The Ritz-Carlton, Chicago is finally a full-fledged member of Ritz-Carlton Hotels. (Image: Ritz-Carlton, Chicago)
A few newsy nuggets from other sources that we missed on TravelSkills this week:
>Airbus files a patent for a plane that could fly twice as fast as Concorde.
>A new survey finds that business travelers tend to be big online shoppers.
>Delta, United and American all say they will no longer transport big game hunters’ trophies.
>Lufthansa expands restaurant-style meal service in business class to more long-haul routes.
>Here’s a handy chart of ticket change fees on major airlines.
>And here’s another on maximum carry-on bag sizes.
NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: Avoiding long customs & immigration lines + Fingerprint as boarding pass? + Hotel rate shocker + More!
I really wish “60 Minutes” would do an investigation of airline change fees. I know someone who works as a reservation agent for a major airline, and she says airlines will sometimes waive the change fees if you cry on the phone or sweet-talk the agent or claim some terrible hardship. She said a common scam was to call in and politely request a change for medical reasons and ask to have the change fee waived. Callers would then give very convincing details about their medical issue, including the doctor’s and hospital’s contact information in case the airline wished to confirm that it was a genuine medical issue. This is a scam, because no doctor or hospital in the U.S. will ever release medical information about a patient to a third party. (Sometimes they won’t even release it to the patient.) And some number of these people can manage to get their change fee waived completely by lying. Reminds me of what happened to bereavement fares, which were fairly common several decades ago but have been really watered down because so many people lied to get a lower fare.
Maybe the government should force airlines to release information about how many change fees are waived for passenger-initiated requests to change a booked ticket. That would be a very interesting number.