Did you manage to outsmart the airlines before they outsmarted all of us on Saturday? Travelers had about 17 hours to book tickets without paying most government taxes, because of Congress’ failure to authorize funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) by midnight on Friday. Most carriers started pocketing that money at the very first opportunity they had.
I did book a ticket and saved about $50, but I must admit I didn’t expect the airlines to raise fares so quickly and deprive customers of any savings.
So what exactly happened? Shortly after midnight Eastern time (ET) on Friday, when the FAA lost its prerogative to collect taxes, airline reservation systems began dropping those taxes from ticket prices. I issued a $164 one-segment ticket on Friday — on Saturday, that same ticket was being offered for $150, with everything else the same, including the fare bases. I bought the ticket on Friday, because I wasn’t sure that taxes wouldn’t be charged the next day.
When I found out that they were indeed excluded, I decided to book another ticket — this one with seven segments, hence the $50 savings.
If you’ve read my book, “Decoding Air Travel,” you know that domestic fares are filed three times a day on weekdays, and once a day on weekends. That weekend feed at 5 p.m. ET was the first chance the airlines had to change fares — and they did, except for Alaska Airlines and Spirit Airlines. They seem to have refiled most fares to include the amounts they previously charged as taxes.
In other words, for 17 hours on Saturday, consumers were the beneficiaries of tax-free tickets. After that, the airlines hijacked the opportunity created by the FAA situation and have been making lots of money since. I’m actually rather impressed by the speed and scope by which they did it.
I should note that some smaller government taxes, such as those collected by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), are still being charged.
Is it fair for the airlines to exploit a government fiasco for their financial benefit? At this point, it doesn’t appear that anyone can stop them.
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My book “Decoding Air Travel,” which has sold hundreds of paperback copies so far online, is now available as a Kindle eBook on Amazon. Given the growing number of readers, I’ve decided to form a virtual Book Club to discuss various subjects covered in “Decoding” and share reader experiences affected by the book.
Amazon is offering the Kindle eBook on its U.S., British and German sites, priced in their respective currencies. The paperback version can be purchased only online in the United States and Canada for the time being, and will be available in bookstores as early as next month.
Although the paperback version is not being sold outside North America at this time, it appears that certain people are trying to make an easy profit by selling it on Amazon’s British and German sites at much higher prices than the U.S. list price. For example, someone has listed a “used” copy on Amazon.co.uk for GBP42, which is more than $67 — Amazon.com is selling new copies for about $28. I’m glad they think the original price doesn’t do justice to the book’s value. Perhaps I should consider making it more expensive.
The “Decoding Air Travel” Book Club will be an open forum via teleconference for anyone who has read the book and has questions for me or fellow travelers — or just wants to share thoughts and experiences related to any of the topics covered in the book. The virtual club meetings won’t be lectures or webinars, but lively and useful discussions.
We’ll begin on a Saturday, but for those who prefer a weekday, we’ll have another meeting later in August, depending on interest. Hopefully, those gatherings will become regular occurrences. If you are interested in participating, send me a message to reserve a spot and receive instructions on how to join the teleconference.
Finally, thanks to the nearly 250 people who have been part of my book tour in five cities so far. I’m taking a month-long break from touring and will be back on the road in late August. There are at least 15 more cities on the calendar.
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The transparency of raw airline data in recent years has been hugely important for our ability to secure the lowest fares and build the best itineraries. ExpertFlyer.com has been a pioneer in that endeavor, and now it has taken an extra step by showing government, military and other fares that have long been a mystery to most travelers.
I first began using ExpertFlyer soon after the website launched in 2005, and was happy to pay the $100 annual fee because it has helped me save thousands of dollars.
Last year, when I left the Washington Times and started teaching seminars, I naturally decided to use the site in my classes — and I received a complimentary subscription. In the interest of full disclosure, ExpertFlyer also donated $1,000 to the book tour I’m currently on. That said, I’m not at all obligated to promote the site in this column.
I’m writing about ExpertFlyer because of its usefulness to my readers. As I explain in my book, “Decoding Air Travel,” unless you are a travel agent or otherwise have access to a Global Distribution System (GDS), you are deprived of viewing raw airline data, such as fare tariffs and flight inventory, as it’s published by the carriers — but before it’s processed by automated booking engines.
This week, ExpertFlyer made available special government and military fares, as well as student and senior fares. The last two were not exactly secret in the past and could be searched on airline websites and online travel agencies, but having access to the raw data is no doubt very useful.
Being able to see government fare data, however, is a big deal. Only federal agencies can book tickets at those fares, but even if you never benefit from them, the information is rather revealing for an air travel geek like me.
The most significant feature of government fares is that they are usually much higher than the lowest regularly published fares, because they are fully refundable and changeable — but they are much lower than the normal full-fare prices available to businesses and consumers. Some companies do negotiate contracts with airlines, but the discount they get is typically between 5 and 15 percent.
Let’s look at the current government fare from Washington to Frankfurt on United — a heavily traveled route by federal employees. Because those flights are less than 14 hours long, only coach tickets are allowed. As of today, the base fare is $718 each way ($1,436 round trip) — the fare basis is YCA, which means it’s a full Y fare, earning 150 percent frequent-flier miles and requiring fewer miles to upgrade than discounted fares, and of course no cash “co-pays.”
Now let’s compare that to the lowest published Y base fare available to any of us — it’s $4,037 round trip. These are only the base fares, but as I learned a couple of months ago when I flew on a YCA fare for the first time, the government also enjoys a big discount on fuel surcharges, which run in the hundreds of dollars.
It’s worth noting that the lowest published United fare from Washington to Frankfurt as of today is $603 round trip, but it’s very restrictive and, of course, nonrefundable. United publishes the same transatlantic fares as Star Alliance partners Lufthansa, Air Canada and British Midland, but any flights on foreign carriers must be booked as United code-share numbers under the so-called Fly America Act. The same rule applies to American and its Oneworld partners, as well as Delta and other SkyTeam carriers.
In addition to the Y government fares, U.S. airlines have begun offering equally nonrestrictive fares with fare bases that book into discounted booking classes, such as L and K. Their downside is that they don’t earn bonus miles and upgrades on them are much pricier.
I’m still learning the government airfare system, but one thing I find hard to understand is why Carlson Wagonlit, the travel company that books travel for several federal agencies, charges almost $90 every time one of its agent touches a reservation — whether to issue a ticket, change it or cancel it. So much for “free” changes and cancellations.
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One of this column’s goals is to point out nuisances in the air travel system and help you avoid them or minimize their negative impact. As I welcome the many readers who have become subscribers since my book, “Decoding Air Travel,” came out, I’d like to tell you about one such nuisance.
As my regular readers are well aware by now, I always know in what booking class a future ticket will be issued. I search for availability in that booking class and choose flights with available seats. That’s why, even if I have to make a reservations with an agent on the phone, I know how much the ticket will cost before I make the call.
The only time when this strategy fails is when I need an airline to book a seat on a partner-carrier, and the ticketing airline’s agent can’t “see” availability in the respective booking class in the partner’s inventory. I’m not talking about award seats, so comparisons with United’s StarNet blocking practice would be misplaced — this is about revenue tickets fully paid for with money, not miles.
So why don’t agents see availability in a certain booking class or fare bucket on another carrier? It usually has to do with the Global Distribution System (GDS) they use to book tickets. For example, United currently uses Apollo and Lufthansa Amadeus. Although most of the time the two systems show identical data, there may be occasional delays, and a United agent may not see a Lufthansa seat displayed as available on Amadeus.
I can explain most things in the airline world, but British Airways and Iberia posed a new challenge last month that left me utterly perplexed. The two companies and Oneworld alliance members merged last fall, and they both use Amadeus, which would mean that their agents should see the same data on their screens — at least it would mean so to a logically thinking person. That person, however, would be wrong.
I was booking a trip for a friend, who is also a client, from Washington to Africa in Business Class. He has Gold status with BA and wanted to fly BA to London and connect to Madrid and on to Africa on Iberia.
According to the BA website, his destination doesn’t exist — many airline sites don’t show cities they don’t fly to, but it’s high time BA added the airports served by Iberia now that they are one company. Fine, I thought, what’s the other option? Naturally, the Iberia site, as the Washington-London BA flight could be booked as an Iberia code-share. There was one problem, though: Iberia priced the desired itinerary almost $4,000 higher than BA.
Clearly, the only thing left to do was to call BA — an exercise I don’t look forward to because of the long waiting time. When I finally got an agent at BA’s call center in Jacksonville, Fla., she said there were no available seats in Business Class on Iberia’s flight from Madrid to the African destination, which I’m not revealing on purpose.
I thought she was joking. Amadeus was showing seven open seats in the full-fare Business booking class I needed, which is J class on Iberia. BA doesn’t code-share that particular flight, so it had to be booked a “true” Iberia flight number.
I started scratching my head. How was it possible for BA’s Amadeus-powered computers to show no seats at all when there were seven? Perhaps it had to do with the point of sale (POS) — I’ve seen airlines alter the inventory on the same flight, depending on where you view the data. But both the BA agent in Florida and I were in the U.S. Still, I changed the POS from the U.S. to Europe, but there was no difference. I also called Iberia to verify the seats were indeed available, and Iberia’s agent in Miami saw exactly what I did.
The BA agent tried to explain the discrepancy by telling me that Iberia hadn’t “given” BA any seats, but I immediately asked her to stop making stuff up. There is no such thing as one airline “giving seats” to another — anyone can book a seat if the operating airline has published it in its inventory, even if the second carrier is not a partner of the first.
Despite all the mystery and frustration, that wasn’t the end of the world, I thought. I asked the BA agent to waitlist the segment in question. My plan was to call back in case another agent could find a way to “see” the seat I needed, and if that failed, I would call Iberia and have them clear the waitlist, since their agent had confirmed availability earlier.
I’ve done just that with Star Alliance carriers several times. For example, Singapore Airlines tends to be stingy with D class availability on intercontinental flights. Star uses D class on round-the-world Business Class tickets, and Singapore deems those fixed fares too cheap. If I issue a ticket with another carrier, it might waitlist a Singapore segment. I’d then call Singapore and ask a supervisor to clear the waitlist if he or she found it appropriate. I’ve also done that with Lufthansa, Japan’s All Nippon Airways, South Korea’s Asiana and others.
However, that simple procedure proved too hard for the merged BA and Iberia, both of which use Amadeus, as mentioned earlier. When I called Iberia back, the agent saw available J seats but said that only BA could clear the waitlist. Except that BA couldn’t, because its agents saw no seats. The Iberia agent’s claim sounded odd, because Iberia controls its own inventory, and I thought it had a way to indicate electronically to BA that a waitlisted seat can be confirmed. So I called back but got the same response from another agent.
Then I phoned BA again and asked the agent to call Iberia, hoping the waitlist could be cleared that way. After keeping me on hold for about 20 minutes, the agent hung up without coming back on the line.
I’d had enough of both carriers’ nonsense, so I took matters in my own hands. I called Iberia yet again and asked the agent to book just that one segment in question separately from the original booking. He gave me the new record locator, and I called BA again, explained the situation and asked that agent if she could incorporate the second booking into the initial one and issue the ticket that way.
She couldn’t but a supervisor was able to do it. Part of me was grateful, but the other part was frustrated that the previous BA agents I’d spoken with never offered me the option I eventually thought of, and wasted hours of my time.
What sort of a merger have BA and Iberia created if they can’t perform the most basic airline function — booking available seats on each other’s flights?
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