An EASY way to $ave more than a few BUCK$
One of the good things about being able to plan travel way out front is that you can grab pricing deals when they become available. This means not just airfares but hotels and rental cars as well.The Wall Street Journal of March 10, 2009, has two articles about airlines and airfares. With the exception of the Middle East, air travel is off (sometimes waaaay off) around the globe. Here in North America the airlines discovered one way to save money, especially on fuel, was to NOT fly empty seats around the sky. That seems pretty obvious. What the airlines didn't count on was so many fewer people are flying. Anywhere. For anything. So cutting capacity has been outpaced by the loss of travelers. Bottom line is there are still empty seats, and the airlines want people in them.
All the major carriers expect that trend -- fewer travelers month by month -- to continue. This includes Southwest, which has always seemed to be ahead of the game. The industry has cut 28,000 jobs, leaving 392,000 still working for the airlines, but for how long? The airlines were pretty proud of themselves for limiting their own capacity, enabling them to charge higher fares and add fees to services which used to be included, such as checking baggage and charging for water(!) and soft drinks. There are airlines who want to charge a fee for booking online(!), and one low-cost carrier in Europe wants to charge passengers to use the lavatory(!!!!)
This means that many airlines will be making short-term offers to the traveling public -- offers like deeply reduced fares six or nine months out -- just to get some cash into the till today. These offers, which are called "Flash Sales", are not widely publicized and may be in effect for only a few days. We will endeavor to make those offers known here, in this BLOG.
At the top I mentioned TWO articles in the WSJ; here is Number 2.
When booking travel through services like Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline, and the like, the comparison prices don't always tell the whole story. Even when going directly to an airline's own website, you may not discover ALL the "additional charges and fees" until you have pushed the button to purchase your ticket. Here are two websites to put into your "Favorites":
Trip Advisor gets into the fees for everything you need to travel, including airfares, car rentals [how about those little add-ons like "license recovery fee", "airport convenience fee", "fuel surcharge fee", for that FREE ride to the gate in the company van, and on and on. Here in Phoenix, taxes and fees can DOUBLE what a rental costs], hotels, restaurants, and visitor attractions.
Flying Fees gets right into it, with baggage charges, fees for headsets, pillows, blankets, ticketing at the airport, fuel surcharges, security charges, food & drink, etc. This site tracks fees at 27 airlines, then lists the five cheapest carriers in some fee categories.
According to industry insiders, by the end of this year most airlines will be filing their fees and charges along with their fares. This will make comparison shopping a whole lot easier. But until then, it's every traveler for him- or herself.
Watch the papers and check broadcast news for any stories about airfare wars, and don't waste time. Buy the tickets you know you will need (on a credit card, preferably with a virtual number) as soon as you have travel dates. We will try to keep you up to date in here.
No comments:
Post a Comment