All about airlines, airports, flying in general. How to navigate them, get the best airfares, maximize your experience in a sector that hasn't exactly been a joy in recent years...come fly with us!
Cover photo: Wikivoyage.org
5 (sometimes surprising) ways flying affects your body
Gus Ruballo You land. Your throat feels like sandpaper. Your head is heavy. Your eyes sting. You've been sitting still for eight hours… so why does your body feel like it just ran a marathon? Most travelers accept this as the price of flying. But there's nothing inevitable about it. These symptoms have specific, well-documented causes — and understanding them is the first step to actually doing something about them. Here are five things flying is doing to your body right now. Some I´ll bet…
Read more…
Comments
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.
-
16
-
17
-
18
-
19
-
20
of 37 Next