Do you sometimes prefer making a connection or two instead of taking a nonstop flight, either to save money or rack up more frequent-flier miles? You might have to change your ways. Domestic U.S. transfers are now allowed much less frequently than before, and making connections on flights between an airline’s hubs is almost impossible.
No big deal, you might say. Wouldn’t any reasonable person choose a nonstop any time? Not necessarily. Different travelers have different priorities — some would rather save time, others money. But the best thing about the previous practice was that passengers had options. Now, that’s no longer the case.
Until June, you could make four transfers each way between Washington and Los Angeles on United Airlines — both cities are United hubs. Since then, the lowest fares have said this in the legal routing rules:
TRAVEL MUST BE NONSTOP
It’s not until fares of just under $700 round trip that the routing gets a bit more liberal — but it allows only one connection and only at a hub airport. Here is how this looks in the United tariff:
WAS-CHI/DEN/LAX/SFO-LAX
The slash indicates that you must choose among Chicago, Denver and San Francisco, but you can’t go through two of them — you would have been able to do so had there been a hyphen between them.
How does this affect you? As of this morning, the lowest published United fare between Washington and Los Angeles is $119 each way and books in L class — but it’s only valid on nonstop flights. What if none of the nonstops on the day you need to fly has available L seats? Then you will have to buy up to S booking class — the next lowest currently published — or whatever seat is available. There may be L availability on a connection through Denver, but it wouldn’t qualify for the L fare because it’s not nonstop. The bottom line is, the routing restriction will cost you at least $100 more.
United was actually the last of the major carriers to clamp down on routing rules, and many mileage runners — people who fly just to accumulate miles — had lots of fun for a long time. It still has one of the more liberal rules — except between hubs. American Airlines and US Airways follow the same policy. American requires a nonstop between Dallas and Miami, and US Airways between Philadelphia and Phoenix.
Delta Airlines is one of the strictest. For example, discounted fares between Atlanta, its main hub, and most major cities require a nonstop, even if that city is not a hub, such as San Diego and Las Vegas. A fair comparison would be the United routing between Washington and Las Vegas, which is much more generous:
WAS-SFO/LAX/DEN/CHI/WAS/EWR/HOU/CLE/PHL/CLT/PHX-LAS
This is actually a typical United routing. You can transfer only once at a hub, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a United hub — Continental and US Airways hubs are also allowed, because United code-shares a huge number of their flights. Of course, current Continental hubs will become United hubs once their merger is complete.
Delta is so strict, in fact, that sometimes it requires a nonstop when neither of the two cities is a hub — for example, between Washington and Los Angeles. The curious part is that Delta doesn’t fly nonstop between those cities, but it code-shares the only daily Alaska Airlines flight from Washington National. So the only way to get a decent fare is to book that one flight at 9:15 a.m. If you can’t, you have to pony up.
To be fair, Delta allows both nonstops and “direct” flights, and when the other carriers say nonstop, they do mean nonstop. “Direct” flights are those fictitious flights I wrote about last month, which have nothing in common except for their number — most of them are operated on different planes and require changing gates and sometimes even terminals.
In addition, Delta is not always as draconian as in the Washington-Los Angeles case. Here is the routing between non-hubs Chicago and Los Angeles:
CHI-SLC/MSP/DTT/CVG/MEM/ATL/LAX/IND/DEN/SFO/LAS/PHX-LAX
The smaller the city, the more liberal the routing — although some bigger places seem to fall through the cracks, probably not for too long. Here is the United routing from Washington to Houston.
WAS-ATL/CLE/DTT/DAY/CMH/IND/RDU-CHI-HOU
WAS-ROC-BUF-CHI-HOU
WAS-ABE/HAR/ROA/SDF/RIC/CAK/CRW/ORF-CHI-HOU
WAS-NYC/EWR-ATL/CLE/DTT/DAY/CMH/IND/RDU-CHI-HOU
WAS-NYC/EWR-ROC-BUF-CHI-HOU
WAS-NYC/EWR-ABE/HAR/ROA/SDF/RIC/CAK/CRW/ORF-CHI-HOU
If you look closely, you will see that up to four transfers are permitted here — this many hyphens are very rare these days. I have the feeling this generosity will disappear once United and Continental start flying as one airline, for which both Washington and Houston will be hubs.
International routings are much more liberal and sometime can fill a page, but that’s a topic for another column.
Related stories:
Airlines find new way to overcharge fliers
DOT should ban fictitious flights
Time for travel school — you are invited
Have you tried to watch fireworks in the bright late-night Alaska sky on July 4th? I had the sun in my eyes a couple of years ago, but if the weather forecast is correct, this coming Sunday will be gloomy and rainy. Too bad for me.
I decided to make my third visit to Anchorage a couple of months ago, and since I was going anyway, I thought I’d teach an “On the Fly” Seminar there on July 6. It will take place at 6:30 p.m. in the second-floor boardroom of the Sheraton hotel. Only ladies have signed up so far. Where are all the male travel enthusiasts? Here is an easy link to the registration page.
One of our students in DC just told me she has already saved $500 on her very first domestic plane ticket since she attended a seminar last week. I’ll do a separate post about that, but the point is, the proud Alaska travelers should act quickly, before the limited seats vanish.
About four years ago, I decided that I’d try to get to Alaska every summer, and to Hawaii every winter — but only if airfares drop to about $400. Not only is it appropriate to go to Alaska during the very hot and humid DC summer, and to Hawaii during the cold winter, but both those places are the furthest one can get to on a domestic plane ticket — and get tons of frequent-flier miles. I did miss Alaska last summer, and Hawaii this past winter.
I try to be creative with my routing when I can, so this time I’m flying from DC to San Francisco, then to Denver and on to Anchorage. I was surprised to find such an option in the legal-routing section of the fare, but I took advantage of it. The trip will yield about 23,000 miles, including my double bonus as a top elite, which of course is only 2,000 miles short of a free domestic round-trip ticket.
So Alaskans, look forward to seeing you in a few days.
Have you been surprised to discover that your flight itinerary has little to do with your originally booked routing or departure and arrival times? Did you accept the changes, even though you didn’t like them? Next time, you could probably do better.
Schedule changes — those made by airline planning departments in advance, not those resulting from irregular operations — have always existed in the industry, but they used to be relatively rare and caused few major disruptions.
In recent years, however, they have become so common that I’m actually surprised when a week passes without changes in any of my future trips — I usually have about a half-dozen booked at a time…
Continue reading about Flight schedule changes overwhelm agents, travelers
This was supposed to be a column critical of US Airways’ rather peculiar Web site, which is unable to perform basic functions, such as retrieving valid and active tickets. But it also became an appreciation of the carrier’s willingness to explain some of those issues and even try to resolve them.
Every airline’s Web site has limitations and various quirks that annoy travelers — some offer odd routings when you search for flights, others show confusing or even misleading prices, and yet others try to get you to buy things you don’t need instead of taking you straight to the final purchase page.
However, if you simply want to display your itinerary by providing your reservation or ticket number, no major carrier will fail you. Except US Airways. In the past couple of years, I’ve had several tickets with flights on that airline that its Web site was unable to find…
