Search Results for "basic economy".
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American Airlines has a wide variety of policies for how many checked bags are offered free to customers. They’re simplifying their policies, which in a couple of cases means more free bags but in other cases means fewer.
They’re also adding basic economy fares to transpacific and Israel/India flights, but those fares will include a checked bag. So the major restriction is that these fares will not allow changes.
JetBlue will ban basic economy customers from bringing full-sized carry on bags on board, and will finally eliminate change fees on other ticket types, which their competitors did last summer.
Elites used to get waived change fees, but the airline says they aren’t contemplating any new elite benefits in exchange – what they do for members is already enough.
In a move perhaps akin to selling upgrades from United Cargo to Economy, United is offering customers who buy basic economy tickets the ability to pay up after purchase to convert their ticket to regular economy.
With basic economy now a tool to segment business travelers from leisure travelers, and with virtually no business travelers, there’s little downside and only incremental revenue in offering passengers the ability to ‘buy out’ of the restrictions on the tickets they’ve purchased.
The Andaz Singapore is taking a page from airline Basic Economy fares, offering a new ‘room only’ rate. When you think of room only, you may assume that it simply excludes breakfast or other inclusions. In this case they mean it literally: you can stay in the room, but have no access to the hotel’s gym or pool.
This also lets them sell rooms for less on third party websites without running afoul of best rate guarantees, since the restriction doesn’t apply to Hyatt direct booking rates.
The cheapest tickets on United are a worse value than similar fares on Delta and Southwest (especially) but even American too. Right now most passengers aren’t well-informed and disproportionately book through sites like Expedia – and as a result don’t know that they’re getting less value, because these sites don’t tell them. Online booking sites don’t serve the people who are ostensibly their customers.
United announced an end to change fees on most domestic tickets. American matched in less than a day, including more destinations. They’re extending change fee waivers on international, basic economy, and award tickets to the end of the year. And they’re letting Basic Economy customers have elite benefits again, too.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
