Word: northwest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Steve Graham got his by cashing in 270,000 of his 500,000 Northwest Airlines frequent-flyer miles and bidding for the prize package at a special auction organized by Northwest. "You can always use your airline miles for a trip to a great place like Fiji or London," says Graham, who travels once a week on business, accumulates about 100,000 miles annually and at one point had 1.5 million miles in his Northwest account. "But meeting B.B. King was the kind of unique, special experience that you just don't associate with an airline program...
Debbie Hare, 40, director of administration at Hare Express, a Troy, Mich, trucking company, knows just how Graham feels. Last June she and her husband Ross, the firm's president, cashed in about 400,000 of their 2 million Northwest miles at a similar auction for the chance to build homes for the poor in rural Kentucky. Their partners on this Habitat for Humanity International project were Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. "How often do you get to swing a hammer and help change someone's life, while being in the company of a former President and First Lady?" Hare asks...
...airlines are not far behind. American, Delta, Northwest and other major carriers will arrange for you to give 5,000- and 10,000-mile increments to such charities as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the United Way of America and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Lufthansa's Miles & More program lets you trade in 125,000 miles for a hot-air-balloon ride for as many as four people. Virgin Atlantic Airways offers a two-day parachuting course in exchange for 30,000 miles...
...there are the auction items like the one Steve Graham successfully bid for. Participants can attend in person or phone in or write in their bids ahead of time. Hotel companies offer auctions as well, but InsideFlyer's Petersen says the airline auctions tend to have sexier awards. Take Northwest's: since 1996, WorldPerks, the frequent-flyer program of the airline, based in Minneapolis, Minn., has conducted three bidding sessions--in Detroit, Minneapolis and at Sotheby's in New York City. No minimum bids are required, and the proceedings are open to any of WorldPerks' approximately 17 million members worldwide...
Checchi's management skills have been coming under attack by Davis, who is buying heavy TV time to slug away at Checchi's stewardship of Northwest Airlines, which he acquired in a 1989 leveraged buyout. Checchi portrays his time at Northwest as a classic "white knight" tale--spent reforming management and saving the airline--while Davis says Checchi's takeover saddled the company with so much debt that he drove it to the brink of bankruptcy. There is truth to both claims: Northwest is healthier now than it was before Checchi came along, but during the recession...