Another blogger, Tom Kyte, commented on his blog recently that he will never understand airline pricing. We can honestly say we don’t either. But we can shed some light on it to some degree. It is consistent in some ways, but ultimately inconsistent. Ralph Hood, an AirportBusiness columnist, commented that he was shocked that on…
A travel company to have a look at is cFares, which offers some services that are rather unique to the online travel market. We found a review of it on GigaOM. We have in the past commented about our issues with online travel agents because we believe that there is a lack of good customer…
Aviation Daily reports that after a ninth-month review, the US Department of Transportation decided not to make any changes in airfare advertising rules. The current rules require airlines to list the full fare in advertisements, with several defined exceptions, allowing government taxes and fees to be broken out and put into the fine print. The…
The Cranky Flier blog focuses on the customer service experience of air travel, among other things. On Sunday, he posted a story about fighting USAirways on a fare downgrade. A fare downgrade is the situation in which, after a fare is purchased, a lower fare becomes available, and you downgrade to that fare on your…
The LA Daily News had an article last week about a mother and her difficulty in getting understanding from Delta Airlines in a death situation. Betty Haack made arrangements in April to visit her son in July, and ended up moving them back a week…not to visit her son, but to bury him after he…
Airlines are scaling back service at smaller airports, driving up fares and driving customers to drive to airports with more service. Several years ago, carriers ordered a large number of 50-70 seat regional jets to replace its aging turboprop fleet on many routes. However, many of these planes turned out to be fuel inefficient and…
We recently reviewed CNN Money’s ‘5 dirty secrets of airfares’. We have added our own commentary. 1. Low cost carriers don’t always have the lowest fares – Remember, the legacy carriers are competing with them. If their fares were not comparable to their competiition, they’d lose all business. Revenue or yield management, which determines how…
In a press release earlier today, USAirways has announced a reduction in fares from Huntsville, Alabama. USAirways has lowered its fares in various markets and eliminated Saturday night stayover and roundtrip requirements in various markets as part of its attempt to transition to a Low Cost Carrier(LCC) model. LCCs are categorized, among other things, by…
Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines announced today the introduction of confirmed standby for its passengers. Confirmed Standby is a newer concept in the airline industry. Previously, airline policy was very black and white. Either standby was not permitted for earlier flights or airlines would allow you to standby for earlier flights that day for free, and get…
USA Today reported yesterday here that a larger proportion of fliers are sleeping at home on Saturday Nights than three years ago. The Saturday Night Stayover is a dated remnant from the past that many airlines still use. Now, first, the requirement of a Saturday night stayover only applies to roundtrip fares. What is means…
Farecast.com announced an expansion of its beta software on which its site is based. Consumers can now get predictions from over 55 cities nationwide. Farecast seems an intriguing idea worth monitoring, but as it is still in beta, we will reserve judgement on its ultimate usefulness until after it has exited the beta process. A…
The Courier-Journal reported yesterday in this article that two years after Delta launched Simplifares, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is the most expensive airport from which to fly. From 600 flights a day last fall to 430 this summer, the amount of available seats are fewer, and the amount of lower fare seats are fewer. With…
As a followup to last week’s mention of the best time to purchase, we have this article from USA Today, written by Jessica Labrencis of Smartertravel.com. We have yet to give our thought on the best time to buy. We believe it is a bit more complicated than that, depending on the airline, the route,…
As reported by Today in the Sky, Jetblue is having a promotion for travel from September 7th through November 15th. In honor of its new service to Houston, Jetblue is dropping one-way fares to the previous day’s price of a barrel of crude oil for the next week. Today’s fare is $73 for flights from…
Let’s talk fares. In simple terms, fare is a fee paid by an individual to travel on an aircraft. Airfares are totally different than fares on your local transit system, where you pay the same rate to travel from point A to point B as everyone else on the train/bus with you, senior, children, student,…
The first step in being an intelligent flyer is knowing who flies where you want to go. In an ideal world, we’d all be able to get nonstops everywhere, but sometimes this isn’t the case. I once encountered someone who had an itinerary which read New York to Boston to Philadelphia. No one wants to…