Awards
Nicholas Kralev talks to Jeff Diskin, senior vice president for global customer marketing at Hilton Worldwide, about the company’s loyalty program, Hilton HHonors.
Just as many loyal United Airlines customers hoped that its expected merger with Continental Airlines would put an end to United’s massive blocking of “award” seats made available for mileage redemption by its partners in the global Star Alliance, the carrier made a government filing that raised new questions about its filtering policy.
With all the complex issues United and Continental have to resolve before completing their merger, which would create the world’s largest airline, the “award” blocking is hardly a top agenda item. In fact, I’d be surprised if it has come up at all in their negotiations so far.
However, it’s an important matter for many elite members of United’s Mileage Plus program, as shown by the overwhelming response to my original column exposing the previously secret practice in September 2008. A thread on FlyerTalk.com, the largest online travel community, that was started at the time has had more than 100,000 views and over 2,000 responses to date…
Continue reading about United’s award blocking an issue in Continental merger
Have you been surprised to discover that your flight itinerary has little to do with your originally booked routing or departure and arrival times? Did you accept the changes, even though you didn’t like them? Next time, you could probably do better.
Schedule changes — those made by airline planning departments in advance, not those resulting from irregular operations — have always existed in the industry, but they used to be relatively rare and caused few major disruptions.
In recent years, however, they have become so common that I’m actually surprised when a week passes without changes in any of my future trips — I usually have about a half-dozen booked at a time…
Continue reading about Flight schedule changes overwhelm agents, travelers
UPDATE: Since United adopted Continental’s reservations system when their merger was completed on March 3, 2012, the airline has insisted it no longer engages in StarNet blocking.
In September 2008, the “On the Fly” column first exposed United Airlines’ previously secret practice of massively blocking “award” seats otherwise made available for mileage redemption by its partners in the global Star Alliance, such as Lufthansa, Thai Airways and Singapore Airlines.
The practice became known as StarNet blocking — a reference to the alliance’s award “middleware” that provides access to those seats by any carrier on a first-come-first-served basis. It caused an uproar and was denounced by loyal United customers as deceitful. In frustration, some of those passengers have turned their backs on United, depriving it of valuable revenue. Some of them canceled corporate contracts with the airline, while others stopped using their United co-branded credit cards.
Apparently, the carrier saves more money by not having to compensate its partners for their “award” seats than it loses by driving some passengers away, so the blocking is still alive and well. Many unsuspecting travelers accumulate thousands of miles in their United Mileage Plus accounts, only to discover later than those miles can’t get them the “award” tickets they hoped to book.
Is there an inherent conflict between the desires of loyal customers and a travel company’s interests? For years, executives have been acting as if there is, despite of what they might say in public. One of them, however, has actually shown that what’s good for travelers doesn’t have to be bad for business.
Graham Atkinson has been president of United Airlines’ frequent-flier program, Mileage Plus, for only 16 months, but while some questionable policies remain in place, he has made a big difference for the better. His approach is not simply to please the carrier’s best customers — it’s to listen to them carefully and find ways to benefit the company at the same time.
Mr. Atkinson, who is also United’s executive vice president and was previously chief customer officer, hasn’t sought much credit for his achievements…
