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Warning: Be careful pricing multi-leg trips

Are major airlines pulling a fast one with multi-leg itinerary pricing? (Image: Jim Glab)

Are major airlines pulling a fast one with multi-leg itinerary pricing? (Image: Jim Glab)

We’re seeing alerts from business travel professionals this week warning that the major airlines have quietly changed their pricing practices on multi-leg itineraries in a way that can cost you a lot more money.

For example, we received an email from Sherry Conley, vice president of operations at Boehm Travel Companies, with this report: “We had a traveler price three legs of a circle-trip on Delta.com — Baltimore to Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids to Atlanta, Atlanta back to Baltimore.  The combination of the three one-way fares was less than $600 in Main Cabin.  When priced as one trip, the price is $1,558.20.  Incredible!  This is just one example – I am sure every agency has many, and it is not just Delta.  American and United have also updated their fare rules.  I’m sure neither carrier had any idea the others were doing this…right!”

The Global Business Travel Association, a trade organization of company travel managers, also sounded an alarm, noting in a statement this week that “United, Delta and American all changed fare structures on multi-city trips without any advance communication to corporate travel managers. This represents a major faring change requiring transparency throughout the buyer community.”

The organization said it sent out an alert to its members and also contacted members of Congress. “While recent airline statements indicate that these changes were the result of unintended consequences of new combinable fare restrictions, we will now survey our members to verify that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction,” GBTA said.

The Business Travel Coalition, an advocacy group for corporate travel, sent a letter to the Justice Department asking for an investigation. BTC suggested in the letter that American, Delta and United “may have recently coordinated” their pricing practices on multi-leg trips, potentially “driving up the price of an airline ticket on unsuspecting consumers by as much as a factor of seven.”

BTC cited an example of a New York-Los Angeles-Albuquerque-Montreal-New York routing that showed a coach fare of $2,745; the total for booking individual one-way segments instead came to $898, BTC said.

While airlines often match each other’s fares, this practice is different, BTC alleged: “This policy is complex and far-reaching, with major implications including for travel distribution channel competition. This is not a match-and-go decision, but one that would have received a considerable thought, analysis and discussion over time.”

Readers: Have you been caught up in this new pricing practice…or racket? Post comments below.

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about: United’s newest, longest flight + Tipping Uber drivers + Qantas 747 Trip Report + Confusion over PreCheck policies + No-fee earlier flights

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Airlines face new scrutiny over surcharges

Are airlines going too far in hiding unjustified surcharges? (Image: Jim Glab)

Are airlines going too far in hiding surcharges that have  no relation to their costs? (Image: Jim Glab)

As oil prices continue to linger at or near their lowest point in years, airlines are facing new criticism of their ongoing fuel surcharges – or more often now, other vaguely-defined surcharges that replaced them – and interests representing travelers want the Transportation Department to intervene.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D.-Conn.) this week released a letter he sent to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx asking for a DOT investigation of carrier-imposed surcharges that “mislead and possibly deceive consumers.”

DOT in 2012 banned airlines from imposing fuel surcharges unless they were directly linked to fuel costs. And after fuel prices went into their downward spiral in recent years, “most airlines dropped ‘fuel charges’ and began assessing consumers other vaguely-worded charges such as ‘international/domestic surcharges’ and ‘carrier-imposed charges,’ which seem to have no relation to any additional costs borne by the airlines,” Blumenthal wrote. In some instances, he said, the fees are larger than the actual base fare charged by the airline.

Blumenthal noted that the fees “sometimes only surface when a consumer attempts to redeem an award ticket,” a circumstance that “seems to further confirm the deceptive nature of these surcharges.” He cited fine print in Delta’s SkyMiles rules which includes hint that redeeming a “free” award ticket may cost the customer “’up to $600 for foreign government taxes and fees and/or carrier-imposed fees for international itineraries;’” and that Delta “’reserves the right to change fees or add additional fees at any time without advance notice.’”

Secretary Foxx got another letter this week from the Business Travel Coalition, requesting a “thorough and in-depth investigation” of airlines’ ongoing assessment “of often-sizeable fuel surcharges on many itineraries,” in violation of DOT rules about justifying such charges.

“We call on DOT to hold the airlines assessing fuel surcharges, by any term or language, to account — by requiring them to substantiate on a route-by-route basis that the charges do indeed reflect the actual costs of fuel per passenger over some baseline amount,” BTC wrote.

Readers: Have you had any unpleasant surprises with unexpected or extreme surcharges? Should the government intervene? Post comments below.

NOTE: Be sure to click here to see all recent TravelSkills posts about:  Should I tip my Uber driver? + Boeing 747 nearing its end? + Bargain hunters travel guide for 2016 + World’s best airline lounge? + Fares to Europe tumble 

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