Washington
Did you know that hundreds of fictitious flights inhabit airline schedules every day? They don’t exist in real life — just on paper. They are meant to make more money for the airlines by tricking customers and perverting a practice that was actually started to help travelers. In fact, they spell nothing but trouble for passengers.
Those fictitious flights are labeled “direct” by the airlines, which years ago decided to rewrite the dictionary and use that term for flights that weren’t nonstop but made at least one stop on the way to their destination. First, those flights were operated by the same aircraft, but later a “plane change” was introduced. The Department of Transportation has allowed the airlines to abuse the practice any way they like.
On my way back home from Boston last weekend, I was on United Airlines Flight 897, which the purser announced repeatedly was “a nonstop service to Washington Dulles, with continuing service to Beijing.”
I immediately cringed, because there is nothing “continuing” about the two flights, except for their number. The plane I was on was a two-cabin Boeing 757 and arrived at gate C19 at Dulles. The plane destined for Beijing was a three-cabin Boeing 777 and departed from gate C3. So the passengers connecting to Beijing did exactly what others did connecting to Flight 803 to Tokyo at gate C1 — or any other flight for that matter. They left the first plane and walked to their new gate.
Did the Beijing-bound travelers benefit in any way from the fact that their tickets had one flight from Boston to Beijing? Absolutely not. In fact, many of them were probably surprised to discover they were on two separate flights.
Then why does United even have that fictitious “direct” flight? Because it wants customers to think that they can fly from Boston to Beijing without the hassle of a connection — a competitive advantage no other carrier offers.
Have you tried to upgrade a “direct” flight? That can be a nightmare — not just for passengers but also for those who work in inventory management. They have to create inventory for a flight that doesn’t exist and to balance the load of two separate flights on different aircraft types with a different number of cabins and hugely different number of seats. As a result, the lowest booking classes and upgrades are often unavailable on “direct” flights. Some travelers are willing to pay more to avoid the hassle of transfers, not realizing there is a hidden connection.
Almost every international United flight has a domestic tag attached to it, but United is by no means the only U.S. airline abusing the system. All major carriers do it. Delta pretends to fly “directly” from Minneapolis to Moscow, Continental from Amsterdam to Denver, US Airways from Los Angeles to Zurich and American from Tokyo to Boston.
As I wrote two years ago, United and Delta are the biggest abusers, while American seems to be the most prudent in that most of its “direct” flights are operated by the same aircraft. American is also the only one whose website displays a “direct” flight as two separate segments at the very beginning of the booking process.
In the rare cases when foreign carriers, such as Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines, operate “direct” flights, they are flown on the same plane, so there is no danger you will miss your “continuation,” which happens regularly on U.S. airlines. If my flight from Boston to Washington had been late, United wouldn’t have held the plane for Beijing just because the two flights share the same number.
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Air travel is one of those topics that no radio or TV show can go wrong with — it’s certain to touch a nerve with many people and provoke numerous comments and questions. That’s what happened yesterday on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, which I was on for the first time.
I always thought the reason to be invited would be to talk about foreign policy on the Friday news roundup, where Diane has three Washington journalists discussing issues from the passing week. That never happened, but a couple of weeks ago I suggested to one of the show’s producers that the summer is a good time for a program on travel.
The Diane Rehm Show is widely considered the best talk show on NPR, with more than 2 million listeners a week. It’s produced by WAMU, the NPR station in DC, and airs in dozens of markets across the U.S. Diane is on vacation this week, so the guest-host was Frank Sesno, a former CNN bureau chief in DC who now heads the George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
There were two other guests except me: from Dallas, Scott McCartney, who writes “The Middle Seat” column for The Wall Street Journal, and from New York, Susan Stellin, a New York Times contributor.
You can listen to the show and read some of the comments left by listeners on its website. We actually got hundreds of comments and questions by phone, e-mail and on Facebook and Twitter.
We talked about various familiar topics, such as airline fees, seats, delays, the proposed Passengers’ Bill of Rights, re-regulation prospects and others.
Since the show’s topic was “Navigating the not-so-friendly skies,” I wanted to offer some advice on how to do that. The main point I tried to make was about the need for travel education, realizing that most people don’t see such a need because they think they know how to travel. But if that were true, we’d be hearing many fewer complaints and horror stories about air travel.
It’s convenient and popular to blame the airlines all the time — and they often deserve much of that blame — but there is a lot travelers can do to make their own experience less stressful and more seamless.
The airlines have made the system very complex, confusing and frustrating. It is what it is, and we can’t changed it that much. However, we can find ways to make the system work for us — and to do that, we need to know it really well. That’s why I believe every traveler can use a bit of education.
My other main point was about the importance of elite airline status, which is the only decent way to travel today. The reality is that airlines don’t even pretend to try taking care of you if something goes wrong unless you are a loyal customer. More practically, elite passengers are exempt from luggage and other fees.
Unfortunately, most people don’t even try to achieve elite status, because they only travel a couple of times a year. As I wrote last month, you only need 4,000 miles on Greece’s Aegean Airlines to get silver status on the Star Alliance, and Aegean gives you 1,000 miles just for signing up. You don’t have to fly on Aegean — just to credit your miles from flights on any of the 28 Star carriers to that program. Silver status waives baggage fees on United Airlines, US Airways and Continental Airlines.
I was amused to read in the comments on the Diane Rehm Show’s website that a listener accused me of being unpatriotic for recommending membership in a foreign airline’s frequent-flier program.
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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.
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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.
