Online Travel Review

Change Your OTR Feed Address: OTR Has Moved to Onlinetravelreview.com (tell your friends)

onlinetravelreview — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:12:59 +0000

After a great year with Boarding Area, Online Travel Review is going back to its roots as a standalone site, which you can find at onlinetravelreview.com. We’ve redesigned the whole she-bang, with a some new tools and a bit more of a focus on columns. To that end, I’d like to start publishing more columns by readers and travelers (that’s you!). If you’d like to share your thoughts on the airline industry in 300-500 word form, just let me know.

If you were getting the feed from Feedburner, nothing is changing. If you weren’t, please change your feed to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/onlinetravelreview/NEGA

See you at the new site…

Check Out Cranky’s Aviation Dally

onlinetravelreview — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:03:56 +0000

Cranky, who writes the Cranky Flier site, has put together Aviation Dally, a sort of Onion for the Airline world (OK, that’s perhaps a bit of an overreach, but you’ll get my point). Stories were contributed by a number of different people who write about airlines, and I might have contributed a couple that have a number of expletives in them. Very mature. There’s some good stuff in there, if I may say so myself (and I just did).

Enjoy!

JetBlue to Launch Service to San Jose, Costa Rica, from Orlando

onlinetravelreview — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:49:43 +0000

JetBlue announced that it will launch nonstop service from Orlando to San Jose, Costa Rica, on March 26th, with fares starting at $99 each way.

JetBlue has built a focus city in Orlando, with nonstop service to 22 cities, with a growing number of cities in Latin America, including Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Cancun; Bogota, Colombia; and 3 cities in Puerto Rico.

Wait…that sorta sounds familiar…Florida hub with cheap flights to Latin America…oh right, yes, Spirit Airlines. Apparently their similar strategy out of Fort Lauderdale isn’t crazy (well, it’s a similar strategy, but not exactly the same. Orlando is a leisure destination in large part, while Spirit seems to focus its operation on the VFR – visiting friends and relatives – crowd out of South Florida).

In any case, the diversification from their original JFK-based strategy is smart, and there are lots more cities where they can reach with A320s from Orlando. Look for additional focus there in 2009.

Are Frequent Flyers Actually Becoming Less Loyal or Is the Wall Street Journal Full of It?

onlinetravelreview — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:21:22 +0000

The Wall Street journal reports the findings of a Forrester study suggesting that travelers have become less loyal to airlines over the past couple of years. The study found that “the percentage of online buyers who say they are loyal to particular travel companies fell to 25% this year from 31% in 2006,” and the article takes off from there saying that airlines have screwed themselves by devaluing miles.

There is a nice chunk of nonsense in the article, starting with that initial data point: a 6% swing in a survey is well within the margin of error, suggesting that the reported 6% drop may not be a drop at all.

Secondly, the article quotes the Forrester analyst saying, “Airlines are shooting themselves in the foot” by devaluing the miles. But this misses the point: the airlines are a mess (really???), and with far fewer seats being flown they had two options: make fewer free seats available (bad option #1) or raise the price of seats (somewhat less bad option #2). Given the fuel prices of last summer and the massive economic collapse, tweaking frequent flyer rules is not what’s driving the problems in the business.

Virgin America’s CEO sums up the situation correctly, “”Airlines have zero motivation to go in and refresh as long as banks are buying billions of dollars worth of miles.” And there’s the point – they’re making money off the programs, so there is no reason to make them more customer-friendly.

I have no problem with that. There are myriad opportunities to use your miles for high-value tickets, especially for premium class international travel. And one other thing to remember: airline programs are one of the few loyalty programs where its members are, in large part, not spending their own cash to earn the rewards. It’s a bit crazy that after spending $25,000 of company money to earn 100,000 miles, that people complain that they’re not getting value out of that arrangement.

Virgin America Won’t Serve Chicago, It Turns Out

onlinetravelreview — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:48:30 +0000

Virgin America, which had announced plans to serve Chicago in early 2009, will abandon that idea after it was unable to secure gates from other airlines at the overflowing airport. Look for an announcement to launch service to Boston and/or Miami in the near future.

Your Flight to Caracas Is Probably Canceled

onlinetravelreview — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:42:56 +0000

If you have a flight to Caracas that does not include a stop in another country, it may be canceled after December 17th (according to this thread). Reservations systems are showing nonstop flights from Delta, Continental and American are all discontinued after that date due to a diplomatic issue between Venezuela and the US. Airlines can re-route you on partners through Mexico, Panama City or elsewhere.

OTR in the News

onlinetravelreview — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:54:45 +0000

The OTR (actually Tripmela, OTR’s sister company) gets a mention in this USA Today story about the state of Indian tourism after the events in Mumbai. I’m not sure why, but I’m disliking when media are calling the attacks “India’s 9/11″ (as USA Today does in that article). The tone just feels off — how many people have to be killed for it to be another country’s 9/11? One hundred? Seventy Five? It feels wrong – belittling both 9/11 and the attacks in Mumbai.

go! Isn’t Becoming Aloha Yet

onlinetravelreview — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:51:14 +0000

A judge has put a temporary halt on plans for Mesa’s go! to change its name to Aloha. Aloha’s former owner has purchased the rights to the name Aloha for $750,000 and had planned to license it to go! for its intra-Hawaii flights. However, a bankruptcy court judge said that it was ridiculous that go!, which was in some large part responsible for Aloha’s demise, would get to use Aloha’s name. He has implemented a two month comment period for former Aloha workers to write to the court about how they feel (basically). Look for go! to change their name in the spring.

Primaris Airlines Shuts Down

onlinetravelreview — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:13:47 +0000

Las Vegas-based charter airline Primaris shut down on December 1st, after filing for bankruptcy back in October. Primaris was noteworthy because it was the first US airline to place orders for Boeing’s 787. It ordered 20 of them which, obviously, it couldn’t pay for and later cancelled the order. They had hoped to fly all-business class all over the place, but that also never happened.

Bangkok Airport to Re-Open Friday

onlinetravelreview — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:11:29 +0000

Good news if you are flying to Bangkok: the normal (as normal as it ever gets in Thailand) flight schedule will resume at Bangkok’s international airport on Friday at 11 am.