Southwest is offer a 15% discount on tickets purchased by April 21 for travel through October 30 using promo code DING15. The terms and conditions aren’t onerous. Discount applies to roundtrip tickets booked at Southwest.com. August 29, 2008 through September 1, 2008 are blacked out for travel with this discount. The discount doesn’t apply to Business Select, Business, or Senior Fares, and doesn’t take money off of taxes.
United Increases Change Fees to $150
Sometime last night United began loading new fare rules with $150 change fees for domestic tickets, up from in most cases $100 (some specific markets had and still have lower fees, but this applies to better than 90% of fares). I don’t see any announcements or news stories on this yet, but here’s the thread on Flyertalk. A dozen years ago the change fee was $25, ten years ago it was $50, eight years ago $75… Now most airlines charge $100, although as with baggage fees etc. the low-cost ‘no frills’ carriers frequently charge lower change fees. JetBlue charges $50 (or $40 if the change is made online). Southwest has no change fee, they apply the full value of a ticket towards new ticket purchases, but a same-day change involves buying up to full fare.…
Off to Roses, and Dinner at El Bulli
I had considered renting a car, and in the end that would have been the easiest. It’s just not that difficult a drive from Barcelona to Roses. Instead, though, we took the Catalunya Express train to Figueres. Cost was ~ 10 euros apiece each way. A car wouldn’t have been more expensive overall, though, because of the cost of cabs – a good 40 euros each way to and from the train station into Roses. (I’d still take a cab to and from the restaurant, though, for reasons I’ll explain). At the train station you stick your ticket in the machine to enter the area of the station with the tracks, but presumably any train ticket would work, no tickets were ever checked onboard in either direction, so why not buy the cheapest ticket and…
Barcelona Trip Report Continued – Le Meridien and Rambling Along Las Ramblas
Le Meridien Barcelona Just under 30 euro cab ride from the airport, and I walk into the hotel and up to the checkin desk. Relatively quick and painless, but not suite available. In fact, no upgrade available. “It is a very nice room, it is an upgrade, trust me you will like it.” It’s the smallest room I’ve ever seen in Europe, and it faces a side street. Back down to the desk to renegotiate, they give me a somewhat larger standard room – this time facing Las Ramblas with a little standup balcony to walk out on. The only downside is that it’s two beds joined together rather than a true King. Ah, Europe. This is an improvement, at least. Service isn’t great here, no one helped me with my bags. And my first…
Columbus Dispatch Knew Skybus Was Folding, Didn’t Report it, and Offers Silly Self-Serving Excuses
The Columbus Dispatch was told by Skybus that the airline would be shutting down. And instead of reporting the story, they sent a reporter to fly the last flight and cover the story. The reporter traveled alongside all the passengers who would soon learn that they had no return ticket to Columbus, instead of letting folks know they might not want to get onto the plane. The paper explains that they honor news embargoes — they were given the information on the condition they not use it until 9:30pm. They’re proud of themselves for actually sharing the information earlier… when another news organization already broke the story, they didn’t wait to post it either! Well, bully for them. We discovered that the local ABC/Fox television stations were telling people at the airport about the shutdown…
Aer Lingus Says They Won’t Honor Mistake Fare
Apparently Aer Lingus had a 5 euro business class fare to the U.S. This one never made it to Flyertalk, which I suppose is one reason I didn’t know it had happened. One source reported it as a fare to Boston, I’ve also heard it was valid to Los Angeles. The airline says just over 100 tickets were purchased, though I’ve also heard 300. In any case, the airline currently says they won’t honor the tickets, though it doesn’t sound like all of this is final yet. It’s highly unusual for a flight deal ultimately not to be honored. Hotel error rates are more hit or miss, but airfares are mostly good once ticketed. Occasionally an airline will back out, but even then I’ve frequently seen some sort of compensation given in return. So this…
Starwood Changes Singapore Airlines Mileage Transfer Ratio – Without Notice
Starwood has – without notice – changed the transfer ratio of Starpoints into Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles. Instead of a 1:1 ratio the ratio is now 2:1. This change apparently went into effect yesterday. Starwood will say it’s a function of the particular airline contractual arrangement. And it’s possible that Singapore insisted on this, they haven’t been particularly friendly or generous partners with anybody really. And they’re profitable, perhaps they don’t need to be. On the other hand, none of Starwood’s transfer arrangements have been improving for members over the past few years. United and Continental also moved to 2:1 ratios, though it also made sense in those cases that the changes were more or less dictated by those airlines’ credit card partner (Chase) who didn’t like the Starwood American Express offering a better deal…
USAirways to Offer Elite Coach Seats for Sale to Anyone
USAirways’ “elite” seats in coach are at the front of the plane, but unlike United those seats carry no extra benefits (such as additional legroom), you just get off the plane first. Elites get them at no extra cost, but starting May 7 USAirways will be offering them to all other customers during web checkin for an extra charge. Now, I wouldn’t pay extra for these seats. Non-elites will be boarding later and have a harder time finding overhead space which will presumably be taken by nearby early boarding elites. But this is a devaluation for elites, who on the rare flight that isn’t full will fface more crowded surroundings. The concept isn’t new, though, Northwest has done it for some time.
Barcelona for Dinner Continued – A British Airways Hop Across the Pond
Baltimore to London-Heathrow Flight BA 228 Depart: 9:10pm Arrive: 9:25am Class: Club World I really despise BA’s refusal to assign seats to business class passengers in advance. My wife and I were on separate record locators. I’m a British Airways silver and entitled to an advance seat assignment. She’s not. Despite a successful TCP (“to complete party”) request linking the reservations, I was unsuccessful in getting a seat assignment for her.. so I didn’t assign one myself, waiting instead so that we could secure seats together at checkin. 24 hours out I checked us in online. There was no problem checking her in all the way to Barcelona. My reservation wouldn’t allow it, I could only check myself in to Heathrow, and the website wanted me to wait until 24 hours before the Barcelona flight’s scheduled…
My Next Trip Report – Flying to Barcelona for Dinner
To some people it probably seems crazy to fly from Washington, DC to Barcelona for dinner. Somehow it doesn’t seem so crazy to me. And for foodies of the world, knowing that the dinner was at El Bulli probably means it doesn’t seem crazy at all. This will once again be a trip report in parts, so here’s the beginning. Pre-trip: Dinner Reservations and Flights In the fall of 2006 on a lark I shot off an email to El Bulli, asking them for a Friday or Saturday night dinner any time April through July. I thought I was being flexible, and that I was getting in at just the right time – about three days after their reservation book opened for the year. I knew that this was a well-regarded restaurant. All the rankings are subjective, controversial, and…
