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
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
Today’s column is rather unusual. I’d like to use this space to introduce the world’s first company to bridge the widening gap between the services provided by travel agencies and the growing and diverse needs of the sophisticated modern air traveler.
The launch of a brand-new website means that Kralev International LLC, the company I founded recently, is now officially open for business.
Kralev International is a very different travel consulting and training company. Its mission is to improve its clients’ travel life in ways they never thought possible. It helps both businesses and consumers significantly reduce travel costs, increase convenience, comfort and luxury, and generally navigate the increasingly complex air travel system more effectively.
We are aware of the limitations of a travel agency and the frustrations they cause a busy traveler, who wants much more than an airline booking. We’ve all had questions a travel agent couldn’t answer: Why did I find a lower fare online? How do I secure an upgrade? What’s the best frequent-flier program? How many miles will I earn? Which airlines have flat beds in Business Class to Europe? What’s the best Star Alliance lounge in Tokyo?
Why don’t travel agents have those answers? Because their job is largely limited to booking tickets in an office — not traveling. They have never been in your shoes, globe-trotting and living on the fly, so they don’t truly know your needs. We live your jet-setting life, so we do have those answers.
Our corporate services include strategic travel planning and cost-saving, exclusive air travel intelligence, flight upgrade strategies and tactics, securing elite airline status and frequent-flier account management. We offer both one-time and recurring training sessions, as well as per-trip and retainer-based Executive Privilege consulting services.
Even though we are not a travel agency, we do book complex international itineraries, because we can save you hundreds of dollars per ticket. For consumers, we have customized in-person and web training, and our unique Travel Angel consulting service, which includes frequent-flier account management, upgrade strategies, securing elite-status and booking airline award tickets.
At the bottom of the new site’s homepage, there is a section called “Challenge us.” Anyone planning a trip can take advantage of it. Tell us about the lowest fare you found and challenge us to beat it. We have saved clients up to $1,300 per person in coach and almost $5,000 in Business Class. The biggest savings, of course, are on international tickets.
If you have comments on the new site, which was designed by Blue Water Media in Washington, we’d love to hear your feedback.
Related stories:
Corporate travel’s lack of innovation
Time for travel school — you are invited
New seminar on travel-booking war
Continue reading about Kralev International launches website
US Airways has denied recent suspicion that it has begun to block award seats made available by its Star Alliance partners for mileage redemption by members of its Dividend Miles program — a practice pioneered by United Airlines, which I first exposed in 2008.
The airline has been silent on the issue since reports about apparent blocking surfaced last fall. Many travelers said they found award inventory on various Star carriers, using one or more of the publicly available sources — the websites of All Nippon Airways, Continental Airlines and Air Canada — but US Airways agents were unable to see those available seats.
To some of us, that looked very much like StarNet blocking — manipulating the alliance’s award “middleware,” which provides access to any Star partner’s inventory on a first-come-first-served basis, to avoid paying other carriers for seats booked on their flights. The patterns resembled those on United, with the most filtering applied to Business and First Class cabins, though some fliers stumbled on coach seats as well. The most affected availability appeared to be on Lufthansa, but also on Swiss, United and others.
In addition, it made financial sense for US Airways to be limiting access to premium partner awards. In the last couple of years, it has in effect been printing miles with lightening speed, as a result of extraordinary promotions it has had, including selling miles at 100-percent bonus. Many Dividend Miles members bought miles and redeemed them for Business and First Class on partner flights, which likely weighed heavily on US Airways’ budget.
Several travel bloggers wrote about the issue, including Gary Leff on “View from the Wing” and Ben Schlappig on “One Mile at a Times.” Leff was more inclined to give the airline the benefit of the doubt, suggesting the problem might have been caused by technical glitches, as well as US Airways agents’ ignorance that some of their partners have First Class in addition to Business.
I’m not a big Dividend Miles fan, though I did help my sister buy miles for a trip to Europe with her family last summer, so it took me some time to look into the issue. I finally got around to it and alerted a US Airways contact at its Phoenix headquarters who has been very helpful in the past — Valerie Wunder, associate manager of media relations. She asked the powers that be and gave me the following response:
“We don’t block award inventory on other airlines, nor do we do the inverse — other Star partners block us from seeing their inventory to maximize their revenues.”
Probably the most frequent difficulty Dividend Miles members have been experiencing has to do with intercontinental First Class awards on Lufthansa, Swiss and others, so I asked Wunder if US Airways may be trying to restrict access to those specific seats.
“We have no restrictions on redemptions, regardless of class,” she said.
However, she offered no explanation for the problem. The mystery continues.
Related stories:
Clarifying United’s StarNet blocking
US Airways hears feedback, fixes website
New Lufthansa business class in a year
Continental shows new transparency
There are so many travel-industry rankings at year’s end, it’s hard to keep track. It’s even harder to figure out which — if any — of them are credible and meaningful. Looking at some of the results, one has to wonder when some of the respondents last flew on the airlines and through the airports they assessed.
Rankings are usually administered by various magazines — one exception are the new Frequent Traveler Awards. In the last several years, I’ve made it a habit to look at the Global Traveler Magazine‘s so-called Tested Awards, most of which make sense. However, as I was reading this year’s results during a flight last week, I couldn’t help but gasp in astonishment at some of the results.
Many of the categories are certainly subjective, and different people’s experiences could easily be different. For example, the in-flight service on the same airline could vary depending on the cabin crew — or even your particular flight attendant.
Still, Lufthansa’s second place for best First Class is surprising. For comparison, Emirates is fifth, Korean Air sixth, and Singapore Airlines eighth. Seriously? Lufthansa is a great airline and it deserves to be in the top 10 — it came out fifth overall in the “Best Airline in the World” category.
But anyone who has flown in Lufthansa First Class in the last couple of years knows that its hard product lags behind most of its competitors. The most glaring example of that is the tiny TV screen. On the carrier’s Boeing 747 aircraft, First Class is on the upper deck, with 16 seats in a 2-2 configuration, which is the standard for Business Class on most other airlines operating the same aircraft type.
To its credit, Lufthansa has recognized the limits of its product and has undertaken steps to improve it. The above-mentioned 2-2 configuration is about to change to 1-1, which will no doubt disappoint some fliers because it will reduce the number of First Class seats by half, but eight seats is the industry standard and makes a lot of sense.
Lufthansa has finally come out with a new First Class seat on its Airbus 380 planes. Could it be that Global Traveler readers were evaluating those seats? No, because surveys were collected between January and August, and the first Airbus 380 didn’t enter service until late August.
There is one First Class feature on Lufthansa that beats all other airlines to the punch: its First Class Terminal in Frankfurt. But it’s used almost exclusively by Frankfurt-originating passengers, so it’s unlikely its weight in assessing the overall product was predominant for all survey respondents.
Lufthansa was also ranked fifth for best Business Class. Again, if you’ve had a chance to compare its hard product with other Business cabins, you’d probably disagree. One could argue that Lufthansa’s service is better than that of United Airlines, but United’s truly flat seats are among the best in the industry. Lufthansa made the short-sighted decision to install the old Business seats on the Airbus 380, but later announced it would roll out a new hard product next year.
United is the only U.S. carrier in the top 10 of any of the leading overall global categories, taking 10th place for best Business Class and best Business seat design, and fourth place for best First Class design. Its “new” hard product, which was first introduced three years ago, has so far been installed on less than 60 percent of its long-haul fleet.
Deservedly, Lufthansa is missing from the top 10 in any of the best-seat categories. But another perplexing presence in the best Business seat category — ahead of United — is South Korea’s Asiana Airlines. Not only are its current seats not truly flat, but they are less comfortable than comparable products on other carriers, such as Thai Airways. Asiana’s service is, of course, superb, but this is strictly a seat-related category.
In the best global airport category, another surprising result: in third place, Amsterdam has beat out Hong Kong and Munich. In North America, Atlanta came out ahead of San Francisco. Really?
Oh, and did you know that Delta Airlines has the best airport lounges in the world? That’s right, and Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines have been shut out of the top 10 completely. If that’s not madness, I don’t know what is.
Related stories:
Airlines cut back on first-class service
Delayed at the airport? Enjoy!
New Lufthansa business class in a year
Singapore Airlines’ maddening perfection
Continue reading about What’s the real point of airline rankings?
