Star Alliance
Air India’s entrenched corporate culture and internal Indian politics cost the carrier membership in the global Star Alliance. Although Star’s leadership went out of its way to help the airline meet the group’s more than 200 requirements, it finally gave up the futile effort last week and suspended accession talks.
Not surprisingly, Air India has been trying to assign blame to anyone but itself, pointing a finger at Lufthansa and accusing it of sabotaging the Indian carrier’s potential membership. Regrettably, it appears the airline has learned little from the nearly four-year experience. It needs to do some serious soul-searching if it wants to survive.
Star showed remarkable patience and continued to hope against hope that Air India would live up to its promise and achieve the necessary standards in safety, customer service, on-board experience, operations, etc. The alliance makes decisions based on consensus, and all its members voted to invite Air India in late 2007. The accession process is rather costly for both the candidate and the alliance, so no member voted lightly and fully expected the invitee to become to join the group.
They all underestimated the problems they would encounter. Air India was initially supposed to come on board in March 2009, but Star agreed to extend the qualification period. It really wanted its carriers to gain broader access to the large Indian market.
Star CEO Jaan Albrecht, about whom I’ve written several times, has been saying for years that one of his top priorities is filling the three major “white spots” in the alliance’s network: Brazil, India and Russia. Brazil’s TAM joined in 2010, though its merger with Chile’s LAN has created uncertainty about the new airline’s future allegiance. There is no obvious Russian carrier to be seriously considered at this time.
So it was very important for Star to full the big South Asia “white spot.” Albrecht himself made repeated trips to India in the last year in a tortuous effort to save Air India’s faltering bid.
However, the reality is that Air India never truly had a chance with the oldest and largest global alliance. I felt several times during this process that having Air India as a member anytime soon was more wishful thinking than a realistic expectation. In fact, many frequent travelers feared that Star might lower its standards to accommodate India’s national carrier.
To the alliance’s credit, that didn’t happen. Rejecting Air India’s application was the right decision, no matter how the carrier tries to spin the outcome. The group’s attention in India is now focused on Jet Airways, which is already a code-share partner of several Star carrier, and possibly Kingfisher Airlines — they both have a much stellar reputation than Air India’s.
Star was founded by United Airlines, Lufthansa, Air Canada, Scandinavian (SAS) and Thai Airways. Today, it has 27 members from 25 countries, which have more than 4,000 aircraft in their fleets and fly over 600 million passengers a year on 21,000 daily flights to 1,160 airports in 181 countries.
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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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My previously high regard for Singapore Airlines has been sinking quickly in the last week. Dealing with its agents regarding an award ticket has been one of my worst airline experiences in years. Now we learn that the carrier did little to help a passenger who suffered a heart attack during a flight last month.
When I wrote about Singapore’s “maddening perfection” in September, I pointed out that it deserves all the accolades it gets for its on-board products and in-flight services. However, the airline hasn’t quite understood that being a global first-class company means much more than that.
I usually try to stay calm with airline agents on the phone and give them the time they need, even when it’s clear they are not very good. That turned out to be a serious challenge last week with Singapore agents assigned to the carrier’s frequent-flier program, KrisFlyer. It’s stunning how poorly trained they are, even though they are based in Singapore — not India, as their accents suggest. A few years ago, the carrier closed its Los Angeles call center, where agents were much better.
I wanted to change the dates of three out of four flight segments on an award ticket entirely on Air Canada, Singapore’s partner in the global Star Alliance. I booked it a few months ago with the last KrisFlyer miles I’ll ever have. As usual, I’d done my homework using the All Nippon Airways’ website, which is the only site showing award availability on every Star carrier. All flights I requested had an open seat.
Normally, if a Star airline has provided a seat for mileage redemption on StarNet, the alliance’s “middleware,” any member has access to that seat on a first-come-first-served basis. You probably know how that system works from my columns about United’s StarNet blocking.
Still, there is a small chance an agent may not see exactly what I see, due to using different systems, time delays and other variables. So when I called Singapore, I gave the agent my first segment and asked him to check for availability. He wanted to know all three flights. I said I couldn’t book the return unless I knew for sure on what day my outbound flight would be. He responded that he couldn’t look for seats one by one, but had to collect all the information from me before searching.
Most airline agents can tell you immediately whether an award seat is available on a certain flight — they either look at inventory or, in rare cases, request a partner seat and see if the other airline confirms it. I later verified with several other Singapore agents that what my first agent told me is indeed how they do things over there. So I gave him all my three new flights. Having written them down, he wanted to read them back to me before starting his search. That took over a minute of odd stumbling over what one would have thought was someone else’s handwriting.
My patience was almost running out when the real shocker came — he asked on what number he could call me back once he had looked for seats. Seriously? Award seats could vanish in seconds, let alone in whatever time he needed to perform what apparently amounted to a rather complex task. I said I preferred to hold while he was searching.
After keeping me on hold for 15 minutes, he disconnected the call without coming back. I called again and went through the same motions with another agent. Following a 10-minute hold, he said one of the new flights wasn’t available. I went back to the All Nippon website — that seat was gone indeed. After all, it had been more than half an hour since I’d first called.
Make no mistake about it — I lost a seat because of the incompetence and poor training of the Singapore agents, as well as the carrier’s inefficient system. Such lack of professionalism is to be expected from a third-world airline, but not from a carrier that is often named the best in the world in various rankings.
Slightly off point, the second agent also said that another one of the flights I wanted was not available — however, the All Nippon site was still showing an open seat. Even now, several days later, that flight shows as available on the site. I just called Singapore and a third agent said she couldn’t see it. I wonder if Singapore does its own blocking these days, taking its cue from United.
In my September column, I also wrote about Singapore employees narrowly following rules and not applying their own best judgment to specific situations that inevitably arise during air travel. In other words, they don’t really exhibit much humane behavior.
I was still surprised to learn this week about an utterly puzzling Singapore decision in March.
Max Pearson, a co-host of “The World Today” BBC program to which I listen almost every day, flew to London on Singapore on his way back home from covering the Japan earthquake and tsunami. Shortly after taking off from Singapore, he suffered a heart attack. The airline refused his request to return to Singapore or divert the flight to the nearest appropriate airport, so he could get the care he needed.
Singapore says it took the measures it deemed necessary, implying that Pearson’s condition was not serious enough to justify a diversion. Obviously, diversions are very expensive for an airline, but they are covered by insurance. Plus, Pearson had what has been described by media reports as a “life-saving surgery” as soon as he arrived in London.
It remains to be determined if the more than 12 hours Pearson had to endure on the Singapore plane might have complicated his condition.
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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.
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As United and Continental prepare to become one airline, they are making changes that, though necessary, are affecting negatively their customers. One consequence is that upgrades on international flights will be harder to get in the short run, and more expensive in the long run.
The carriers announced last month that they would begin “cross-fleeting” — swapping routes in each other’s network — and some of those changes have already been loaded in their schedules. Both United and Continental will be serving certain routes in the next several months, but each of them is taking over other routes entirely.
For example, all Anchorage flying goes to Continental, as do the Washington-Paris and Washington-Amsterdam routes, now operated by United. The current Continental flights from Newark to Zurich and Brussels, as well as its Houston-Lima flights, will be flown by United.
That practice is not unusual in airline pre-merger situations. While the United-Continental merger was legally completed late last year, they will be operating as separate airlines until they secure a single certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is expected to happen by early next year.
However, United and Continental are implementing the route changes before resolving some technical issues that will harm their customers.
If you are a United 1K flier and have system-wide upgrade certificates, you can’t use them on the previously United flights now operated by Continental — and the other way around. The same applies to your confirmed regional upgrade certificates on domestic flights. As of now, it’s technically impossible for the carriers’ reservations systems to accept upgrade certificates from the other airline’s frequent-flier program.
Mary Clark, a Continental spokeswoman in Houston, confirmed that certificates will be “carrier-specific” for the time being. “We are in the process of aligning the programs, and changes to the current policies will be announced as they are rolled out throughout the year. We aim to fully combine the programs by 2012.”
United is expected to adopt Continental’s reservations system eventually, but until then, there may be another way to resolve the issue. The carriers announced this week that miles can now be transferred between United and Continental accounts. I wonder if they can make it possible for upgrades to be transferred as well. It’s unclear if they looking into such an option yet.
There is another issue with the United system-wide upgrades whose impact is just now becoming apparent. For years, they have been allowed only on tickets booked in W class or higher, which makes S, T, L and K classes ineligible. Continental recently adopted the same rules.
This means that customers often have to spend hundreds of dollars more than the lowest available fare, just to qualify for an upgrade request — and if the upgrade doesn’t clear, they are left with a lot less money and the same coach seat they would have had if they had paid much less for it.
Things are getting even worse. In January, because of the merger, United added a 14th coach booking class, G, which was a regular published booking class on Continental, but on United it was previously an unpublished travel-industry discount class — it didn’t earn miles and was ineligible for upgrades.
Now, instead of four, there are five booking classes ineligible for system-wide upgrades. So what? you might ask — just a small technicality. Not quite. As a result of this change, W fares are getting more expensive. For example, a base fare of $800 that might have booked in W class before, now books in S or T. A few days ago, I helped a friend with a ticket from Washington to Bangkok, and the W base fare was more than $1,400 round trip — including taxes and surcharged, it came up to $1,900.
There is no question that fares have been going up for some time. A few years ago, a W fare to Bangkok was about $900, including taxes. In 2002, an H fare was $900. So the trend is clear and it didn’t start yesterday. But adding one more booking class makes things even worse.
It’s worth pointing out that American Airlines system-wide upgrades are allowed on all published booking classes.
Another negative change as a result of the United-Continental merger is that, similarly to the upgrades, discount vouchers from one airline cannot be used on the other. So if you want to use a United voucher for a ticket to Anchorage, you can’t, because United has given its seasonal service to Continental.
This week, the United website seems to be including Continental flights in electronic certificate-discounted itineraries, but the official policy hasn’t changed. It may be a website glitch, given that it also allows Lufthansa flights, and the vouchers’ terms and conditions specifically say that they are not valid on code-share flights.
One positive merger-related change is that United customers can now avoid StarNet blocking — it has diminished but still exists — by transferring their miles to Continental, which doesn’t block Star Alliance partner award seats.
NOTE: Several months after this column was published, United and Continental made it possible to use upgrades on flights operated by the other airline, including on mixed itineraries.
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