Upgraded: Your ability to earn lots of British Airways miles
Chase and British Airways have launched a pretty amazing airline mileage-earning credit card offer. 50,000 BA miles after one purchase, then 50,000 more after spending $2000 within three months. Gary Leff has thought this through and come up with a scheme for 420,000 miles between two people. That’s a lot of free tickets for a $75 annual fee.
Downgraded: Track suits
A Best Buy executive says that United refused him an upgrade because he was wearing a track suit. “United says there is no passenger dress code, but they cited two rules. Ticketed passengers can not be barefoot and must be clothed.” Standards!
Upgraded: Fees for Expedia phone bookings
Expedia announced that it was dropping the booking fees it charged for booking any flight, car rental, hotel or cruise on the phone. As online agencies compete to attract customers, this is the latest fee to drop. Yay, lower fees! Priceline immediately tweeted that they had never had phone booking fees. Nyahh.
Upgraded: Responsibility for rental car reservations
Avis Budget Group has worked with global booking systems to prepare their networks for an eventual introduction of no-show fees for car rental bookings. Frankly, I’m amazed that this is a fee that hasn’t been enforced more widely already.
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November 8th, 2009 at 6:03 am
About no show fees, here’s something I don’t understand. Airlines say that they overbook because they have so many no shows. But if they charge no show fees (i.e. the full price of the the ticket), what difference would it make if someone didn’t show? In fact, it would be better for the airline because the plane would be lighter (and customers wouldn’t be bumped). Which airlines charge (and enforce) no show fees?
November 9th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Airlines don’t charge a no-show fee, per se. Rather, since they already have your money, they simply deduct a change fee from the value of the ticket if you later want to reuse it. Assuming they do at all; many airlines will only let you reuse a ticket’s value if you cancel it before the flight departs. So if you simply don’t show up, you don’t get to reuse it at all, and the entire cost of your ticket becomes the “no-show” fee.
I tend to agree that with the current policies regarding no-shows, overbooking makes less sense. However, there is an opportunity cost associated with not overbooking. If there is a no-show on a high demand flight, there is a possible that the airline could have gotten extra revenue from selling the same seat twice (once to the passenger who didn’t show up, and once to the passenger who did).
Also, keep in mind that not all “no-shows” are due to the customer simply deciding not to show up. A delayed flight could mean that some passengers will miss their originally booked connecting flight, creating an opportunity to sell the seat again.