How do airlines decide what fares qualify as “sales,” and why do they advertise certain fares, but not other, much lower ones? Why is United Airlines promoting a “sale” between Washington and Boston for $109 each way, when there are currently six published lower fares in that market, beginning with $49 each way?
For the most part, I don’t bother to figure out why airlines do certain things anymore. I just gather all the information I need about what they do and try to work with it — or around it. Years of watching fares have taught me not to fall for those “sales,” because in many cases, I can find a much lower price to the same destination, on the same dates and on the same carrier.
Both United and American Airlines are currently advertising two fall sales on their websites. My review of the American fares showed that most of them are indeed the lowest available prices at this time. There are a few small exceptions — for example, I found a fare from New York to San Diego that is $5 lower than the advertised $164.
There are many more and much bigger differences on United. The unadvertised — but published — fares between Washington and Boston, in addition to $49 each way, are $54, $64, $74, $84 and $99. They all have fewer restrictions than the $109 “sale” price.
I say between Washington and Boston — not from Washington to Boston — because domestic fares are the same in either direction, unlike international fares, which are usually very different.
Let’s take another example. The advertised fares between Denver and Los Angeles in two separate United “sales” are $99 and $89 each way. However, I found $68 each way. In addition, Denver-New Orleans is on “sale” for $123 each way, but there is also $109, and even $89.
Some of the advertised United fares are truly the lowest published at this time. For example, $88 each way for Washington-Chicago, $108 for Chicago-Denver, and $157 for Chicago-Los Angeles.
There is another catch that could increase the benefit of the unadvertised fares to you. Typically, “sale” prices require a round-trip purchase. In contrast, most of the lower fares I found have no such condition. In fact, the major U.S. carriers have been publishing more and more truly one-way fares in recent months, which has always been the case with Southwest Airlines and other low-cost carriers.
To United’s credit, some of its current sales don’t require a round-trip purchase. That is, indeed, the prudent thing to do. If a round trip is mandatory, why advertise one-way fares? Of course, for marketing purposes, but I’ve always found that a bit dishonest and deliberately misleading.
I mean no criticism of United for promoting as “sales” fares that are higher than other published fares. I wrote this to warn travelers that they should check all existing fares between two cities before settling for what they think is a “sale” or the best deal.
Those of you who have attended my “On the Fly” Seminars know how easy it is to bring up on your computer screen all fares published by every airline on a certain route in just seconds.
Continue reading about When an airfare sale is not quite a sale
Nicholas Kralev talks about saving on airfare, achieving elite airline status and his upcoming “On the Fly” Seminars on FOX 5 in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2010.
Many people, including famous ex-KGB spies, were shocked this week that Russia is still spying on the United States. Really? Did we forget that even Washington’s allies have been known to engage in such activities?
As I said in three radio and TV interviews, the real surprise in the latest case is that those people were willing to risk so much to gain so little. It appears that they sent no classified information or any other intelligence secrets to Moscow in the decade they operated.
In fact, most of the information they were tasked with collecting can be obtained in perfectly legal ways. What will President Obama’s agenda be during his trip to Russia? What will the U.S. negotiating position be on the new START treaty? Those were among the questions I was trying to answer at the time, along with my colleagues on the diplomatic beat and analysts at various think-tanks. Of course, we all wanted to know the answers before they were made public — no matter whether we intended to publish them or not.
I still don’t fully understand why the Russians had to resort to such complicated and sophisticated methods from the golden age of spying. The best explanation I could come up with is that they didn’t comprehend the rules of the U.S. policy community, or perhaps they were too paranoid to have diplomats at the embassy in Washington try to get the information they needed.
Why do you think foreign diplomats invite U.S. journalists to lunch? Sure, they have their own propaganda to spread, but they also try to learn things, since many Washington reporters are better plugged-in to U.S. policy-making and personalities than the average diplomat.
The main difference in the purpose of the Russians’ activities in this case compared to the Cold War is that, back then, they were trying to harm U.S. interests. Now their goal was to use the collected information to protect and advance Russian interests. A legitimate goal but certainly an illegitimate method to achieve it.
These are some of the participants in the first official “On the Fly” Seminars in Washington last week. Everyone who came was extremely satisfied — in fact, none of my students had expected to learn nearly as much as they did.
As you can see from the comments on the seminars’ website, they were called “a traveler’s dream,” “incredibly revealing and extraordinarily valuable,” and “a mandatory tool to save money for frequent fliers and corporations.”
“These are perfectly practical methods to make the system work to your advantage — just a few steps to get inexpensive flights, ideal itineraries, upgrades, no fees, and free flights,” said David Aidekman, founder of Adventurati, a group travel company.
Charles Zhang, who came all the way from Princeton, N.J., to attend one of the DC seminars, said he has had top elite status with a couple of airlines for a while, and flies more than 150,000 miles a year. “But I still learned lots of new things from your seminar, which I had never heard before,” he said. “I will use my skills from you seminar toward my future flights, and enjoy my travel more.”
Of course, I couldn’t be happier with the feedback, but it seems I have a serious challenge to overcome: It’s clear the seminars are extremely valuable for those who attend, but the problem is that they don’t know that until they come. Despite the detailed curriculum and syllabuses I’ve posted, last week’s participants said they had no idea that much of what I taught was possible and available to all travelers.
So it seems I need to come up with a catchier way to compress material that takes hours to teach into a few soundbites and paragraphs. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, I’m pleased to announce that the next seminars in Washington will take place on July 23 and 24. Before that, I’ll be offering a seminar in Anchorage, Alaska, on July 6. I’m also looking into doing the same in New York, either in July or August.
Continue reading about Lessons from ‘On the Fly’ Seminars, and July dates announced
It doesn’t happen very often that I fly a new route on United Airlines, especially out of Washington — it seems I’ve flown a huge number of them. But my 467th United flight this week was on the relatively new nonstop service to Moscow.
That flight is flown on a Boeing 767, which means that it’s reconfigured with the new truly flat business-class seats. Even better, upgrading to business on that flight is usually fairly easy, and I was on a pretty high M fare, so I never had any doubt my upgrade would clear.
By the time that happened a week before the flight, I had two choices in terms of window seating: a forward-facing seat in the row before the last or a rear-facing seat in the first row of the business cabin. About six months ago, I would have chosen the first option, but after flying backward from San Francisco to Sydney in December, the direction doesn’t bother me anymore. Each couple of seats feels very much like a private compartment, and you don’t really see anything outside that compartment while seated, so you forget there are other passengers facing in a different direction. I chose the first row because it’s away from the galley and the coach cabin, which makes it quieter and less trafficked.
It was a standard United flight in terms of the service — pretty good, but nothing spectacular. My glass of water never remained empty for too long. A couple of flight attendants asked if I worked for United, because I looked familiar — that tells you how often I’m on those planes.
My routine on long-haul flights begins with changing into my plane pajamas, which are given to first-class passengers on some non-U.S. carriers — this time, I’d taken a set from Lufthansa, but I usually rotate them with sets from SWISS or Singapore Airlines. I used to change after takeoff, but by the time the seat-belt sign is off, the service has already begun, and I’d rather not be in the flight attendants’ way.
During takeoff, I read newspapers — usually the Financial Times, where I used to write, and the International Herald Tribune on flights originating outside the United States. Then I turned on my entertainment system and start a film — “Valentine’s Day” was the first one I watched. It didn’t do well at the box office when it was released in February, despite the all-star cast and the director Gary Marshall, who also did “Pretty Woman.” I thought it was good enough for a plane ride.
After dinner — not-so-tasty chicken breast and cheesecake — and Chardonnay, it was bedtime. The flight left as 5 p.m., so it was too early to sleep. I tried really hard but not very successfully. At least I had a long and nice rest in a flat bed. Later, I watched another film — the very good documentary, “Celine: Through the Eyes of the World.”
Breakfast was disappointing, as it usually is in United business — just a croissant and fruit — and way behind competition, but United has never excelled at its soft product. Only first class gets eggs for breakfast.
This was my seventh time in Moscow, but the first at Domodedovo Airport — I found it much nicer than Sheremetevo. It was my 202th airport overall, according to my profile on FlightMemory.
Continue reading about Flying new United route — rare occurrence
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