CASACW2

I'll answer my own question ^ I called 18007920001 (the chase card number I found) and spent about 15 minutes following the prompt to get to a human being. Then the lady said they'll notate the account, and when I reach the new card's $2k in 90 days, call in again (oh boy) and they'll add the extra 25k points. Sweet

Halo117

UA claims: "Premier members have unrestricted access to United Standard Awards when redeeming miles to book award travel on United- and United ExpressŪ-operated flights. If there's a United seat for sale, these members can get it with award miles, guaranteed, even if it's the last seat on the airplane."

Now to be clear these are standard rewards that are usually double the saver rate "think BS vs WGA" rate, but this essentially means no capacity controls.

The capacity control issue for revenue based programs is a non-issue as the premise is based on a revenue component. This is purely an accounting crisis where they sell pts less than the currency is worth. If WN really wanted to control this issue it would have limited giving away pts below market value to its partners and not raid its members accts every year. Frankly the RR 2.0 program was built to allow for an entire plane to be redeemed on pts and the corresponding liability would be knocked off the books. This move makes the program very untrustworthy nor straightforward as was heralded. If WN wants capacity controls....Go back to RR 1.0!

fotoflyer88

I have 9,725 points (small ish potatoes) - any suggestions for burning these up out of LAX? What was their "dollar value" supposed to be for a non-status like me.

Hecta

Was the original email targeted? I have not received it and fly Southwest pretty frequently out of Dallas.

I wonder why some people would receive it and some wouldn't?

rove312

It was one item in the Rapid Rewards Report email newsletter. You may have needed to opt in to receive it.

rove312

Around $160 one-way fare, depending if it was for a non-stop or not. You can look for destinations that can be had with those points at https://www.southwest.com/travel_cen...ination-finder ; it searches for round trips with a number of points "based on 30-90 day advance." Only Las Vegas shows with that for a round trip; if you double that to see where you could go one-way, much of the western half of the Lower 48 is available.

nsx

Best dollar savings would be on the lowest fares you can find: 3000 points or so each.

littlewinglet

Everyone seems to overlook that the original idea of like-cash award programs was that people would have to spend a certain amount on paid flights to get the points, so it effectively worked like a rebate. And heavy spenders got additionally rewarded with the companion pass.

Then along comes Chase and SW suddenly gets greedy and starts throwing around miles and CPs left and right. Heck, a typical leisure traveler like myself could travel with a companion for free indefinitely. Just churn the two SW cards every few years and do some light MS on the side.

What SW didn't think ahead about, is that all those miles are sold at a discount so they're not identical to people who are frequent travelers. I'm shocked their award ratio is only 11%, as quoted elsewhere. I'd think these days with the bowtie circles and arrows blogs, everyone and their dog would be flush with SW points.

jn in ca

Yup, let me confirm that. If you carry the Chase/United card, you can pay double miles and book any available flight. I used that feature this week.

This brings up a more general point that I made like 10 pages ago. Everyone is focusing on the rewards of the Chase/SWA card, but the benefits matter too.

The UA card has benefits like free club passes and free checked luggage that SWA can't offer. So Chase has to make the rewards somewhat more rewarding to make the card appealing. It appears that Chase went overboard and now we, the loyal FFs, are going to pay the price.

My SWA card now goes to the bottom of the pile. After April 17th, it may come out, but I strongly doubt it. I cannot imagine what Chase can do to make either the UA or SWA cards better than 2% cash back.

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For a comparison, look at DL. Their cards are the opposite of the SWA cards. From a rewards standpoint, the Delta American Express cards are vomit, but lots of DL FFs carry them anyway, because of the benefits.

nsx

The thing is: The original 2011 idea of selling 1.67 "good as cash" cents of travel for 1 cent could never have worked. It didn't work in 2014 at 1.43 cents either. You can't lose money on each sale and make it up with greater volume.

Capacity controls were one missing element needed to make the program sustainable. That element is now being added. The other missing element needed is some "better than cash" redemption option. That element is still missing.

Without that second element, Chase would need to pay Southwest the approximate cash equivalent of each point in order for Southwest not to lose money on the deal. Chase and its customers would then both be better off with a cash back card than with the Rapid Rewards card.

I still don't see how anyone who did the math could have believed that the 2011 program plus large sales of points to Chase added up to a bonanza for Southwest. Its essence was collecting 1 cent up front in lieu of each 1.67 cents of future revenue.

littlewinglet

This type of awards amount to a cashback, effectively. And they count on some people taking forever to earn enough points, forgetting about them, letting them expire, etc. At the time this structure was create, they also had dirt cheap fuel options so they could just mark up their flights 10% and still be competitive.

The mass selling of points to Chase seemed like easy money, and they honestly probably never suspected just how easy it would be for average person to game the system.



Now, with higher fuel costs, I've noticed they've been jacking up their fares left and right to try and negate the points usage. To the point where their fares are very uncompetitive in many cases. That's the dilemma they're in. They can't infinitely keep raising cash fares to devalue the points, since then they're not competitive against other airlines for cash bookings.

dlaue

Right now you this will take two people round trip to Sacramento through August. Or one person round trip to Vegas or the Bay Area.

Go to Sacramento on a Thursday and return on Sunday or Monday morning and your rental car can be cheap, too.

3Cforme

Delta used to claim that standard rewards (the high-priced brother of saver rewards) were free of capacity controls. It's been a few years -- but emphatically not never. Northwest had instituted capacity controls for RuleBuster awards (booking into C instead of J) well before being acquired by DL.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/north...ter-award.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...l#post10446544

toomanybooks

Plus the enormous inflation in numbers of points floating around. Not just WN; don't forget the URs that convert 1:1. Every blogger touts Chase URs via Ink or Sapphire. God only knows how many URs are out there. And when Hyatt increases redemption rates for Park/Grand Hyatts/Vendome/whatever, it's more likely the URs will start going to WN. I have really not been trying that hard compared to some folks and wife and I already have 800K UR.

Something else probably pretty obvious just hit me, related to your last line. A CP will likely get used way way more on international (or potentially Hawaii) flights. How many business travelers take the CP wife on that CMH-DAL midweek trip to see a client? But to the Caribbean for vacation, all of them will. So maybe that's where we are heading, in part: Higher point redemption rates on flights where CP is likely to be used.

hughc99

Can you expand on this? I have been trying pretty hard (without going the MS route) and don't have anywhere near this number.