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Airline pilots and their extremely rigorous training
Rathke A few of you may have had the privilege of visiting the flight deck of a commercial airliner, and found yourself fascinated by the myriad levers, buttons, and other mechanisms surrounding the captain and co-pilot. After seeing that instrument panel, have you ever wondered what kind of training a pilot has? Of course, they must have a flight license, but how do you study for it? How long does it take? Are there other requirements along with flight training itself? Here's a quick…
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Here is the next story about the epic battle - http://snipr.com/1s9pcm
It will eventually affect everyone. Even FFs don't ourchase blindly. If AA's prices are higher than others they will book away from AA. Business travelers are the big kahuna here. Corporations want to work with a system that gives them interconnectivity across the travel spectrum.
Honestly, I don't know what AA was thinking. They are getting slammed IMHO,
Elite flyers will still stick to their alliance/group, so it is a matter of luxury and budget travelers, is it not ?
I agree with your article that hidden pricing and opaque fees are a major irritation, and need to be spelt upfront. I also want to do away with hidden-city pair business.
Here is my latest post on this issue from ConsumerTraveler.com - - http://snipr.com/1s5bzd.
Basically AA wants to save money by moving transactions between passengers directly with the airline rather than through intermediaries. Unfortunately, the current system that AA wants to use does not allow for across airlines comparisons of prices, interlining (selling tickets between airlines), transparency of fees, building packages, and other deficiencies. The online travel agents and the IT companies that currently power almost every travel agent transaction are not amused and are against the whole idea. These companies lose business to AA and consumers lose transparency and the ability to compare pricing and businesses lose much of their flexibility. There is more, but that is it in a nutshell.
Today Sabre decided to de-preference AA tickets and that will be a major blow to AA representing a loss of something like $5 billion in revenues, I estimate. We'll see how long they keep fighting.
Charlie: I do want to know how, a current back-engine database company hampers consumer/traveler ? My classic problem-set question is how come no engine, gives me the answer for this:
"I have 1000USD, and I want to travel from NYC{EWR,JFK,LGA} to any caribbean island for a week starting Feb XXXXX "
Currently no portal (for lack of a better word) does that. I will get periodic targeted emails from say CheapCaribbean.com or Airfarewatchdog etc - It is no cigar !!
I hope google/itasoftware solves this problem-set for me.
ITA Software never sold any product or services to the consumer. matrix.itasoftware.com gave consumer /traveller the various options between a pair of routes. Then one had to go hunt for a travel agent or to the airline to get it ticketed on the farebasis. If the google/ITA combination reduces or simplifies it further is better for a onsumer no ? You have to be a Frequent flyer now, to use ITA + expertflyer + seatguru to get what you want.
What do you think ?
Way back in July in this Group I speculated that currently the travel search is very route pair sensitive. Or fare sensitive. If you recall the Congressional/Senate hearings few years back about orbitz when the airlines joined together to put orbitz together based on ITA software, the players - Travelocity and Expedia protested. Its the same repeat.
The difference is that ITA is the google of Travel search, and Orbitz was the commercial venture of US airlines using ITA's backend engine.
Bottom Line: Consumers do benefit.
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