TAKING THE TEMPERATURE OF SUMMER TRAVEL.
With peak summer travel season in full swing there’s an
onslaught of alarmist yammering that
summer vacation and
the entire travel industry are in some sort of death
spiral. Seriously folks…sure, things are not as peachy
as in previous years and everyone is pulling back to
some degree. But is all the "doom and gloom"
really necessary? To wit:
Planes are still packed to the gills. The average
airline load factor for June
was down just 1.7 percent compared to last June.
Despite all the predictions of small towns left high
and dry due to flight cutbacks and speculative “you
might not be able to get there from here” stories,
airlines are flying at full capacity this summer. As
a matter of fact, there are slightly
more seats available this
summer compared to last. The proposed
10-15 percent cuts in seat capacity don’t come until
October or so, and with oil tumbling $16 in the last
week, airlines may not have to cut all the way to
the bone after all.
Delta just eked out a profit for the second quarter
(don’t believe the
headlines about the $1.2
billion loss
grossly inflated by special “one time charges.”)
In June,
AirTran set two all-time
records: Its
load factor for the month was 84.7 percent and it
enplaned more than 2.3 million passengers for the
month, a 4.2 percent increase from June 2007.
While
hotel occupancy growth is
flattening, hotel rates are holding
steady, except in certain markets like Hawaii where
they are down 20-30%; Las Vegas and Orlando rates
are also down. However, rates in major business
travel cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and San
Francisco are up compared to last year.
Fares for fall and holiday travel are higher (like
everything else dependent on oil) , but not
unrealistically so.
Average airfares are generally about
20 percent higher than last year.
We have found fares in the $400 range for non-peak transcon flights between ATL and the west coast
around both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fares
between ATL and New York, Washington DC or Chicago
for Christmas are in the $275 range. (Fares
searched July 21, 2008 and subject to
change.) Not bad and not much different than what
you’d have paid last year.
Are
we missing something here? Have things deteriorated THAT
much? Or is summer just the time that everyone loves to
complain about travel? Let us know what you are thinking and set us
straight if you have too. Maybe our rose colored glasses
need some adjusting?
LET US KNOW.
GOOD
ON HERTZ.
There’s little worse than the ripped off feeling you get
when you just don’t have time to stop to fill up the
rental car on the way back to the airport. Rental car
companies typically gouge you by filling the tank up at
the rate of about $8 gallon.
Hertz has done an about
face on this sleazy practice. Starting now, Hertz will
fill up the car for you at local market prices, and ding
you an extra $7 fee for doing so. That’s fair. We hope
other rental car companies take note. (Always confirm
this when picking up the car since the rule is new and
employees may not be familiar with it….)
OH
NO. THIS DOES NOT SOUND GOOD.
Airport baggage theft report from the
AJC: “An Atlanta
police officer watched over the travelers' luggage at
the airport. Then he spotted a man — someone he had
arrested before — walking away from the Delta baggage
claim carousel with two large bags. When confronted,
Willie Minter, 49, admitted the bags weren't his and
offered an explanation: ‘Officer, I have a drug
problem,’ he said, according to an Atlanta police
report.”
Full article here. Hmmm. Now that the airlines are
charging us fees for checked bags, maybe they should
provide the staff to start matching bags with claim
tickets—a common practice until the last travel downturn
(2001) when airlines cried poor. One more reason to
never check a bag….
FIRST
BAG FOR $15 ON NWA.
Delta’s proposed merger partner Northwest Airlines has
added the new (and nearly standard) $15 fee for the first checked back. But Delta is standing firm for now
on it’s decision not to impose the fee on the first bag,
but has added the $25 fee for the second (Medallions
exempted).
AA BEEFS UP IN ATL. When all you read about is
airline cuts, it's nice to hear about an addition:
Starting Sept 3, American will add one more nonstop from ATL to New York La Guardia for a total of five per day.
Why fly AA to NY? Because you can scamper right through
that quick and easy T concourse security line and be on
your plane in a matter of minutes. Same thing on your
return.
SADNESS IN SEATTLE. Your TICKET editor got a little misty eyed in
Seattle last week when he spied upon the darkened shell
of a once busy, but recently shuttered Crown Room out on
the Delta end of SEATAC’s concourse A. All that’s left
behind the glass windows overlooking the concourse are a
few wires hanging from the ceiling and some old b&w
arrivals and departures monitors mounted in walls.
DELTA REGIONAL PARTNER ASA GETTING BETTER? We've
been very down on ASA due to the consistent, frequent
and negative feedback from TICKET readers and from
government stats showing bottom of the barrel
performance for many years. However, ASA is claiming to
be turning this ship around and sent us the following
stats to back up the claim.
ASA has steadily
improved performance month-over-month since November
2007.
In May, ASA
completed 99.8% of our nearly 24,000 flights and
operated more than 83.8% of those flights on-time.
In May ASA had the
highest flight completion rate of any regional
carrier and tied for the second spot ranking overall
for all carriers reporting to the DOT
In May ASA earned
the No. 1 spot for fewest complaints by passengers
Is ASA right? Are you noticing
an operational turnaround?
Let us know!
THE
TASTE OF THE TICKET.
"This
was the first time I had experienced Singaporean
cuisine, though I generally fancy Asian food. I was not
sure what to expect. "
Want to hear more? Then check out the latest dispatch
from our fearless taste-tester in
THE TASTE OF THE TICKET!
DID YOU KNOW....that
THE TASTE OF THE TICKET is one of the most popular
elements of THE TICKET newsletter-- thousands of readers
check it out every month!
DELTA
EKES OUT A PROFIT.
Despite the screeching about Delta’s so-called loss of
$1.04 billion…when you take out the special “one time
charges” of $1.2 billion, you’ll know that it actually
had a net income (or profit) of $137 million in the
second (April-June) quarter. (No bad considering April
was weaker than last year since Easter fell in March
this year.) How’d they do it? Analysts quoted in the NY
Times attribute the gain to about $170 million in new
passenger fees and a pretty good fuel hedging program.
Delta hedged nearly half of its fuel consumption during
the second quarter, leading to an average fuel price of
$3.13 a gallon which may sound like a bargain, but it’s
a 50 percent increase from last year when it paid $2.09
a gallon.
COMMENTS ABOUT DELTA’S NEW PAY WITH MILES.
Interesting insight regarding Delta’s new Pay With Miles
option from our colleague
Tim Winship’s column on SmarterTravel.com. “Delta
and its credit card partner, American Express, recently
introduced Pay with Miles, permitting members of Delta's
program to redeem their miles at a value of 1 cent each
for Delta tickets. The move was clearly an attempt to
shore up the program's declining value. When program
members do the math, however, they will find that using
Pay with Miles amounts to a 1 percent rebate, which can
only be applied toward the purchase of Delta flights.
That may suffice as a stopgap measure. But as consumers
discover that other credit cards offer a 1 percent cash
rebate—that can be used to purchase anything, not just
Delta tickets—the Pay with Miles option loses much of
its luster.”
HOTEL SHUFFLE. Wyndham Worldwide now owns
Microtel and Hawthorne Suites which means
Hawthorne's affiliation with the Hyatt Gold Passport
program is over. (In case you have not been watching,
Wyndham grew out of Cendant Corp and now includes
brands such at Ramada, Wingate Inn, Days Inn, Howard
Johnson, and of course Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. The
frequency program for the group is now called
Wyndham Rewards (formerly TripRewards.)
CUTS
THAT DON’T REALLY HURT.
All these airline schedule cuts that the media is
screaming about are on routes that always seemed a
little bit thin to us in the first place. We could
really look at this as a time of "right-sizing" instead
of downsizing. Atlanta to
Ottawa on an RJ? Salt Lake to Yakima? Charlotte to
Sacramento or Atlanta to San Francisco on United? These
were all routes that the legacy carriers added during
the bubblicious days that had many of us scratching our
heads in the first place. I mean, how many people were
actually flying on that that daily RJ between ATL and
Leon, Mexico anyway? And while flying non-stop from ATL
to Edinburgh was nice for the year or so that it was
offered, it's not like I'm going to change plans now
that I have to stop once on the way there. --cjm
Don’t
Forget! BOOK ALL YOUR ONLINE TRAVEL VIA
LINKS FROM THE TICKET!
WE
LUV SFO.
SkyTrax, one of the best of the many airport surveys out
there, recently named San Francisco International as the
best airport in North America. The west coast gateway no
doubt won due to the popularity of its sleek new
international terminal, which puts the airport on par
with other winners like Singapore Changi, Seoul Incheon
and Hong Kong. The rest of the airport, including
Delta’s facilities in terminal 2 and AirTran’s in
Terminal 1 are old, but still efficient. Other top
airports in the US were Vancouver and Dallas/Ft Worth
(which is something of a mystery to us. Are we missing
something?) Best airport in Europe: Munchen. (www.worldairportawards.com)
ARRIVE IN STYLE IN MANHATTAN: Book a full coach or first class ticket to New York on
Delta and you’ll get a free helicopter ride to the East 34th Street Heliport (TSS) or the
Downtown Manhattan Heliport at Wall Street (JRB). Full
coach fares and first class fares are both around $900
round trip, so be sure and book first class!
Delta/US Helicopter details here.
ON
TIME PERFORMANCE:
While we’ve gotten through the summer without any major
snafus around the big holiday weekends of Memorial Day
and July 4, we are still about on par with last year for
overall on-time performance—meaning that about 25% of
flights are late. Like last summer, most of the problems
occur in the New York region, so if you can avoid that
area as well as Chicago, you will most likely avoid the
most painful delays. Despite what you are hearing about
airline schedule cuts, few if any have happened in NYC,
so congestion and capacity issues remain unsolved. For
those lucky enough to be flying west of the Mississippi,
significant or persistent flight delays are few and far
between.
DELTA 747? If Delta succeeds in its merger with
Northwest (which currently flies 747's), you'll once
again see Delta 747's jetting about the globe just like
in the good old 70's when Delta had a few of these big
boys in its fleet flying between Atlanta and Dallas,
Detroit, Miami and LAX.
THIS
AND THAT….
To enhance revenue, Delta and United have raised the
price of inflight alcoholic bevs in coach to $6 from $5
(poor flight attendants who have to make change.)….
Also, Delta is going to start adding advertisements to
the boarding passes you print from your home or office
PC….. A guy who had to spend the night in an airport in
Germany has created the
Mini Motel, a
one-person tent complete with air
mattress, pillow, reading light, alarm clock and pillow
($39.95), and has sold it to a handful of airports for
distribution during large scale overnight flight
delays…United will reduce its daily round trips between ATL and Denver from three to two starting in November.
PRICEY CHANGES.
It’s getting very expensive to change your mind.
Starting this month on Delta and several other major
carriers, the change fee for domestic tickets increases
to $100 from $75 if you ticket was booked at delta.com.
It’s $150 if it was booked via a travel agency.
The fee
is up to $200 or more for international tickets (+$50
for those not booked on delta.com).
ADIOS
LEON, BONJOUR LYON.
Delta’s cut it’s nonstop RJ flights to Leon, in north
central Mexico, which was an easy way to get to the
wonderful town of San Miguel de Allende. (You can still
get there on Continental via Houston.) At about the same
time, Delta has added new nonstops from New York-JFK to
Lyon, France, France’s second largest city and its
gateway to the Alps.
DELTA
CUTS.
Adding to the previous and expanding list of schedule
cuts, from ATL, Delta will eliminate flights between ATL
and Vienna, Toledo, and Lansing. (Know of other
Delta cuts? They don't announce them, so it's hard to
keep track. If you hear about one,
let us know!
MIDWEST AIR CUTS.
Milwaukee-based Midwest Airlines announced big cuts to
its schedule this week with 90 daily departures to 28
cities, down from 118 daily departures to 38 cities.
However, ATL-Milwaukee flights on Midwest were spared
the axe.
Don’t
Forget! BOOK ALL YOUR ONLINE TRAVEL VIA
LINKS FROM THE TICKET!
We've gotten a little behind on publishing our MAILBAG,
which readers say is one of their favorite parts of THE
TICKET. So here's a couple months worth of the best
comments and user-generated info out there! Thanks,
folks!
DELTA'S INTERNATIONAL (TRANSOCEANIC) 757’s OH MY!
NIGHTMARE.
“I was on the 757 from JFK to Brussels about three weeks
ago. My upgrade to Business Elite did not clear – those
upgradeable fares are becoming more and more of a scam –
therefore, I was stuck in economy class. It was a
nightmare. The economy seats on the 757 are seemed
significantly more cramped compared to the 767-300
economy seats – absolutely no leg room. The
video-on-demand was not functioning – even after
attempts by the crew to reset. There was no choice of
meal in economy – it was chicken or chicken. Also, the
cabin crew seemed to be disoriented and confused –
clearly the lack of space. I’ve never been so glad to
get off a plane upon arrival. --C Wilkinson
NO
BIG DEAL.
“Just saw your ‘international 757’ item on the latest
version of The Ticket... I don't understand the big
deal. Back in the day, we spent 9+ hours on
international 707 and DC-8 flights and thought nothing
of it. And certainly those planes didn't have video at
your seat, etc.! The airlines are right-sizing aircraft
on many routes and who can blame them with the high cost
of fuel!” –M Texeira
ROBBED.
“Recently I flew to Manchester on a ‘Domestic’ 757 from
JFK. The BusinessElite cabin was abysmal. Same as a
Domestic configuration across the Atlantic and J class
fares to boot. I was deceived to say the least.
Actually, I feel I was robbed. Never again!! If Delta
wants to do this, then sell the space as a downgraded
business class cabin like they in the Caribbean, with
fares to match. $6,000 for MAN-JFK-MAN on a Domestic
757 is simply robbery and deception!” --P Katopodis
CAN’T
IMAGINE.
“I just wanted to let you know that Delta is flying a
757 internationally from Atlanta - on their Shannon
route. I cannot imagine 8 hours on a narrow-body...what
are they thinking??” --J Pickard
COMFORTABLE.
“I just wanted to let you know that my wife and son
arrived in Edinburgh yesterday from Atlanta via JFK on
one of those 757s. She said that the flight was
comfortable and that our 11 year old son really enjoyed
the on demand entertainment system in the seat in front
of him. Just some feedback for you! Thanks for all that
you do in putting together The Ticket; I really enjoy
reading it and usually forward it to lots of friends.”
--R Webb
DELTA
CHARGING $25-$50 FOR FREQUENT FLYER TICKETS:
NO
LOYALTY.
“Doesn't Delta realize this will be counterintuitive?
Now I have no reason to remain loyal to Delta, so
instead of continuing to fly Delta and earning miles
that will just end up costing me at least $25 to use,
I'll start using other options like Air Tran. Good
riddance, Delta.” --D Blum
HONESTY.
“Get real. I haven't finagled a free "free" ticket out
of them in years. There are always costs. At least this
one is honest and upfront.” --J Sinton
FAT
CHANCE.
“Delta says, ‘Our hope is that this surcharge is
temporary, and should fuel prices subside from current
levels, we will reevaluate it.’ Fat chance! It is my
experience that when any business, not just a hard-up
business, taps into a new revenue stream they don't
normally give it up unless forced to do so by law and
since these miles are given by the airlines there is no
way that will happen.” –S Gaskins
BUSY
REDEEMING.
“As fortune would have it, I am redeeming almost half my
FF stockpile in August prior to the new fee. Based on
the small number of seats reserved for award tickets,
this is just another way to gouge Delta's best customers
and show that they really are not committed to customer
service, as if anyone had any doubt left. I'm sure we
can expect Delta to jump on the first checked bag
bandwagon any time now. They still managed to gouge me
by saying that there was a problem completing my award
tickets online and that I needed to contact an agent
thus automatically adding the $25 fee for an agent to
each ticket.” --R Schmetzer
A BIT
O’HISTORY.
“A hundred years ago the railroads were doing comparable
things to their freight and passenger service customers
and look where they are today. Fifty years ago, it was
the banks and the telephone company (AT&T). Ditto.
Today, it's the legacy airlines, and I'll bet you my
ticket home that their market share and societal
relevance will end up on a par with the old telecom
monopoly or the Pennsylvania Railroad by the end on the
2020s. This is the dying gasp of a soon-to-be extinct
monopolist. It's life inside the fish bowl for Mr.
Anderson and his ilk.” --A Selden
WHAT’S THE DIFF?
“With Delta, whether there is a charge for Award Travel
or not is really immaterial; Delta award tickets, even
months and months in advance are few and far between, so
what difference does it make if there is a surcharge?
You won't be able to redeem your miles anyway.” --J
Morris
GOLD
RESERVE PARKING AT ATL:
“Just
an FYI since I have not seen one recently regarding the
Gold Reserve Lots at ATL...as of June 1 there are
now over 900 people on the wait list. There has been no
turnover since last year according to the
parking management office. Thanks for the informative
site! It is a real help in my travel planning.” --S
Taylor
MORE
SCHEDULE CUTS:
PUERTO VALLARTA.
“Delta's non-stop ATL to PVR (Puerto Vallarta) has been
trimmed from 7 days to 3 days a week (F/Sa/ Su)” --T
Blaisdell
BANGOR.
“We have a summer home in Maine, and so I do a lot of
flying in and out of Bangor in the summer, often through
Boston. Not this year. I had a meeting this week in
Boston, and my husband actually had to drive down and
pick me up because there are no afternoon or evening
flights from Boston to Bangor on Saturday. There used
to be afternoon/evening flights every hour or 2 between
Boston and Bangor. It's making vacation and business
travel much harder this year.” --L Peterson
ATHENS.
“As a resident of suburban Athens I frequently travel
out of either Athens (AHN) or ATL depending on what kind
of great fares I can get. I was disappointed to learn
that US Airways has abruptly discontinued all service
from AHN as of 5/22. Thanks for the great Ticket
newsletters.” --T Moore
GOT A COMMENT, TIP OR ADVICE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE?
Email us and it could end up in a future issue
of THE TICKET! Send yours to
ticketatl@travelskills.com. Thanks!
A FRIENDLY
REMINDER:
Luv ya! Mean it! Return the love by booking your
travel via links in THE TICKET! We need readers to book all trips on links
embedded in the newsletter or
portal. Remember, doing so helps us help you. Thanks in advance! (Just click
on the ads to the right, or the links below!)
See
you again next month or sooner with a NEWSBITE if or
when hot news breaks.
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