Twitter + Fares = Twares

by Brenda Yun on


Twares may not be a word in the dictionary now, but it might be a common word in travel vocabulary soon.

Twares is a noun, and it means you can get special, time-sensitive fare offers from United Airlines if you follow the airlines on Twitter.

A tweet was sent from @UnitedAirlines at around 11:10 a.m. ET on Wednesday to promote a special $63 each-way “Tware” between Washington Reagan National and Chicago O’Hare. The first tware has expired, but United is holding a 10K Twitter follower challenge (it’s at just over 5,000 followers right now). When it reaches that number, another tware might pop up.

It’s time to stop stalling and join Twitter!

You can find Gadling on Twitter, as well as most of the Gadling Team: Mike Barish, Kraig Becker, Catherine Bodry, Alison Brick, Justin Glow, Aaron Hotfelder, Tom Johansmeyer, Jeremy Kressmann, Heather Poole, Jamie Rhein, Annie Scott, Karen Walrond, Kent Wien, and Brenda Yun.

U.S. Airlines hoping for a successful summer

by Scott Carmichael on

Let’s file this one under “boo hoo”.

U.S. Airlines are hoping that summer air travel will help dig them out of the slump they have been in for the past year(s). As business travel has plummeted, consumers trying to escape all the doom and gloom for a couple of weeks of R&R is pretty much all they have left to hope for.

So, if summer travel is this important for them, you’d assume they would take the time to load some juicy low airfare for us, wouldn’t you?

Sadly, they want to have their cake, and eat it, as airfare prices for the summer months are absolutely atrocious.

Some examples of the fares loaded at the moment:

United Airlines – Chicago to Las Vegas in June – $521
United Airlines – Chicago to Paris in July – $1054
American Airlines – New York to Paris in August – $939
American Airlines – Los Angeles to Hong Kong in August- $2054
Delta Airlines – Atlanta to Paris in September – $1023
Continental Airlines – Newark to Amsterdam in August – $948

None of those fares are exceptionally cheap, and in a time where the airlines claim to be hurting so badly, it isn’t exactly like they put effort into lowering prices to help passengers.

In fact, I’m guessing that the airlines just assume (and hope) that you and I will be so eager to travel, that we’ll pay anything.

These high prices will have a bad effect on summer travel – it will force passengers to sit and wait for fares to drop, making their vacation plans even more complicated. You’d think the smart airlines would want to offer something good now and lock passengers in as early as possible.

Of course, only finding bad fares may force people to completely abandon their plans and stick to a more budget friendly trip.

For tips on how to squeeze the most out of your trip, check out this handy guide by Tom, or go through the budget destination posts we’ve written for you.

Spirit Airlines staff fed up being called DD MILF’S by their employer

by Scott Carmichael on

The hard working cabin crew at Spirit Airlines are fed up – they are annoyed that their boss is inviting passengers to check out their DD’s, and asking people to come book a “MILF”.

For those that missed out on a “movie classic”, MILF is a reference from American Pie, and the abbreviation means “Mother I’d like to F**K”.

That’s right – Spirit is using that cheeky reference as a way to get passengers on their low cost flights. In the world of Spirit Airlines, MILF means “Many Islands Low Fares”, a reference to their $9 island flights.

Oh, and DD? It doesn’t refer to the breast size of their staff, it’s just a way of saying “deep discounts”.

Still, the cheesy innuendo has become so much of an issue that the staff have asked their union to force Spirit to pull the series of ads.

Another hot issue is ad placement – Spirit began selling ad space on tray tables, cups and napkins. The next item in line for ads was the staff apron which has become a placard for Bud light, and the crew is fed up with it.

Union reps claim that flight attendants will have a hard time telling drunk passengers that they will be cut off from booze sales, when they are walking around as walking beer commercials – and I happen to agree with that.

Of course, the airline says the initiatives help the company grow, and secure jobs, but there have to be better ways to make a few bucks, especially if it is annoying your staff this much.

(Via: Foxnews.com, image from Zazzle.com)

Fat finger deals – should your airline or hotel honor them?

by Scott Carmichael on

A fat finger deal is the name given to airline deals where someone “with fat fingers” missed a zero, or put a comma in the wrong place when entering air or hotel prices.

The deals pop up more often than you’d think in this day and age, but airlines are starting to fight back. In recent years, some of the better fat finger deals would get you from the US to most European destinations for $20, or from LA to Fiji for just $50.

The mistakes are human, and despite all the computerized air fare systems, at the end of the day there is still someone locked away in an office who is responsible for loading the thousands of various air fare combinations into a computer terminal, and I’m sure we all know that when people get involved, something will eventually go wrong.

In the past, airlines would do one of several things;

  • Ignore the problem and let people benefit from the screw-up
  • Let people know the deal would be honored, but only on a smaller scale, hotels would let people stay a few nights instead of the months they’d often book
  • Let people take the trip AND try to benefit from all the good PR they create by honoring it

Nowadays airline are in a world of hurt, and any kind of screw-up that could cost them money has to come to an end. When passengers grab one of these fat finger deals, the airline will simply cancel it, and in most cases won’t even bother to inform them.

A natural reaction to this behavior is that the airline is perfectly within its rights to do so – it was an honest mistake, and they have page after page of fine print protecting their business practices. But there is one very simply reason why I don’t think the airlines deserve to get off easy – mistakes are not a one way street.

If you book a non refundable hotel room and made a mistake entering the date, you are screwed. If you book a ticket on the airline, but make a spelling error in your name, some airlines will charge you $90 to fix it. Airlines have perfected the art of making money off your mistakes, but when they mess up, they simply make the problem go away.

%Poll-25742%

At Least One Country is Getting Tough on Hidden Airline Fees

by Josh Lew on

Hidden fees are ta reality of air travel. Fuel surcharges have finally dropped, but not gone away. then there are airport taxes, insurance charges and administrative costs. The small nation of Singapore is trying to crack down on undisclosed costs by forcing advertising to include a full disclosure of costs and fees. Eleanor Wong, chairwoman of the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore (ASAS), said that a “media advisory” announced last year did not lead to the kind of full price disclosure that she had hoped. So more stringent measures had to be taken.

“The idea is that these are non-negotiable add-ons and should be treated as an integral part of the fare. With the practice of adding fuel and other surcharges becoming prevalent, we thought it would be useful to issue a specific clarification that would apply to the general principles of fair advertising specifically to the travel industry.”

To enforce this new law, ads that do not fully disclose prices will be suspended. For once, Singapore’s authoritarian bureaucracy might have actually done something useful.

[Via TTG Asia]