You may remember Dave Carroll from music videos decrying the state of United Airlines customer service. But the airline keeps finding ways to inspire new songs:

After famously breaking his guitar, United Airlines has managed to cause further trouble for David Carroll by losing his luggage — just as the Canadian singer-songwriter was en route to deliver a speech about customer service.

You can’t make this stuff up.

There have been two videos so far, both decrying United’s baggage handling and subsequent customer service. Personally, I thought that Carroll’s first video was his best. The second was okay, but felt like it was trying too hard, and didn’t add much. Yes, the third video in the trilogy is basically writing itself now.

(Thanks for the heads-up, John!)

Travelocity is upping the ante in the ongoing wars between the major online travel agencies. The agency is offering refunds if a hotel rate drops between the time you book a room and the time you stay at the hotel.

Here’s their pitch:

While competing sites offer price protection on hotel bookings only when lower prices are found on their respective sites, or only within the supplier`s cancellation window, Travelocity customers who find the same hotel booking for less elsewhere online (excluding hotels booked using a name-your-own-price service) any time prior to the day of check-in, can notify Travelocity and receive a refund for the difference in price. Additionally, as a special offer to introduce the hotel price match guarantee, between now and Dec. 31, 2009, customers will also receive a $50 discount toward future travel.

The new guarantee is aimed at two competitors: the hotels’ own lowest-price guarantees, and Orbitz.

Hotel websites typically offer a 24-hour window for filing a claim if you can find a lower rate. (See Hyatt’s terms, for example.) That’s not that impressive.

Orbitz offers an automatic refund (”Price Assurance”) if another customer on Orbitz books the same room for the same dates at a lower rate. Those are some slim odds. Yes, it’s automatic, but again, the odds are against your ever seeing a penny.

Travelocity’s guarantee is stronger than both of these offerings, insofar as the rate simply has to drop, and in a huge window of opportunity. But since you have to do the legwork and call Travelocity in order to get the refund, they are effectively betting that you won’t be tracking rates on a regular basis.

To be clear, this is only relevant (and possible) for prepaid reservations anyway. A cancelable reservation can always be replaced with a new reservation at a lower rate, after all, should the price drop. Travelocity calls their prepaid rooms “Good Buys” so look for that label to be covered by the new guarantee.

So, how DO you track rates once you’ve booked? Bring in Yapta.

Yapta allows you to receive updates when rates drop for specific hotels’ rooms (they do it for airfare, as well). So if you book a hotel room on Travelocity, you should immediately run a search for that specific hotel on Yapta, then select “track price drops.” If the price goes down, you get an e-mail. Then, contact Travelocity. Collect refund.

I don’t believe Travelocity was counting on customers using automated assistance when they launched this. But they’re about to find out if this is a feature they can actually sustain.

Related:
- Orbitz Price Assurance re-examined: Real savings or gimmick?
- Check in the mail: Orbitz refunds airfare price drops, but is it worthwhile?
- Less Choice: Expedia excluding hotels from searches
- Track airfare before and AFTER you buy?

Downgraded: TSA
Upgraded: Airports with independence
Near Glacier National Park, in Kalispell, Montana, Glacier Park International Airport is hoping to boot the TSA off its property and replace the government security agency with private contractors. What?? I had no idea this was possible, but sure enough: Under the Screening Partnership Program, an airport can apply to reprivatize security, generally if TSA isn’t meeting the airport’s needs. The issue for Glacier was staffing: The TSA calculated staffing levels based on October traffic levels — when August is the peak travel time for the area. About 15 airports, including several in Montana, have opted out of the TSA’s domain.

Upgraded: Efforts to keep convention business. ANY convention business
Hotels need business. So, is there any problem with hosting a convention of swingers as a Holiday Inn in upstate New York did? The annual spouse-swapping event, “Entice the Falls” (link not entirely safe for work), featured some exciting events like “Flogging 101″ and a (canceled) body painting party. But how many bonus points do you earn for a weekend of debauchery?

Downgraded: Chrysler at the rental counter
The Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group is slashing its purchases of Chrysler vehicles. Their fleet is currently 76% Chrysler, but Ford will nearly tie Chrysler for new purchases (34 and 30%, respectively).

Upgraded: Luxury in Mecca
Downgraded: Raffles Hotels’ management’s common sense
Islamic pilgrims to Mecca who aren’t feeling particularly pious, but who are looking to live large, may be pleased to hear that Singapore’s Raffles Hotels are planning an enormous luxury hotel that will cast a shadow on the Muslim world’s holiest site. But what on earth is the hotel chain thinking? I’m sure some will find the uber-luxurious hotel an affront to the religious meaning of the site; are they painting a giant target on all the hotels in the Raffles brand?

Upgraded: Recliners!
The dip in travel has been a boon for furniture makers. What? Yes, according to the industry, sales of reclining chairs are up, as Americans travel less, stay home more, and look for greater comfort in their living room.

Upgraded: Spotlights on mileage running
I’ve been known to go on a mileage run or two (though not for a few years now) in order to bump up my elite-qualifying miles to the next tier, but I’m nowhere near the big leagues that these guys play in. Check out this 20-minute documentary on mileage runners, and the OCD spirit that drives them to collect miles and points with a singleminded focus:

After last week’s incident in which a Northwest Airlines flight from San Diego to Minneapolis flew 150 miles past its destination before turning around and coming back to land, there have been more questions than answers. The pilots claimed to have been embroiled in a heated discussion. They deny reports that they were napping, and they had no alcohol in their systems. It’s unclear how long it will take before we really know what happened, and why these pilots were out of touch with air traffic control for so long.

I offer no answers here, either, but another question: Would this have happened if passengers were able to hear the cockpit conversations?

I don’t fly United Airlines much anymore (and it seems I’m on United Express when I do), but the thing which made United unique (and to me, pleasant) was Channel 9. Audio channel 9 on the inflight entertainment system can, at the captain’s discretion, be set to the radio frequency which the pilots are using to communicate with the FAA center, airport approach, or tower handling that flight’s movements. I’m a nerd, I realize, but I’ve always found that audio interesting: You can hear the frustrations of pilots and controllers at busy airports like O’Hare. You can hear what the ride is going to be like minutes before you hit a patch of bumpy air. You can hear your pilots getting cranky when they’re delayed for takeoff, or guided to descend into severe wake turbulence (which I experienced once.)

But if I were a passenger on a Channel 9 enabled flight that was scheduled to arrive at 8, and it was 8:15 and we weren’t descending, with pilots silent on Channel 9, I would suspect something was up. I might ask the flight attendants questions. And maybe, just maybe, the incident in question might have played out differently.

Now, someone might argue that this degree of passenger empowerment leads to nuisance questions from travelers who don’t understand the technical lingo of aviation and who misinterpret the meaning things your pilots might say. (”Fuel emergency” on approach would scare the pants off of many people, I’m sure.) That’s part of the reason Channel 9 has been increasingly turned off on United flights in recent years.

But I am left thinking that Channel 9 would have been a healthy check on this wayward flight. Passengers could have raised the alarm, and a huge imbroglio could have been avoided — not to mention missed connections at MSP.

So what do you think? Should passengers be allowed to hear the pilots’ conversations with air traffic control? And what would you have done if you had been listening on a flight like NW 188 and heard nothing but dead air?

—

Image: Northwest 188’s flight path, courtesy of FlightAware. When the pilots didn’t respond to air traffic control, many suspected the possibility of a hijacking. Some of the twisting-back-and-forth maneuvers were apparently required by air traffic control to test whether the pilots were actually in command of their aircraft.

Starting as early as April 2010, travelers on long-haul Air New Zealand flights may be able to stretch out and sleep in coach, for as little as $150 extra.

To get the “bed,” the adjacent seat would need to be empty (a rare phenomenon in the sky these days), so there would be no guarantee of upgrading the seat before booking. Two adjacent economy seats could be mechanically adjusted to create an angled but flat seat.

Regrettably, there are no photos to show at this point. But here are some details that were provided to analysts:

Curley, head of research at Goldman Sachs JB Were, said the airline’s management was coy about revealing too much before a relaunch of its aircraft interiors ahead of the first arrival of one of several Boeing 777-300ER planes at the end of next year. But he said he believed the seat arrangement would involve a system where both seats could slide forward and the seat rest would come up so the foot room disappeared and the passenger could spread out across both seats.

Unlike the herringbone design used in business class, where the seats fold down flat, the economy class “beds” would still have a slight pitch.

Because this is a world first, the idea also has the potential to earn millions of dollars for Air New Zealand in export revenue. Its aircraft interior design subsidiary Altitude Aerospace Interiors, set up in 2008, plans to sell its new turn-into-a-bed economy seat design to other airlines.

Given the long flights from New Zealand to nearly anywhere else in the world, it makes perfect sense for this particular airline to be spearheading this. And this sounds like a fantastic idea for those looking to travel more comfortably on the cheap.

But it’s no substitute for a reserved seat in a premium cabin. There’s always a big risk that the flight will be full, and that the adjacent seat won’t be available. But this is creative thinking. I’m looking forward to seeing the design.

Related:
- Lufthansa considering bunk-bed style sleeper seating in economy class
- Airline seating: Standing, alternating, elevated, and now, sideways
- A step up for economy class seating
- Three people, six arms, four armrests: Can they coexist?

Joe Sharkey reminds us that the Secure Flight program requires travelers to, from, or within the United States to ensure that the spelling of their name on their passport or government-issued identification must match precisely the spelling of their name on their boarding passes.

So if you use your driver’s license and it says John T. Smith, your ticket must also say John T. Smith — not John Thomas Smith, not Jack Smith, or any other name variant.

Let’s put aside for a moment the counterargument that names and identity do not, in and of themselves, create a security risk for anyone. Unless you start flicking driver’s licenses at passengers like Chinese stars…

Yes, in case you forgot, the terrorists won. Big time. But I digress.

The reality of travel in this great land is that your ID has to match your boarding pass. And you’ll have to give them your gender and date of birth, too, to distinguish you from similarly-named people who might be on a no-fly list.

And that means you’ll want (well, need) to update your customer profiles with the companies with whom you book flights.

Though the program is already implemented, the timeline for mandating 100% compliance isn’t clear:

TSA has built some flexibility into the processes regarding passenger name accuracy. For the near future, small differences between the passenger’s ID and the passenger’s reservation information, such as the use of a middle initial instead of a full middle name or no middle name/initial at all, should not cause a problem for the passenger. Over time, passengers should strive to obtain consistency between the name on their ID and their travel information.

The ease of actually changing your profile varies by company. American Airlines makes it easy to add/change your middle name/initial for Secure Flight compliance on their website. United requires that you e-mail them. Orbitz reprimands me to “re-enter a unique name and date of birth for each traveler,” but their site doesn’t actually include a field to actually enter a date of birth anywhere.

And don’t forget that your passport may not list your name the same way as your driver’s license or other government-issued ID. Be sure the ticket matches the identification you actually carry for a given trip.

I’ve made the changes with some, but not all, of the companies I book with, whether airlines or agencies. If I’ve been able to do it online, I’ve done it. Luckily, my passport and driver’s license both list my full name, including my complete middle name

So, have you updated your profiles? Or have you considered having an ID reissued to make sure it’s consistent with other identification? Hit the comments!

Full credit to Randall Munroe at xkcd.com.

An article on the website of the trade journal Hotels sounds an alarm to hoteliers, and by extension, to consumers: Expedia and its sister site Hotels.com are blocking hotels under the Choice Hotels umbrella from searches on their sites.

The alleged reason? Here’s a quote from the piece, for the wonkish:

For some time now, we have been hearing from many industry sources that during renewal negotiations Expedia/Hotels.com has demanded new terms and conditions that are against everything the hospitality industry stands for: last room availability, guarantees that the best rates are only found on Expedia/Hotels.com sites, penalties to properties that do not use their sites 100% of the time, etc. These contract renewal “negotiations” have been described to us by some participants from various hotel companies as “here are our terms – take it or leave it”-type of meetings and “practically lack of any essence of a real negotiation,” etc.

In other words, these new terms and conditions demanded by Expedia will effectively take away hoteliers’ rights to manage inventory and rates at their own hotels, destroy channel management and rate parity, and will eventually lead to a long-term erosion of hotel brand and price integrity in the same manner it did after 9/11 in 2001.

Since Choice is apparently not playing along, they’re missing from search results on Expedia-owned sites. That means that customers looking for a hotel will have to look somewhere other than Expedia if they want a more complete picture of the lodging landscape. That’s nearly 5000 properties that are off of Expedia’s grid. And there may be others.

Granted, the Choice properties (Quality, Comfort, Econolodge, Clarion) aren’t ones that I long to be staying at. You may not miss them. But for the budget-minded or the roadside sleep-seeker, these brands are generally reliable, standard motel fare. And now, on Expedia, it’s as if the hotels didn’t exist.

Part of me doesn’t have a problem with this. The big online travel agencies aren’t search engines. They’re businesses, and they’re trying to make as much money as they can. They don’t claim to represent every hotel in the world, and it’s their prerogative to keep out a company that isn’t willing to ante up.

But for consumers, it makes apples-to-apples comparisons harder, and thus makes loyalty to a single agency hard to justify. It also makes metasearch more important. Using a search like Kayak, which once claimed to want to catalog every hotel on the planet, looks more attractive for first-cut hotel searches.

Expedia is risking losing customers’ trust. If the agency wants to hardball its suppliers, that’s its option. But consumers would be right to ask if Expedia is in their corner.

“Fees don’t fly with us” — so goes the ad for Southwest. But is Southwest Airlines backing off its no-fee promises?

The company, which recently announced a quarterly loss (a real outlier in an otherwise profit-studded corporate history) renewed its vows to not charge for luggage fees. By not charging for the first or second bag, Southwest is really on its own in this market.

But it seems they’re starting to get jealous of the other airlines’ fee fetishes. CEO Gary Kelly hinted at future fees and optional add-ons:

“We would much prefer to explore opportunities to provide more service to customers and give them the choice to spend more money with Southwest Airlines,” he said. “Our frequent-flier program and Southwest.com both position us well to pursue that strategy.”

That’s still very vague. But it’s a disappointment to many who champion Southwest as the airline who won’t nickel-and-dime its customers.

But it shouldn’t really be a surprise. A few weeks ago, Southwest rolled out Early-Bird Check-in for a fee. (Once Southwest started suing the websites that checked you in automatically, you could see this fee coming.) But many are still saddened by Southwest’s evolution into a “normal” airline.

And if Joe Brancatelli’s recent analysis holds water, it may be a losing strategy for Southwest to pursue fees. As Joe notes, the airlines with the greatest revenue losses are the ones with the greatest reliance on bag fees and add-ons. Read the whole thing.

So is Southwest backing off on its “Fees don’t fly with us” spin? Will they be retracting ads like this one?

Upgraded: Bad ideas made real
Remember the proposal for sideways seating on commercial airlines? DesignQ, the company that proposed the scheme, is moving toward testing — including crash simulations — by the end of 2009. I am honestly surprised the design is being pursued this aggressively. We’ll see how those tests go. Here’s a reminder of what the designers have in mind:

Downgraded: Hilton hotels in Venezuela
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has nationalized another Hilton-managed property, this one on Margarita Island. It looks like the 154 timeshare owners are out of luck. And yet, the hotel is still in the Hilton system, and maintains the Hilton branding. Huh?!

Downgraded: Hotel reviews… for libel
TripAdvisor contributors, take note: If you’re writing a scathing review of a small Australian hotel or inn, you may find yourself the defendant in a libel suit. Companies with fewer than 10 employees are legally less restricted in suing for libel than larger firms, apparently. But the best defense for libel remains the truth.

Downgraded: USA Today
USA Today’s circulation took a 17% hit, and Gannett’s management placed the blame on a decline in travel. Those papers that show up in front of the hotel door sure do add up!

Downgraded: Pilots’ holsters
Remember the pilot who discharged his pistol in the cockpit and shot a hole through the fuselage, in-flight? He’s been permitted to fly again, 18 months after being fired by US Airways for the incident. In his defense, “the Department of Homeland Security faulted the design of holsters used by pilots who carry their weapons on board planes. The department’s inspector general said the design increased the chance of accidental discharge when pilots inserted their guns in the holsters.” But why a pilot needs a holstered sidearm — behind a locked cockpit door — in the first place isn’t clear to me. The pilot is no longer allowed to carry a weapon aboard.

Upgraded: Peep shows for UK airport security
The US isn’t the only country installing full-body through-the-clothes scanners at airports. The UK is doing so as well. Yes, the systems are designed to show hidden weapons. But “the full body scans will also show up breast enlargements, body piercings and a clear black-and-white outline of passengers’ genitals.” Black-and-white nude silhouettes are already visible to security personnel at Manchester Airport. Passengers have the right opt out of that screen and choose a more traditional scan instead.

Downgraded: Glib descriptions of getting upgrades
Upgraded: Smackdowns
Gary Leff and I got the same e-mail from the folks at TripBase, promoting a post on their blog describing how to “almost always” get upgrades. The post is yet another piece of upgrade disinformation, perpetuating mythologies that may have once held sway but no longer mean anything in today’s airline environment. Gary has a fantastic point-by-point takedown of the piece.