Why do numerous airlines, including those aspiring to be among the world’s best, keep focusing on improving the in-flight experience, but don’t seem to care what kind of service their customers receive before they even step foot on a plane?
It’s high time they understood that travelers are getting smarter, and mediocre reservation agents won’t be tolerated much longer.
In April, I wrote about my disastrous experience with Singapore Airlines’ award-booking agents, who were so poorly trained they might as well have worked for a third-world carrier. In May, I mentioned British Airways’ arrogance and refusal to offer the slightest apology after losing the luggage of two First Class passengers who had paid $12,500 per ticket.
This month, it was Turkish Airlines’ turn. The Star Alliance member has improved significantly in recent years, and spent a lot of money on advertising and public relations. Actor Kevin Costner, who ironically flies mostly on his own private plane — and flew me on it a decade ago for a Financial Times story — was hired to do TV commercials for Turkish. So was NBA star Kobe Bryant. The carrier’s motto is “Globally yours.”
However, in many respects Turkish remains a rather backward regional airline. It’s not that its reservations agents are not well-trained — that’s the case with much more advanced carriers. The bad experience with Turkish begins as soon as you dial the number of its call center.
Even though the center is open only during U.S. business hours, all agents are in Istanbul. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, except that many of them have a very poor command of English, and the connection is so bad you’d think it’s 1950. It sounds as if the airline uses cheap Internet-based technology to keep costs low. Many companies around the world do that, but I haven’t experienced such poor quality in years.
I called Turkish to change the date of a flight, and I knew the original booking class wasn’t available on the new flight, so the ticket would have to be repriced in the higher class. There was no change fee, so only a $265 fare difference had to be paid.
The truly global airlines have a very simple procedure in such cases: The agent reprices the ticket and — often with the help of a supervisor or the rate and ticketing desks — reissues it within minutes. To my utter shock, however, a supervisor informed me that the Turkish reservations center is not capable of reissuing tickets. So the ticket in question could only be reissued at an airport, no later than two hours before departure for a $20 fee — and that’s full-fare Business Class.
Seriously, Turkish Airlines? What year do you think this is? Do you really want to increase lines at airport ticket counters when something this simple can be done over the phone? So much for spending millions of dollars (educated guess) on advertising and PR — you’d be much smarter to invest that money in a 21st century reservations center.
A few days before the above-described experience, I noticed that Turkish doesn’t allow seat assignments to be made on its website, even in long-haul Business Class, and even when a booking is created on the site. I posted that on the carrier’s Facebook page and was informed that seats can be assigned no earlier than seven days before departure.
Why? Isn’t it more complicated to set such artificial deadlines than just allow customers to get a seat as soon as they buy a ticket? This is not a question of charging for seat assignments, because Turkish doesn’t do that. But why waste time calling reservations only to get a seat? It’s not like you’ll have a pleasant experience.
Related stories:
Singapore Air’s inept agents, dark side
British Air loses bags on $12,000 ticket
The peculiarities of airline agent training
American’s antiquated ticketing process
Continue reading about Airlines neglect non-flying experience
North American airfares are now published four times a day during the week, after the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) added earlier this month a filing feed at 4 p.m. Eastern time to the already-existing feeds at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 8 p.m.
This means that, at any of those times, a certain fare can be put on the market, changed or pulled off the market. It also means that a fare’s entire lifespan can be as short as three hours.
The 4 p.m. feed had been planned for months, as I wrote in my book “Decoding Air Travel.” Although the airlines update their data 24 hours a day, ATPCO sends that data out to Global Distribution Systems (GDS), which are used by airlines and travel agencies to book flights, four times a day during the week. On weekends, there is only one feed at 5 p.m. ET.
“ATPCO started this new time for the U.S. and Canadian subscription data feed on Oct. 3,” said Jay Brawley, the company’s director of customer marketing. “The weekend feed remains the same.”
Located near Washington Dulles International Airport, ATPCO is owned by 16 of the world’s largest carriers and the Federal Express Corp. Its only and much smaller competitor is SITA, which publishes some fares in Europe, Africa and Asia.
ATPCO sends out feeds with international fares every hour, except for several hours on Saturday night, Brawley said. Discounted international fares typically stay on the market longer than discounted U.S. domestic fares — sometimes for weeks.
The official filing feeds don’t exclude the possibility that a fare may be changed or removed at other times on a booking source directly controlled by the airline, such as its website. In addition, the data changes in those feeds can take an hour or longer to update in various booking systems.
How do you know that a low fare to a city you need to visit has been published? You certainly don’t have to wait for the airlines to announce a sale — in fact, as I’ve written before, “sale” prices are often far from a bargain. Thanks to the transparency provided by the Internet, you can actually keep an eye on fares, through websites like FareCompare.com and AirfareWatchdog.com. You can also subscribe to their e-mail alerts for fares between any two cities.
Reacting to a good fare — meaning booking it — quickly cannot be overestimated. In my book, I give an example of a missed opportunity from January 2008, when I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Just before she began her speech, I received an e-mail alert from FareCompare about a $99 one-way base fare between Washington and San Francisco. As it happened, I needed to book a trip to San Francisco, but I couldn’t act immediately, since I had to write and file a story for my newspaper. By the time I was free to look into booking a ticket, the fare was gone.
Not that there was anything I could have done in this case, but the experience taught me a valuable lesson: If you get word about a really good fare, book it as soon as you can. Most domestic fares usually stay on the market at least a couple of days, but there is never a guarantee, and some vanish within hours — the airlines can do whatever they want.
Related stories:
When an airfare sale is not quite a sale
DOT cracks down on airfare advertising
When airfares jump on you for no reason
Proper airfare advertising comes to U.S.
Airlines, want better GDS model? Unite!
Continue reading about U.S. fares now filed four times a day
Nicholas Kralev talks about his book “Decoding Air Travel” during a visit to Houston, TX, on Oct. 12, 2011.
You may have seen TV commercials featuring American Express or Capital One credit cards that promise points or miles with the clout to get you any seat on any airline without blackout dates. Those financial services companies try to distinguish their own loyalty schemes from airline programs, which restrict access to award seats.
Non-airline programs are not affected by award seat limits, because they don’t need award availability to book you on a flight. Instead, they sell you a regular revenue ticket, charge the ticket price on your credit card, then credit the cash amount back to your card and take miles or points out of your account, whose number is based on a standard formula.
Let’s say that you want to use your Capital One miles for a free ticket. The Capital One website performs a flight search and you choose a flight that costs $100. Once the ticket is issued, 10,000 miles will be deducted from your account.
While Capital One values $1 at 100 miles, the American Express Membership Rewards program converts $1 into about 80 points, though the precise number varies based on the type of card you have.
By any measure, that is a lot of points. If we assume that the average U.S. domestic round-trip ticket costs about $500, Capital One will charge you 50,000 miles and American Express 40,000 points. In comparison, you need only 25,000 miles from most airline programs — if there is award availability, which is a big if.
Of course, many airlines will also give you any open revenue seat on any flight, but for double the miles required for a “saver award” — they call it “standard” or “anytime” award. If you need a First or Business Class ticket, the airlines will actually give you a better rate even on a “standard award.” Such an award from North America to Europe in Business Class will be about 200,000 miles. Assuming that the average revenue ticket costs about $5,000, Capital One will charge you 500,000 miles and American Express 400,000 points.
It’s worth noting that the airline mantra about giving you the last available seat on a flight as a “standard award” is changing, and that privilege is no longer available to everyone. For example, it’s one of the benefits of United’s new Mileage Plus Explorer Visa card from Chase, which means that customers who don’t have the card — and are not elite fliers — won’t have access to that last seat.
The real advantage of the tickets purchased with non-airline miles or points is that they earn miles, because they are in effect revenue tickets — the airlines will never know that you didn’t pay money for them.
That same model is used by some hotel loyalty programs, including Starwood and Priority Club, which allow points to be redeemed for flights. Even some airlines offer such options, in addition to their regular award redemption opportunities. For example, United’s Mileage Plus Choices program is very similar to Capital One’s scheme, valuing $1 at 100 miles — only miles earned from Mileage Plus co-branded credit cards can be used for such tickets.
Related stories:
All your loyalty programs on one screen
Flying with Obama and earning miles
Donate miles or money to Haiti?
Continue reading about The benefits of non-airline credit cards
