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Where to credit post-Jan. 1?
So, there's an off chance that I'll wind up on VX once or twice after the new year (I've got a regular TCON trip, and if I can't make the ATL-SEA lie-flat flight work then VX is my fallback...I'm covered on status with VS-via-DL, so I'm basically unchained until April). Prior to that the answer (in my mind, at least) is "keep on with Elevate" (even as AS tries to push Mileage Plan, the plain truth is that an F flight on VX will still generally do better under Elevate-and-Convert than under Mileage Plan), but afterwards I'm open to options. I've got a pot of miles over on SQ (and a large transferrable pile elsewhere, so converting for trips to Europe and elsewhere is definitely on the table), I wound up with a random pile on BA (I got something like 10k miles for an HEL-LHR-YYZ award flight courtesy of VX...no, there were no blood sacrifices involved in making that happen, I swear!), and I'm willing to consider AS as a viable option due to my pile-o-miles there from VX (and likely augmentation with their CC...if nothing else, pile preservation is a thing), but otherwise it's standing out as a mixed bag and I'm not going to have any status there come Jan. 1.
(Of course, once AS starts ripping out the VX product, I'm moving on over to DL for now since if I've gotta connect on a TCON I might as well get a proper bed out of the deal, and I might seriously look at B6 as time goes by.) |
Originally Posted by GrayAnderson
(Post 28863545)
So, there's an off chance that I'll wind up on VX once or twice after the new year (I've got a regular TCON trip, and if I can't make the ATL-SEA lie-flat flight work then VX is my fallback...I'm covered on status with VS-via-DL, so I'm basically unchained until April). Prior to that the answer (in my mind, at least) is "keep on with Elevate" (even as AS tries to push Mileage Plan, the plain truth is that an F flight on VX will still generally do better under Elevate-and-Convert than under Mileage Plan), but afterwards I'm open to options. I've got a pot of miles over on SQ (and a large transferrable pile elsewhere, so converting for trips to Europe and elsewhere is definitely on the table), I wound up with a random pile on BA (I got something like 10k miles for an HEL-LHR-YYZ award flight courtesy of VX...no, there were no blood sacrifices involved in making that happen, I swear!), and I'm willing to consider AS as a viable option due to my pile-o-miles there from VX (and likely augmentation with their CC...if nothing else, pile preservation is a thing), but otherwise it's standing out as a mixed bag and I'm not going to have any status there come Jan. 1.
(Of course, once AS starts ripping out the VX product, I'm moving on over to DL for now since if I've gotta connect on a TCON I might as well get a proper bed out of the deal, and I might seriously look at B6 as time goes by.) |
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The transition timeline...
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Originally Posted by GrayAnderson
(Post 28863545)
So, there's an off chance that I'll wind up on VX once or twice after the new year (I've got a regular TCON trip, and if I can't make the ATL-SEA lie-flat flight work then VX is my fallback...I'm covered on status with VS-via-DL, so I'm basically unchained until April). Prior to that the answer (in my mind, at least) is "keep on with Elevate" (even as AS tries to push Mileage Plan, the plain truth is that an F flight on VX will still generally do better under Elevate-and-Convert than under Mileage Plan), but afterwards I'm open to options. I've got a pot of miles over on SQ (and a large transferrable pile elsewhere, so converting for trips to Europe and elsewhere is definitely on the table), I wound up with a random pile on BA (I got something like 10k miles for an HEL-LHR-YYZ award flight courtesy of VX...no, there were no blood sacrifices involved in making that happen, I swear!), and I'm willing to consider AS as a viable option due to my pile-o-miles there from VX (and likely augmentation with their CC...if nothing else, pile preservation is a thing), but otherwise it's standing out as a mixed bag and I'm not going to have any status there come Jan. 1.
(Of course, once AS starts ripping out the VX product, I'm moving on over to DL for now since if I've gotta connect on a TCON I might as well get a proper bed out of the deal, and I might seriously look at B6 as time goes by.) |
Originally Posted by shza
(Post 28871458)
Not sure why B6 is your back-up and not the clear choice. I like D1 on the planes with 1-2-1 seating, but rows 2 and 4 in Mint are easily the best seats in domestic F.
(1) B6 doesn't have the "right" system for me. They serve RIC (the third-closest airport to my home) but neither PHF (unsurprising, since PHF is circling the drain as "one airport too many") nor ORF (slightly more surprising since ORF and RIC have similar traffic levels). Mint does not go out of any DC-area airports. Moreover, I've found B6's non-Mint product to hover slightly ahead of other airlines' coach products...to the very rare extent that I've been stuck back there. (2) B6 still has IT issues that they need to deal with. I can now book a flight on B6 connecting to a Mint flight and get Mint (this was no joy last year) but on a test booking for Oct. 3, the system dings me for between $71 and $549 for doing so vis-a-vis booking the segments as separate segments (with the through-fare being $1747 for most options) and presuming that I'd book a BlueFlex ticket on the connecting leg. I also can't book more than two segments together (sort-of like the standing issue that VX had, which doubtless did not help their load factors on those DAL flights), meaning that RIC-SEA is still a bit of a booking game. (2b) To the extent that it is an artifact of the booking system, the "sticker price" of $1747 to get to the West Coast plus whatever is needed to get to SEA from there is light-years above what I'm used to paying for one of those DL lie-flats (which usually sit in the $700-900 range PHF/ORF/RIC-ATL-SEA; occasionally I'll land a higher quote, but that's usually due to a routing via ATL-LAX or JFK). (3) TrueBlue is arguably the weakest FFP out there on face value, though I've heard that the value proposition improves slightly with the various badges and whatnot. I've always had the feeling that whomever designed it thought they were being hired by King Digital to design something for Facebook. I didn't have any luck crediting a flight to SQ last year, either, so I'm a bit wary of bothering with that. (4) DL's system map just works better for me, and I can usually get a seat on a D1-equipped TCON out of either JFK or ATL for a fraction of what I'd pay for Mint. I don't get the D1 catering (I wish!) but I do get lounge access at JFK at the Clubhouse (gratis due to status) and I get a lie-flat seat. ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== Elevate is going away on Jan. 1, yes. Until then, when in First crediting to Elevate probably makes more sense than crediting to MileagePlan (a WAS-SFO flight in F for this week running $1503 in F will give me something like 19,777 post-transition MileagePlan miles versus 12,650 on MileagePlan) or elsewhere (without getting into the arcane math, I can probably get a JFK-YVR seat on CX in J for not much more than that many miles). AS and VX trying to nudge me to credit to MileagePlan in the interim has just annoyed me given the negative value proposition there (and the fact that I'm never going to fly AS enough to earn Gold "internally", while the loss of DL as a domestic partner and the effective loss of AA*), though I strongly suspect it makes sense for folks based out on the West Coast. Afterwards is the question. *Example: I cannot book a WAS-CHI or NYC-CHI flight on AS' website, so starting after Jan. 1 I wouldn't be able to get AS credit or earning for it. I can book ORF-ORD-SEA but not ORF-ORD...so again, no joy. In some respects, the merger has killed what value MP would've retained for me. |
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