Ticket prices to England just went down

by Grant Martin on

I’m not sure if there’s a secret sale going on or someone at US Airways messed up the feed today, but ticket prices to the UK for summertime travel just went down. This means that instead of paying 1200$ for that ticket from Chicago to London you now might be able to get away with about 600$. Quite an excellent price for summertime travel.

The fare sale seems to be centered solely around US Airways routes between the United States and London (LON) and Manchester (MAN) with travel between Monday and Thursday. If you’d like a dandy tool to check availability, use this Farecompare link to view a calendar. Plug in your favorite airport in the departure box to check if the fare is available from your city.

London not where you want to go? Consider booking your transatlantic leg into London then booking a separate ticket from there to your final destination (it’s called nesting). You can either go through a canonical search engine like Kayak or Opodo, or try your luck at a Low Cost Carrier via flylc.com.

Happy summer travels.

An ode to JetBlue

by Jerry Guo on

I’ve been rather harsh on US airlines lately, especially the all-purpose @$!%-hole that is US Airways. So since I don’t like to be a squeaky wheel–all the time–I’m going to switch it up and wax eloquent about JetBlue for a bit.

I just took their JFK to Pittsburgh flight, and it turned out to be one of the best flights in recent memory. That’s not saying as much about JetBlue’s performance as it is about the sad state of American aviation.

But props to Jetblue anyways. They already had something like 40 channels of free satellite TV on this flight (which was only an hour in the air). The pilot also had the courtesy to come into the cabin to make his initial announcement. The two flight attendants were very nice. Oh, and the headphones and snacks were free (looking at you, US Airways). Best of all, the flight was 50% cheaper than the next available one.

How to ‘executive bomb’ US Airways

by Jerry Guo on

So normally it’s not wise to utter the word “bomb” in the same breath when you’re talking about flying. But what to do if you’ve had a horrible experience with an airline, and customer service just won’t help you out?

Last week I posted about the five worst airlines in the US, which got a lot of comments. One of the readers wrote in about getting screwed on US Airways when he did them a favor and volunteered to take a later flight due to overbooking. But surprise surprise, US Airways was no help when he complained.

We have tried calling and writing to their Consumer Relations office. At this point, we have realized that our 24 hour delay was made on the basis of a false promise. Obviously, we will try to never fly on US Airways again; if we must, we will certainly never volunteer to be bumped.

So is this the end of the road? No, thanks to a technique perfected by the good folks over at Consumerist. It’s called “executive bombing,” in which you go straight pass the lowly customer service people to either senior management or the “elite” customer service desk, which takes care of the really angry customers. To do this, you’ll need to track down the contact info for these people, which I’ll talk about in a coming post. For now, here’s the number for US Airways Executive Office: 877-369-6512. Go get ’em.

The five worst US airlines

by Jerry Guo on

These rankings are straight from the US government (courtesy of the Department of Transportation), so at least they’re not entirely biased. Based off the number of complaints, the five worst US airlines are Northwest, Delta, United, American, and US Airways (being the worst).

None of this is especially surprising, other than maybe that complaints are surging–as usual. But what is surprising is that America’s most hated airline, US Airways (sadly most US travelers will agree with you hands-down on their status), is equally hated, if not more so, by its own employees. Ouch.

In a New York Times story, one worker wrote in, “… I hate to tell you but the interiors of our plans [sic] smell bad and they are filthy. As an employee I am embarrassed to admit working for US Airways.” It was also revealed how far the airline will go to cut costs–they’re currently on the lookout for a cheaper supplier of their famous pretzels. Right now, each package costs roughly 3 cents.

I’ve had several bad experiences with US Airways, though to their credit, the last time they randomly canceled my flight–and had the nerves to blame it on the weather–they ended up agreeing to send me a $250 voucher. But I generally go out of my way to avoid flying with them. And so should you!

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US Airways: no alcohol in or over New Mexico

by Catherine Bodry on

New Mexico‘s Regulation and Licensing Department has denied US Airways a permit to serve alcohol in the state — and that includes the state’s airspace.
The decision came after a temporary 90-day permit expired, which was put into place after a passenger who was allegedly over-served on a US flight got behind the wheel. Dana Pabst then drove the wrong way down I25 and hit a van carrying a family of 5. Everyone 6 people including Pabst were killed.

Other incidents where flight attendants reportedly over-served passengers were also taken into account.

US Airways can apply again for a state liquor license, but the company would have to show that it was “prepared to meet New Mexico standards in their practices.”

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