United to charge for meals on international flights

by Grant Martin on

Gradual reductions to in-flight meals have finally reached the international market. It used to be that everyone on the aircraft got a meal, wherever where you were going or in what class you were. That slowly devolved to meals in first class on some long-haul flights (exception: Continental, where all meals in domestic are still free!).

Now, spurned by cost cutting measures across the industry, United Airlines has announced that they’re discontinuing meal service on some of their international flights.

From Washington DC‘s Dulles airport, flights to Europe will now offer food for purchase instead of the standard “chicken or pasta” choices. Nine dollars will get you a salad or sandwich while six buys a snack box. I found no mention of warm food in this Bloomberg article.

To reiterate: they aren’t even charging you $9 for the soggy chicken that you used to get.

As to whether the changes will be unrolled to the rest of the international legs, the airline is still not sure. They’ll be taking input from passengers after this trial period to see how poorly it’s received.

And poorly received it will be. On a three or even four hour flight across the country I can see how someone can gorge up on food beforehand and make it through the itinerary. But on a nine hour flight you need to eat at some point. And unless you brought a sack lunch you’re going to be forced to pay whatever prices they’re charging. Yes, they only take cash.

Take this opportunity to send a note to UA protesting the changes. There’s still time to reverse the tide.

10 tips for smarter flying


Other Trouble in the Skies


British, American and Iberia Airlines to sign cooperation agreement

by Grant Martin on

The UK’s British Airways, American Airlines and Spain’s Iberia this morning announced that they would soon be cooperating on flights between North America and Europe while they would also start to collaborate and expand on other routes together in the Oneworld Alliance.

Are the airlines merging? No. But aren’t they already all part of the Oneworld alliance? Yes, they are. What the airlines have agreed to is tighter collaboration among their operations. Ground operations, codeshares and mileage programs will be better integrated to ensure seamless operation among carriers (read: keep passengers hooked in the alliance), while costs and overlapping spending will be reduced.

It’s important to note that the airlines will continue to operate independently, similar to the Continental and United collaboration announced earlier this year. What’s not clear is whether they will be collaborating on pricing. As Virgin Atlantic, the main competition, sulks about the conglomerate having over 50% of the landing slots at Heathrow, many have noted the potential for monopolistic pricing among the new bedfellows.

So will prices actually go through the roof? Technically, less competition in the market suggests that prices may have the potential to rise — but there are still plenty of carriers and entry points into the EU. American, British and Iberia may soon have a good handhold on Heathrow (Sorry, Virgin), but Amsterdam, Gatwick and Frankfurt are still wide open, so with a little bit of creative routing you don’t have to call of your summer vacation.

Several Oneworld airlines are filing for antitrust immunity to get the ball rolling on the cooperation agreement — should this get approved, expect to see small changes in operations over the course of the year.

Top off that United frequent flyer account with Award Accelerator

by Grant Martin on

United Airlines just fired up a tool on their website called Award Accelerator, a tool that essentially lets you pay to double or triple earned miles on any of your flights. Basically, you pay a sliding fee on check-in that effectively equates to three cents per mile, then at the end of your flight the airline dumps the bonus into your account.

So say you’re flying 500 miles from Detroit to New York City. Pay fifteen bucks and you can earn 1000 miles for the trip, or pay thirty and you can earn 1500.

So when is this useful?

Well, if you divide the cost of a regular domestic award ticket, 25,000 miles, by 0.03 cents/mile, you get a total of 750$ spent for those miles. In other words, if you bought all of your miles for an award ticket this way you would be paying 750$ for that ticket — too much for any old domestic ticket. So it doesn’t make sense to double or triple your miles on every flight.

The instance in which this tool might be handy, however, is when you need just a few extra miles to reach that award tier from which you can book. You’re at 24,000 miles, you’ll earn 500 on your next trip and want to push that to 25,000, for example. In this case, it makes sense.

Just try not to make a habit out of it.

Struggling airlines close airport lounges

by Grant Martin on

Scrambling to cut costs at every corner, airlines have now turned to their airport lounges as possible ways to save money.

If you’ve ever been walking through the airport and saw a business person on a Blackberry weaving through the crowd only to duck into a room labeled “Red Carpet Club” or “Admiral’s Club”, you know what I’m talking about. Airport lounges were created as a way to award elite and first class passengers for their business, make a little money on memberships and provide haven from the oft busy airport terminals that we deal with on a daily basis. For me, they’re a lifesaver, while others only view them as an extravagance.

Unfortunately, some of them just were not making enough money to justify their existence, so many airlines are closing their underutilized or overstaffed lounges. Delta just announced that it’s closing nine of its Crown Room Clubs, while United similarly is closing four. You can check out the UA lounges being closed here, while you can find the CRC’s that are still active here.

At the very worst, those who hold memberships to either clubs that are closing may be able to use partner clubs — holders of Crown Room Club cards should be able to get into other Skyteam lounges while United members can use Star Alliance lounges.

And if those aren’t an option? Try a magazine.

[Thanks to Moody75 for the link]

The hunt for the missing dog in Dulles continues

by Grant Martin on

For those of you following the story of the the solider’s dog that was lost by United Airlines earlier this week, you can now get updates on the unfolding events on the website helpfindjeddah.com or via a Twitter feed that they set up.

Apparently, enough people had caught wind of the story via the web such that there’s a serious movement towards finding the animal — well over five hundred people are now following the feed, garnering enough attention to get the Washington Post to run an article this morning.

In it, we learn some new facts about the debacle, including the interesting note that the owners only fed the dog people food and are concerned about her ability to fend for her self on her own.

Judging from some of the intense comments we got on our earlier story, there seem to be two schools of thought on the attention and resources that this search is getting: either you think we should shut down DC tomorrow and form a human chain across the the metropolitan area or you think we should sack up and let things sort themselves out — haven’t you ever seen that movie Homeward Bound?

I personally am a bit divided. I do hope that we find the dog quickly and think that all of the effort that people have put into finding her is quite touching. At some point, however, we’ll probably need to stop consuming resources and leave the rest up to fate.