Things in the Sky calls it an interesting argument, but really that’s way too generous. Congressman James Oberstar thinks checked bag fees justify the government re-regulating the airlines. Deregulation has been credited with making airline travel affordable for the average American. But Oberstar pointed to the $2.7 billion the airlines earned in baggage fees in 2009 as evidence that consumers are no longer benefiting from the system. He said he believes there’s support in the House for re-regulation. But consumer pricing is still consistently on the decline as a result of deregulation. (People forget that the whole point of the regulated era was to maintain high fares to boost airline profitability, that it wasn’t until 1976 that the Civil Aeronautics Board began ‘experimenting’ with allowing regulated airlines to offer discount pricing.) And as Dan points…
Deltalina Guests on the Crew Lounge Podcast
The new episode of The Crew Lounge hosted by Sarah and Bobby features Deltalina as a guest. She’s still a flight attendant, teaches courses for Delta (not to mention doing promotional events), and she’s single. She’s happy to have folks come up to her and take photos, doesn’t like when people point from afar, and has been approached in an airport bathroom and just wanted to finish what she was doing… Turns out the name originated on Flyertalk, a passenger called her that on a plane and she went with it, and it took off (it’s been used on CNN and elsewhere, and became semi-official, she adopted it for Twitter, here’s Deltalina’s Twitter feed.). Katherine’s father is from Puerto Rico, speaks Spanish, often often flies Delta’s Latin American routes. Here’s the Delta safety video, with…
Continental’s Award Pricing Computer Problems, and What it Means for the Continental-United Merger
Continental agents do what their computer tells them to do. They aren’t especially empowered. And in a dispute between common sense and the computer, the computer is always right. Continental doesn’t permit ‘holding’ an award except when there aren’t enough miles in the account, and you plan to transfer points in (e.g. from American Express). My understanding has been that Continental will only put an award on hold for 24 hours, which is plenty to make a transfer since Amex points transfer more or less instantly, sometimes the points won’t be available for 15 minutes or so but it’s more or less immediate. Although each time I put an award on hold with Continental, the agents tell me they’re putting the awards on a three-day hold. The reservation on the Continental website will say just…
Can Lessons from Successful Grants Salvage the Essential Air Service Program from the Dismal Waste that it is?
Cranky Flier wants to learn lessons from the handful of government grants to subsidize air service that haven’t been total failures (but hardly represent the best possible uses of funds in a world of tradeoffs, hunger and homelessness and whatnot). His post is titled, When Airports Should Subsidize Airlines. The short answer, though, is that they shouldn’t. And Cranky almost understands that: As a general rule, if you as an airport think there’s some insanely large untapped market that nobody knows about, you’re probably wrong. The airlines do this for a living, and if there’s a missed opportunity, they’re likely to find it. In nearly all cases, it’s best to just work on lowering your operating costs as much as possible to try to attract service for the long run. Otherwise, you’ll just end up…
eBags 20% Off Sale with Free Shipping, a Good Opportunity to Pick up a Throwaway Carryon?
In addition to working with a nice roll-aboard, I like to have the occasional throwaway bag as well. The kind I tend to pick up for $20 in Southeast Asia. I hate to check bags but occasionally I want to overpack on the outbound portion of a trip, maybe bring a bunch of liquids with me or gifts, and I don’t want to bother bringing checking the bag on the way home, so a bag I feel comfortable just leaving behind. Ebags is running an extra 20% off sale through June 21. Combined with free shipping, this makes it easy to pick up a throwaway bag as well, something as cheap as $32 all-in. And of course it’s even less expensive than that because you can pick up 8% cash back via eBates or 10%…
When Did Hotwire Start Offering Their Own Rebates?
Hotwire provides credits towards future bookings with each purchase and they call those credits Hotdollars, and though I’m not all that frequent a customer of theirs my account also says that I have access to Hotwire Express. It’s apparently not too exclusive a service but does provide more personalized service and flexibility from real customer service folks and not just auto-responses. They never told me I had access to it, I just noticed it on my account when I started poking around this morning looking for more information on the Hotdollars program. Apparently the Hotdollars program has existed for at least a five years and somehow I never noticed it. For the longest time I hadn’t even created a Hotwire account, I just booked as a guest, what a mistake — I’ve been racking up…
Delta Offers Double Elite Qualifying Miles and Hefty Bonuses for Flights Out of a Few Cities
Delta is targeting travel originating from a few cities, the ones I’m aware of are: St. Louis, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and Nashville. You can test out other cities with the following URL: http://delta.com/XXXbonus (replacing XXX with the airport code you wish to try) Many additional cities have been tried over at Flyertalk without additional success. Registration can be done separately for each city’s promotion, and each roundtrip originating in that city will earn double elite qualifying miles and bonus miles as follows: 5,000 bonus miles to Delta hub cities 10,000 bonus miles to other cities in the North America 25,000 bonus miles for international travel beyond North America in coach 50,000 bonus miles for international travel beyond North America in busines class Purchase tickets by November 30 for travel through December 31, and naturally the bonus…
Delta’s Absurd and ILLOGICAL One-Way Award Pricing
Cranky Flier points out the absurdity of Delta’s one-way awards. Delta doesn’t offer one-way awards for less than the roundtrip price, they just price the award as a roundtrip at double the mileage cost of the segment you choose. So if only ‘medium’ awards are available for a simple domestic one-way flight, that’s 20,000 miles one-way so 40,000 miles roundtrip. And the one-way domestic segment is 40,000 miles. Note that if only high is available, then the one-way would be 60,000 miles. Now, a one-way award with last seat availability in domestic coach on United or American would be 25,000 miles. See the difference? But as Cranky points out, if you needed last seat availability on Delta (60,000 miles for a one-way) you’d just book last seat availability outbound, and pick a random return flight…
ANA Website No Longer Allows Members Without any Miles to Search for Star Allaince Awards
I woke up this morning to some disturbing news. The All Nippon Airways website award search page is the killer app for searching out Star Alliance awards. The site displays award inventory for all Star Alliance members, and is easy to use (more or less). Sometime overnight (here in the US, presumably sometime in the morning over in Japan!) the website introduced a new restriction: The Partner Flight Award search function is not available for passengers who do not have any mileage balance. Makes sense, Star Alliance members the world over were using the ANA site to find their award space and then calling their home programs to book awards. Either ANA got tired of having their system resources used by folks who are only nominally members of their program, or other member airlines pressured…
Alaska Improves Baggage Delivery Guarantee: Your Bags are at the Carousel within 20 Minutes or They’ll Give You 2000 Miles
Take that, Domino’s! Alaska is increasing their first checked bag fee, but continuing to exempt all elites and reducing the fees on checked bags beyond the first one. What’s more, they’re improving their Baggage Service Guarantee. Since July, 2009 they’ve offered 2000 miles (or a $20 discount on a future flight, who would choose that?) if checked bags aren’t delivered within 25 minutes of a flight parking at the gate. They now guarantee checked baggage delivery within 20 minutes. Several thoughts about the improved baggage guarantee: 1) If they’re going to charge for checked bags, this makes it go down easier. 2) It’s really impressive that they can get baggage working so smoothly as to promise this. It shows a real commitment to deliver results, something that’s hard to imagine most major carriers doing. 3)…
