How to get to | Samoa

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the email me link at top right, or leave a comment.

Samoa

Source: Robyn Gallagher

Some cruise ships and freighters visit Samoa from other South Pacific islands and also Australia and New Zealand. However, most visitors to Samoa arrive by air at Apia. Airline options are limited to regional carriers.

• Star Alliance - Air New Zealand from Auckland, Tonga and Los Angeles)
• Oneworld - none
• Sky Team - none
• Other selected - local airlines to Pago Pago (American Samoa), Air Pacific from Fiji, Virgin Blue subsidiaries from Sydney Brisbane and Auckland

TIP Fares from Auckland, Fiji and Australia are relatively cheap, except in school holidays or if there is a major event on in Samoa.

TIP Air New Zealand has through-fares from UK and USA to New Zealand and Australia that allow an en-route stopover at Cook Islands, Samoa or Tonga for little or no extra $.

TIP Awards in business class between USA and New Zealand are easier to get via the islands than on non-stop flights.

TIP On a Star Alliance round the world fare, which is distance based, it is much more efficient to fly Auckland to Apia to Los Angeles or vice versa than doubling back via Auckland (Los Angeles to Auckland to Apia to Auckland).

How to get to | Paraguay

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the email me link at top right, or leave a comment.

Paraguay

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Visitors to Paraguay arrive by bus from all neighbouring countries (except Bolivia), by cargo boat from Brazil, or by air at Asuncion. Airlines flying to Paraguay include:

• Star Alliance - none
• Oneworld - none
• Sky Team - none
• Other selected - TAM and other South American airlines

TIP Paraguay cannot be included on the standard alliance around the world fares, and no major airlines fly to Asuncion. However, TAM is a partner of some frequent flyer programs and thus awards are possible.

TIP From outside South America, first fly to Buenos Aires (see the how to get to Argentina post for some tips) and then get a separate ticket to Asuncion by bus or air.

New route, new hotel

I've mentioned before that one of my travel goals is to fly all the routes of an airline (over 100 routes). Naturally this is a shifting target as new routes get added from time to time, and old routes removed. I've achieved this goal twice, temporarily, and will do so again shortly.

Air New Zealand has a new route which I'll be flying. There is also one current route I have not yet flown, although I'm undecided on whether it counts or not toward my goal. The reason - it is a special flight which combines two destinations from one origin, and thus flies between two small regional airports which normally would not have flights between them. The flight is once per week, and doesn't operate all the time. Is it a regularly scheduled service if flights are this infrequent and sporadic?

Recently I decided that I would, after all, fly this route. The thing that helped me decide was the schedule requires an overnight stop at a nice regional place, and a hotel has been newly rebranded to a major chain. This the first international chain hotel at this tourist spot, only the second hotel of this chain in the country, and supposedly one of only a handful of 5 star hotels in the country. So I'll get a nice weekend stay in a very pretty and interesting place, fly another odd route, and try out a newly refurbished and supposedly very nice hotel. I'm sold.

Oh yeah, I also get some hotel points which will prevent my modest balance in that program from expiring, so the "value" of the stay is really in excess of the points I'll earn there.

Emirates Skywards major devaluation

About 6 weeks ago I posted the news that Emirates Skywards will have a major overhaul effective 1 January 2010.

In short the frequent flyer program will be more closely aligned to revenue than it currently is. Earning rates depend on fare basis and the class of service factors for business and first class are higher.

Since the announcement, Emirates has drip-fed more detailed information including the new geographic zones (from 2010 both earning and redemption is zone-based), and new earning & depemption charts. After crunching the numbers on hundreds of routes, the conclusion is unmistakeable - this is a significant devaluation.

Geographic zones

The current program has 13 geographic zones for awards. From 1 January 2010 there will be 18 zones for both earning and redemption. Mostly these are unchanged from the existing zones, except:

• America split into 3 zones - North America west (which includes Houston), North America east and South America
• Australia/NZ split into 3 zones - Australia west (ie Perth), Australia east and New Zealand
• Cyprus switches from Near East to Europe South
• Cities near to Dubai (ie Bahrain, Doha and Muscat) switch from the Home zone to Middle East

The consequences of the America & Australasia zone splits are to make some awards cheaper for cities closest to Dubai, and some awards more expensive for cities further from Dubai.

Cyprus awards are more expensive.

Cities near to Dubai now have a small extra award mileage cost relative to the equivalent award to/from Dubai.

The new charts have a disclaimer that the figures are based on the most direct route between zones. Since Emirates has lots of tag flights (ie flights between cities other than Dubai), it is unclear how to interpret the new earning & redemption rates on some routes. For example between Asian Sub-continent south and Far East there are some direct flights (Male to Jakarta for instance) but between most city pairs travel would need to be via Dubai (eg Colombo to Seoul). How are the rates determined in those cases?

As the Emirates route map changes frequently, Skywards members will need to pay attention to changes in the zone earning rates. This could be a positive or a negative depending on changes to the routes and how quickly Skywards reacts. It certainly is a nuisance and is a drawback of using geographic zones so heavily in a frequent flyer program (incidentally Air NZ Airpoints also uses zones, but the issue is less relevant for them due to their much more limited route network and less active changes in that network).

Awards relatively unchanged

The good news is that on the whole award costs are the same in the new chart as the existing one. There are some increases (mostly associated with the zone changes) and some decreases.

This is particularly reassuring to those who have a sizeable stash of miles, given the short notice to cash them in on the old award charts if the rates had increased significantly.

The new ability to redeem one-way awards is a genuine improvement.

Upgrades costly

The new upgrade costs are much higher than the old costs. Upgrades from flexible fares are generally slightly higher than the old upgrade cost (with some slightly cheaper and some much higher), and upgrades from saver fares are generally 30-40+% higher than the old upgrade cost.

In most cases the new mileage cost to upgrade from economy saver to business is almost as high as the cost of a business award.

Earning rates slashed

The most significant change is to the earning rates. Emirates spun the changes as being an enhancement to the class of service bonus. While it is true the mileage earned for first class relative to economy class (flexible fares) is higher from 1 January 2010, this has been achieved by reducing almost all the earning rates as outlined below.

The 2009 earning rates are 100% mileage in economy, 150% in business and 200% in first.

The 2010 earning multiples are 50% for economy saver, 100% for economy flexible fares, 125% for business saver, 175% for business flexible fares, 200% for first saver and 250% for first flexible. However the base mileage earning between the zones is roughly 80-90% of the typical distance flown.

The result is marginally higher earning on flexible first and business fares, a 15% drop in earning on saver first fares, a 30% drop in earning on saver business fares and a whopping 55% drop in earning on saver economy fares. Some routes have smaller or bigger changes in earning than these generalisations. Most people fly on saver fares because the definition includes all fares not fully refundable, fares which are available for a limited period or are non-published, and all fares which include other airlines.

Status more difficult to achieve

In more PR spin, Emirates trumpeted that the elite status requirements were unchanged. Of course now we see the detail of the earning rates it is immediately obvious that from next year it will be harder to earn Silver or Gold status.

Summary

The changes remove most of the anomalies in the existing program, and at the same time represent a significant devaluation.

With both earning and redemption being fixed amounts based on zone and fare, the earn to burn ratios are relatively constant. The earn to burn ratios on Skywards from 1 January 2010 are generally in the 8-10% range, with some as poor as 5% and some as good as 15%. This represents much worse value than most US-based frequent flyer programs, for example.

These changes are big enough for me to rethink my plans for some premium longhaul trips on Emirates for 2010.

E-tickets are more convenient, yeah right

Ticketing 'bot fails

I have finally received the last ticket bought in the Oneworld 10th anniversary sale, which ended 3rd November. The quick and supposedly automated online booking process got stuck and required some chasing up to get human intervention to push the ticketing through. I knew I needed to do this because I did not receive an email e-ticket (although did get the quick booking confirmation) and verified using the various online tools such as checkmytrip that the ticket had not been issued (as opposed to a glitch with the email). When the booking is ticketed these online tools should show a ticket number.

In this case the ticket would have been issued quicker as a manual paper one.

Passing the buck

There are reports on Flyer Talk of people needing changes mid-itinerary (eg during irregular operations) being forced to wait for the original ticketing airline to deal with it. Not so convenient when you are halfway around the world and the ticket desks of the ticketing airline are all closed because it is night time/weekend/public holiday for them.

With a paper ticket you can easily get changes from any airline on the ticket (subject to the rules of the fare of course). This also is possible with e-tickets, but only amongst airlines whose computer systems properly talk to each other. Other combinations (eg between American and Cathay Pacific) are "impossible" to change, or may be changed by one airline only to not stick. This is a worse issue because the first sign of problem may be later in the trip when the second airline tells you your ticket was cancelled (I've had this happen and it is not pleasant).

The passenger should not be required to have extensive knowledge of the workings of airline systems. I don't think it is too much to ask that processes for dealing with tickets involving multiple airlines should work seamlessly.

Still need paper

With few exceptions (eg in markets where mobile boarding passes are allowed), an e-ticket still requires the passenger to have a printout of the ticket information and itinerary. This is to show immigration/security if needed (they do not have access to airline reservation or ticketing systems), and also as backup when computer systems fail.

Earlier this year I encountered an airline's total computer failure while flying. As I didn't have a printout with me, ultimately they had to accept my word that I was booked on the flight (with a check that the passenger numbers tallied their register). Fortunately for me, I have status with that airline and they were happy to accept my word, so I wasn't stranded. Not everyone would be so lucky.

More restrictions

It seems like yesterday that around the world tickets could have 24 or 28 or more flights in the itinerary. With paper tickets there is no limit on the number of flights - you just add more coupons. E-tickets, however, have a strict 16 sector limit. So around the world fare rules were changed to reflect this. There was no reduction in fare to compensate for this devaluation.

The issue, however, is more than the loss of value. The limit creates difficulties if a 16 sector itinerary requires additional flights, for example when an airline ceases to operate a route. If a reroute with additional flights is required, better hope it is late in the itinerary when the airline can just delete the older (already flown) sectors to keep within the 16 sector limit. If it is early in the itinerary, or before the start, then a mess is created. It hasn't happened to me yet, but with several complicated 16 sector itineraries ticketed for travel next year it probably is a matter of time until I have to deal with this issue.

How to get to | Haiti

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the email me link at top right, or leave a comment.



Haiti

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Entry to Haiti is by air or by bus from Dominican Republic (Santo Domingo to Port Au Prince is the easiest option). Airlines flying to Haiti (Port Au Prince) include:

• Star Alliance - Air Canada
• Oneworld - American
• Sky Team - Air France (but not from Paris - see below), Delta
• Other selected - some Caribbean airlines, some North American low cost airlines

TIP Air France flies to Haiti on a milk run between Miami and French Guyana.

TIP The routes with reasonable competition on them are Montreal, Miami/Fort Lauderdale and to a lesser extent New York JFK. Paris Orly also has some low cost airlines flying to & from Haiti.