I have several friends traveling on Southwest over the next week and a half. Two things: 1) they’re going to miss their first class upgrades, and 2), there’s a decent shot that their flight will be cancelled last minute.
If I had Southwest tickets booked over the next week or so, I’d seriously consider finding another way to travel because Southwest’s current operational meltdown could easily derail your trip and leave you stuck for days without an alternate Southwest flight, and Southwest won’t rebook you on another airline so don’t consider that to be your backup plan.
There are ways to find inexpensive award tickets on the major US carriers for very close travel as a backup or replacement (you can get most bank points into one or more of these currencies with a 1:1 transfer ratio):
In almost all cases, using one of the above currencies will be cheaper for travel starting in the next couple of weeks than using the airline’s mileage program directly, but definitely check and choose the cheapest option. They’re all likely to be better than playing Russian-roulette with your Southwest flight though.
Remember, if you get stuck and you paid for your airfare with a premium card (Chase Sapphire Preferred/Reserve, American Express Platinum, Citi Prestige), you’ll likely be covered for hotel and meal expenses while you wait to get home. None of these cards will cover alternate airfare though, so don’t fall into that common trap and expect to be reimbursed for booking a new ticket home.
It’s going to be a cluster-hug over the next week or two out there, good luck!
Lizzy Air Lines currently has a better completion ratio on flights than Southwest. Unfortunately, no major bank rewards program partners with Lizzy’s Juice Box Miles™ program.
Do this now: Book any speculative AA and Hyatt awards today for any potential travel in the next year.
Why? Both Hyatt and AA are expected to make major award price changes over the next few days.
1.Hyatt is going to introduce peak and off-peak pricing for hotel award bookings sometime in mid-October for stays in March 2022 and beyond, and last I checked October 14 probably counts as sometime in mid-October. The new chart can be found here. I’d book absolutely every hotel stay with Hyatt that you may possibly take next year, assuming your point balances allow it. If the price goes up you’ll be locked in at the old rate, and if it goes down you can get the lower price and the difference in points back, so the downsides are minimal.
2.AA is going to devalue AAdvantage mileage awards really soon, according to twitter personality JonNYC who has inside sources and is almost always correct. As a result, I’d book any business/first class international awards that you may possibly take in the next 330 days right now. If the trip or timing doesn’t work, you can always cancel the trip and redeposit the miles with no fee under current AA policies, but if you end up taking the trip you’ll be locked in at the current prices.
Remember when Citi added AA as a temporary transfer partner for ThankYou Points in July? It brings me absolutely no pleasure to report this, but the prediction that AA would devalue soon as a result of this partnership seems to be correct. I’d say that the US dollar would be good hedge against AA devaluation, but that seems to be undergoing a major devaluation of its own. I guess it’s time to hedge with pumpkin futures, just remember to sell them before Halloween.
AA miles are currently on-track to mimic pumpkins in mid-November.
Airfares for a couple of the routes that I regularly travel are annoyingly high for the next couple of months, and my go to for short hop domestic mileage redemptions on those routes is also double what it would normally be (10,000 Delta SkyMiles versus the normal 5,000 on the days that I want to fly).
As a result, I’ve pivoted to AA bookings with British Airways Avios and the 40% transfer bonus from American Express. On short-haul domestic routes, those flights are 7,500 Avois or ~5,400 Membership Rewards points with the bonus. (Side note: I suggest Seth’s wonderful Avois Redemption Calculator when deciding whether Avios for AA short-haul redemptions will work for you and your travel patterns.)
That’s all fine and good, but after my Avois booking is complete I have a British Airways record locator and my British Airways frequent flyer is attached the ticket; that’s not ideal because I hold an AA credit card which gets me priority boarding and a few other perks. That credit card is tied to my frequent flyer account with AA, not my BA account. If I had AA status I’d be even more annoyed since that wouldn’t be attached to the ticket either because the AA status is necessarily part of your AA account.
The Trick
So, I want to book with BA Avios but have my AA frequent flyer number on the ticket. While it’s possible to call British Airways or message them on Twitter to get your AA record locator, and then to take that record locator and contact AA and hope that the agent you talk to knows how to update your frequent flyer program and number, it’s annoying and error prone. There’s a much easier, mostly unknown method: Use the “Manage Booking” section of OneWorld Alliance member FinnAir’s website and you can update all of those details yourself. The steps:
You can then enter your AA (or Alaska) frequent flyer number and click “Save”. After that your record will automatically attach to your AA account. You’ll then get all the measly benefits that your AA credit card provides, and/or you’ll get the flogging attached to your AA elite status, all without having to talk to another human.
Unless you board with AA elites, how would anyone know that you too are elite? By looking at your bag tag? Groan! Avoid that embarrassment with the FinnAir trick.
Airlines went nuts in the last day or so, here are a few of most relevant announcements:
1.ANA announced that they no longer have change fees for trips originating in the US. The text in that announcement is a little weird in that it seems to imply that policy doesn’t take effect until October 1, but I believe that what’s actually happening is that on the first of October, countries in the Americas other than the US will no longer have this, but all countries in the Americas including the US have fees waived until then. A few choice ANA sweet-spots:
North America to Japan round-trip in business class is 75,000 ANA Mileage Club miles during low season, 85,000 miles during regular season, and 95,000 miles during peak season. All of these are actually a great value.
North America to Europe round-trip in business class is 88,000 Mileage Club miles.
2.Southwest is having a fare sale for travel that includes Thanksgiving. Hopefully you’ve locked all that in by now, but in case you haven’t please do it soon. If you haven’t booked by tomorrow, there will be consequences. What consequences? I won’t feel bad for you when you have to book at higher prices. How’s that for consequences?
3. Ok, so technically this is “Thursday Airline Mayhem”, but I want you to be ready if it’s relevant so this item was brought forward a day: Southwest is extending their schedule tomorrow, and this round covers Spring Break 2022. I’d do yourself a favor and look at your plans for next Spring and get some tentative flights booked with Southwest if it overlaps with those plans. They’ll almost certainly change their schedule between now and then which will give you the opportunity to potentially switch to even better flights at no upcharge.
If you book with Rapid Rewards points, you can always cancel and redeposit with no penalty for a nice play on tentative plans.
4.JetBlue is having fare sale for bookings made by tomorrow that covers travel between September 20 and November 18. This is a good speculative travel play because even JetBlue Basic award tickets can be redeposited or changed without fees.
The Southwest 737 Flight Management System (FMS) in mayhem mode.
1. Southwest has a new Companion Pass promotion(*) that’s very easy to attain: You have to purchase a paid round-trip or two one-way flights by tomorrow and travel by November 18. Register just in case you book something and qualify (yes, you have to book by tomorrow so I admit the likelihood of a booking you don’t know about coming up in the next day is small).
The companion pass will be valid from January 6, 2022 through February 28, 2022. And, you can change the companion three times over that period, which is a great way to scale this to multiple free tickets for multiple companions if it suits your travel style.
2. My Xfinity rewards program $100 Visa Gift Card showed up in the mail today. It’s issued by Metabank and has a 424030 BIN. Unfortunately that BIN is one of the harder to work with, but liquidation is still easily possible. Now, let me say something I think I’ve never said before and I’ll never say again: Thanks Xfinity!
3. There’s a widely targeted offer for 3x spend at grocery, drug stores, and restaurants for Barclay’s JetBlue cards for up to $1,000 spend. Look for an email with the subject “Fly off with 3X additional points on everyday purchases this fall.” Combine with two $500 BestBuy gift cards at Kroger for a nice win.
The top-tier elite Southwest experience summed up in a single picture.
* Unfortunately, you do have to fly on Southwest. However as I always say, they do get you where you’re going.
1.American Express has a transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to all of its airline partners, something unheard of until this point. You’ve probably heard this reported elsewhere already, so let’s add to the conversation with a few particular sweet spots:
40% bonus to Avios with Aer Lingus, British Airways, or Iberia
Use Iberia for great award space from the US to Europe and avoid fuel surcharges with BA with the same flight access. Look for Madrid trips for extra value.
30% bonus to Virgin Atlantic, Hilton, Marriott
Use Virgin Atlantic for really low redemption round-trip tickets in Business or First to Japan and Eastern Asia
25% bonus to AirFrance/KLM FlyingBlue, Aeromexico, Hawaiian
Transfer Marriott Bonvoy points. With the transfer bonus, you’re looking at approximately 1.85 Bonvoy points to 1 MileagePlus mile. I’d say that’s about the best general use case of Bonvoy points I’ve seen in a long time. (This is a terrible idea with most other programs, especially Hyatt.)
One of the tropes you’ll find brandished in the mainstream media is that dressing nice, letting the gate agent know that you’re on a honeymoon, or uttering the words “revenue management” will score you a free upgrade. Of course you probably know that’s all a bunch of crap. Airline upgrades don’t work that way and gate agents who play those kinds of shenanigans are disciplined and may end up losing their job.
At a hotel you can usually use the $20 trick for a an upgrade, but trying that at the gate just won’t work. Trust me. So how do you get an edge? Spoiler alert, there is an airline equivalent to the $20 trick that doesn’t involve a crooked gate agent. Let’s call it the “jump-the-bucket” trick. Catchy right? Right? Ok, I know it’s not.
Elite Upgrades in the US
All major US airlines with a first class cabin onboard have some sort of upgrade program for their elite flyers, and there’s a well defined order to which elites are upgraded to the big seat upfront and with what priority. Just because it’s well defined doesn’t mean that airlines publish specific terms and conditions though. Rather, airlines speak about priorities in generalities and as a result it can be a trick to suss out how it really works. To compound the complexity, each airline has slightly different policies and sometimes upgrade instruments get into the mix too.
The major US carriers do share one thing in common for elite upgrades: different ticket fare buckets have different upgrade priorities, and you can hack your way into a higher upgrade priority with the “jump-the-bucket” trick.
Fare Buckets
Ok, so fare buckets matter for upgrades, but WTF is a fare bucket? The boring definition is that each bucket is a letter (like S, or J) or pair of letters (like OW) that corresponds with a given fare on file in their systems. There isn’t a standard for buckets on all airlines, but they do share a lot in common. First class fare buckets are often Z or F, and economy buckets are often S, L,Y, and B for example. Typically there are around 20 fare buckets per airline.
Fare buckets also have a hierarchy. F > Z, and Y > B > M. See the pattern? Nah, me neither. That’s ok though. You don’t need to memorize the hierarchy, just know that it exists and how to find it.
Jumping-the-Bucket
And now my friends, you’ve got enough background to understand how to game the upgrade lottery. When airlines process upgrades, one of the universal tie breakers is your segment’s fare bucket. To win that battle you just have to make sure you’re in a higher bucket than the other guy. Unfortunately that’s not free, but it’s usually less than $20 or so to jump to the next bucket when you book a ticket. Even better, it’s almost a certainty that no elites on your plane have booked into anything other than the cheapest bucket that was available when they bought their ticket. (There’s a small wrench here, sometimes government contracts and big business contracts will book into high buckets per the specific terms of their agreement with the airline. That usually doesn’t matter if you’re not going to or from DC though, especially during peak leisure travel.)
Now, let’s talk about how to jump-the-bucket with ITA Matrix:
1. Search ITA Matrix for your desired flight 2. Pick your desired itinerary 3. Look at which fare buckets the itinerary has
Example: I searched for a Delta direct flight between Los Angeles (LAX) and Chicago O’Hare (ORD) on Sept 10, and picked the cheapest flight that wasn’t basic economy since those fares aren’t upgrade eligible. In this case, it was an economy flight in fare bucket V, which you can see in my example ITA Matrix search at the end of the line in parentheses after the word “Economy”:
A sample itinerary. Note the V booking code embedded in Economy (V) at the end of each leg.
Now I need to find which bucket has a higher priority than V. On Delta, that would be X. (See the next section for priorities. I don’t memorize this and I bet you don’t want to either.) So, to continue with the prior steps:
4. Determine the next higher fare bucket (see next section) — in my case X 5. Return to the main ITA Matrix booking page 6. Enter your desired cities and dates again 7. Click “Advanced controls” to turn them on if they’re not already on 8. Tell ITA Matrix that you want a specific fare bucket (booking code) by entering “f bc=X” in the “Outbound extension codes” and “Return extension codes”. Replace X with the appropriate fare bucket as needed. 9. Click through to find your itinerary 10. Cut and paste your itinerary into bookwithmatrix.com to book
Side tip: Remember how I glossed over searching for a flight that wasn’t basic economy in my example? Well, basic economy on Delta is fare bucket E, and you can enter “f ~bc=E” to tell ITA matrix to ignore any fares in the E bucket. The tilde means “not”.
In this particular example, an X bucket fare was $145.20 which is exactly $13 more than the V bucket. If I book this itinerary, I’ll be ahead of similar leveled elites that booked the cheapest fare they could, which is probably all of them provided the bucket was available when they booked.
The same itinerary after jumping-the-bucket. The higher bucket with a better shot at an upgrade costs an extra $13.00.
Cool eh? Cheaper than the $20 trick, and personally I’ve had great success with this technique in the past.
One last gotcha: Sometimes different segments each have their own fare bucket. That’s ok too, just use the Multi-city tab on ITA Matrix and enter fare codes segment-by-segment and you’ll get what you’re after.
Airline Fare Bucket Priorities
How do you know the order of fare buckets for a given airline? First answer: Ugh. Second answer, visit cwsi.net. To save myself the hassle I’ve written them out and I guess I’ll share them with you too (ordered highest to lowest):
Delta: W, Y, B, M, S, H, Q, K, L, U, T, X, V, E (highest first, lowest last, E is basic economy)
United: O, A, R, Y, B, M, E, U, H, Q, V, W, S, T, L, K, G, N (highest first, lowest last, N is basic economy)
American: Y, H, K, M, V, Q, S, N, L, O, B (highest first, lowest last, B is basic economy)
Alaska: Y, B, H, K, M, L, V, S, N, Q, O, G, X (highest first, lowest last, X is basic economy)
Caveats
A few things to watch out for:
As flights get closer, lower fare buckets may sell out or get zeroed out by the airline, pushing close-in bookings into a higher fare bucket. So if you book 5 months in advance and jump-the-bucket at the time, you may not be ahead of everyone by the time you fly
There are other criteria for upgrades too, and they vary by airline. Your status level for example is almost always a higher priority than your fare bucket. (Unless it’s a special Y-up bucket, but that’s beyond today’s post)
Using certain upgrade instruments trumps all fare classes. (SWUs on AA, RUCs on DL, GPUs on UA)
Conclusion
There’s an airline cousin to the hotel $20 trick, and it’s called the jump-the-bucket trick. For a few extra bucks you can often up your chances for an elite upgrade. #winning #twirlingtowardfreedom
The United “basic economy” fare bucket. Or, is that the Economy+ bucket on an ERJ-145? It can be hard to tell.
1. Bad news: Up until as recently as last month, if you could find an offer for a Chase credit card with a fixed APR listed in the Terms and Conditions, that offer would bypass the Chase 5/24 rules. That’s no longer the case according to a trustworthy source (former Reddit /r/churning moderator AndySol1983).
2. Good news: A new link for an American Express Business Gold card with no lifetime language and a 90,000 Membership Rewards sign-up bonus after spending $10,000 in three months has surfaced. Yes, we got one of these on Tuesday, but this one is a different offer and thus another chance for you to get the card in case you weren’t targeted with Tuesday’s version. (Thanks to sticky__ricky on Reddit)
Don’t forget, those Business Gold cards often get upgrade offers for 80,000 Membership Rewards or more for converting them to a Business Platinum.
3. Good news: Southwest is having a fare sale for tickets booked today for travel at least 21 days from now. The dates cover Thanksgiving travel, so check existing Thanksgiving bookings or look at making them now if you don’t have them locked in.
4. Bad news: The rolling Southwest free change window misfeature seems to have been fixed by their IT department. It seems that the widespread, “book the cheapest fare you can and then switch to the schedule you want” tricks are no longer for this world. For the gory details, see this Flyertalk thread and read posts on and after August 3.
A cup of Southwest Airlines: they’ll get you where you need to go (good), but you have to fly Southwest to get there (bad).
