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Around the world, the issue of fuel surcharges has been getting a bit of press, and increasingly, its day in court.

In New Zealand, Qantas got nailed with a fine for false advertising, thanks to 122 convictions of “not disclosing the full cost of a fare, or imposing extra charges such as a fuel surcharge which should have been included in the price.” Air New Zealand was already convicted of similar charges months ago.

In Germany, on the other hand, consumer protection groups lost a battle. The discount airline Hapagfly (part of the TUI travel conglomerate) was found not guilty of charges fundamentally similar to the Qantas case in New Zealand. (Link is in German… keepin’ it local!) That decision contradicts another German court’s ruling against the carrier LTU which was found guilty of false advertising by virtue of excessively small print in newspaper advertisements. The Hapagfly case is going to a higher court.

Here’s hoping the tide is turning in favor of more accurate and transparent pricing.

While oil is still comparably higher than it was two or three years ago, it has pulled back nearly 20% from its recent highs. Airline fuel surcharges haven’t all fallen to earth by the same measure.

Two notable exceptions are Air France-KLM and El Al. KLM reduced their surcharge by 5 euros each way, while El Al cut theirs by $14 each way. Other airlines have been resistant, and others have even raised their surcharges in the past two weeks, despite the drop in fuel prices.

The entire practice is a sham. If the cost of doing business has increased as a result of fuel expenses, then the change should be reflected in the base fare. Call it a fare hike - which is what it is.

But the airlines like to be able to quote “base fares.” They have been able to game the system by quoting prices with “taxes and fees” extra. And now we see that airlines are illegally colluding to use fuel surcharges to keep prices higher: Two British Airways executives resigned over an investigation into the company’s surcharge practices.

To see anyone actually reducing the surcharge is refreshing and welcome, so hats off to Air France-KLM and El Al. But we can do better. Let’s aim for greater price transparency. Let’s get rid of fuel surcharges.

(image: DrunkatNYU)

Some good news for U.S. consumers. The Department of Transportation isn’t relaxing rules governing the advertisement of airfares after all. (Background here, here, and here.)

What this means: Airlines can’t advertise a $100 base fare and then slap a $100 fuel surcharge on there. They’ll need to include fuel surcharges in the base fare in all marketing. No Ryanair-style pricing in the U.S.

Other policies were considered, including both more and less restrictive options. See here for a full breakdown of the alternative proposals, and which airlines supported which option.

Though more “total price” advertising would be welcome, at this point I’m content to see status quo rule the day.

tags: travel | fares

All-business class startup carrier Maxjet is running another fare sale. The deal:

$999 INCLUDING all taxes and fees for travel between London-Stansted and Washington-Dulles or New York-JFK, in business class. That’s a great deal.

Book before midnight on October 1, 2006 for travel between November 1, 2006 and February 28, 2007.
Use Promo code: ANNV06

Related:
- Another all-business class airline…
- All-biz airlines filling planes… and knife-wielding passengers’ stomachs
- Do we really need ANOTHER all-business class airline to London?
- MaxJet’s fatal flaw?

I’m a fan of FareCompare’s fare drop alerting service, which I’ve mentioned before here. The alerts go out as soon as a lower fare is loaded into the system, sometimes several hours before it’s actually even available for purchase. That beats the pants off of Travelocity and Expedia alerts.

Until now, the problem was the volume of alerts. If you signed up for their e-mails, you’d get three messages a day, essentially one for every instance of new fares being published. If any flights, to anywhere in North America, dropped, you got an e-mail. That’s great if you’re completely flexible about your destinations, but really, how many people want to travel to Ketchikan, Alaska in November?

Now, finally, you can limit alerts to just those cities you want. Once you’ve signed up for alerts (see the box on the left side of their homepage), you can click “manage” and tinker with the settings. Big thumbs up on this improvement.

Google is apparently trying to poach some pennies out of the travel market. Entering a pair of cities in a Google search now outputs a small search box with links to the big online travel agencies. (pictured above) Clicking the default link sends you to Expedia.

You can also use airport codes for North American destinations. You’ll need to spell out the name of the international destination city.

Maybe this is old news, but it’s new to me.

But I’d still stick with the aggregators like Kayak, as reviewed here. You’ll get a much better overview of the fares available.

Reader AJ writes in. His question:

I would like to find an airfare search engine where I can put in an airport and see:

a) Where all the direct flights go and the prices for each.
b) specify “Europe” or “Asia” and see the best prices to countries in those regions.

Why you ask?
We frequently travel last minute, and frequently we do not care where we go, we just like to go. So if we have 5 days with nothing to do and want to go someplace, anyplace, in Europe it would be handy to see what the lowest price option is.

First off, I admire your flexibility, AJ. Way to go.

Your first criterion, finding only the nonstop flights from a particular departure point, is tough. Some search engines will let you specify nonstops only when you’re searching specific dates, but I can’t find a nonstop limitation on any of the broad, flexible searches I’m familiar with. (Other readers are invited to chime in with suggestions in comments!)

As for looking for the cheapest flight for ultra-flexible destinations, you’re in luck:
The two best options right now are offered by FareCompare and Mobissimo. Travelocity offers an option for domestic travel. ITA Software has a solution, too, but it requires more work and is not as flexible on dates. Here’s the breakdown:

- FareCompare offers a flexible destination search through their “Destination Deal Maps” in the middle of the page. Click on the continent you want, and a list of fares will appear. Clicking on a fare shows you the dates eligible for the fare. Pick a date, then an airline, and the system checks seat availability. FareCompare doesn’t sell tickets, so you’re directed to one of the major online agencies to close the deal.

- Airfare aggregator Mobissimo also offers a search like this, bizarrely located in the “activity search” tab. After selecting your departure point, you can select the desired continent from the pulldown. It’s odd to see “Europe” or “Africa/Middle East” listed as an “activity” right alongside “beaches,” “gambling,” or “opera houses.” But hey, the search works. Like FareCompare, Mobissimo doesn’t sell tickets, but directs you to the seller.

- Both FareCompare and Mobissimo effectively mirror Travelocity’s Dream Maps in format. But Travelocity recently neutered this tool for international travel searches. It still works well for domestic searches, and the site sells tickets directly. (The flexible international search was taken down because the fares didn’t include the fuel surcharges. See here for an explanation.)

- One final idea would be to use ITA Software’s search. ITA’s search requires you to input destinations, but it allows you to string a number of options together. For example, you could enter your departure city, then add a boatload of contending city names or codes to the destination field in the form. Say you’re interested in going to Europe, you could enter something like “ams;fra;par;lhr;dub;mad;cph;ath;rom” — a string of European cities’ airport codes, separated by semicolons. Then widen the destination search by using the pulldown menu to include any airport within 300 miles. Then click “more options” and uncheck “allow airport changes,” to make sure you arrive and depart the same city. That will pull in a LOT of destinations for the dates you want. ITA doesn’t sell tickets, and doesn’t point you to a seller — take your pick.

tags: travel | low fares | airfare search

I don’t give a lot of specific fare deals on this site, since others (here and here) are more closely watching fares than I ever could, but this introductory Delta fare is just too good not to mention.

Commemorating their new New York-London route (which they recently purchased from United Airlines), Delta has great deals across the pond.

For travel between New York-JFK and London-Gatwick:
$199 ($303 with taxes) for roundtrip economy-class
$999 ($1141 with taxes) for roundtrip business-class

$1141 roundtrip is cheaper than anyone else in business class, including Maxjet, for the dates I checked.

The fine print: Buy tickets by September 7. Travel may begin November 15, 2006 through March 21, 2007. All travel must be completed by April 20, 2007. Blackout Dates: December 15, 2006-January 7, 2007. Saturday night stay required and 30-day maximum stay.

Of course, seats are limited, etc., etc., etc., and this will require a bit of hunting to find dates that work, especially for the business class fares.

Also, Delta has branded these flights Delta 001 and Delta 002. I guess that makes this the new flagship service?

(image)
tags: travel | Delta Airlines | business class | low fares

Farecast, the site that intends to predict the directions of airfares for your specific travel dates, has expanded their beta site to include many more airports.

The horizon for predictions is limited to 3 months. If you’re looking at travel dates more than 3 months ahead, you won’t get any analysis, just fares.

It’s also still a bit buggy. I had a few searches come up with no flight results, or no prediction, even though they were in the range of “legal” dates.

Predicting airfares’ direction is tricky business, since fare wars are waged by humans, not machines. Plus, fuel prices depend on a number of geopolitical factors, which I suspect aren’t part of the Farecast algorithm.

I’m wary of predictions, but the fare trend is the key. (FareCompare offes a trendline, too.) If your fare is below that trendline, just buy. Don’t worry about the prediction. If it’s below the average, it’s a good fare.

Related:
- Farecast beta goes public, just in time for a reader review
- So how accurate is Farecast?
- The traveler’s crystal ball
- Market timing: More advice on when to buy cheap plane tickets
- The black art of repricing tickets

tags: travel | Farecast

A short write-up of around-the-world ticket options in the New York Times today, while generally good, left out some important options.

- Branch out. The article advises checking with the 3 big airline alliance websites (Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam) to see flight options. That’s great, but don’t limit yourself to the alliances alone. Some airlines have side agreements outside their alliance that may be appealing, such as the Emirates/United round-the-world ticket.

- Talk to a travel agent. While many airlines can sell you the ticket, it’s often easier to deal with an agent for this kind of thing. Not every airline customer service rep knows the minutiae of round-the-world ticketing. I’d even suggest you talk to more than one travel agent, to compare pricing, routing, and heck, personality.

- Start in Sri Lanka. If you’re going around the world twice or more, consider buying the second (and third, etc.) ticket someplace like Colombo, Sri Lanka. I’m not kidding. You can buy a business class RTW ticket there for about the same price as a coach RTW ticket in the US or most of Europe, on the same airlines. The article mentions this, but it’s really worth driving home.

tags: travel | RTW | round the world tickets

Yesterday, the site Seeking Alpha posted this tip for getting the best price for airfares:

What’s the absolute best time to purchase a ticket directly from the airlines? Turns out it’s Wednesday from midnight to 1a.m. in the time zone of the airline’s “home base.”[…] Why? That’s when the computer systems of most airlines get rid of the reserved but unbooked lower fare reservations.

Several blogs — at least 36 of them as of this writing — picked up on this tip. The problem is it’s completely wrong. It’s pure, unadulterated bunk, a long-running myth of the airline industry.

I consulted with the good folks at FareCompare.com, who reaffirmed my view. The Wednesday midnight rule is a myth. Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com sets the record straight:

- Held reservations don’t all expire Wednesdays.

“Held inventory is released every day at midnight so Wednesday is nothing special. Agencies who use Sabre, Worldspan, Galileo and/or Amadeus [the major GDS’s — the global computer networks used for booking tickets] can hold DOMESTIC inventory (sold status SS) without ticketing up to 24 hours during the day, and the carriers at their choosing come in the evening at Midnight and release un-ticketed inventory. The hold for international inventory is normally longer than 24 hours but is at the discretion of the airlines. Some airline websites have a hold feature, but it acts the same way as an agency: the inventory is lost at midnight if not ticketed, and the itinerary is repriced at the current inventory for that flight at time of purchase. For the most part all airline sites use the same policy.”

- Most fares that are put on hold aren’t that cheap to begin with.

“It’s not the low fare inventory that opens up at midnight. Low fare inventory is almost always ticketed immediately. Un-ticketed inventory is normally high priced business inventory held by a corporate agency for business travelers who are on the fence about going, or by government workers who have a special ‘hold until travel’ feature for negotiated routes.”

- Midnight isn’t necessarily the best time for new fares, anyway.

“New fares (lower or higher) are distributed at 10:00am, 12:30pm, and 8pm EST and loaded about 2-6 hours later in the GDS and airline sites. Seat inventory is controlled by automated revenue management systems, which continuously monitor current sales and consult historical models to decide on whether to release the lowest price seat inventory. The 8pm domestic ATPCO [Airline Tariff Publishing Company – the clearinghouse (owned by the airlines) for raw air fare/rule distribution] fare feed (5pm weekends) is loaded into the GDS and airline sites between 12:15am and 1:30am, which has the changed fares. But there is no correlation to getting a good deal, just because some inventory might be freed up at midnight. It is just as likely to free up at 2pm when the yield management system decides sales are soft in a particular inventory price bucket for a particular flight.”

- SHOCKER: Some agencies will try to get a better price than the fare they sold you. You just may not find out.

“Large volume non-online agencies do have a practice of ticketing later at night and trying to re-price all un-ticketed items to see if any fares or inventory have changed on a particular flight (sometimes they pocket the difference, sometimes the customer gets the benefit).”

- This is not news.

“There is nothing special about this process. It has been this way for years.”

There you have it. Myth busted. It’s Wednesday night as I type, and though midnight is approaching, I’m not banking on any airfare deals tonight. Neither should you.

Big thanks to Rick Seaney for the insights.

UPDATE: SmarterTravel.com took on the same question today, and they suggest that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (especially Tuesday) are more likely to have lower fares. I don’t buy it. The explanation is purely anecdotal; I’ll go with the boys at FareCompare who track airfares obsessively, who say the low fares can come on any day.

Related:
- Flexible-date search alternatives for international destinations
- Where to find cheap last-minute or emergency tickets

Reader David S. writes:

Have you heard of the site airfarewatchdog.com? They list some very good fares. However I sometimes have a difficult time finding the fares that they list. What do you think about the site?

Indeed, I’m certainly familiar with George Hobica’s Airfarewatchdog. He and his team scour the internet for low fares and post regular updates, both listing the best fares in America, and the best fares for individual departure cities. It’s a great overview. His site has pointed to some good stuff, and I’ve linked to him before — like the $750 round trip business class fare on Maxjet back in March. He offers e-mail subscriptions, too, though the mailings are sometimes erratic.

Meaning no disrespect against Airfarewatchdog, but I find FareCompare’s alerts to be faster and more consistent. E-mails go out as soon as lowered fares hit the databases. If that’s too much information, you can get a good snapshot of fares from your city with the site’s Destination Deal Maps (effectively the same as Travelocity’s recently downgraded Dream Maps — except it functions both domestically and internationally.)

To see the Deal Maps, go to FareCompare.com and enter your departure city in the middle of the page.

To join the fare alert list, go to FareCompare.com, click on the Deal Maps or run a search for city pair, and then click on the “FareCompare AirFare Email Early Warning System” box in the upper left corner.

The downside of FareCompare is that it doesn’t cover Southwest or JetBlue, since those airlines don’t participate in the big global fare networks (GDS’s). So a human touch is necessary to test those fares.

It’s a case of machine vs. man. FareCompare’s automated system offers faster response than the more human search of Airfarewatchdog. But the ‘dog includes airlines that the machines can’t.

tags: travel | Airfarewatchdog | FareCompare