According to ABC News, some American families are opting to fly this summer rather than drive, because the airlines will get them to their destination cheaper than they could drive themselves:

It’s an American summer tradition: Pack the suitcases, put the kids in the car, and hit the open road. But not this summer, say the Itkinses of Falls Church, Va. To save money, they are flying to Disney World instead of driving. The Itkin family’s travel package, including three round-trip tickets and a two-night hotel stay, cost them $1,065. The American Automobile Association (AAA) estimated the same trip by car would have cost them $1,334 — almost $300 more.

Is this really true? The $1065 number is seemingly just 3 tickets and 2 hotel nights, not food, park tickets, etc. I’ll venture a guess here: $150 per night for the hotel, which leaves 3 tickets at $255 each. Seems possible. (Heck, you could do it for less, but these prices are plausible.)

So what about the driving itinerary?

Given what we know about the Itkin family, their drive will be 868 miles, about 13.5 hours each way. Add some miles for driving around the Orlando area, and round up a bit, and you’ve got about 2000 miles. Given the distance and time, I assume that they’re building an overnight into both outbound and inbound, since it’s a long trip, plus the two nights in Orlando. Let’s use $150 for the hotel — it isn’t cheap for a hotel, especially a roadside motel, but it’s in the ballpark and makes a harder case, so let’s use that number anyway. So $600 in lodging expenses.

To get to the AAA’s estimate, the Itkin family would still need to spend $734 in gasoline. At $3 per gallon, that’s 244 gallons of gas. In 2000 miles? That’s 8mpg! What are they driving? Heck, even a Hummer H3 now gets 20mpg highway… Unless they’re adding in the time value of money, the AAA estimates don’t make sense to me.

Any help out there?

(Update: Niel in comments sets me straight, reminding me of the federal reimbursement rate for vehicle use… That adds up quickly. Whether or not it’s an accurate reflection of costs is another matter. Thanks, Niel!

Also this article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on the same issue of flying vs. driving. The “comparative advantage” of driving increases the more people you’re toting around.)

A few small Friday afternoon items (RJ-sized, perhaps?):

- Spirit Airlines $8 each way (pretax) fire sale fare sale ends tonight. Dates and availablity are obviously limited, but it’s darn cheap. The booby prize, if the $8 fare is sold out, is a $44 fare. (via smartertravel.com)

- A DeLand, Florida teacher was suspended for offering his students extra credit for collecting AirTran coupons from Wendy’s beverage cups. (32 cups equaled a free ticket under the promotion.) On the plus side, very few Wendy’s cups were littering America’s streets, and one school’s kids got a valuable less in frequent flyer miles… (via Today in the Sky)

- What better way to spend $37,200 than on a SINGLE NIGHT at Cannes’ Hotel Martinez penthouse suite, the most expensive hotel room in the world?

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Taking a page from Ryanair’s playbook, Air Canada effectively began charging bottom-fare customers for checked luggage on Wednesday.

Starting today [April 26], Air Canada customers booking a Tango fare at aircanada.com, will be eligible for up to $20 savings on their return trip if they agree not to make any changes to their booked itinerary, and agree to fly without checked baggage, within the normal carry-on bag allowance only. To obtain the discount, customers simply click on the GO Discount Tango fare option when making their online booking.

Air Canada already sells tickets in a simplified set of five fare types. Of these, “Tango’ is the cheapest, and they already sock it to you for things like seat assignments ($15) and limited mileage earnings (both redeemable and elite-qualifying).

I was amused to see an enthusiastic press release from the “Coalition for Luggage Security,” seemingly a front for a penny-stock company that offers to ship your luggage to your destination in advance of your travels. Their statement, dripping with praise of Air Canada’s new consumer-unfriendly policy, is a howler:

Other airlines should take their lead. We believe more airlines will adopt similar pricing and option models when they realize the savings to consumers and their own business. Soon we may see offering the shipping of luggage during reservations, and charging for carry-ons, or separate lines into airports for those travelers without luggage. The ideas are only limited by the willingness for airlines to become profitable, governments to release their controls on the traveling public, airports to utilize more effective use of space and infrastructure and most importantly for the American people to re-embrace freedom of movement without restrictions.

Look, I am all for carry-ons rather than checked luggage, but checking in bags doesn’t mean you aren’t embracing freedom of movement. What’s next? If you don’t use online check-in, the terrorists have won!? Oy.

But back to Air Canada: They can save the last dance for someone else. I won’t Tango.

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Priceline’s latest US-based promotion/sweepstakes may be of interest to the Upgrade: Travel Better crowd. The “Ultimate Upgrade” offers free private jet travel, or, more likely, upgrades on American or USAirways. (The catch: If you win an upgrade, you have to buy the ticket you wish to upgrade from Priceline; presumably the name-your-own-price tickets are not eligible.)

Entry is automatic for air or air+hotel purchases. “No purchase necessary” — mail in a card. See here for the full rules.

The private jet services are offered through OneSky, which is notable for offering discounted private jet travel for repositioning flights. Let’s say someone books a plane to fly from New York to Miami, and someone else books the same plane to fly from Washington to Chicago. The aircraft has to get from Miami to Washington, but it has no one to carry. Enter OneSky, which purports to offer access to such flights at a discount to normal private jet rates. Still not cheap, to be sure, but cheaper than retail.

Looks like Germans are following in the great American tradition of suing everyone.

According to this article in a German medical daily (!?), an unnamed airline (cough, Lufthansa, cough…) was found liable for confusing its passengers by codesharing.

The plaintiff’s ticket was issued by one airline, with its own flight number, but operated by another under a codeshare agreement. The passenger lined up to check in with the airline who ISSUED the ticket, not the airline actually operating the flight. He missed his flight and sued. The airline’s argument was simple: He should have read the ticket and checked the airport monitors. But the Oberlandesgericht (~state supreme court) in Frankfurt found in favor of the plaintiff and awarded him 10,000 euros.

Some codeshares can indeed be confusing, but come on… Suing?? Knowing where you’re going is a minimum basic skill for travel.

Codeshares indeed have their pluses and minuses. On the one hand, you open up a range of additional flight options, with mileage-earning opportunities. Perhaps most attractively, the price for the same flight may vary, depending on which airline is selling it. Same schedule — same plane! — but different price.

But there are real downsides, too, though. You don’t always earn miles on a codeshare as you would on the issuing airline’s operated flight, even if the airlines are in the same alliance; rather, you earn according to the rules accorded to the partner airline. (I believe American Airlines is an exception: If you buy a codeshare with an AA number, you get miles as if it’s AA.) Upgrades may be a problem. Changing a ticket may involve an additional layer of bureaucracy.

Seat assignments can be a pain in the butt, too. A family member recently reserved a flight operated by Lufthansa, but sold with a United flight number. Her seat assignments were missing by the time she checked in with Lufthansa. The check-in agent scoffed, “Oh, it’s a United-issued seat assignment? No wonder.” Nice to see the Star Alliance working so seamlessly. (The lesson: call the operating airline for seat assignments.)

She got a seat, but not the one she reserved weeks earlier. Maybe she should have sued for compensation.

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CNN/Money reports that Airbus denies yesterday’s NYT report that they were pitching standing-room-only “seating” to Asian airlines. (I admit I still enjoy the phrase “Hannibal class” to describe these seats…) The Airbus spokesperson even calls the report “crap.” But this was a front-page article, and author Christopher Elliott is holding firm, according to IAG.:

Current information from the NYT reporter (Chris Elliott) is as follows: “An Airbus spokeswoman admitted to me last night that the standing room seat exists. Its only argument with the story is that it said it no longer is pitching the concept. But the seats are real.”

Sounds like Airbus is backpedaling. Nonetheless, for those fearing the advent of Hannibal class, breathe easily, this is good news…

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Last week, readers of the New Yorker were treated to a paean to Irish airline of the year (that’s a pretty small field to choose from…) Ryanair, the king of ultra-no-frills flying. (Read the Gridskipper summary, since the article isn’t online.)

But Ryanair was also recently treated to an undercover investigation by the UK’s Channel 4. This is old news (the show aired in February), but the video is available online now. Click below to watch — it’s about 45 minutes long. (I admit I haven’t seen it all, yet, but some of the video is downright scary. My early favorite: The trainer asserting that passengers seated in 1A aboard Boeing 737-200s are definitely going to perish in case of a crash, because of the placement of the stair handles. Flight attendants should therefore not ask these people to assist in case of emergency, because they’re goners… none of which is true.)

The company responded to the network with a series of correspondence, disputing some of the charges, which you can read (series of pdf’s) on the Ryanair website.

The video is a disturbing insight into the training and life of Ryanair flight attendants. Even more disturbing than Hochschild’s book on Delta’s flight attendant training in the early 1980s, The Managed Heart, because passenger safety, and not “only” the well-being of airline employees, is in play.

Many travelers assume that the discount airlines are always the cheapest. In the United States, that means flocking to the websites of Southwest and JetBlue, and simply buying the ticket without comparing the options. This is foolish.

In fact, this is precisely what these airlines want you to do: Their reputations as low-fare carriers are cemented in the public eye, so they don’t make their fares searchable by the big travel agencies. (There is a workaround for JetBlue fares, which I reported here.) The masses, assuming the discount airlines are the cheapest, simply buy on faith.

That faith is rarely questioned in the media. Thankfully, WSJ writer Avery Johnson makes an exception, and exposes lower fares on the traditional carriers:

Discount carriers including JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines and AirTran Holdings Inc., citing rising fuel costs and the introduction of more high-end perks, have been steadily boosting prices in recent months. Traditional airlines, meanwhile, have been increasingly moving into the low-cost carriers’ routes and copying their simplified fare structures.

The result on a growing number of routes is that the low-cost carriers’ fares are no longer always the cheapest. One example is the fares between Northeastern cities and Florida, a big focus of the low-cost carriers’ expansion. Spirit Airlines’ cheapest round-trip fare (before taxes and fees) between New York’s La Guardia Airport and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., now tops US Airways’ – a $148 sale fare compared with $138. The same pattern is playing out with Southwest and AMR Corp’s American Airlines on flights between the Washington, D.C., area and Chicago, where American has a fare of $197 (including taxes) compared to $232 for Southwest (that’s for round-trip travel between May 12 and May 17).

The lesson is simple. It’s always wise to compare the traditional airlines to the discount airlines before making the purchase.

With rising fares, but also with changes to their networks, the discounters are looking more and more like traditional airlines. JetBlue even recently announced plans to partner (codeshare?) with international airlines. Southwest plans to fly internationally (well, to Mexico, potentially in partnership with ATA) by 2009.

Admittedly, the legacy carriers would unlikely have lowered their fares if not for the discounters. But they still fly to more places and have broader reward redemption options. You can’t cash in your Southwest or JetBlue points to fly to see the Great Barrier Reef. So I adore the low cost carriers for bringing the fares down on the legacy carriers, allowing me to earn more miles I actually care about. (Last year, now-defunct Independence Air’s fire-sale fares from/to Washington, DC made the fares on United, American, and US Airways much more attractive. The bonuses and promotions that United offered were amazing. Four trips to DC and, with the bonuses, I had enough miles for a free economy ticket to Europe.)

Remember, when an airline says it’s a “low cost carrier,” they’re referring to THEIR costs, not yours. A low cost carrier does not necessarily mean a low fare carrier. Shop around.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) revisits the issue of fare errors, most recently discussed here a few weeks ago.

While the article asks the important question — when are such fares honored, and when are they canceled? — it still offers no conclusive answers. As I’ve argued before: in the world of travel, you sometimes just don’t know, simply by looking at the price, if a rate is an error or a promotion.

The airlines (American and Delta are singled out) reportedly are trying to build escape clauses into their contracts of carriage and fare rules, in case of an “unreasonable” fare, but even then, what really is an unreasonable fare when Ryanair sells tickets for just the tax?

Once a purchase is confirmed, with ticket numbers, confirmation numbers, and a charge to your credit card, you should be pretty safe. My advice: Book first, always pay with a credit card (for the purchase protection benefits), and wait to ask questions later.

What kind of seat would you like? Smoking or nonsmoking? Cell-phone or non-cell-phone? Seated or standing harnessed to a board? Groping or non-groping?

Single-gender mass transit, already in place in Tokyo and Mexico City, reaches Rio today with the introduction of all-female railway cars, in an effort “to avert groping and other unwanted sexual advances.”

Hopefully Rio’s men won’t assume that a woman’s presence in a mixed-gender car is an invitation to grab. Anyone have experience with this kind of transit??