Kinglobjaw's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘northwest’

If you look into the Delta Shuttle operation, you’ll realize US Airways is king in the shuttle market.

First, Delta decided to add First Class to lure more passengers. Then they added WiFi internet. Didn’t really help. A few months later, Delta downsized the fleet, from the maddog (MD-88) to the Delta Connection outsourced EMB-170 cutting seats by almost half. That move doesn’t seem to help either, now does it?

Currently, Delta is offering 3,000 miles for each segment instead of the usual 500. US Airways hasn’t matched yet, but do they really have to?

The fact of the matter is US Airways rules the shuttle market. They are far more convenient, offer a better product and a much more reliable service. Since Delta is merging with Northwest to become the world’s largest airline, I doubt it will drop the shuttle operation entirely, but DC to New York La Guardia seems to be Delta’s weakest of the three shuttle routes. They’d be foolish to downgrade the aircraft further as they’d loose any remaining premium traffic, but I see them reducing flights. To be fair, Northwest was never a big player in Boston, DC and New York, so they can’t bring in that many loyal customers to the new Delta.

Me? I’m just glad US Airways has a solid shuttle operation I can rely on. Including weekends! And those twelve First Class seats on every flight? They’re icing on the cake!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

If you’re Polish you probably know the story about two brothers- Pawel and Gawel (Paul & Gaul?). I believe they were also twins. They lived in a two-story house, one lived on the second floor, the other on the first. They never interfered with each other’s lives aside from the shared appliances/ common areas.  I don’t remember which brother did what, but the gist of  it is that one brother was a tidy and proper as can be, while the other created one heck of a ruckus- all the time! Living with the downstairs brother was like a personal hell.

I will be making a point in just a moment, so wait for it!

If you rent cars frequently you probably know or at least heard of two car rental companies that work side by side- National and Alamo. They are usually co-located, one on the left and other on the right. Although both companies are not available at all locations, when they are together they usually share counter space, a shuttle bus, a parking lot and sometimes even cars!  In this case I can recall which company did what, but the gist of it is that Alamo posted miles to my Mom’s Northwest WorldPerks account within 24 hours (Yep, I counted, alright!). When it comes to National- it’s been 6 days already and the miles have still not posted! Why not, I don’t get it! Normally it would be trivial since it’s only 50 Northwest miles but we’re doing this as part of the Northwest Pile On The Miles promotion, where four partner transactions earn you an additional 4,000 Northwest miles. And since NWA’s list of partne’s included in the promotion is unsatisfying, there are exactly and only four we can manage to do. Thus, these really need to post!

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

NWA has an enticing promotion where you can get up to 10,000 bonus WorldPerks miles after just 10 purchases. There are quite a few partners out there, but I’m trying to figure out how I can make these 10 purchases spending the smallest amount of money and trying to buy things I can actually use.

So far I’m 50% done. What’s neat is I can earn 1,000 miles after each purchase, not 10,000 after 10 purchases. So in the end, if I can’t utilize partners to buy 10 times, I’ll still get some bonus miles.

1. Barnes & Noble $10 gift card (+ $0.95 for shipping). Miles earned: 30 base + 1,000 bonus.
2. Borders $5 gift card (+ $1.95 for shipping). Miles earned: 15 + 1,000 bonus.
3. Gaiam $1 tree donation certificate (no tax/free shipping). Miles earned: 6 + 1,000 bonus. (link of this item here)
4. NorthernTool saw/blade ($1.99 no tax/free shipping). Miles earned: 6 + 1,000 bonus. (link for this item here)
5. Sears $5 (free shipping). Miles earned: 10 + 1,000 bonus.

All this adds up to 5,067 extra miles added to my NWA/DELTA account. Of course, the NWA Mall probably takes the longest of all the airline malls. I won’t see those miles till July or August. Ironically, Delta’s mall posts miles the fastest (generally 5 to 6 days after transaction).

I buy magazines regularly at Borders/Barnes & Noble, so I’m really only spending extra on the shipping which would costs less than if I were to drive or take the bus. With Gaiam, I’m doing a good thing for the planet- I’m donating a tree. Sears has a lot of things like extra nozzles for my Dyson vacuum, so I’m sure I’ll end up using it soon. I’ll put good use of the blade from NorthernTool, I’ll no longer struggle with scissors when cutting boxes! What’s funny is that the blade is backordered. Many FlyerTalkers are probably onto this promotion and that’s the cheapest you can go at NorthernTool.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Very easy and free 100 miles with Delta, Northwest, Lufthansa and 16 other companies after filling out a simple form. More details available at Mobile Miles.

One thing regarding the phone number you enter. DO NOT enter your own or change the ‘+372′ prefix for Estonia! Just add 7 more random digits and hit submit. You will then get a confirmation page.

You can try doing it again and again for all the programs that you earn miles/points with; however be sure to enter a different phone number every time. You can also use a different email every time, should you choose to do so, but it is not necessary.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

If you are not a RewardTV member, now is the time to join. Free of charge, of course! You get tons of valuable points for just watching your favorite TV shows, even if you don’t really watch them at all. You end up earning lots of points since you earn them in bunches of thousands. What can you do with your points? You spend them on shopping sprees. There are two each week and they announce the guaranteed prizes ahead of time. This is no silly sweepstakes.

An upcoming shopping spree on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 2:30PM Eastern Time is offering 1,000 AADVANTAGE miles for 300,000 RewardTV points (if you sign up for today, you can still earn in time- yes, you really earn them that fast). RewardTV very rarely offers miles as a reward, as it’s usually a gift card to places like BestBuy, Staples or Amazon.com (my favorites).

Besides American Airlines they partner with other airlines, but those miles are offered even more scarcely than the AA miles. Here are the airlines:

• Delta
• Northwest

They also partner with Marriott, but since I’ve never seen them offer it, I have no clue whether it’s a $10 Marriott gift card or Marriott Rewards points.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark

Because I fly only with US Airways, does it mean I only carry a Dividend Miles account? Of course not, and folks should learn to do the same.

You have to be on the lookout for various partner promos from the other airlines. Sometimes they’ll let you earn miles so easily and quickly and you’d be crazy not to. And I’m not talking about flying here! Take a look at a section of an email from Northwest that I got this morning.

Dear Mark,

Never shopped WorldPerks Mall before? Now’s a perfect time to try!
Savvy WorldPerks members know they can earn miles every day by shopping WorldPerks Mall. Now, you’re in the know! Plus, through March 31, 2009, make a purchase on WorldPerks Mall from Ann Taylor®, Lands’End®, homedepot.com, or more than 200 other favorite online stores, and you’ll earn 1,000 Bonus Miles in addition to the miles you always earn. Shopping the Mall is easy, fun and habit-forming. You’ll see.

Register today for this one-time offer.
 

1,000 miles for one (any) purchase. That’s great! The cheapest way to nail this is to buy an iTune for 0.99 cents. That will earn you 2 miles + 1,000 bonus miles. Full details on the promotion can be found here.

Some may ask if keeping a 1,000 miles is good for anything if you’re not going to fly with that airline?

Well, for starters, that 1,000  miles would normally cost you $50 + tax if bought directly from that airline. Also, you can be sure there will be other promos in the future to get you to try new products or the airline credit card will carry a no free promotion where you can score a huge 20,000+ mile welcome bonus. If you earn E-Rewards you can usually transfer to your frequent flyer account to get more miles. Last but not least, you can try redeeming those miles for a magazine delivered to your home free of charge. Subscriptions for certain magazines start from only 600 miles in cost.

I’ve been doing this with a couple of frequent flyer programs just to score enough miles that I will keep as emergency miles. I already have 50,000 miles with United and will have about 35,000 miles with the merged Delta frequent flyer program. I”m also going for American Airlines since I already have about 8,000 miles in my AAdvantage account. I’m also thinking of signing up for the BMI program since they have low redemptions levels for UK and Channel flights. All these are not from flying, but from partner promotions and no annual fee credit card offers from the airlines.

Have a nice clicK life,

-Mark