Posted by Seth on October 31, 2011 under Dining, Flying, Mileage Run, Review, Trip Reports | 
About half way between San Francisco and Beijing I awoke from my nap and headed to the lav. Time for a quick break to stretch my legs. I had absolutely no expectations of anyone waiting for me when I got out. Apparently I should have.
A flight attendant approached me in the aisle, addressed me by name and asked what she could get me from "up front." Knowing that a bigger seat – my likely answer – probably wasn’t going to actually do much in terms of being successful as a request I was rather dumbfounded. Partly because I had just woken up, I like to think, and partly because I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to answer.
She then offered up that they had no extra amenity kits as the forward cabins were both full, but that I could ask for anything else I wanted, finishing the suggestion with the phrase, "You know the drill, don’t you?" Alas, I was somewhat embarrassed that I have no idea what the drill is or what I’m supposed to ask for or be able to get. Eventually she suggested that perhaps a glass of wine or a snack would be suitable.
And the snack was.
Seriously, compared to the mid-flight snack offered up in Economy is was like a bit of heaven.
And the mid-flight snack was probably better than the first meal. That first meal was a piece of sponge-like reconstituted chicken-esque product soaking in a tomato-based sauce. It was pretty bad.
The last of the three meals was the most edible of the bunch, but still not phenomenal. I chose the noodles over the turkey sandwich.
And then I was in Beijing. Woohoo!
As always, more to come…
Tags: Beijing, China, Dining, Dream2011, Flying, Mileage Run, Photos, review, San Francisco, Trip Report, United
Posted by Seth on October 31, 2011 under Dining, Flying, Mileage Run, Review, Trip Reports |
When the check-in machine at the airport informs you that it is unable to rebook your connection that’s a bad thing. When the agent behind the counter has to back away from the computer and call in reinforcements to figure out the rebooking it is even worse. But, when they eventually work together to figure everything out it isn’t all bad.
With the snow in New York City not expected to begin until early afternoon I figured my 10:30am flight out of JFK was going to be just fine. And the connection on from Dulles to Seattle would be fine, too. After all, Dulles has plenty of spare capacity and nicely separated runways meaning that operations there rarely suffer. But they did. And so the issues in DC, combined with the rain in NYC, meant that my reasonably easy connection on the way to Seattle was not going to happen. Ruh roh.
The issue was made even more challenging by the fact that the United Airlines operations at JFK are so limited. There aren’t a whole lot of alternate options out there once you’re stuck. Fortunately they managed to scare up space on the JFK-SFO flight and then connect me onward from there. I’m pretty sure there was some sort of overbooking involved to make that space appear but the flights ended up going out with folks clearing the standby list so that was apparently not a huge issue. And, even though I didn’t get the new line on my flight map (IAD-SEA) I did actually get to Seattle the same day I intended to. And that was pretty critical for catching my onward flights to China. Even better, I did it from the comfort of United’s p.s. Business Class.
The seat was much more comfortable for sleeping than the A319 seat I was supposed to be on. And the food was, much to my delight, quite good.
The past few times I’ve done the p.s. flights it has been on the morning departures and the breakfast options aren’t much to get excited over, but the lunch I had was most impressive.
If I had to quibble at all it would be on the fact that they don’t have as many toppings on offer for the sundaes, but they have the ones I like and they have chocolate and vanilla ice cream rather than just one. Hardly worth getting worked up over.
Add in plenty of leg room and a blanket that I really should have kept for my onward flight to Beijing and I managed to both eat and sleep quite well for the five and a half hours I spent on the plane.
The onward connection to Seattle was on a CRJ-700, not my favorite aircraft by any stretch. But it was a smooth flight and the approach in to Seattle offered up phenomenal views of downtown as we flew up the Sound and then circled back to land to the South.
Only about 3 hours later than originally expected and many, many hours ahead of my originally scheduled flights, even if I hadn’t missed the connection. Not bad at all in the end.
Tags: Beijing, China, Dining, Dream2011, Flying, Mileage Run, New York City, Photos, review, San Francisco, Seattle, Trip Report, United
Posted by Seth on October 29, 2011 under News |
Qantas has apparently taken a management page from the NBA, locking out their employees and shutting down the airline in a labor dispute.
Qantas will stop all domestic and international flights from 5pm (AEDT) on Saturday 29 October until further notice. This is in response to the damaging industrial action by three unions – the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU).
Not good for the company and downright horrible for customers. This is going to be ugly.
Posted by Seth on October 27, 2011 under Internet, News |
There was plenty of news in this morning’s quarterly earnings call for United Airlines. As per usual, most of it was focused on the financial numbers but there were a few interesting bits that came out which are actually of interest to passengers rather than investors. Wedged between a screed about potential new taxes on the industry and mention of aircraft retirements was a very simple statement by CEO Jeff Smisek: Wifi is coming to the mainline fleet.
I was actually caught a bit off-guard by the comment and haven’t seen the transcript yet to confirm if he qualified that statement with the word "domestic" but apparently that doesn’t matter much as rumors surrounding the announcement suggest that it quite likely has potential to be a global deployment. That’s HUGE.
Subsidiary Continental has been dancing with LiveTV for a few years now, trying to get some in-flight internet into service from the provider. LiveTV hasn’t been able to deliver, however, and that’s been quite frustrating. The recent successful launch of ViaSat-1 will allow LiveTV to get their service up and running next year but apparently that’s not sufficient for United; they’re moving on. At least for part of the fleet. Apparently the new announcement might only be for the subsidiary United portion of the fleet, with LiveTV keeping the Continental portion.
The winner of the contract is apparently Panasonic Systems according to Runway Girl, who has great sources for this type of information. Panasonic currently supports in-flight wifi via a Ku-band satellite network. This is slower than the Ka-band service that LiveTV/ViaSat are launching but it is also available today. And Panasonic has announced that they will have a combination Ku/Ka antenna available reasonably soon which should allow the product to scale up as the network options become available. Oh, and Panasonic has a partnership with ViaSat similar to LiveTV so they might even end up using the same satellite but via a different provider.
Definitely a huge development in this space with lots more details to come.
Posted by Seth on October 26, 2011 under News, TSA |
Finding a politician willing to speak out against the TSA has, for the most part, proven to be a challenge. No one wants to give an opposing candidate the opportunity to label them soft on terrorism or other similar smears. So it is somewhat surprising to find that not only is there a Congressman starting to make some noise, but it is Representative Mica (R-Fla), the Chairman of the House committee that oversees the department and one of those intimately involved in building the organization. Apparently he’s having some regrets about that move now.
Among other things, Mica notes that the "chat" interrogations being conducted at Boston‘s Logan airport are a farce implemented by untrained individuals and which offered up "idiotic" questions to passengers. This implementation in Boston is the first trial site of an expanded program where the TSA tries to analyze the behavior of passengers, a plan that the GAO has noted lacks scientific validity. Said Mica, "It’s almost idiotic. It’s still not a risk-based system. It’s not a thinking system."
Ouch.
Speaking of the TSA, why not pile on a bit here. There are a couple additional stories in the news over the past couple weeks that can make one sympathize with Mica’s view on things. For starters, there was the hand-written note on the back of an inspection notice in a checked bag with the simple message, "Get your freak on girl" when the agent spotted a vibrator in the checked bag. Real classy there.
And then there is House Resolution 3011 which is now under consideration. This bill will, among other things, amend Section 709 of Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 33 of the US Code. That section defines a variety of federal agency names, mostly related to banking or law enforcement, and makes it illegal to use the names or associated images (e.g. badges or uniforms) of such agencies in print or performance in a manner which is meant to convey that the agency involved is approved, endorsed or authorized by that agency. The amendment will add the TSA and Federal Air Marshall services to the laundry list of protected agencies.
There is some concern that adding the names to this list will prohibit satirical and other less than sanguine portrayals of the Agency. I’m not quite as convinced, as it would also require that the portrayal suggest that the agency approves the parody. I suppose making a movie where the TSA officer character, wearing a suitable costume, is a buffoon or otherwise does something stupid could be construed as a violation, but that would be quite the stretch on the enforcement side of things. Still, it is an interesting move by a group that is frequently subject to significant mockery to potentially limit that. If you can’t beat ‘em, outlaw them??
Next up there’s the report of a handgun falling out of a checked bag at LAX on Monday. This one is actually not the TSA’s fault so stop beating them up on it. Guns are permitted in checked bags. The owner is an idiot for not properly declaring it or packing it (supposed to be in a separate, locked container), but the TSA didn’t do anything particularly wrong here.
Finally, there’s the story of Eduardo Valdes who tried to bring a gun through a TSA checkpoint in Miami a couple weeks ago. This wouldn’t be so awkward if
- Valdes wasn’t a TSA agent responsible for keeping guns out of the secure area of the airport;
- The gun was not unregistered; and,
- Valdes did not have a permit to carry the gun.
Nothing but top-rate professionals minding the farm it would seem.
Yeah, it is hard not to sympathize with Mica and his views that the TSA is an idiotic system that doesn’t involve much thinking. The only question is whether he can actually put some action behind those words. Let’s see out elected officials hold the Agency accountable. Let’s see them actually do something about the problems rather than just campaigning for political gain. So, Mica, you’ve identified the problem. What are you going to do about it?
Posted by Seth on October 25, 2011 under News |
United Airlines and Amadeus, one of the major Global Distribution Systems, signed an agreement to extend the availability of United fare and inventory data for Amadeus subscribers into 2013. This deal will allow travel agents using the Amadeus system to continue to sell seats to their customers.
Of particular note in the announcement, however, is not simply that the partnership was extended but that it was improved as well. Starting in mid-2012 Amadeus-based agents will not only be able to sell regular inventory on United flights but they will also be able to sell the company’s Economy Plus seating. Economy Plus is one of many ancillary services that United makes available for purchase and this deal represents the airline working with the GDS company to make such an ancillary purchase available via the GDS rather than solely directly via a Direct sales model.
With more and more airlines making the push to bring such ancillary sales wholly into the Direct model it is rather refreshing to see at least one company bucking that trend and working with their GDS partners to make the options available in a centralized and transparent manner. It will be interesting to see what other options flow into this relationship over the coming months and years.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on October 25, 2011 under Trip Reports |
I’m of a somewhat split personality when I’m traveling. On the one hand I’m rather OCD about most of my plans. On the other hand, I have a particularly bad track record with leaving stuff on airplanes. In the seat pocket or in the various storage cubbies or even just in an overhead bin. I’ve pretty much been an idiot more times than I care to count. And by the time I do realize that I had lost something it is generally too late to matter. I managed to recover my laptop (yes, I left my laptop on a plane) a couple months ago but I hadn’t yet left the terminal. Other than that, however, the Lost and Found gods have taken phones, a Kindle, MP3 players, headphones and a jacket from me at various points in time. And those are just the things that I can remember that I lost.
My trip to Texas this past weekend was just another example. I had a great flight and was pretty happy as I stood up to recombobulate upon arrival in San Antonio on Friday. So happy that I managed to leave my little Flip video camera in the cubby next to my seat. I realized it mid-day on Sunday. Whoopsie. I figured it was gone. History. Never to be seen again. After all, that’s the way it has always been.
Imagine my surprise when my phone rang this morning with a Caller ID number in San Antonio. It was the baggage services office from Continental calling to find out if perhaps I’d left something on the plane. Why yes, yes I did. And so they’re sending it back up to me. Pretty impressive service I must say. Doesn’t happen all the time, but I’m certainly happy it did this time.
Posted by Seth on October 24, 2011 under News |
It is quite clear that the airlines wish it were not, and there are a number of people offering up suggestions on how to break the trend we’ve seen of pricing and marketing air travel as a commodity. But is that really in our best interests as passengers? I’m not so convinced.
The most recent claim on this front comes from Evan Konwiser via tnooz.com. The crux of Evan’s claim appears to be that:
We refuse to reward airlines by paying more for things like good service, nicer planes, quieter terminals, or shorter lines…. [B]ut then feeling indignant and wronged when the service inevitably fails to meet expectations.
I cannot argue this part of Konwiser’s claim. As travelers we do, indeed, shop based almost solely on price and ignore the rest of the details. Why? Because at the end of the day the products actually are, quite frankly, a lot like a commodity. The seat is going to be between 17-18 inches wide and have between 29-34 inches of pitch. It is going to be in a tube where you fly some hundreds of miles per hour and eventually probably get where you’re going. So where is the differentiation?
The airlines are pushing Direct Distribution architectures where they interact directly with the customer rather than using the legacy GDS systems for their fare and inventory distribution. The theory is that such means will allow the carriers to differentiate their product offerings versus competitors and tailor the sales pitch on more than just the price. As stated in the article:
Direct Connect offers some hope by differentiating the shopping experience and tying more tangible product enhancements to the purchasing decision.
By being able to connect directly with consumers at OTAs or metasearch engines via an API (or directly via the carrier web-site), airlines can in theory provide a customized experience.
They can change pricing, amenities, and features depending on who you are and what kind of trip you’re looking for.
While price is still a primary concern, it might allow airlines to throw in other “value” items that shift the decision away from pure price to a value trade-off. The more consumers actively make those choices, the more they can link the purchasing experience to the flying experience.
But the Direct approach still doesn’t address the largest issue – that the travel experience is decoupled from the purchase point. Yes, an airline can advertise that they only charge $6 on board for booze instead of $7 or that they sell fresh food rather than just snack boxes. They can even integrate the purchase process at the time of the transaction to get you a discount (and there is ample evidence of many airlines doing this today with bag fees). But that’s not going to drive purchase behavior. Certainly not enough to offset a $20 difference in price in most cases.
I am afraid that I must concede that the trend towards the Direct model – where the airline can "tailor" the offering to the known customer, including skewing the price if they so choose with little to no transparency – is one that seems unlikely to be stopped any time soon. Such a trend will, for the near term, make it more difficult for customers to effectively compare the total cost of a journey, just as is the case today due to variations in bag fees for most customers on most airlines. It is hard to see how this is good for the consumer, especially when the product is essentially the same other than schedules.
If an airline were to offer some distinct difference and market on that then perhaps they’d beat the price comparison pressures. Midwest did so for quite some time with their larger seats and cookies in flight. But they couldn’t maintain that difference as they expanded to compete with the larger carriers. And there is scant evidence that any other carriers would be able to either.
I’ve written previously, railing somewhat against the Direct model and the potential impact it can have on customers. I’ve got nothing against the airlines offering up more data about the services and associated costs of the various bits of the travel experience. Far from it, actually, I’m hugely in favor of the airlines sharing that data in a consistent, indexed and searchable manner. The difference is that I want to see the data shared across a common platform so that everyone can see all the bits and compare them rather than the airlines only showing some parts to some customers and other parts to others.
Becoming a market leader should come from actually having the best product, not from obfuscating the details and hoping no one notices that you’re toying with them on the cost side of the equation. Maybe it is a chicken and egg game where no one is willing to pay for the better product because no one knows about the better product. But if that were really the case then it seems unlikely that United Airlines would have committed to keeping EconomyPlus in their fleet post-merger or that Delta would have matched the product with their deployment of Economy Comfort fleet-wide which was announced yesterday. And those airlines seem quite content to keep offering the product, knowing that they’ve monetized and commoditized it.
Blame the GDS companies if you must for not adapting quickly enough, but the airlines are still mostly to blame for not actually offering a substantially different product from each other. And why should they when consumers have demonstrated time and again that they are rarely going to pay for it?
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on October 22, 2011 under Trip Reports |
I’ve been working lately on cobbling together a rather ridiculous series of flights for our winter vacation this year. The plan is mostly South Asia, focusing on the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka, plus a quick stop in Bangkok on the way home. At least that’s the theory.
Initially I booked the trip using points for award travel round-trip between New York City and India. Since then the itinerary has morphed a bit so I’ll be changing things up (thank goodness for free award changes as an elite!) but I actually need to get a couple of the tickets purchased in order to make those changes, just in case. And it is proving incredibly difficult to buy at least one of the tickets.
If you had asked me a month ago, before I started all of this, I would have bet that the ticket on Sri Lankan would have been the hard one to acquire. I would have lost that bet. The transaction with them was smooth as could be, handled fully online and it was only a couple days later that American Express called to make sure that I really was buying a couple one way flights from Colombo to Bangkok in early January. It wasn’t even a big enough risk for them to call immediately.
Buying the flight from Bangkok to JFK on EgyptAir, however, is proving to be a ridiculous mess. I started with their website which looks pretty slick, at least for the flight selection search bits. It showed the fare I had seen otherwise online (about $150 less for each ticket than any other channel) and I went through the long process of entering in all our personal data to book the flight. At the final payment screen, however, the transaction was denied. Repeatedly.
My first call was to Visa to make sure my card was OK. It wasn’t, but they cleared that up. Waiting two hours didn’t help; still denied. Another 24 hours later and still denied. Even more strange, however, was that the credit card company didn’t even show the most recent transactions. It is as if EgyptAir never even tried to authorize the card; they just rejected the transaction. It took a couple calls but eventually I got in touch with someone in the EgyptAir ticketing office in New York to try to process the transaction. The first agent saw the reservation and the price I was quoted online. She transferred me to another agent to handle the transaction who promptly informed me that the fare was $300 higher. Ugggh.
So long as I was not going to get the discounted fare I figured I’d try to get some other value for the transaction. American Express offers bonus Membership Rewards points for travel booked through their portal so why not give that a go, right? Apparently their system is not robust enough to handle selling a one-way ticket in business class from Bangkok to New York City:
That’s is simply ludicrous, especially considering that probably a dozen airlines or more offer service on that route with a single connection.
And so I’m essentially left with a bevy of third party online travel agencies through which I can try to book the flight, but now I’m faced with wading through their differing fares and service fees to find the right price. Plus I’m stuck with dealing with one of them for service going forward rather than dealing with the airline directly. What a mess.
It shouldn’t be this complicated to spend money on a plane ticket.
Tags: American Express, Bangkok, Egypt, EgyptAir, India, internet, Membership Rewards, New York City, NYE2011, Sri Lanka, Thailand
Posted by Seth on October 21, 2011 under Flying, media coverage, News |
The Wall Street Journal has a piece today about inaugural flights and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner discussing next week’s initial flights for the aircraft and the efforts some folks went through to secure a seat on the flight. After reading the details of what some of the others were willing to go through I can quite easily say that I’m both a bit jealous and also quite certain that I stood no chance of getting anywhere close to being on that first flight.
There is a Mr. Lee who lives in California and who was on the first scheduled flight of the 747 and the Airbus A380. He managed to convince ANA to give him a seat on their inaugural as well, though he does have to pay the same amount as the other lottery winners (~$1,000). Or Mr. Bertuccio who fat-fingered his bid in the auction to win a seat and ended up paying about $7,500 more than he intended to bid, but he got the seat for about $33,500.
And then there’s my line, all the way at the end of the article. Yes, I am indeed ecstatic to have the opportunity to fly on the Dreamliner in its first week of commercial service. I also had a lot more to say in the interview though I’m also not surprised at the line that got quoted. It was definitely the best sound bite I tossed out there.
It does gloss over that I’m stringing together a roughly 20,000 mile journey across 10 flights, three airlines (more if you count regional operators) and sleeping in five different cities in the span of 8 days in order to make this happen and the fact that I did it all for only about $1,200 in airfare. Then again, column inches are tough to come by these days, I suppose.
Only 13 days until I’m on the Dreamliner…I’m definitely getting excited.
Posted by Seth on October 20, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Airlines appear to have virtually no limits when it comes to identifying new ways to give out points in their loyalty programs. Early on it was other travel partners where the program synergies made sense to offer the rewards. Then it was credit cards and then retail partners. Next up on the list: Social Media outlets.
Because we have small resources and we want to manage our costs effectively we have picked social media as a new strategy to promote the brand and market the services we have. – Tero Taskila, CEO of Estonian Air
Estonian Air has teamed up with SimpliFlying to create a new marketing effort focused on Facebook and similar platforms.
People are being rewarded not just for flying the airline but really for being advocates. So whether or not you are flying Estonian Air you can be rewarded for example by sharing tips on flying or taking part in quizzes or polls on Facebook. You will earn points that are then translated into virtual rewards like badges as well as real world rewards like Amazon gift vouchers…or even free flights if you can accumulate enough points. – Shashank Nigam, CEO of SimpliFlying
The potential on this front is tremendous, particularly given the relatively low costs of creating the loyalty schemes in this manner. The cost to produce the rewards – especially the virtual ones – is nearly nil relative to the brand publicity produced. Of course, there is also the potential for abuse and for brand exhaustion should some folks become seen as shills rather than as providing honest opinion about the products, but that is something only time will bear out as a result.
In a similar vein, JAL and TripAdvisor have teamed up in Japan to provide points for JAL Mileage Bank members who create reviews on the TripAdvisor site. The program is limited only to members who live in Japan and it is limited to only 300 points per month, but it is a similar approach to building brand loyalty through social media channels.
Definitely some interesting developments on this front.
