Flying Maxjet or Eos?

Looking to choose the best seats on the plane?

SeatExpert now covers the two all-business class airlines. Seats are color-coded for good, bad, and so-so seating, but annotated comments are yet to come. See here for Eos, and here for Maxjet. (The odd shape of Eos’ seats on the map reflects their use of ottomans and privacy partitions in their seating units.)

Flying Southwest?
Savvy Southwest flyers have been checking in online 24 hours before their flight, to get that boarding pass in group A and assure themselves of early boarding. Many use automated check-in services that guarantee an A pass, since they’re cheap, or even free.

But legitimate “A” holders may be fighting for space with cheaters. Someone posted a method of hacking your boarding pass to change the B or C to an A. It’s astonishingly simple, and it’s frankly an embarrassment to Southwest that their boarding passes are so easily manipulated. (No, you can’t create a boarding pass willy-nilly and fly around the country for free… the barcode still contains the information about you and your itinerary.) A similar trick could be used to change the date and print yourself a boarding pass for security, if you wanted to accompany a friend to the gate. (It won’t let you on a plane.) This latter trick I have no problem with, since you’d just be using the boarding pass to enter security, not cheating your way into better seats.

I wonder how long it will take before the company changes the HTML of the passes to prevent this sort of hack. When 137 people line up with “A” passes, with no one in “B” or “C”? Start the clock. (Via digg, thanks to reader BJ!)

(images: Maxjet, ladygypsy)

I received an account update from Continental Airlines OnePass this past week — it’s an airline I have some orphaned miles with, but I haven’t flown with them in a while, and I’ve never had status with them.

What struck me was the way my OnePass membership was framed. Right up top, I was labeled “Non-Elite.”

Why not call me “Riff-Raff” or “Pond Scum” while you’re at it? Will the airline be honoring my reservation, or will I need to wait at the bar?

I can understand the idea of incentivizing flyers to attain elite status, but labeling me “Non-Elite” sure doesn’t make this customer feel like the airline is interested in winning my business.

So I pulled up other family member accounts to see how other airlines label their low-rung riff-raff can’t-get-an-upgrade board-last sit-in-the-back middle-seat “non-elite” members.

Northwest: “Base Member”
United: “General Member”
Delta: “SkyMiles Member”

Notice the word “Member” appears again and again. Inclusive. Part of the club. Continental’s scheme doesn’t allude to membership at all, and focuses entirely on how close you are to elite status. Aspirational? Maybe. But it’s kind of off-putting. How would you feel if you logged into your bank account and before you even saw your balance, your account was labeled “Low Margin Checking”? (Unless you’ve got a 7-figure balance, of course…)

I guess I’ve learned my place.

Related:
- Debating the value of elite status

Parking at the airport? Before you automatically grab a ticket at the airport’s official parking lot, consider the site AboutAirportParking. The site uses Google Maps to show the locations of the various airport area parking sites, with information on pricing, links to the lot operator, etc.

The site allows users to write reviews of parking facilities. On the downside, the information is limited to airports in the United States for the time being. Frequency of shuttles to the airport would be a nice feature to include, too.

Since many lots are at hotels, also consider ParkSleepFly.com, the directory of airport hotels with long-term parking packages, which I mentioned recently.

(via GoogleMapsMania, thanks to reader THC!)

Downgraded: Food on Alaska Airlines
Well, the food is the same, but it’ll cost you $5 starting August 1.

Upgraded: First class food on Singapore Airlines
Flying up front on Singapore? Consider the thali. Do they have a tandoor in first class? This I gotta see.

Upgraded: Smokers’ inflight nicotine fix
Stuck on a long flight (and not flying all-smoking Smintair), or sitting inside a smoke-free Westin or Marriott? Crack open an ice-cold NicLite — the bottled water with the nicotine kick. You’ll soon be able to buy it at LAX, and possibly other airports.

Downgraded: Delta’s online booking bonus
Book a flight online at delta.com, only get 500 bonus miles instead of the usual 1000. American has already done this for less than top-dollar fares.

Upgraded: AA’s Online Check-In
Same-day round-trip American Airlines flyers rejoice: You can now check in online for both the outbound and the same-day return flights. Convenient for out-and-back trips, as well as mileage runners.

Downgraded: Varig. Upgraded: Varig
Brazilian airline and Star Alliance member VARIG, long in bankruptcy court, was sold for a mere pittance to VarigLog, the cargo arm of the airline that had been previously spun off. The new owners immediately cancelled all flights except the lucrative Sao Paolo-Rio de Janeiro shuttle, leaving many international travelers scrambling for alternatives. Brazilian regulators subsequently forced the airline to resume international flights, but the carrier only has 13 planes that aren’t either repossessed or grounded due to lack of maintenance. Where she stops, nobody knows.

Downgraded: Canadians and permanent residents
If you’re Canadian or a green-card holder, you’re more likely than a US citizen to be a criminal. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from efforts to expand fingerprinting requirements. My opinion: Either fingerprint everyone, or no one.

Downgraded: My opinion of South African airport security
Reporters walked through security and onboard aircraft carrying razor blades, knives, mace spray, and other prohibited items.

Travelocity has disabled its flexible search function for international destinations. According to SmarterTravel.com, the online agency pulled the option because the U.S. Department of Transportation argued that the existing search did not offer sufficient price transparency. The culprit: fuel surcharges.

Indeed, this was my own pet peeve with Travelocity’s flexible search. You start with a great fare to Paris and when you finish clicking, your fare went up $300 — $100 in taxes (expected) and $200 in fuel surcharges (suprise!). Often, Travelocity would come back with a message like “We found a lower fare for you than the one you selected.”

(The change also affects the international component of Travelocity’s Dream Maps. Interestingly, you can still see fares to international locations posted on the maps, but you can’t go the next step to find airlines or book them.)

I part company with SmarterTravel’s blame game: I actually think the DOT was right in pressuring Travelocity to offer a more transparent fare search. The existing product was misleading. It’s Travelocity’s fault for not configuring their fare search product in a way that includes surcharges. Fuel charges are a specific, identifiable line item in building a fare. Why can’t it be included in a search?

But for those who loved that flexible international search, now gone, what are the alternatives? Here are my picks, ranked in terms of similarity to Travelocity’s defunct search.

1) Zuji
(Update: Zuji has killed the old flexible search-by-fare feature. The original post remains below for the sake of posterity, but this feature has been disabled. It is replaced by a +/- 3 day flexible search, which is not nearly as powerful. Skip it.)
Outsource! Zuji is Travelocity’s Singapore-based subsidiary, and it looks and feels much like the American site. And guess what: the international flexible date search is still there. The site is in English, and results are in US dollars. (If you’re based in the US, choose “other” for a country on the first page.) Some airlines are missing (but they were missing from the flex search on the US site in the last few months, too). Suggestion: Run your search on Zuji, then actually book the specific flights you find on Travelocity or elsewhere. Booking on Zuji may work, but you’ll incur higher booking fees plus extra charges for using a credit card overseas.

(Update July 29: A reader e-mail asks about Zuji and Dream Maps (referenced above). I can’t find a Dream Maps equivalent on Zuji. However, since Dream Maps will still show base fares (for now), but won’t let you click through to see airlines or schedules, here’s my advice: Use Dream Maps to find a good base fare in your desired region. If you see one, do a flexible date search on Zuji for that particular destination.)

2) FareCompare
On the plus side, FareCompare’s search acts much like Travelocity, except it’s organized by fare, not by airline. The downsides: It doesn’t show total prices (will it be targeted by the DOT next?). It also doesn’t let you book directly, but refers you to the big online agencies, where the price is often very different from what FareCompare quoted. Finally, it’s missing a number of smaller (but still mainline) international destinations.

3) ITA
The engine behind Orbitz, Continental, and others, allows you to search for fares to just about anywhere in the world, and it shows final prices including all taxes. It also finds codeshares and mixed-airline itineraries that are often good values. Its “month-long search” isn’t as broad a search as Travelocity’s, especially because you need to specify the length of your stay within narrow ranges, but it’s worth checking. But … it won’t let you book anything. You’ll need to go to an airline website, online agency, or traditional travel agent to buy the ticket.

4) Kayak
Kayak allows flexible search to international destinations, but only within 3 days of your specific dates. Some reliability problems here, too, for international fares that are quoted well below what the target sites actually charge. It’s not the free-for-all price-first dates-later approach of Travelocity (or Zuji) but it’s an option to consider.

Reader Vicky S. of Stockton, California writes in:

I’m flying to New York in September on United, and I’m wondering if there is any way for me to use my Capital One miles to upgrade. I have over 20000 miles with the card.

Vicky, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. You would need United Mileage Plus miles or upgrade certificates to upgrade the flight. Too bad, too, because upgrading on the cross-country flights to JFK, in United’s three-class planes, is worth it.

You can use those CapitalOne miles to buy a ticket, but you can’t use them for upgrades on any airline. That’s one of the tradeoffs that comes with credit card miles that aren’t linked to a specific carrier.

As a general rule, I’m opposed to bank-issued miles, like CapitalOne’s “No Hassle Rewards,” as opposed to airline-issued miles. Sure, you get to cash the bank’s miles in for any airline’s ticket, but that really just means you’re getting cash back. Why not get a card that actually pays you in real cash, then?

Besides, the value of those bank-miles isn’t that great. CapitalOne sets cutoffs for redemption of their miles:

15,000 miles are required for tickets up to $150; 35,000 miles are required for tickets from $150.01 up to $350; 60,000 miles are required for tickets from $350.01 up to $600. For tickets over $600 in value, the required number of miles will be determined by multiplying the cost of the ticket times 100 (ex. $768 ticket requires 76,800 miles).

That means you’re getting 1 cent per mile MAXIMUM, with ZERO chance of leveraging those miles for an upgrade (like you just discovered) or a premium-cabin ticket. A business class ticket to Australia could easily run you $8000 — which would require 90,000 United Mileage Plus miles (though that’s going up to 110,000 miles in October) or a whopping 800,000 CapitalOne miles.

So for now, check your United account to see if you have enough miles for the upgrade. It’ll most likely cost you 15,000 United miles each way.