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Posted by
George Hobica on Thursday, September 04, 2008 at 5:19 PM to
In case you missed it, American Airlines and Kayak.com are no longer friends. The short of it is that Kayak, when they list fare search results, sometimes send you directly to the airline's web site, but sometimes they offer a choice of booking with Cheaptickets.com or Orbitz.com. Of course, you'll pay $6 or $7 extra when you book with a third party (it's a convenience fee of sorts).
But what we don't understand is why wouldn't you go directly to Orbitz or Cheaptickets? Why go to Kayak and then to Orbitz when it's really the same fare?
Seems like American didn't get it either, and insisted that Kayak only list American as a vendor. As a result, Kayak pulled American's fares. AA, in its original suit, claims that Kayak was continuing to list its fares, but we don't see any evidence of that. AA wants Kayak to stop using its name, logo, and flight information.
Of course the reason that Kayak includes those other sites is because that's how they make money. They also make money by checking-by-default a pop up window to Priceline.com. (In our opinion, that's a bit naughty: we'll check the box ourselves, thanks, if we want to search Priceline.)
Kayak claims (PDF format) that they stopped listing AA because of "American's demand for incomplete, and therefore biased, search results." Frankly, we don't see how not sending customers to a fare on Orbitz or Cheaptickets that's $6 or $7 higher is incomplete or biased. In Kayak's answer to AA's law suit, it claims that "American Airlnes published false statements concerning Kayak's economic interests" and that AA "intentionally interfered with Kayak's former and prospective customers...thereby causing Kayak to suffer actual damage."
This is great stuff! Basically, it's all about money and, in our opinion, not so much about the user experience on Kayak. When Kayak first began, we thought the whole idea was to send users directly to the airlines, distinguishing the site from Travelocity, Orbitz, and so on. But perhaps there was not enough revenue in that model so they changed the process?
For a while, Kayak was listing fares on Southwest as well, but Southwest didn't like that, and now they just have a link to Southwest's site when you search for fares on routes served by Southwest. Clearly, the absence of American's fares on Kayak makes the site less useful.
And as one consumer commented on this issue:
"AA is not objecting to Kayak or Sidestep from selling tickets on AA, it’s the manner in which they are selling them. Based on the law suit Kayak is not selling the tickets based on the agreement in which they signed on to sell AA tickets. They are taking you, the consumer, to third party sites to sell the tickets and their agreement is to sell them from AA.com. By sending people to these third party sites AA is incurring additional fees to sell you the ticket which in turns makes ticket prices higher verses their own ticketing channel. From what I can tell Kayak was getting a preferred kick back from these thrid party sites to run the tickets through them and not AA.
So before you start blasting, read up on the subject before you make yourself look like a bumbling, overly emitional consumer.
I think AA is in the right on this one for a change…"
We would have to agree.
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Posted by
George Hobica on Thursday, September 04, 2008 at 4:51 PM to
The vast majority of thousands of respondents we polled said that airlines should have a separate section on their planes for parents with babies and small children. But would you actually pay for this? So far in our latest reader survey, 59% of you say you would indeed pay something extra for a child- and baby-free flight. Make your voice heard and and vote!
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Posted by
George Hobica on Thursday, September 04, 2008 at 2:06 PM to
In case you missed it, United announced last month that they would only have food for sale on trans-Atlantic flights in coach class. But consumers were up in arms, and so were employees.
No doubt they were concerned that other airlines wouldn't follow, and all else being equal, consumers would go for the free food.
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Posted by
Bo Borre on Monday, September 01, 2008 at 8:34 PM to
Europe/Africa/Middle East Airfares
Unless you've been wandering the desert for the past few years, you have no doubt heard one thing or another about Dubai. The rulers of this stamp-sized sandbox not much bigger than Rhode Island have certainly made no secret of their quest for world domination, or at least worldwide recognition, and aim to fix this insignificant pinpoint on the Arabian Peninsula firmly on the map of human consciousness by any means available.
Unlike their rich neighbors, flush with oil and petrodollars, Dubai has precious few natural resources to fuel their outsize global ambitions, so they have to rely on time-honored tools and tricks of the tourist trade as ancient as the Pyramids: grand architecture and awe-inspiring engineering, sheer ingenuity and lots of slave labor (OK, cheap imported labor) plus an almost unseemly dose of very modern marketing moxie.
In the mold and spirit of boomtowns like Las Vegas and Orlando, also created out of less than nothing, or less frivolously, the great trading ports of Singapore and Hong Kong, they are banking on the age-old premise that if they build it bigger, taller, longer, shinier and, perhaps, better, we—that is, you and everyone you know along with the rest of besotted mankind—will come, and bring plenty of cargo and hard currency.
A promise of eternal sunshine, unfettered fun and shameless conspicuous consumption is expertly designed to get us to buy into all the hype, hubris and huckster hocus-pocus of the place long enough to spend some serious money before we just might realize that, in the end, there really is no there, there. Of course, that's all a matter of personal taste and maybe culture and history and beautiful scenery really is overrated, especially when the golfing is this good.
Certainly, getting you and your shiny suite of Samsonite there is easier than ever. In the past year two daily nonstop routes have opened, with Delta flying out of Atlanta and Emirates serving Houston in addition to their existing New York route, now serviced twice daily, on some days by the Airbus A380 mumbo jumbo jet. Big whoop, but wait, there's more...
Over the next four months, no fewer than three new nonstop routes will be launched when United takes to the air from Washington and Emirates adds Los Angeles and San Francisco to their network, inaugurating two of the longest nonstop routes in scheduled service, although Singapore Airlines still holds the record with their New York to Singapore by-way-of-the-moon flights.
It's worth noting that so far only United is celebrating the launch of new service with an official sale, offering fares that are, in many cases, not the best around. And despite all this talk of nonstop flying, you can get there for considerably less if you don't mind changing planes, and possibly socks, on the way. One of the best deals we've found is just $900 from Chicago, perhaps as a consolation for being the only major international airport not blessed with a nonstop route to Neon Nirvana.
Finally, it should come as no surprise to anyone that in order to accommodate the massing hordes and all their luggage, Dubai is building the world's biggest cattle ranch airport with a handling capacity—and a duty-free shopping mall—expected to be twice that of any airport currently operating anywhere in the Solar System. This will serve not merely as the Gateway to Arabia but as the future crossroads for all things going East, West, North, and South. And if it doesn't quite pan out as planned, they can always lay claim to the biggest elephant in the world—a really, really big white one—and turn it into a space and aviation theme park.
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| Thursday, August 28, 2008 |
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Posted by
Tracy Stewart on Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 6:10 PM to
Airline Industry News
Well, there goes another one. Canadian and UK based Zoom Airlines has ceased operations as of today, after having filed for insolvency. Said Zoom founders Hugh and John Boyle, "The price of oil resulted in our fuel bill jumping by nearly $50 million in one year and we could not recover that from passengers who had already booked their flights."
Seems like only yesterday we were waiting for Zoom's final go ahead from the DOT to set up service between JFK and London Gatwick! Sigh.
Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are offering discounted fares to stranded Zoom passengers, and Flyzoom.com has listed (in addition to an apology) other carriers which service Zoom's routes, such as Air Transat, Air Canada, Air France, Fly Globespan, Canadian Affair, British Airways, Air New Zealand, Alitalia, and American Airlines.
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| Wednesday, August 27, 2008 |
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Posted by
George Hobica on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 2:26 PM to
Add Frontier to the growing list of airlines charging to cash in frequent flyer miles. Beginning Sept 15, they'll start charging $25 to cash in, and $75 if you do so 14 days or fewer before travel, for a total potential hit of $100. They're also upping the number of frequent flyer miles required on most itineraries by 5,000 miles. If you haven't already checked it out, see our handy airline frequent flyer fee chart.
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Posted by
George Hobica on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 12:57 PM to
We have honestly not seen any airline do this before. JetBlue is offering really cheap sale fares to various destinations, but only in one direction and only for one day of travel (travel days vary depending on route). Fares are available only on their site. And a note on their site says, "Offers change daily. Be sure to check back each day."
This is new, new, new. The fares, although they will probably only help a few people are really low (moving to Orlando and you were thinking of leaving on September 12? Well, change it to September 10 and fly for $49!). Actually, you can combine a cheap one way fare with a more expensive fare in the other direction, and save some cash, so as long as you have flexible travel dates, this could be a bargain
Fares are as low as $19 (Long Beach to Sacramento one way on September 16) and range up to $99 (Long Beach to Boston on October 20). Perhaps JetBlue looked at their inventory and saw a bunch of undersold flights and decided what the heck. The sale is titled, "Seven Days of Super Low Fares to Lots of Destinations" but it's not clear when the last day of sale is. Seven days from now? Or will they change the fares daily over the next seven days?
We'll be watching this very closely. In our humble opinion, more and more airlines will be bypassing the Kayaks and selling super low fares only on their own sites, as American, Southwest, Allegiant, and Spirit already do.
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Posted by
Molly Feltner on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 10:58 AM to
Fees up, dude! As a recent LA Times article points out, surfers are now getting hit with what might be the biggest new airline fee yet: checked surfboard charges. While fees for checked bags are up across-the-board, some airlines are now charging flyers as much as $300 to check a surfboard. However, the airlines seem to let golfers off the hook, only applying regular first and second baggage fees to golf bags.
To see which airlines are charging the most for surfboards, go to SmarterTravel.com.
Are the airlines unfairly targeting surfers? Post a comment below.
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