Congratulations! You’ve decided that life is too short to endure the squalor and indignity of ‘cattle class’ and will join the ‘premium classes’ and shop around for the best prices in the front of the cabin. (That’s where you turn left instead of right at the door to the plane.)
But with first class costing around twice the price of business class; which in turn can cost twice the price of a flexible economy ticket and 20 times more than the cheapest ticket in the back of the plane, reconciling comfort, cost and convenience is a dialectical dilemma – it’s easy to pay a lot more for a lot less.
Premium economy can be a successful compromise. Taiwan carrier Eva Air was the first airline to introduce a premium economy cabin in 1991, the year it started flying, with Evergreen Deluxe (renamed Elite Class on Boeing 777s), that rewarded economy passengers paying the full (Y) fare with a separate cabin, and better seating and service, followed in turn by Virgin Atlantic a year later, British Airways’ World Traveler Plus, and United Airlines Economy Plus and a growing number of carriers. Premium economy typically offers 38 to 42 inches of leg room – five to 7 inches more than regular cattle class at about one third of the price of a business class seat.
It attracts leisure travelers (especially the girth-stricken or those of normal height) and business travelers whose budgets do not stretch to business class. According to British Airways’ research, typical premium economy passengers tend to be self-employed or work for small to medium sized companies; or honeymooners. Savvy travelers often mix classes, flying out in business class, and back in premium economy, or vice versa, depending on the need to work or sleep.
The cheapest distance between two points is often flying with a carrier through its home hub rather than traveling direct, saving up to 50 percent on the price of a nonstop business class ticket – as strategy that I call ‘cross-border hubbing.’
Traveling from London to Bangkok last year, I forwent the chance to shell out a daunting £3,168 for a round-trip business-class ticket with British Airways, or Singapore Airlines, by paying £1,332 with Austrian Airlines and a seamless connection in Vienna. Traveling to the East Coast of the United States, consider Icelandair (fresh fish and malt whiskies in business class) – and an easy change of plane in Reykjavik makes a pleasant break. Finnair goes out of its way (no pun intended) to attract travelers from Britain to go via Helsinki to destinations in Asia and the Far East.
Many travel agents, such as long-haul specialists Trailfinders.com, offer so-called ‘negotiated’ fares with certain carriers.
For example, planning a hypothetical round-trip from London to Sydney for travel in April, Trailfinders.com offered me premium economy with Virgin Atlantic (via Hong Kong) for £1,665 (60-day advance booking); business class with China Airlines (via Amsterdam and Taipei) for £1.849; and Thai International (via Hong Kong) for £2,339.
Virgin Atlantic.com came up with premium economy for £2,600-£3,000; Upper Class (business) for £4,300 (restricted) and £6,700 (flexible) – compared with the lowest economy price of £1,083. British Airways.com offered premium economy for £918 and £1,189, and business class for £5,055. Opodo.com had the lowest economy fare (£727) with Emirates; premium economy, British Airways, £1,858; Qantas, £2498; and Japan Airlines, £5,832. Business class offers ranged from £2,564 with Etihad Airways, and £3,700 with Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific, to £4,040 with Qantas.
The lesson to learn from these prices is that not every airline or online travel agent can offer the best deal with every carrier.
If you’re traveling at least half way round the world, it may make sense to go all the way round (either east or west) by buying a round-the-world (RTW) ticket in business or premium economy. They are often cheaper and more flexible than a round-trip fare.
All three alliances (Oneworld, Star Alliance and Skyteam) offer a raft of prices and routings, usually with just two airlines; such as British Airways from Europe to Sydney, Qantas across the Pacific, and thence, via a variety of gateways, BA back to Europe. Star Alliance partners Air France and Lufthansa offer a similar around the world duo.
With such a wide world of choice out there, what is the best way to look before you book? Unless you know what flights you want, the strategy I recommend is first to go to OAGflights.com, or Amadeus.net, that allow you to check flight schedules and seat availability (though not prices) between any city pair, wherever you are in the world, and then shop around for the best prices.
Skytrax Research (www.airlinequality.com) can help you figure out the best, and worst, seats in premium cabins, along with seat dimensions and seating tips, on long-haul flights, for more than 325 airlines around the world. Seat plans at www.seatguru.com (part of TripAdvisor.com) show you which seats to ask for, and which to avoid, on nearly 100 airlines, including Air France, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Qantas. Select an airline and an aircraft type, move your mouse over the seating plan, and seat descriptions will appear (green designates a ‘very good seat,’ yellow, ‘be aware!’ and red, a ‘bad seat.’)
Travelers will welcome the cascade of cuts in fuel surcharges by airlines such as British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Lufthansa, Air France/KLM, Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and El Al, in response to a sustained fall in the price of oil, with jet fuel now half the price it was in the summer. Air Canada has eliminated fuel surcharges altogether on North American flights, instead “folding them into advertised base fares.”
This raises some questions: What is the “benchmark” price for jet fuel on which surcharges are based? And with the price of jet fuel accounting for more than a third of most airlines’ costs, are surcharges just the means of protecting airline profits during the downturn?
But what incenses travelers more than anything is that the price of an air ticket they have purchased online can just about double when it comes to the final amount charged. Just as we have become reconciled to a raft of taxes - as wide-ranging as the U.S. Animal & Plant Health Inspection Tax, the Sydney Noise Tax and the Canadian Airport Improvement Tax - here come the airlines with charges for almost everything, from checked baggage to onboard beverages, even soft drinks and water, to changing tickets.
The airlines believe that “à la carte,” pay-for-all-the-extras pricing is the magic bullet for restoring profitability.
“Airline customers clearly resent these often unclear fees, but they have incredible potential to boost the bottom line of an airline,” said Christopher Staab, a managing partner at Airline Information (www.airlineinformation.org), a consulting firm in Miami. So much so, he continued, that despite the worldwide economic downturn expected to hit most airlines very hard in 2009, many of the mainstream U.S. airlines “are expected to be very profitable next year thanks to à la carte pricing.”
But there’s still a lot of anger out there.
Stan Juster from Karmiel, Israel, writes: “Any day now, I expect airlines to charge for turning on the overhead air spigot. It’s an absurdity for airlines to think the public will accept extra fees for checked luggage, seat selection, food and water, pillows and blankets etc. - all under the guise of compensating for higher fuel costs. It’s a boondoggle; just another way to increase their profit margin, particularly in light of the recent decrease in the cost of fuel.”
Martin Bleasdale from Les Baux de Provence, France, agrees: “They may as well include the rest of the fuel, airport landing fees, amortized price of the plane, meals, drinks, cabin lighting, crew salaries …,” he writes. “That way they could charge full price for a free ticket.”
Staab said that every time airlines need revenue they simply increase their à la carte fees: Some U.S. carriers “are charging $15 or $25 for the first checked bag; all except Southwest Airlines now charge between $25 and $50 for the second bag, and have reduced the maximum weight from 70 pounds to 50 pounds,” or from 32 kilograms to 23 kilograms, “in economy on international and domestic routes.”
Fees vary radically, Staab added: “You go to book and you don’t know what you’re going to pay. This is a particular problem with online travel agents, like Opodo and Travelocity. I booked a fare on Expedia for $300 and I finally paid $600. They didn’t tell me; there was just a little flag saying, ‘Extra charges may apply.’ But you have no idea what those fees are; it’s not their fault, they cannot keep up.”
À la carte pricing will work for both airlines and travelers provided it is “transparent” and offers customer choice; after all, why pay for a meal and beverages, or baggage services that you don’t need?
Air Canada’s à la carte pricing model is being followed by other carriers. American Airlines, for example, has announced it will fully implement à la carte pricing next year. There are likely to be a few basic fares, giving travelers the option of paying for additional services.
At Air Canada’s Web site, you can choose from four basic fare levels. The top tickets, Latitude and Executive Class, are all refundable and come with priority check-in, food, drinks and all the frills. The cheapest fare, Tango, requires extra fees for meals, advance seat selection, flight changes and airport lounge access; Tango passengers can save $3 if they forgo frequent flier miles, or do not check a bag.
Speculating on the scope for a la carte options with the Airbus A380 Super Jumbo some time ago, I envisaged one of the airline alliances, such as Star Alliance or Oneworld, operating the ‘flying village’ for member airlines, who might share the same plane on certain routes, with their own fares, flight attendants, in-flight cuisine, and style of service. Franchises would be sold for wining and dining and other amenities.
There’s nothing new under the sun, they say. Some twenty years ago, the Canadian carrier Wardair (long since subsumed by Air Canada) offered quality at reasonable prices with a single standard of cuisine and service throughout the plane and a ‘Big Seat’ option. No matter how much you paid for your ticket, you could trade up to a Big Seat in the front of the cabin for about 50 Canadian dollars.
What do airlines and banks have in common? Answer: They are likely to go bust overnight. What are the airline equivalents of Lehman Bros. and Goldman Sachs? Will governments bail out failing carriers in a similar way? If not, what can I do if I have booked a ticket with an airline that collapses?
The prospect of airline failure looms large for many travelers. High fuel costs and the credit crunch have already seen more than 20 airlines go bust this year. (Alitalia’s future had looked doubtful until a last-minute agreement appears to have rescued it from bankruptcy.) And, in the early hours of September 12, XL Leisure Group, the third largest UK tour operator collapsed, leaving 90,000 customers people stranded abroad, and 23,000 holding advance bookings.
XL customers who had booked a package holiday (flight plus accommodation) were protected under Britain’s Air Travel Organizers’ Licensing scheme for tour operators, which is overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority; those abroad were repatriated; those who had not yet traveled got their money back.
But people who had simply bought tickets direct with XL Airways were not covered by ATOL, or an alternative bonded scheme, and had to pay their own way home.
Whether or not you can get reimbursement from an airline which has gone bust depends on where you buy your ticket, how you pay for it – and the small print of your travel insurance. Trip cancellation terms of most travel insurance policies do not cover scheduled airline failure.
Credit cards offer the best protection, whether you pay for tickets direct with the airline, or through a travel agent. Should the airline be grounded, you can claim the money back from the card company, or bank, if you were due to travel. If you are left stranded abroad, the card company should refund the cost of the flight home.
Debit and charge card transactions are not protected in the same way, and you are most likely to lose your money; although Visa debit card holders are covered by a ‘chargeback’ procedure on the basis that goods or services have not been delivered, or are not as they were described. According to Visa Europe, in such cases the chargeback rules allow its card issuing banks to recover money paid on all Visa debit and credit cards from the retailer’s bank. Visa chargeback claims must be made within 120 days of the purchase or from the date the goods or services were due to be delivered.
If you book flights through a travel agency, whether online or terrestrial, make sure that it is a member of the International Air Transport Association (400 airlines and 6,000 travel agents around the world) and participates in its ‘billing and settlement plan’ – through which agents remit money from ticket sales to airlines. The BSP facilitates the cash flow between passengers, agents and airlines, and processing refunds.
‘When Alitalia appointed an administrator, we, according to the rules of the system, secured a deposit allowing the airline to continue participation in the BSP,’ says Lorne Riley at IATA in Geneva. ‘This minimizes the risk to participants, the airlines, the travel agents, and by extension their customers.’
So is it better to buy tickets through a travel agent rather than an airline? ‘You could make that speculation,’ Riley says. ‘I wouldn’t.’
Some travel agents now offer ‘Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance,’ either free of charge or for about $10 for a business class round-trip flight. Two big providers of SAFI are brokers Marcus Hearn in London (www.scheduledairlinefailure.co.uk), who sell only to agents; and International Passenger Protection, a company that offers insurance directly to travelers through its Web site – www.protectmyholiday.com.
The long-haul travel specialists Trailfinders.com in London, guarantees ‘that clients will not lose any money paid to us for travel in the event of a collapse of an airline, tour operator, or any other provider.’
‘This pledge has been honored since our foundation over 38 years ago,’ says Nikki Davies, PR & marketing manager of Trailfinders in London. ‘It makes no difference at all how they pay; we put client’s money into a trust fund; if an airline goes bust, we’ll give them a full refund, or sort them out on the next best alternative, whichever they prefer. They will not lose any money.’
Monica Beaupre, a manager for public affairs at American Express in New York, says, ‘The best travel companion you can take along is travel insurance. We offer a wide variety of travel insurance benefits here in the U.S. Global Travel Shield is for card members and non members; Travel Assure is a package of protection just for card members.’
Both policies provide cover ‘if a covered trip is cancelled or interrupted due to… financial default or bankruptcy of a tour operator, hotel, resort, rental car company, other travel supplier or Common Carrier Conveyance.’
I would argue that this covered ‘scheduled airline failure;’ But if I were buying the policy, I would like it to be spelled out, in a ‘what if?’ scenario.
The devil, after all, is in the small print.
Beware of bogus blogs is the watchword for travelers who seek unbiased information. There is something seductive, beguiling, about the immediacy of the personal blog; ‘a shared community of fellow travelers’ sharing that authentic experience; unless we detect the verisimilitude of mercantile scribes in air-conditioned offices.
The PR industry has long since embraced blogging as just another medium, another form of publicity. Technorati.com is a search engine that catalogues over 13 million blogs and a surfeit of sponsored links, that may or not be authentic. And, as I write this, a new junk mail message invites me to ‘discover the power of the Blog Blaster, the new way of advertising on the Internet.’ Many blogs are just thinly disguised hotel blurbs.
There are blogs for all seasons and manners, ranging from tedious diaries with blow-by-blow accounts of the writer’s meals and musings, to crisp reports, and intelligent, entertaining essays on places one has always been meaning to visit. The only way to check the authenticity of a blog is to look up a place that you know.
Travelblogs.com is an eclectic collection of travelogues posted by readers, from ‘Guadalajara, the livable city,’ to ‘Venice for lunch,’ well worth a browse if you are going their way. Holidaysuncovered.com claims to list ‘over 50,000 reviews by real holidaymakers’ of budget lodgings at popular resorts around the world. The reviews, good and bad, are pithy and to the point and have an authentic ring. Slow Travel (www.slowtrav.com) has posted more than 40,000 reviews of hotels and restaurants and 400 trip reports, essays and articles; well worth a visit. (Slow Travel must not to be confused with Slowtravel.com, with sponsored links to a mixed bag of travel services. When I typed ‘Lausanne,’ where I used to work, into the search window, I was directed to Tripadvisor.com, among others, a site devoted to ‘unbiased reviews’ of hotels, resorts, and vacations, and I was not convinced by the ‘reviews,’ good and bad, of hotels I know or where I have stayed.)
Hotelchatter.com is replete with ads and sponsored links, and, surprise, surprise, when I clicked on ‘related stories’ on a hotel blog, I came through to the ubiquitous Tripadvisor.com. And when I entered ‘Lausanne’ all I got a clutter of sponsored links. Newyorkology.com offers a cornucopia of up-to-date news and views of the Big Apple; Biznettravel.blogs.com has some interesting blogs between the ads and some useful links; while Wanderlust.com and Gridskipper.com are unconvincing when most links lead to Google.
Traveler-generated content is one of the fastest growing features of online travel. Sites such as Virtualtourist.com and Igougo.com rely upon reviews posted by individual travelers. Both sites offered me reliable views on hotels, restaurants and things to do and see and see in Lausanne. Wikitravel.com has nearly 9,000 travel guides and articles written by contributors, among the best I can find on Lausanne. Travelpost.com posts ‘unbiased hotel reviews from real travelers’ and hosts personal travel blogs.
Look out now for hotel sites, such as Sheraton.com that breathlessly invites travelers to ’share travel experiences with other guests,’ and ‘explore a global neighborhood with access to thousands of stories, and recommendations from customers touting hidden gems around the world.’ Soon they can join in ‘live chat’ online with other guests.
Travelers bursting to share experiences may want to start their own travel blogs with the help of sites such as Blogger.com or Sixapart.com. Or register a cute domain name.
Mrparticular.com, a self-confessed ‘failed novelist,’ who works in hotel marketing, has the mission to ‘expose the reality behind the offer’ in reviews of 20 English country house hotels, that include icons such as Chewton Glen, Ston Easton Park and Clivedon. Mr. Particular is overly arch and he strives too hard to write the stylish essay; but his reviews are in the tradition of the ‘mystery shopper;’ if only he would cut to the chase.
There is nothing eccentric or sad about preferring to travel solo or booking a vacation on one’s own, judging by the number of specialist travel companies, many Web-based, that cater for the single traveler.
According to British specialist singles holiday company Just You (www.justyou.co.uk), research shows that 19 percent of women prefer to travel alone, and another 14 percent would like to take a vacation on their own: 20 percent of Just You customers who are not single ‘prefer, for all kinds of reasons, to holiday by themselves.’
But not all solo travelers wish to stay solo for the duration of their trip. Yvonne Carlson, editor of Holiday41 (www.holiday41.co.uk), which arranges packaged holidays and short breaks suitable for singles, and people who just want to go on their own, says, ‘There’s a definite increase in the number of people who want to share their holiday but not their bedroom. By identifying trips that are female-friendly, or single-friendly, means that even when you vacation with friends there is greater likelihood of the experience being enhanced by the opportunity to mix with a like-minded group of people.’
Other services for solo travelers who wish to meet up with like-minded people include AirTroductions.com that allows its members to post their profiles and travel schedules and meet people with similar business or personal interests on the same flight by arranging seating, or at the same departure or arrival airport on a specific date or time. Even someone simply wishing to share a cab with another solo traveler can be put in touch with another member for a $5 fee. AirTroductions.com says it has signed up 15,000 members since its inception in September 2005. According to its founder Peter Shankman, some travelers are looking for a date and some for potential business partners, but others are simply looking for someone pleasant to sit with on a long flight.
Travellers Meeting Point (www.travellersmeetingpoint.com) allows users to find out who will be staying in the same city. On Arrival (www.friendsonarrival.com) provides a free notice board and member profile search “to provide common ground for people to connect, share experiences and arrange to meet up.”
Singles Travel International (www.singlestravelintl.com) offers what it calls “low/no supplement” travel for singles, especially cruises and high-end tours, with reductions in single supplements. Solo’s Holidays (solosholidays.co.uk) offers a wide choice of group vacations for singles to more than 70 countries with no single supplements, to suit a variety of tastes, ages and budgets, while Companions 2 Travel (companions2travel.co.uk) is a good resource for pairing up people who want company. And 1000traveltips.org offers useful tips from independent travelers.
Should you be heading for London, Stephanie Archer and Sharon Glanville at My Friend in London (www.myfriendinlondon.com) offer, for #50 an hour, a “one-to-one service’ to women who are visiting London, accompanying them to shops, restaurants, museums and the like. ‘Female business travelers in particular often just want companionship during their stay in the city, particularly somewhere like London that can be quite intimidating, Even confident women who know London can lose their bearings, or enjoy visiting parts of the city off the beaten track,’ Glanville says. ‘We treat them just like we would treat our best friend who has come to visit.’