The Expedia fee was scheduled to go back into effect on June 1. The company had two choices: Quietly reinstate the fees, and face the marketing wrath of the no-fee competition, or “permanently” kill the fee with a big fanfare. How’s the fanfare sound on your end?

The big agencies still get a cut of the sale, unlike most mom-and-pop travel agencies, so the extra booking fee monies were additional revenue. Many customers (31%, according to here) were doing their searches on the major agencies’ sites, and then going to the airline to book directly and save the fee. Now, the agencies’ fares should be on the same level as the airlines’ own websites.

Interestingly, Expedia also cut change fees in the same breath:

Other fee changes also were announced Wednesday. Expedia.com said it will eliminate the change-and-cancel fees on hotel, car rental and cruise reservations and on most flight reservations. Flights that are part of certain package deals will still be subject to a fee when reservations are changed or canceled. Expedia.com said it will resume charging $20 [on June 1, 2009] to make a flight booking over the phone, a fee that was halted during the promotion.

Eliminating change-and-cancel fees is nice, but it’s just the surcharge, not the totality of relevant fees. Airlines are charging $100, $150, or more to change itineraries for non-refundable booking classes, and Expedia can’t waive those fees. The elimination only applies to the surcharges which Expedia tacked on.

In any case, this puts pressure on Travelocity and Orbitz to make fee cuts permanent as well. Both of those sites’ fee-elimination policies have a sunset clause, and fees are scheduled to re-emerge on June 1. Neither site is commenting on whether they’ll follow Expedia’s lead or not. We’ll see if there are more announcements of newly-permanent fee reductions in the coming days…

Two weeks ago, George Hobica of Airfarewatchdog posted about a seemingly dramatic new change in the ways airfares are collected and disseminated, which he claimed would throw a wrench into the already-frustrating system of regularly fluctuating prices. “[A]irlines will be able to change their fares more often and more quickly than ever before, and consumers will need to keep on their toes like never before.” His suggestion caught my attention. The problem is, it’s a non-problem. The more I thought about it, his post just didn’t add up.

Under the title, “Airfares may change more often than ever in the near future,” George writes that “ATPCO, the folks who act as the airfare intermediary between the airlines and you, the consumer, via airfare distribution systems such as Travelocity, Expedia, and your local travel agent, will soon be implementing real time, instantaneous airfare updates, according to a person who is familiar with the matter.” The consequence of such a change, according to George:

What it means for you is that fares can fluctuate much more frequently than before, which may make shopping for airfares even more of a challenge.

What is means for airlines is that in order to respond to their competition’s airfare increases and decreases, they could conceivably have their pricing analysts work in a 24 hour environment. On the plus side for airlines and the online travel agencies such as Travelocity, they’ll be able to eliminate fare mistakes almost instantaneously instead of waiting for the next fare update, which could be hours away. On the minus side, airlines might have to add staff to their pricing and fare analysis departments, and really keep on their toes.

Right now, airlines file fares continuously throughout the day with the ATPCO clearinghouse, who then distributes those fares to reservation systems at set times (3 times daily for domestic fares on weekdays; once daily for domestic fares on weekends; up to 8 times daily for international fares on weekdays; and 3 times daily for international fares on weekends). Subscribers to those ATPCO feeds — airlines, and the global distribution systems such as Galileo, Amadeus, etc. — pass the information on to their clients, usually agencies. As long as inventory holds up (and if fares are low, that’s a big if), fares will be stable for a several-hour window.

On the surface, George’s account of the possible shift from periodic updates to real-time updates of airfares sounds like a plausible tale, and a big shift in the way the business works. (Except for the “pricing analysts” working 24-7… They have computers that do this sort of thing these days, you know…) But the more you think about it, the more it just doesn’t make sense for anyone to worry about this.

For starters, the concept of live-updated fares in ATPCO isn’t new, so George’s post is a few years too late. It’s been around for at least five years, and I can find evidence of it on the ATPCO website going back to at least February 2007. It’s currently pitched under the name “Instant Subscriptions.” It’s an option for subscribers, not a new standard. So the service is available, but it’s not being implemented. Which begs the question, why not?…

I called Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare, who works closely with ATPCO and knows more about their airfare products than any person really should. I asked Rick about the prospects of a shift to an instant-fare-update world. He confirmed my skepticism.

For starters, Rick pointed out, the technical challenges of implementing a system like this are huge. Huge hardware investments. Rewriting software. In today’s environment, this is highly unlikely.

Then there’s a collective action problem, and the issue of fare variation: Let’s assume that some agencies subscribing to ATPCO feeds would opt for the live updates, but others don’t. Then assume Airline A raises some of its fares. If Agency XYZ gets its fares through a live-updated feed, but Agency ABC doesn’t, then ABC will show the old (lower) fares. Now XYZ’s low-fare-guarantee would kick in, because its competitor ABC would be offering the same flight for less. So XYZ could lose money if it offers the live-updated fares. Unless everyone opts for live updates at once, it’s going to be a problem.

More to the point: Even if — if — airlines were signed on to constantly update new fares in real-time, would they want to? What’s the benefit in doing so, if you’re an airline? There are already multiple updates, only a few hours apart, so when one airline lowers or raises fares, their competitors don’t have long waits before they can respond.

And finally, even if the published fare changes, there’s still the matter of inventory. Airlines can publish all the fares they want, but if there’s no inventory of seats to back it up, any fare war is moot.

So is it possible that we’ll see live-updated fares someday, with prices bouncing around like a bank stock on options-expiration day? Sure, if every subscriber to airfare prices joins the fun, and if there’s plentiful inventory to back up each price point. None of this is happening anytime soon.

So let’s not fearmonger (or faremonger)…

For starters, there are sites which have folded, some new competitors, and sites that changed their model significantly. At the same time, there has been pushback from airlines and suppliers, some of which have resisted the aggregator model. (The lawsuits between American Airlines and Kayak, which initially resulted in American Airlines no longer being listed in Kayak results, was perhaps the most prominent case of pushback. Since October 2008, aa.com results are back in the results. More on that below.)

The result: The golden ring of a truly complete search, covering all the options and all the providers, is still a ways away. No single site actually finds every flight option, every fare, or every seller.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t differences between the aggregators. It’s time to disaggregate the aggregators again.

This year, each site was put through multiple tests. Four kinds of itinerary were tested: A large-city to medium-city domestic US flight with multiple carriers offering direct service; a medium-city to small-city domestic US flight with at least one change of plane required; an international flight with a US origin; and international flights (from Paris to Dubai, and Manchester to Madrid) to test how sites do for non-US flights. For each of these flights, I tested a short-term booking (7 days advance purchase) and a longer-term booking (30 days advance purchase).

This time, I compared Kayak, Sidestep, Mobissimo, TripAdvisor Flights, Momondo, Skyscanner, WeGo (formerly Bezurk), Trax, Farecast, Fly.com, and Dohop. Sites which were on the list last time but either folded or stopped doing metasearch include FareChase (bought by Yahoo, then abandoned in March 2009), PriceGrabber, and Qixo.

So which aggregator came out on top in 2009? Here’s the summary, with site-by-site reviews thereafter…

• Overall best bet: TripAdvisor Flights. Low fares, good features, a solid performer overall. It took them a while to join the game, but it’s a strong product with a small but important edge over its closest competitor, Kayak.
• Lowest price, domestic: If you’re searching for domestic US airfare, most of the aggregators did pretty well, but the lowest fares were consistently on TripAdvisor Flights, Mobissimo, Momondo, or Trax. (Kayak and Sidestep would have been included in this list, but they often offered the lowest flights at the same base fares, but typically directed you to Orbitz, instead of to the airline or to a no-fee site like Priceline, to buy the ticket. Orbitz still charges a booking fee as of this writing, so single-airline itineraries can typically be purchased for less elsewhere.)
• Lowest price, international from US: If you’re searching for international flights starting in the US, try Kayak and Trax.
• Lowest price, international, ex-US: If you’re search for international flights that don’t originate or end in the United States, Mobissimo and Momondo performed best.
• Class conscious: If you’re looking for a deal on premium cabin fares, fly.com is your site.
• Sorting features: If you want control over options, and like to tweak and limit your results, Kayak gives you the most power.
• Real total cost: TripAdvisor Flights lets you estimate what your actual costs will be, including luggage checking fees, headphone charges, etc.
• Avoid: WeGo, which offered impressively-low search results, but none were actually bookable. Also avoid Dohop, whose prices were consistently higher than their competitors.

Individual site reviews

TripAdvisor Flights
Although a clone of its competitors in many respects, TripAdvisor’s new aggregator offers one big difference: The site offers an analysis of how much the flight will actually cost you, once you figure in the baggage fees, the headphone fees, etc. It even considers what your elite status is. That’s a great feature. Second, and more disappointingly, the site (unsurprisingly) favors its sister sites Expedia and Hotwire in its results. But those sites add no booking fee right now, so no big whoop. The site combines the best sorting features of Kayak with the added value of fee analysis. TripAdvisor takes it by a nose.

Kayak
Kayak is the largest of the metasearch sites, and it offers solid results. But it didn’t consistently offer the cheapest fare, because the universe of sites it searches is sometimes limited by agreements with individual partners. (American Airlines, for example, won’t allow results from its website to be shown alongside AA flights sold through Orbitz.) Orbitz puts demands on its partners, too, and subsequently, Kayak is heavily Orbitz-centric, with no representation of Expedia, Travelocity, or Priceline. Actual fare availability was good when I clicked through to sellers’ sites. Kayak’s sorting features are still the best (so good that they’re copied wholesale by TripAdvisor), with the ability to narrow search results by time, airline, or aircraft type (e.g., no props or RJs), to name a few. The site has recently added “flight quality warnings,” such as on-time percentages and tight-connection alerts, but those aren’t a big deal.

Sidestep
Kayak bought Sidestep a few years ago, but continues to operate the site as a standalone entity. Frankly, I don’t see why. The results are identical, the search tools are nearly the same, and there’s nothing to recommend this site over its parent. Everything stated above is true here as well, but why bother?

Farecast
Farecast, now owned by Microsoft, is most famous for their fare prediction engine, which suggests whether ticket prices for your route will drop in the future. The predictions are pretty accurate, though they don’t account for times of day, routing, or airline, if you have preferences on those matters. (And you should.) Farecast also offers up an aggregator, albeit a fairly minimalist one with few options and a favoritism for Orbitz results. Come here for the fare predictions, but for live fare comparisons, you’re better off elsewhere.

Mobissimo
Mobissimo claims to search more sites than anyone else, but not necessarily for a domestic US search. They have good coverage of Asian and European airlines, but their controls and filters are less than others’. Decent results, but I preferred others’ display of information.

Fly.com
From the folks who brought you TravelZoo, Fly.com offers one gimmick that’s worth noticing: First- and business class fare comparison. That’s it. Otherwise, it’s a clone of other sites. If you’re not looking for premium cabin seats, skip it.

WeGo (formerly Bezurk)
Big on teasers, low on success. WeGo touts some amazing fares, but good luck buying them. They also don’t list the lowest flight first: They show a sponsored link at the top. Bad, bad, bad.
Update April 9, 2009: WeGo has eliminated the sponsored results feature.

Skyscanner
Britain’s SkyScanner offers decent results for UK-based searches, but it’s not as helpful to others. For US and non-UK searches, SkyScanner searches returned far higher fares than the average.

Momondo
This Danish site is quite good at ferreting out obscure sellers of travel, especially for intra-European itineraries. But be aware that you’ll often get results from suppliers in countries outside the destination or origin. Flying Chicago to Baltimore? Your ticket could be sold by a British company (which could mean a 3% credit card surcharge).

Trax
Trax.com offers a Kayak-lite search that works well for domestic US itineraries. They include Priceline and Cheapoair, which others don’t, but the results weren’t significantly better.

Two other sites of note:
1. An aggregator you can’t use for booking, but which is great for research, remains ITA Software. Their engine powers Orbitz, and backs up Kayak and TripAdvisor results. They’re a great resource. (Click “log in as a guest” to use the search without registering.)

2. No discussion of fare search would be complete without a mention of FareCompare. The site’s alerts give you a heads-up on future sales by notifying you when fares drop, before they go on sale. They offer fare search, too, which is powered by Kayak.

So… what’s your experience with fare aggregators? Hit the comments to share your stories.

What this used to mean: If the price of a ticket would drop in the time after you bought it, and if you were alert enough to notice the change, you could go online or call the airline and “refare” the ticket. You’d receive a voucher for the difference in the mail. Three years ago, I detailed the process here.

Repricing a ticket at a lower fare will now involve a reticketing fee — you’re cancelling the earlier “nonrefundable” ticket, paying a penalty, and using the credit from that transaction toward a new ticket.

United was the biggest airline to be doing free re-faring of an identical itinerary. Alaska, JetBlue, and Southwest still offer it for free. Most other airlines allow you to reticket, but there’s a fee of between $75 and $150. (It could still pay off if the fee is less than the fare difference.)

One warning to anyone repricing tickets, with fees or not: If you’re waitlisted for an upgrade, you’ll lose your place in line, and you may need to reapply. It’s a new ticket, so you’re starting fresh.

On the one hand, United’s abandonment of free refaring makes economic sense. Why give voucher refunds to people who have already paid for their (nonrefundable) tickets? The airline has your money, so there’s no incentive to give it back.

On the other hand, the voucher system is a way of guaranteeing future business. This is what the folks at Yapta, the service that tracks price drops after you’ve purchased the ticket, argued when they first launched their fare-drop tracking service:

Look, as an airline I still keep your cash. I’m taking a short-term hit, and over the next 12 months I have the opportunity to turn that $100 coupon into a $500 ticket. I’ve locked in your loyalty.

The voucher logic isn’t being abandoned entirely, after all. United and other airlines still give vouchers when there’s a customer service issue, and that voucher is designed to both show goodwill and lock in a future sale.

United’s change also means that they’re reneging on a benefit they offered as part of their “customer commitment.” As Gary points out, this was launched in order to ward off a passengers’ bill of rights, nearly a decade ago. Perhaps they’re planning to play the same card again: If pressure builds for another PBOR, then United can trot out a re-faring policy, just like they did last time.

The agency is now offering price guarantees that mimic Orbitz’ “Price Assurance” for airfare and Travelocity’s “PriceGuardian” for packages:

That’s why starting today [we're] backing up every Flight AND Vacation Package purchase with Free Pricedrop Protection for orders booked by June 1st. Now you, and your users, are automatically covered if prices drop before the trip!

Up to $300 Cash Back if Flight Prices Drop:
If another priceline customer books the same flight for a lower price, we’ll automatically refund the difference in cash…up to $300.

Up to $600 Cash Back if Vacation Package Prices Drop:
If another priceline customer books the same vacation package for a lower price, we’ll automatically refund the difference in cash…up to $600.

As I’ve expressed before, I don’t think that a price guarantee that relies on another customer booking exactly the same itinerary is worth that much, unless you’re booking a really, really common route (and, in the case of a package, a midrange mainstream hotel). But hey, if it’s not costing you anything and doesn’t take any effort on your part, why the heck not.

Bottom line: The competition for your business is heating up. Who’s next?

Both agencies are promising that the fees will be on hiatus until May 31, 2009. But bringing the charge back may be tough: Back in 2007, Priceline and Hotwire dropped their booking fees “temporarily,” and they still haven’t brought the fees back.

That leaves Orbitz as the lone holdout among the biggest U.S. travel agencies. So when will Orbitz, the biggest holdout, throw in the towel on fees?

Consumers should welcome the rollback of these add-on booking charges. But this episode shows how brutal the online travel marketplace is right now. If online travel agencies want to collect a surcharge, they’re going to have to get creative, and earn it. Simply offering price comparisons and a few online alerts — which are free elsewhere — won’t cut it. And Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline, and Hotwire have admitted that.

Sure, Orbitz may counterargue that they provide value-added with their price guarantee, but since that service is of relatively limited value, I wouldn’t pay a premium for it (though maybe it’s worth the $6.99+ gamble for someone else…)

Travelocity is even poking a stick in Orbitz’ eye by copying their “Price Assurance” model and bringing it to vacation packages under the name “PriceGuardian.” If someone else books the same package as you, and the price has dropped, you get a check for the difference. Yeah, good luck with that.

What we may see is a shift to voluntary fees for add-on services, much like the airlines are going a-la-carte themselves. Want a price-drop guarantee? Pay a few bucks up front. Want text message alerts? A few more bucks. That I could see happening. But the standard one-size-fits-all fee is history at the mainstream agencies.

Several readers have sent in e-mails, informing me of airfare deals they’ve gotten in recent days. They’re good, especially to Europe. A few examples:

Reader Diane found a deal from Denver to Amsterdam on US Airways in July: $2068.32 for a family of three, including all taxes and even travel insurance.

Reader Frank is taking his family of four to Paris in June. He’s leaving from the New York area — going over on Open Skies, coming back on L’Avion. It’s costing him more than it cost Diane, but it’s still a decent deal: $1479 per person for a cradle seat, booked on the L’Avion site. (As an aside, I don’t think L’Avion should be calling their product “business class” anymore, especially given that their corporate sister, Open Skies, is categorizing an equivalent seat as premium economy, err, “Prem+.”)

If you’re looking for some off-season discounts to Europe (say, February), and coach class is more your speed, then check Air France. $350 base fare ($490 all-in) from New York to Dublin, for example.

Finally, reader Aurelio booked a sweet spring break fare from Chicago to Last Vegas on United for $119, all-in, round-trip. Those are 2003 prices! Crazy-cheap!

To book some of these deals, you may need to be flexible with your dates or your connections. And be sure to comparison shop. Sites to consider as springboards include FareCompare, Kayak.com, and ITA Software, for starters.

Have you scoped out any good deals of late? Hit the comments with your savvy savings, especially if they might still be available for others to book!

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It’s obviously a trip that I didn’t want to take: My grandmother passed away late last week, just weeks after celebrating her 99th birthday. I flew to her home — in Germany — and was fortunate enough to see her, talk with her, and bid farewell before she passed away. I am very glad I went. I will deeply miss her.

The trip was an education, in more ways than one. But thinking back to this blog’s modus operandi for the moment, let me share what I learned about booking flights under such circumstances.

There is wide variation in what airlines will do for you in a time of crisis. For starters, it seems bereavement or compassionate airfares are far easier to find if the travel is taking you internationally.

As such, it is perhaps no surprise that international airlines are far more willing to offer a discount during times of family crisis than domestic U.S. carriers.

As I’ve noted before, most bereavement fares need to be booked over the phone. An exception is Continental, which provides a great deal of transparency. Their compassion/bereavement website lays out the details, which are maximally 20% of the current airfare for your flight.

Documentation requirements vary by airline. Some will require death certificates or signed statements from the attending doctor or hospital. Others are less concerned with paperwork, and will take you on your word.

Some airlines offer compassion airfares for premium cabins: Lufthansa was ready to quote me a compassion fare for first, business, or economy. It can never hurt to ask.

Bill McGee, writing in USA Today, had an extensive piece of bereavement and compassion fares a few weeks ago. Read his whole article here. The current state of U.S. airlines offering these fares is quoted below.

• American Airlines. Compassion fares can be booked only by the airline, and details are available through reservations. Although tickets can be issued by travel agents, all changes must be made by American.

• Continental Airlines. This carrier is more forthright than most about its compassion fare policies, and allows bookings to be made through its website. It also clearly posts its bereavement discount policy: 5% off round-trip fares up to $499.99; 10% off round-trip fares up to $999.99; and 20% off round-trip fares of $1,000 and up. As for change fees, Continental states: “All rules of the fare that is being discounted apply. Some fares allow the waiver of penalties due to documented illness.”

• Delta Air Lines. Delta no longer offers bereavement discounts within the 48 contiguous states. In addition, the international discounts are not published on Delta’s site, and in fact they’re not available online; all such bookings must be made through reservations.

• Northwest Airlines. NWA’s website claims that “Because our prices are among the lowest around for last-minute travel, we do not offer bereavement fares.” However, a call to Northwest’s reservations department (800-225-2525) confirmed that bereavement fares are available. That said, there are two important caveats: 1) you must register as a WorldPerks member in order to obtain such fares, and 2) round-trip bereavement fares can require a Saturday night stayover (otherwise you’ll need to purchase two one-way bereavement fares, as I was offered).

• Southwest Airlines. A call to Southwest’s reservations line verified that the airline does not offer bereavement fares.

• United Airlines. Under the “Booking Travel FAQs” section of United’s website, the airline states: “Do you have any emergency or bereavement rates/discounts? United offers emergency fares for different situations. You cannot obtain these fares on united.com and must call United Reservations at 800-864-8331.”

• US Airways. US Airways does not offer such fares for domestic or international travel.

In my own case, flying internationally, I started with a search on Kayak.com and ITA Software to get a sense of the prices for normal, non-compassion fares. I then called only a handful of airlines who flew to Germany with a minimum of connections. I also made sure to follow my own advice and check with consolidators and look for discounted business class (Z-fares).

In the end, I went with Lufthansa, which offered reasonable ticket-change terms, a discount of about 20% off the 1-week advance purchase fare (even though this was booked within less than a week), and the best schedule. I wasn’t asked for any documentation, either, which surprised me, frankly. Alternatively, I could have saved a few bucks by purchasing from a consolidator and making it a two-stop instead of a one-stop, but that just wasn’t worth it.

My thanks go to Lufthansa for their flexibility. And their compassion.

Now, Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is getting in on the act of criticizing the industry, calling on the airlines to drop the fees and surcharges. An excerpt:

“I understand that you need to recoup the losses incurred while prices were rising, and that the economic downturn is impacting your industry,” Senator Menendez wrote. “But American families are struggling as well, dealing with job losses, falling home values, and a financial market that is erasing their retirement savings. It is crucial that you pass on the savings seen from falling fuel prices as quickly as possible.”

He added, “Now is not the time for Americans to be priced out of traveling — that is simply unfair to families who want to spend the holidays with their loved ones and it is bad for our economy in need of a boost.”

Sure, it may be grandstanding, but it’s not coming out of the blue. People see the price of gasoline dropping, but air travel hasn’t gotten any cheaper. And travelers are pissed off.

Will one senator’s pronouncements affect anything? Don’t count on it. Airlines are free to set their prices, and set their prices they will. Where Menendez and his colleagues in the upper house might have some sway is here:

Senator Menendez, who held a news conference this morning at Newark Airport, said consumers at least were owed some clarity from the airlines about the fees they were paying on their tickets. The federal government does not require airlines to follow a uniform method in disclosing those fees on their Web sites. Some airlines state them up front as part of the ticket price, while others quote the fare separately and add the fees before a purchase is completed.

Amen to that. Prices can go up and can go down, but they need to be transparent.

Here’s what I wrote when it was rolled out:

Unlike Yapta, which tracks fare drops and alerts you when the published price goes down, Orbitz will automatically send you a check IF AND ONLY IF another Orbitz customer purchases the same ticket you booked, and they do it for less money. If the price just goes down, but no one buys that ticket on Orbitz, you’re out of luck. No refund.

So when would you be more likely to win in the refund lottery? It would need to be a frequently purchased itinerary, so I’d be expecting it on major business routes like Washington-Chicago, San Francisco-New York, etc. Trying to get a price drop refund on that Bozeman, Montana to Fayetteville, North Carolina itinerary? Good luck with that.

So were my hunches right, or wrong? I asked Orbitz what the numbers really look like. Here’s an update from their reps:

Orbitz has mailed refund checks to travelers on over 2,400 routes since June 2008. This information is based on flights purchased on Orbitz.com in instances where a customer has purchased an airline ticket, and a subsequent Orbitz customer purchases a ticket on the same flight at a lower price, automatically generating a refund.

Subsequently, Orbitz provided a spreadsheet with the top ten refunded routes from ten cities. (The document was labeled “top 20,” but there are 70 routes mentioned.)

As I predicted, the majority of routes are indeed major business routes between American cities. There are some quirky outliers, though. Atlanta to Liberia, Costa Rica; Chicago to Guadalajara, Mexico; Miami to Barranquilla, Colombia; New York to Paris. The major business routes remain king, though.

Have any of you bought a ticket on Orbitz and gotten a refund afterward? If so, hit the comments.

[UPDATE: In a followup, Orbitz has provided the top 20 routes that have generated refunds. The list of 70 routes originally posted represents the top ten refund routes for those particular departure cities. I'm appending the top 20 list as well. Thanks to Orbitz for sharing the data!]

See the complete list, as provided by Orbitz, below the jump…

Top 20

	A	B
1	Top 20 Destinations
2	Origin	Destination
3	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)	London Heathrow (LHR)
4	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
5	Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
6	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)	San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
7	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
8	San Francisco International Airport (SFO)	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
9	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)	San Jose Del Cabo Airport, Mexico (SJD)
10	LaGuardia International Airport, New York  (LGA)	Detroit Metro Airport (DTW)
11	General Mitchell International Airport, Milwaukee (MKE)	Las Vegas McCarran International Airport (LAS)
12	Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
13	Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD)	Las Vegas McCarran International Airport (LAS)
14	Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP)	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)
15	Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA)	San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
16	Logan International Airport, Boston (BOS)	Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD)
17	Guadalajara Miguel Hidalgo Airport, Mexico (GDL)	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
18	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)	San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
19	John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)	Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP)
20	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)	Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR)
21	Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC)	Orlando International Airport (MCO)
22	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)	Cancun International Airport (CUN)

]]> http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/10/16/orbitz-price-assurance-re-examined-real-savings-or-gimmick/feed/ 7 http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/10/07/upgrades-and-downgrades-a-la-carte-bankruptcy-redux-and-liquids/ http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/10/07/upgrades-and-downgrades-a-la-carte-bankruptcy-redux-and-liquids/#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:51:37 +0000 Mark Ashley http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/10/07/upgrades-and-downgrades-a-la-carte-bankruptcy-redux-and-liquids/

Downgraded: American Airlines considers going fully a la carte
American Airlines is considering ditching the “combo meal” approach to plane tickets and going fully a-la-carte with all its fares. This potentially means something along the lines of Air Canada’s model, not just adding on fees for baggage. Amusing, to me: Air Canada’s executives “look down their noses a bit at the actions of their U.S. counterparts, saying a la carte pricing should be about transparency and customer choice, not simply revenue.” The promise of price transparency is not a victory for consumers unless everyone does it the same way: Making apples-to-apples comparisons will be harder if some airlines publish fares one way and other airlines don’t.

Downgraded: Sun Country files for Chapter 11
Sun Country, the Minnesota-based discount airline, has filed for bankruptcy protection… again. But hey, they’re still operating! Beats the “We’re sorry, all flights are canceled” message on the homepage of so many failed airlines. The airline faced a cash crunch after the company’s owner was indicted on federal fraud charges.

Upgraded: Odds of actually bringing liquids through security
TSA and international counterparts are “within a year” of relaxing restrictions on carrying liquids through security checkpoints. “TSA has been testing X-ray machines that can detect liquid materials used in bomb-making and the technology is close to be ready for widespread use. The X-ray machines themselves are already widely deployed in the U.S., but the software necessary for the liquids detection and evaluation is still being tested.” Again, these are already in action in Japan. What’s the holdup?

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]]> http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/10/07/upgrades-and-downgrades-a-la-carte-bankruptcy-redux-and-liquids/feed/ 0 http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/06/10/resource-a-list-of-all-major-us-domestic-airlines-fees/ http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/06/10/resource-a-list-of-all-major-us-domestic-airlines-fees/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:13:46 +0000 Mark Ashley http://www.upgradetravelbetter.com/2008/06/10/resource-a-list-of-all-major-us-domestic-airlines-fees/ Rick Seaney and the FareCompare team have once again beaten me to the punch: They’ve compiled a list of U.S. domestic airlines’ fees and put them all in one place.

Most every fee the airlines have imagined (so far) is there. The phone booking fee. The luggage fee. The cost of snacks, booze, and meals. The pet fee. The skycap fee. The re-ticketing fee. And on and on. (The fee fee, the Arial font fee, and the fee fi fo fum fee, as outlined here, somehow didn’t make the cut.)

It’s a great list, insofar as it helps consumers make better decisions. I’ve always argued that the lowest fare may not be the best value. (And that doesn’t even take frequency, upgrade possibilities, on-time arrivals, or anything like that into account.)

Be sure to check out the list.

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