TravelSkills covers a lawsuit in New York alleging that Uber’s surge pricing amounts to price fixing under anti-trust law. The suggestion in the suit is that Uber’s app creates a cartel.
Fundamentally, however, surge pricing is great.
Last week I wrote that American changed its fare rules to charge you more on many connecting itineraries and on trips that include stopovers. In fact, United and Delta have done the same thing, though I also explained how to beat the practice.
In one example I showed you how to save as much as 74% on a ticket. Multi-segment itineraries may now be more expensive than buying each segment separately on these three major US airlines. However you can beat the practice by pricing out each flight segment separately, and if cheaper buying the series of one-way tickets instead of a roundtrip, open jaw, or circle trip.
Chris Guillebeau, who has visited every country in the world and has spoken at Frequent Traveler University, is out with his new book Born For This.
His Art of Non-Conformity was about building work to support lifestyle, and inspired a generation of of people who worked and traveled and didn’t even distinguish between the two. His $100 Startup helped people get beyond barriers to starting a business, to figure out what they’re best at and how to take the leap.
But this may be his most ambitious and important project — to help you figure out what you want out of work, whether working for yourself or someone else, and find it.
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 flight attendant onboard this morning’s United flight 1246, a Boeing 737 from Sacramento to Houston, deployed the plane’s emergency slide on arrival, slid down, and walked off.
The flight attendant who exited the aircraft via slide has been removed from duty, though I think the United crewmember was the horse and United needs to be introduced to the barn door. Popping the slide would seem to be the crewmember’s declaration that they’re no longer working flights.
Richard Brason blogged that he “isn’t happy about” Alaska Airlines buying Virgin America. While it’s true that Branson doesn’t have a veto over the deal, as he says, he doesn’t say he would have opposed it if he did.
And while there may be some amount of ‘sadness’ Branson is almost certainly very happy with the sale for two reasons.
Air France is scheduled to restart Paris – Tehran service in two weeks. Their flight attendants objected to having to wear headscarves when disembarking as well as the airline’s ban on skirts for the flight.
They asked for the ability to opt out of working the Tehran flights on the basis of conscience. France is largely secular, and attitudes towards Islam are in many ways quite negative. France, and Air France, is also quite unionized. So imposing working conditions that subjugate women to the demands of Islam as imposed by Iran is naturally unpopular.
Air France had threatened penalties against crew not observing the dress code suggesting that “air crew were ‘obliged like other foreign visitors to respect the laws of the countries to which they travelled’.”
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As of this writing United, American, and Delta shares are up so far early in the trading day.
With Alaska’s announced purchase of Virgin America for $2.6 billion, a roughly 90% premium over the airline’s market value just two weeks ago, there was an immediate reception to the deal at the New York Stock Exchange.
Alaska Airlines and Virgin America held an investor call this morning to walk through the deal that came together over the weekend.
Regarding the Virgin America brand, Alaska “want[s] to learn more about it.” You ‘d think they’d have some idea the value of the brand and how (if) to deploy it before spending $2.5 billion — $600 million in cash and taking on $2 billion in debt (while picking up half a billion in cash from Virgin America). Currently Virgin America pays 0.7% of revenue off the top to Virgin for the brand.
Alaska claims they initiated the deal, and JetBlue got into the bidding after they started negotiating.
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 »
