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Advice for Air Travelers in the New World Order

Posted on: Wednesday, 23 April 2008, 06:00 CDT

By Joe Sharkey

As a general rule, this column does not dispense advice. The rule is temporarily suspended. Here is some advice for business travelers:

Expect to be spending more weekends away from home.

Plan travel as far ahead as possible, but read the fine print on your airplane ticket.

Do not pay for an airline ticket with anything but a credit card.

Make the best of your time at the airport because you are going to be spending more of it there.

First, weekends. The other day, United Airlines quietly instituted a couple of quick changes that competitors are now looking at carefully. United said, for example, that it was adding a Saturday night stay requirement on all discounted fares where it competes with other major carriers - that is, on 65 percent of its market.

And of interest to those of us who make changes in itineraries booked on cheaper, nonrefundable tickets (that is, most business travelers), United is raising the change fee to $150 from $100.

United explained the changes in a statement that included this sentence: "In an environment where fuel prices are averaging almost $120 a barrel we are facing a cost increase."

Yada, yada. Airlines, we feel your pain. But we are on the receiving end of the new cash-generating schemes, which, said Joe Brancatelli, the publisher of the subscription business travel site Joesentme.com, are "aimed directly at the business traveler."

Air travel now becomes "a game of strategies and tactics," he said, for the customers and the airlines.

Saturday night stay requirements are tiny poison pills that the major airlines once slipped into cheap advance-purchase fares to make them unattractive to business travelers, who hate having to stay on the road unnecessarily over a weekend.

The rule began disappearing in 2000 and 2001 when low-cost airlines, which do not have such restrictions, began taking more market share from the network carriers. But the Saturday night stay rule has been creeping back. And with its new policy, United has now moved the issue back into the main airfare pricing channel.

Credit cards? You may have noticed that airlines have been encouraging customers lately to pay for tickets using various means beyond credit cards. They are doing this partly to reduce their high credit card processing costs.

But do not use these other methods for airplane tickets. In the United States, under the federal Fair Credit Billing Act, a credit card company is required to return your money for a service not supplied, like an airplane trip. Debit payment agencies are not.

In recent weeks, some travelers on airlines like Oasis, Skybus, ATA, Aloha and others have had to scramble for refunds when those airlines abruptly stopped flying. In general, it is a bad idea to pay for an airline ticket with anything but a credit card, Brancatelli said, because resolving disputes is easier with a credit card company in your corner.

But worse, he said, "If your airline goes belly up and you paid with a debit card, you go to the back of the bankruptcy line with all the other unsecured creditors."

Meanwhile, assuming you have planned ahead, grin and bear it.

"Airline lounges have gotten better, even though it's amazing how much more crowded they are," said Laura Davidson, a public relations executive from New York who travels frequently on business and now plans work to do if - and when - her flight is delayed.

"I have this three-section Tumi carry-on bag, and one section is just for use during delays," she said. Among its contents are work folders and magazines like Vanity Fair - "which is a two-hour read that I never otherwise have time for," she said.

"I try to time-manage instead of being frustrated," she added.

"I prepare for the worst. It's all about diminished expectations. And sometimes you're surprised. I flew out to Chicago on a flight that arrived on time, and I was so happy that I thanked the pilot."

Source: International Herald Tribune

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