Airline cancellation fees worse than baggage fees

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Airlines rely on you to have minor and major personal crises. Everything from changed meeting dates to family emergencies generate around $2 billion in change and cancellation fees a year, according to the Department of Transportation. That’s pretty much twice the amount the airlines pull in from extra bag fees – a measure that’s already been lauded by the Wall Street set for its impact on the airlines’ finances. For American Airlines parent AMR, for example, change and cancellation penalties came to $116 million for the first quarter of the year, while baggage fees amounted to $108 million.

These penalties, lamented almost universally by passengers, upped airline passenger revenue by 3.2 percent in the United States. As usual, business travelers get screwed most (probably because they travel most. They paid the bulk of $527.6 million in first quarter change fees.

Even with fewer people climbing onto planes this year, increases in penalty amounts have led to a net gain in revenue for airlines from this type of fee. A number of the larger airlines upped their change fees from $100 to $150. JetBlue moved it from $40 to $100 – and saw first quarter fees surge 29 percent, from $25 million to $32.2 million, relative to the first quarter of 2008.

These change fees are actually pretty important. With the money they bring in, airlines can offer discounts elsewhere, financed by the extra income. And, they make it more attractive for passengers to buy full-fare tickets, that way they have a bit more flexibility. The more expensive tickets benefit the passenger … and of course, the airline.

Need help? If you’re flying Delta, look for the red coats.

by Jamie Rhein on

As much as I’m displeased about Delta’s new policy to charge $5 more for bags checked at the airport , I do have to say I was pleased with how friendly the gate people were on each leg of our flights to New Mexico and back this month.

I think the people I came across are naturally pleasant, but Delta is making extra efforts to ensure passengers feel as if they can get great service from a real person. The airlines have brought the Red Coats back. Red Coats are the customer service personnel of Delta’s yesteryear who are not tied behind a counter but are accessible to passengers in need. They walk around Delta’s service areas to offer assistance. Delta cut those positions years ago, but has decided that having people trained to be extra friendly and on hand may smooth over travel woes and keep customers flying Delta.

The people wearing Delta’s red coats have the ability to rebook tickets, hand out hotel vouchers and any other task that may make travel easier on the passenger. If it’s easier on passengers, it’s easier on everyone.

Delta has moved up a few notches in my book, not that the airline is keeping track of what I think, but having personnel available to smooth over upset is good for business in my opinion. For now, it sounds like the Red Coats are only at major airports. [USA Today]

British Airways says, “Sandwiches? You don’t need no stinkin’ sandwiches!”

by Sean McLachlan on

British Airways has announced that as of next week it will no longer serve sandwiches on its short-haul flights, the BBC has reported.

The move, which the airline hopes will save £22 million ($36.3 million) a year, will affect all flights after 10am that last less than two-and-a-half hours. Passengers will be served “snacks” instead, most likely meaning a tiny bag of pretzels and a thimbleful of orange juice in a little cup filled with ice. Early morning flights will still serve breakfast, such as it is.

The airline is also considering further cuts such as no more hot towels in Club class (my heart bleeds) and maybe even getting rid of free pretzels in economy.

So much for “Fly the friendly skies.” Oh wait, that’s United, and they went bankrupt and had to get bailed out by the American taxpayer. Sorry, I have trouble keeping my penny-pinching airlines straight. I’m still mad about BA opening my luggage and leaving it out in the rain at Heathrow. When it got to Missouri (two days late) my clothes were soaked and my books were ruined.

Ah well, the sandwiches I make at home and bring with me when I fly always taste better anyway. And I never put anything valuable in my checked luggage. I’ve seen people putting laptops in their suitcases. They obviously don’t read Gadling.

The Internet – an airline’s best friend, and their biggest enemy

by Scott Carmichael on

Not much has had a bigger impact on what happens behind the scenes at airlines than the Internet. Just 15 years ago, a flight involved a trip to a travel agent, a call to the airline or one of their now extinct City Ticketing Offices (CTO).

In this article, I’ll take a brief look at how the Internet has helped, and harmed the airlines.

The Internet as their best friend forever

Remotely accessible booking systems had been around for years before the Internet took over – and many of the old online services had some way to sell tickets through their application.

Business travelers and aviation freaks often had access to dial-up booking systems. Those systems were pretty horrible to use, required a complex array of text commands, and were nowhere near as friendly as the current web based booking engines. That said – for geeks, they were awfully cool to use, and booking tickets using them was much more fun than it is nowadays (anyone remember War Games?).

Once airlines learned how to embrace the Internet, they embarked on a one way trip towards getting rid of expensive legacy systems, some of which had been in use since the early 70’s.



The Internet is a one way ride to making a ton of money

Many of the things we used to take for granted are gone – and the Internet is to blame for that. Remember printed ticket stock? Those red carbon prints are gone from most US airlines (they are still used for specialized tickets and many foreign airlines still issue them).

Checking in at the airport used to involve a smile and someone handing you a boarding pass. Nowadays you check in the night before, and print your boarding pass at home. Major airports used to have 30 or 40 staffed desks, now they can handle all their passengers with just 4 or 5 people.

So, it is needless to say that airlines LOVE the Internet. They don’t need thousands of ticket agents, expensive real estate for ticketing offices, and in most cases, the first time you actually deal with an airline employee is when you step up to the gate.

From Internet savings to Internet earnings

Once airlines mastered the art of saving themselves a ton of money, they started to use the Internet to make money. Online check-in has become so popular, that people who don’t use it are being penalized. If you want to get in touch with an old fashioned phone agent to book your ticket, you’ll be charged a fee. United Airlines wants $25 per ticket booked using their phone agents.

The future of the Internet for airlines is simple – everything you want to do, will be done through their online tools. When upstart airline Skybus started flying in 2007, they did not even invest in phone lines – complaints, questions and other queries had to be emailed to them. Of course, they may have been a little ahead of the curve, because they were bankrupt in just 11 months.


The Internet as the enemy

With the proliferation of social networks, the Internet is slowly coming back to bite the airlines in the behind.

Information spreads faster than ever, and news (good and bad) can quickly go “viral”. One example of how the Internet actually hurts their bottom line, is when someone discovers a fare mistake.

Fat finger deals

Even though airlines use more technology than ever behind the scenes, a lot of the processes are still supported by real people. And anywhere people are involved, someone is eventually going to screw up (badly).

Airlines work with thousands of airfares – every single city pair has a long list of fare codes, specific dates for those fares and hundreds of other pieces of data. A “fat finger deal” happens when someone sitting behind a computer mistypes – instead of expecting customers to pay $500 for a flight, they’ll load it for $50, or $5. In other cases, an airline may forget to charge additional fees.

Recently, a large airline loaded 100’s of fares to Europe, but forgot to include the fuel surcharge. In the past, it would take quite some time for travelers to discover this, and even if they did, it would probably only make it to a couple of their friends through email.

Nowadays when something like this happens, someone discovers it right away, and in a matter of minutes the news is being shared with millions of people.

When you can fly to Europe for just $250 all in, news travels very fast. Services like the popular Farecompare can find out of the ordinary airfares within minutes, and share them as soon as they discover them.

In the past an airline may have been able to fix its mistake before more than one or two hundred people took advantage of it – nowadays the damages could be in the millions before they even notice something is wrong.

Any PR is good PR no longer applies

The old mantra “any PR is good PR” no longer applies to the Internet. When United Airlines broke the guitar of one of their customers, the guy vowed revenge.

That revenge resulted in a song about how useless United Airlines is, and has been watched by over 4 Million people.

I’ve seen some “specialists” claim that this didn’t really hurt United Airlines, and it is indeed debatable whether a popular Youtube clip can hurt them, but like with many viral clips, this one made the crossover to old school media. I’m pretty sure that is when the United executives started to notice they really screwed up.

Newspapers, TV stations and magazines all devoted some of their coverage to an airline throwing a guitar, breaking it, and being too incompetent to pay for its mistake.

A quick web search shows that almost every TV news station in the country covered this – and there is no denying that this severely hurt the brand name (if it could be damaged any more).

In the past, a seasoned journalist would contact their favorite PR rep at the airline, and ask for an “official statement”. Nowadays, the news is considered old by the time the old school press covers it.

Airlines invested in employees to be hip and interesting on Facebook and Twitter, but now those people suddenly have to learn damage control as people start Tweeting about how horrible the airline is. When one of the trending topics on a social network is “United Sucks”, even the best PR flack won’t be able to put a positive spin on that.

Galley Gossip: A weekend in Chicago- talking about blogging & a quick trip report

by Heather Poole on

It’s been a few years since I’ve had a nice long layover in downtown Chicago, so I’d forgotten what a truly wonderful city it is. You see, whenever I’m visiting the Windy City my crew and I usually get stuck at an airport hotel, if we even leave the airport at all. So when I got an invitation to speak at the travel blog exchange conference, I decided to make it a long weekend. I also decided to bring my mother along.

Our flight from New York departed to Chicago on Friday. Saturday we spent the entire day wandering around and exploring the city. More about that later. Because on Sunday, I, yours truly, actually sat on a panel with some of the most powerful travel bloggers around. In fact, I took a seat right between Sean Keener (co-founder of Bootsnall) and Nomadic Matt. And on the other side of Matt sat Michael Yessis (co-founder and co-editor of WorldHum). Honestly, I’m not even sure what I was doing there, but I was very excited about it and I do hope someone photographed it. Because we were there to discuss how to keep a blog lively, I won’t bore you with the details of “lively” blogging, but I will share a few of the questions and answers I think you might find interesting.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE STORY ON YOUR BLOG AND WHY: I couldn’t narrow it down to just one post, so I shared my three favorite posts…

  1. THAT DAY – 9/11: This is the most serious post I’ve written to date. The best part was AOL featured it on 9/11 last year and it inspired millions of people to share their own stories of that tragic day, a day that not only took so many lives, but also completely changed the way we travel today. Some stories were so emotional they made me cry. Powerful stuff.
  2. FLIGHT ATTENDANT PET PEEVE #1: ANSWER PLEASE – This is my very first Gadling post. Over 700 people responded and the majority of those comments were not nice…not at all! In fact, it felt like 700 drive by shootings. I learned very quickly I needed a tough skin in order to write about what I do for a living, and to shake things off, and not take the comments personally. That was a huge lesson. I now work hard to show that flight attendants are nice, good people, who are also smart and interesting. Because we are!
  3. THE HOTTEST TREND ON THE AIRPLANE SINCE THE MILE HIGH CLUB: The laviator post is one of my favorites not just because it was featured on MSNBC and National Geographic, but because so many people responded and joined in the fun. I never expected that! I love including my readers, whether it be by having contests, sharing letters, stories, photographs, whatever, so if you’ve got something to share, let me know!

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVIDE FOR YOUR READERS: An escape from day to day life. At least that’s what I hope to provide for readers who are unable to travel as often as they’d like. For those who do travel regularly, a chance to see what’s going on behind the galley curtain. Because aviation enthusiasts really are curious. I also enjoy educating my readers by allowing them to “see” what it’s really like to be a flight attendant and letting them know why we do the things they do, because honestly, we really aren’t on a power trip, we’re just enforcing FAA rules, rules that are really quite simple.

HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR BLOG ALIVE WHEN YOU’RE NOT TRAVELING: Thank goodness for readers who inspire posts with their comments and questions.

And now for my quick trip report….

WHERE DID I STAY? Hotel Burnham. We got quite a deal on Hotels.com. For just $129 / night we had an amazing view on the 15th floor in the refurbished, 105 year-old, Reliance Building . Located in the theater district, the pet-friendly, boutique hotel is a short walk from Millennium Park. In the lobby they offer a complimentary wine reception from 5-6 pm. The rooms are plush and tastefully decorated, the beds are comfortable and set against a bay window overlooking the city, and a zebra print bath robe awaits you in the closet. What more could you ask for? A Nordstrom Rack, you say? Right next door.

MY FAVORITE MEAL? Fish and chips at The Gage. They weren’t too crispy or even greasy. They were, however, perfectly flakey. Not only is the food amazing, but the portions are huge. The atmosphere is a mix of cool and contemporary, and while the prices are a tad bit high, it’s totally worth it. Especially if Oliver is your server.

MY FAVORITE THING TO DO? Walk around Millennium Park. I don’t know what I loved more, the Opera singers practicing at Jay Pritzker Pavilion in the middle of the afternoon, the gorgeous gardens at every turn, the kids splashing around in Crown Fountain, or the family fun festival we were lucky enough to run into, all while just wandering around.

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