me on my business trip if the business destination merited my companion visiting). No fuss, no muss, no trying to figure out if this next leisure trip is a "good enough" use of my reward program earnings or if I should save the rewards to use the next time. The availability is simple: anywhere WN flies for $240. And WN can't mess with the availability for me as a reward redeemer without simultaneously messing with the availability of that seat to be sold to a random member of the public, so it's of significant consequence to WN to devalue my reward program earnings.

(I can see one scenario in which WN can significantly devalue my reward program earnings without having a similar sized impact on the attractiveness of their published fares for the general public. Right now it's not uncommon to see WGA fares that are 90% the price of the AnyTime fare. I can imagine that being rarer once RR 2.0 kicks in -- WN can make that flight 85% more expense to RR 2.0 redeemers [counting both the 67% price increase for redeeming in the AnyTime category vs. the WGA category and the 10% price increase in dollar terms], but only 10% more expensive to the general public, by discontinuing the published fare in the WGA bucket. Conversely, if WN wants to encourage redemptions, they would continue to publish a WGA fare that's only 1% cheaper than the AnyTime fare, and make their Web site really encourage that general member of the public to buy the AnyTime fare for its refundability and changeability.)

I don't deny that the value proposition of RR 2.0 is much worse than RR 1.0 for the travel patterns of many folks who are regular posters here. But as I continue to examine it, it still looks to work out reasonably well for me. I'll probably still continue to split my travel between UA and WN; and this might steer a bit more of my travel toward WN (although I do have to think some more about the new UA 75K EQM level and the improved position that would give me on standby/upgrade wait lists).

jrpaguia

Wow. Well, that throws a wrench into my "mostly ignore WN for 2011" strategy.
The BS fares for my primary route is about $160...so I cut those numbers in half.
Which means that if I do 48 one-ways, with a 40% "rebate" my effective airfare is $90 (or $85 if you count the Jack and Ginger)...but it guarantees CP and I get to give away more free trips to friends and family.

Gee, thanks...I think.

jrpaguia

Heh...heh...I thought I had an outside chance of Platinum (the 75K eqm at US) by spending more time with US but it looks like I might be staying Gold. We shall see.

nsx

60% of BS fare is still a pretty high fare, high enough to profitable for Southwest.