Booking Stragies for Hub Captive Flyers

by Grant Martin on

If you happen to live in a city where the airline market is dominated by one carrier (Minneapolis: Northwest Airlines, Houston: Contintental Airlines, etc), you’ve probably been subjected to the semi-monopoly that they can impose. It irritates me how they can complain about rising fuel and air traffic control costs while they charge 350$ for a one way flight from Detroit to Columbus Ohio. Yes, that’s 161 miles.

The thing to remember is that the price of tickets is dictated by the number of open seats and the demand for them; unfortunately demand is higher in hub cities where you have little choice of your carrier. But if you can get to a small feeder city where demand is lower, the price will often go down.

Take Detroit and Flint. The price for a DTW-SEAttle flight between October 15 and 22 is 716$. Plug in FNT-SEA though and you’ll get 536$. Often times, the leg from FNT will connect in Detroit anyway and you’ll get on the exact same flight that was 200$ more departing from Detroit. Sure, Flint is an extra 30 minutes away and you have to connect, but I’d do it for the extra money and frequent flyer miles in my pocket.

Another thing is, you don’t have to fly all the way back on your return trip. If your flight is from CDG-MSP-STC (Saint Cloud, MN), you can just get off the plane in Minneapolis and have your buddy pick you up from there. Be careful though, bags will check through to your destination (domestically) and the airline will cancel the rest of your itinerary. Just be cautious, plan well and more of often than not you can work the system to your advantage. And you didn’t hear that tip about skipping flights from me.

Bizzaro NWA/UPS 757 Takes to the Skies

by Grant Martin on

If you happen to be flying Northwest on or near a transatlantic (TATL) route in the near future, keep an eye out for the 757 with a UPS rudder. Looks like Northwest needed a replacement part and the only thing they could find was from a UPS jet. I guess if it comes to operating with a ridiculous looking plane for profit versus a broken plane with no profit you have to go with the money; but its also easy to see here how high of a priority aesthetics are.

A plane like this reminds of driving around in my hometown in West Michigan seeing the beat up junkers with off-color fenders and hoods. Heck, for a couple of years I even drove a ’93 Ford Ranger that was tarp-blue with black quarter panels. And from my past experiences with these type of vehicles, well, it makes me kind of feel like this plane is kind of jerry-rigged.

But hey, it flies, right? Off the top of my head, the TATL 757 flies between Detroit, Hartford, Amsterdam and Dusseldorf, so if you’re in those areas, stay alert. Here’s another picture.

Getaway Maps — The Perfect Cure for the Destination Blues

by Grant Martin on

Believe it or not, there are other places to go on vacation besides Cabo San Lucas. Heresy! Heresy, I know, but give me time to redeem myself.

The three main factors in getting away for the weekend are budget, time and location. Sure you could get away for the weekend to Hoboken, but it really doesn’t have the charm. And we’d all like to go to Fiji, but ticket prices aren’t too competitive right now.

What Farecompare has done is created a tool that factors those two variables into one that displays the lowest price of tickets in a region against a Google map. It’s called a Getaway Map; you know you want to get away at some point this fall, you know you’ve got three hundred bucks and you know you want to go somewhere in Central America. Plug in your hometown to the root Getaway Map page, click on the Central America page and you’re set.

Farecompare takes the cheapest fare from a broad survey of fares from the present to deep into 2008, so to get the price you want you may have to tinker around with the software. There can also be small discrepancies in price; international tax isn’t always calculated correctly and it will sometimes take a few hours for new fares to load (I’ll explain that later).

Along those lines though, one nice thing you can do is set up a fare alert to tell you when cheap fares to any particular region go on sale — Toledo to Europe for example. And since the fares load early, you often know about the sale before it shows up on Expedia and you can call your girlfriend in a panic telling her to break open the piggy bank. Not that I have done that.

Point is, Farecompare is a very powerful tool for those who are flexible on vacation date, budget and location. Plug in a few sample destinations and give it a try. Between you and me, Farecompare is one of the only three travel websites that I check multiple times a day.

Delta Opens up SKY360 Lounge in New York

by Grant Martin on

If you find yourself in New York any time over the next month, take some time to stop by the SKY360 Lounge that Delta opened up last week. Occupying an expensive piece of real estate on 57th street and 6th avenue, this new storefront is supposed to showcase the new changes happening at Delta over the coming months.

Among the cadre of activities for the public to experience within you’ll find:

  • A (complimentary) coffee and soda bar, serving cocktails in the evening, with little pods in which to sit and enjoy them. Bring your laptop for free wifi as well.
  • Samplings of the new, exotic menu items inspired by Delta’s celebrity chef. As dear Catherine and I pointed out last week, this is becoming the hip thing to do among airlines.
  • And my favorite, examples of the new leather coach and premium seats to be installed in the new 777 livery (pictured), integrated with the new Audio/Video On Demand (AVOD) system for your Sopranos fix.

Additionally, if you can manage to get your “friend in PR” to get you an invite, a variety of private events are happening in the evening, from an Esquire party to random hotties dropping in. I’m still trying to get there for a corporate event — keep an eye out for me.

Tips for Avoiding the Airplane Cold

by Catherine Bodry on

Recycled air, low humidity and close quarters — all these factors make you 100 times more likely to catch a cold on a flight. So what can you do, save from wearing a surgical mask and rubber gloves?

Ed Hewitt on Msnbc.com offers some fairly common sense suggestions. For example, Hewitt’s first tip is to stay hydrated. I know this, yet all that free booze on international flights makes an 8-hour trip so much more enjoyable. Drinking lots of water might help you after the flight, but sometimes it’s the here and now that counts. It’s a touch choice.

Hewitt also recommends washing your hands. I’m sort of appalled that he even needs to suggest this — I’d like to think that most of us are washing our hands regularly. When I travel I also bring handi-wipes and hand sanitizer for convenience — and no, I’m not a germaphobe. It’s just easier to sanitize than wash, dry, use a paper towel to open the restroom door so you don’t re-contaminate your hands, hold door with your leg while tossing the paper towel away, etc.

One unexpected tip is to use mouthwash to kill germs and add another layer of protection while also keeping your throat moist. Remember to carry nothing larger than a 3oz bottle.

How do you stay healthy on a flight?