Business Travel Tips

The times when frequent-flier award tickets were free are gone. Now, airlines are continuously adding new booking fees and other surcharges to frequent-flier award tickets.
The Wall Street Journal listed fees and benefit cuts recently introduced by the major airlines.

Beginning August 7, US Airways will stop giving bonus miles to elite frequent fliers. It will also start charging between $25 and $50, depending on the destination, for booking award tickets.

On Aug. 15, Delta Air Lines will add a fuel surcharge to award tickets — $25 for U.S. and Canada and $50 for other destinations.

On Sept. 15, Northwest Airlines will add a fuel surcharge of $25 to$100 to WorldPerks tickets issued in North America.

American Airlines has added a $5 online booking fee and will increase the number of miles needed to buy certain award tickets as of Oct. 1.

Continental Airlines announced the company will no longer allow frequent-flier members to buy the last seat available on certain flights “where demand is high” after Sept. 3, though the restriction won’t apply to elite fliers. On Aug. 17, the airline will increase fees for booking award tickets close to the date of travel.

The newspaper also reported on how airlines are taking measures to make their frequent-flier programs more attractive.

Earlier this year, both Northwest and Delta introduced new options that allow fliers to buy tickets with a combination of cash and miles, so small increments of miles could be redeemed.

Delta recently announced it would replace its awards program in September with a three-tiered system that’s similar to American Airlines’ program. Instead of offering domestic tickets for either 25,000 or 50,000 miles — with many more tickets available for 50,000 miles — the airline will offer about 50% of its total seat inventory for 40,000 miles, while maintaining the same amount of seats in the 25,000-mile tier. The rest of the seats will be in the 60,000-mile tier.
However wsj.com notes that under Delta’s new three-tier structure, award travel is more expensive in some cases. “A premium-class seat to Europe used to cost between 90,000 and 250,000 miles and will now cost between 100,000 miles and 350,000 miles.” […]
In November, Alaska Airlines will add more award levels, in an effort to make it easier to use miles.