Australia
While most U.S. airlines have learned to be relatively honest with their best customers, many of their foreign peers have not yet realized that travelers are not as stupid as to fall for their PR spin and questionable practices.
It’s time for those carriers to wake up to the fact that it’s the end of 2011, and much in the airline industry is rather transparent to those of us who pay attention. Trying to persuade customers that bad news is actually good may be an essential PR trick, but in today’s hyper-connected world, it’s not hard to figure out someone’s true intentions.
Among the airlines still using the old playbook is British Airways, which is surprising for such a major and quite good global carrier. Last month, it drastically devalued its award redemption chart, but it tried to present that negative change as a positive one.
The clue came with the usage of the world “revitalizing” to describe the changes to the carrier’s frequent-flier program, Executive Club. At least they steered clear of “enhancement,” which is what many U.S. carriers used in the past, inviting much derision from frequent fliers.
British Airways announced a few weeks before the changes took effect that they were coming, but what those changes actually were going to be remained a secret until the very day they were implemented. That move showed gross disrespect for the company’s best customers who deserved much better for their loyalty.
In contrast, many U.S. airlines and hotel companies publish their new charts, as well as other program changes, months in advance. One recent exception was Delta Airlines, which didn’t really have an official global chart for more than a year, until it finally published one in February, effective immediately — actually, much of it was already in use unofficially.
Apparently, British Airways was afraid that many Executive Club members would rush to burn their miles before the last change — after all, there were plenty of miles on its books, partly thanks to its giving away 100,000 miles as a credit-card sign-up bonus. So it said that the number of award miles required for “97 percent of our routes” will stay the same or even go down.
In fact, that turned out to be false. In an attempt to save face when the new chart came out, the airline said it had meant 97 percent of the nonstop routes out of London.
While some of those nonstop routes have indeed become cheaper, there are many Executive Club members outside London who earned their miles hoping to use them for trips to cities other than London. Unfortunately, they are the big losers — the increases in those cases can be over 80 percent. Substantial premiums have been added to connecting and partner flights across the board.
Those changes, along with the huge amounts British Airways charges in taxes and fees on award tickets, have drastically devalued its miles. Just this week, I booked award tickets to Asia for two clients, and I really wanted to help them burn their British Airways miles. However, that particular award had almost doubled in price, and the taxes were over $1,200 per person. So I booked with another airline for nearly half the miles and $85 in taxes.
British Airways in certainly not alone in thinking that customers are stupid. Air Canada quietly started charging fuel surcharges on some partner award tickets earlier this fall. Did it hope no one would notice that they were asked to pay hundreds of dollars more than before? Finally, after Air Canada was exposed on various blogs, it admitted what it was doing and said that even more partner flights would be included in the new program.
And then there is the scandalous behavior of the United Arab Emirates’ Etihad Airways last month.
For two days in October, it advertised a First Class fare from Spain to Australia on its website for less than 400 euro. According to Spanish media reports, about 300 people bought tickets. The first of them traveled 10 days later, when an agent in Brussels noticed the fare and alerted the appropriate department. It was then determined that the fare was a mistake, and the passenger was downgraded to coach without any compensation. The rest of the tickets were canceled.
I’ve written about mistake fares before, but the issue here is not whether Etihad was wrong not to honor the tickets. I said scandalous because of a letter the airline sent to the passengers who decided to put up a fight and wanted to defend their rights through the media.
Etihad hired a law firm in Spain that in no uncertain terms threatened those customers in writing with litigation, if they dared to go to the media. The last time I checked, Spain was a democracy with freedom of speech, and the United Arab Emirates was something quite different. I don’t believe anything has changed since.
Related stories:
Airlines neglect non-flying experience
How much slack do the airlines deserve?
U.S. warns airlines on fare mistakes
Singapore Air’s inept agents, dark side
Continue reading about Airlines still think customers are stupid
United Airlines fulfilled its promise this week by finally allowing one-way mileage awards on its partners in the global Star Alliance. More importantly, it showed that its Mileage Plus program is truly an industry leader — it didn’t follow American Airlines in taking away stopovers on award tickets, which will save travelers many frequent-flier miles.
Mileage Plus has become one of the most customer-friendly loyalty programs in the world. As odd as it sounds, offering one-way awards is a rather progressive step, given how rare it is in the industry — for no good reason. United has been offering one-way awards on its own flights since February.
Stopovers on international awards are incredibly useful — they are usually not permitted on domestic tickets. I don’t use them all the time, but I do often enough to mourn their loss on United. They are partly responsible for my visits to 82 countries.
When American banned stopovers last year, its justification was that the introduction of one-way awards eliminated the need for stopovers — one can now visit two cities or countries by booking three one-way segments. The problem for customers was that such an award now costs many more miles.
It would have been easy for United to copy American’s move. After all, taking stopovers away would have taken more miles off its books and decrease its liabilities. United has historically matched various practices initiated by its arch rival, but this time it made its own decision. Mileage Plus members should be grateful — preserving stopovers will save them tens of thousands of miles per trip.
I must admit, I was a bit confused about the stopover policy, and an earlier version of this column said United was doing away with them. I was misled by a reservations agent last weekend, and by a sentence on United’s website, saying “That means no stopovers.” It appears that only applies to one-way awards.
I received a comment from a reader who had seen a thread about the column on FlyerTalk.com, which prompted me to speak with a supervisor at Mileage Plus. He checked his resources and assured me that stopover are still permitted on round trips.
I’ve been praising Mileage Plus repeatedly since Graham Atkinson became president two years ago. In February, I wrote about all the right things Atkinson did — one negative thing he couldn’t change was the infamous StarNet award blocking. At the time, he told me that no decision had been made about stopovers.
Atkinson left United in September, as part of the management changes resulting from the merger with Continental, but I’m glad to see that his approach to customer loyalty lives on.
By the way, don’t forget the 24-hour international connection rule, which lets us do a mini-stop en route, so look for those day-long layovers if you want to sample a new country on the cheap.
Continue reading about United keeps free stopovers on awards
The observation that everybody is a TV critic was made a long time ago, but in the last few years I’ve also noticed that most people think they know how to travel — both how to book a trip and how to handle all aspects of the journey.
At the same time, we keep hearing and reading horror stories about mistreated and overcharged passengers, ruined vacations, missed weddings or funerals. Those tales often end with the affected travelers’ solemn pledge never to fly the airline that wronged them again. But are the airlines the only ones to blame or should travelers share at least part of the responsibility?
Having flown almost 2 million miles and visited more than 80 countries, I’ve seen it all –- airline agents who offer completely different answers to the same questions, and others who simply make up rules to avoid dealing with an issue; flight attendants whose dislike for their job is evident in everything they do on board; rude and demanding passengers who fail to recognize when an airline employee actually does them a favor… MORE
Continue reading about Time for travel school — you are invited
Ever since electronic permits for foreign travelers to the United States who don’t need a regular visa became mandatory in January, I’ve been getting reports about confusion among both passengers and airport agents about some of the new rules. So I thought I’d try to clear things up.
It’s a particularly good time to do that, because after March 20, the Department of Homeland Security will impose fines on airlines that transport visitors with neither a visa in their passport nor approval by the new Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA).
The fines will be $3,300 for each non-compliant passenger, said Joanne Ferreira, a spokeswoman for the department’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division…
Continue reading about Airline agents make up U.S. entry rules
How would you like to fly to Australia in Qantas Airways’ luxurious first class on its new Airbus A380 aircraft for $1,200? You could actually buy such a ticket last week, but as regular readers of this column might have guessed, that was yet another case of a mistake fare.
Just like 2009, the new year began with a major airline making an error when filing a fare, and then deciding not to honor the issued tickets. As I wrote last January, Swiss International Air Lines published a $300 business-class fare from Toronto to several European and Indian cities. In November, British Airways filed a $560 round-trip coach fare from the United States to India.
On Wednesday, it was American Airlines’ turn. A frequent flier noticed that the $1,200 fare from Los Angeles to Sydney, which is typically an economy price, now booked into first class — not even business. Similar fares were available from other U.S. cities…
Continue reading about Airlines refuse to honor mistake fares
