Date set for Copa and Avianca-Taca to join Star Alliance

Posted by Seth Miller on November 22, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points | 4 Comments to Read

April 2012 is going to be a busy month for Star Alliance. That’s when Copa and Avianca-Taca are expected to become full members of the global alliance, culminating a process that has been ongoing for many months now. The official invitation to join was extended just earlier this month and it seems that the integration process will be completed incredibly quickly by global alliance standards. Normally the integration takes 12-18 months (or even longer if you’re Air India) but these carriers plan to do it much faster.

For Copa the process shouldn’t be too hard. They already use the same OnePass loyalty program as Continental and that will merge into the new MileagePlus program from United. There will still need to be bilateral agreements drawn up with the other alliance members and some adjustments on the inventory and computer systems side of things but they are pretty far ahead in the game.

For Avianca-Taca there is definitely some more work involved. Although the carrier has frequent flyer relationships with Star Alliance members United and Lufthansa there are still more steps required to get fully integrated. Still, Copa CEO Pedro Heilbronn confirmed that join date for both programs so it looks pretty good, at least for now.

One interesting bit about Copa joining the program is that, as of today, there are no long-haul flights into the Panama City hub from overseas. There are connection options from Dulles, O’Hare, Los Angeles, Houston and Newark, giving great integration to the United Airlines network, but not much beyond that. It will be interesting to see if joining into Star Alliance can bring some more long-haul traffic into that hub.

Related Posts:

• Changes announced for the 2012 Mileage Plus program
• Code-sharing coming to Central American competitors
• Copa likely to join Star Alliance

Checking in: TianAn Rega Hotel, Beijing

Posted by Seth Miller on November 21, 2011 under Hotel, Review, Trip Reports | 5 Comments to Read

The range of hotel options available in Beijing is tremendously broad. From dirt cheap rooms with no windows to grand luxury with a few more zeroes on the nightly rate, anything can be had. As I researched options for my stay I was reasonably certain of the neighborhood I wanted to be in – near Tiananmen Square and Wangfujing – and I knew that, as usual, I wasn’t going to be shelling out the big bucks for the luxury experience. I was also, however, a bit suspect of the cheapest properties. When their biggest selling point in the customer reviews is that the front desk does a pretty good job of keeping the hookers out at night so they cannot solicit you in your room that’s not necessarily the level of accommodation I’m looking for.

I ended up at the Starway Premier TianAn Rega hotel. The rate was pretty reasonable (~$75/night, all in) and the location was perfect. It was a block north of the main drag and directly between the Tiananmen East and Wangfujing stations on the Beijing Metro. And there was no indication that there was even a risk of having prostitutes roaming the halls looking for business.

Arrival was smooth and the folks at the front desk spoke enough English that I was able to get the small bits of information I needed from them without issue. They claimed that I was upgraded into a better room, though I’m not so sure what that meant as it looked a lot like what I booked, but sure. And the room was pretty nice.

Free wired internet in the room and free bottled water, too. The mini-bar had a few options, though I never felt compelled to give that a go; there were bodegas downstairs with cheap beer if desired.

The only notable complaint about the room was the noise from the street that filtered up. Despite two sets of windows in between inside and out I was definitely hearing the cars and trucks rolling by at night. And since the hotel faces a relatively large street there was plenty of traffic. Not a huge deal as I travel with ear plugs but it was a bit annoying. I’m also not sure what the net effect of that would be on insulating the room at either the hot or cold seasonal extremes.

Oh, and only a stand-up shower with a translucent divider between the shower and the bedroom. Perhaps a bit awkward if sharing and not particularly close to your roommate but, again, not the end of the world.

At the price point the room was definitely a good deal, especially for the location. I’d have no hesitations about booking again. It is also right across the street from a Days Inn which is a bit more recessed from the road and might lose some of the noise issues, though I wasn’t in one of those rooms so I cannot say for certain.

Read more from this Trip Report under the Dream2011 tag here.

The many different prices of a flight

Posted by Seth Miller on November 20, 2011 under Flying, Trip Reports | 11 Comments to Read

I like to think that I have a pretty solid grasp of how revenue and inventory management work together within the airlines to control the price of a flight. I understand fare rules, inventory allocations and routing rules and I can generally figure out what’s going on. Heck, I’ve even built tools that help find the information and distill it to simple numbers. So I was incredibly surprised this weekend when I went to purchase a few "local" flights for our New Years trip to South Asia. Needless to say, the numbers were not playing nice.

I got an award flight into India using my OnePass miles from Continental and a revenue ticket on the return from Colombo, Sri Lanka on a combination of Emirates and British Airways. That part was relatively easy, though I did run into some issues booking one of the return options (now since discarded) via EgyptAir from Bangkok. But that was nothing compared to the crazy I experienced trying to buy the domestic flights in India and the short hop from Chennai to Colombo.

Here’s a screen shot from the ITA pricing engine for one of the flights we wanted:

Pretty simple, really. Based on that we should have been able to get the flight for about $200 without much trouble, right? So I started checking around a few different booking engines. Thanks to the various referral link/rebate options for flight bookings I was checking three different engines, Expedia, Vayama and CheapoAir (n.b. – those links earn me that rebate if you use them). The rebates offered vary so there is some flexibility in figuring out which is best deal but, all else being equal, I should be able to get the published fare from each, right??

Not at all.

For that flight which nominally cost $200 the options I got were $257 or $247 from Vayama and CheapoAir, respectively:

Exact same flight, date, time and fare bucket, but a price that was 25% higher. Zoinks! Fortunately Expedia was able to book the flight at the "correct" price for that one.

For the flight from Chennai to Cochin a few days earlier, however, CheapoAir was about $50 less than Expedia and actually ended up being less than the published price in ITA thanks to a coupon that they had published, a coupon that didn’t work on the above itinerary.

Similarly, for the flight to Colombo the ITA price seemed decent enough, with flights at the right time for what we wanted:

Once again, Vayama was terribly over-priced, even including the click-through rebate earnt:

And Expedia was still showing the published ITA rate:

But don’t forget to check the operating carrier, too. A quick visit to the SriLankan website pulled up this price:

That converts to USD $213 at the current exchange rates, a full $80 less than the fare published in ITA and a whopping $140 less than what Vayama wanted for the exact same rate.

So, is there a moral to the story? Maybe it is this: Airfare pricing is horribly inconsistent and near impossible for mere mortals to effectively and easily compare. It also further enforces my fears of how much worse it could get if the airlines continue to pull information out of the GDSes and move towards their direct sales model. In this case the direct model ended up saving me a few bucks, but only after quite a bit of digging to find the best price.

It really shouldn’t be this hard.

Related Posts:

• Buying a ticket shouldn’t be this hard
• Amadeus and United extend partnership – with a twist
• Is air travel a commodity or not?
• Let’s talk airfare and distribution

Happy birthday, TSA!

Posted by Seth Miller on November 19, 2011 under News, Screening Management SOP, TSA | 4 Comments to Read

Today is the TSA‘s 10th birthday and there are celebrations all around the country. Passengers everywhere are feting the organization for their polite, respectful and efficient screening of passengers and cargo. The ability of the organization to effectively discern the difference between legitimate threats and hyped theoretical attack avenues was praised by both Congressional leaders and law enforcement officials in a ceremony on Capitol Hill where agency head John Pistole accepted the warm acclaim with humility and deference to the tens of thousands of well-trained agents the organization has out in the field working each day.

If only any of the above were true.

Well, it actually is the 10th birthday of the agency, so I guess that’s something. And what better 10th birthday present to receive than a letter from your parents (Congress in this case) telling you everything you’re doing wrong. Because that’s what actually happened this week. Two Republican Congressmen issued a rather scathing report entitled "A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform" that excoriates the agency for being incompetent, overly bureaucratic and generally dysfunctional. Ouch.

Among the things the TSA is criticized for, some of my favorites include:

• Stopping the growth of the Screening Partnership Program (private screeners under TSA rules like at SFO) despite those screeners being as good or better than TSOs and at a lower cost, both for training and ongoing operations.
• The SPOT program (behavior detection officers) growing despite it lacking scientific credibility or any demonstrated efficacy, including a number of cases where known terrorists passed through airports where the program was in operation and avoided detection.
• Deploying 500 Advanced Imaging Technology (aka nude-o-scope) machines in a "haphazard and easily thwarted" manner despite a lack of evidence that they are ay more effective at detecting threats than the metal detectors they are replacing. There is evidence that they might cause cancer but that’s apparently of less concern.
• The failed deployment of the "puffer" machines at a cost of roughly $39MM which was eventually abandoned when it was determined that they simply didn’t work in the real world.
• There are more former TSA employees than there are current employees after only 10 years in existence, and there are over 65,000 active employees in the organization.

The report offers plenty more, but those are definitely the highlights.

The recommendations section offers a number of interesting suggestions. None of them are "disband and start over" but there are a few that could result in a significant change of direction for the organization. Little things, like trimming the $400MM administrative payroll overhead in DC or setting actual performance standards for passenger and baggage screening and then holding the employees to them are starters. Ditto for deploying some of the 2,800 pieces of screening gear that are in warehouses rather than at checkpoints.

The report is worth a read, or at least a skim, to see just how wasteful and incompetent the agency responsible for securing travel in the United States is. Really makes me happy every time I visit the airport.

Related Posts

• EU bans nude-o-scopes as cancer risk; TSA doesn’t care
• SSI only secret when it is convenient
• Strong words for (and from) the TSA

The debacle that is Avios, and a few gems it offers

Posted by Seth Miller on November 18, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points | 10 Comments to Read

When British Airways and Iberia announced a couple months back that they were integrating their loyalty programs under the Avios moniker there were a whole bunch of folks (mostly based in the USA) who were pretty upset at the potential issues it could raise. At that time I took a somewhat measured approach, suggesting that there are a few areas in which folks might see benefits, mostly for those in the UK or Europe. Now that the details are out and we can look at the numbers I’m still not certain, but the program mostly seems to be a debacle unless you live in the UK or Spain and only fly on simple trips.

You didn’t want to connect, did you?

The single-partner award chart isn’t nearly as bad as previously expected, with a catch. Awards on a single partner now do not permit connections. If you require a connection for your itinerary then you redeem an award for each flight. That means JFK-EZE on AA would be one price (25K one way in coach) but connecting via Miami would add 7,500 to that total; connecting via Dallas is 10,000 more. So if you can position yourself to get to a hub gateway (or if you are lucky enough to actually live in one) then the numbers can be quite reasonable still. I queried ~150 city pairs on routes operated by wide-body aircraft by Cathay Pacific, Qantas and LAN and found a few routes where the numbers aren’t completely awful. But that assumes you’re at the gateway and want to go to the hub. A pretty significant catch to be sure.

Also on the connection front, it appears that folks based in Europe are going to feel the pinch of award prices rising. A trip from Istanbul to Paris sees a 4,500 point surcharge over a trip from Istanbul to London. Not all that surprising considering the rate on London-Paris is 4,500. In other words, even if you stay on BA metal for the journey you get hit with a connection penalty. This applies to flights originating in the USA as well, and the up-charge might be even more than you’d expect (ORD-LHR is 20,000; ORD-CDG is 25,000 while MIA-LHR and MIA-CDG are both 25,000). In other words, the award charts are very inconsistent and nearly impossible to decipher with any reasonable sense of reason.

Multi-partner Awards

The multi-partner award chart is unchanged and is shown below. With this scheme you are permitted up to 8 segments on an award, including an open jaw stopovers so long as the stopover is on the direct point of travel. That basically means only at hubs, which is also not particularly great, but also not atypical.

Some "gems"

So, what are these "gems" I referenced in the thread title? There are a couple to talk about.

If you’re looking for flights operated by international configured aircraft and hoping for a bargain there are a few routes that come up as quite reasonably priced. Some have gone down from the prior charts, though, again, no connections are permitted any more so there’s that problem. Still, take a look at some of these routes with the decent redemption pricing (o/w, economy):

Comparing those numbers to other carriers I’ve compiled data on suggests that the program isn’t a complete fiasco, so long as you can avoid that pesky connection problem.

Also, it is possible to redeem 10% of the regular Avios award price for an infant in lap which is a nice feature and most certainly not one that most programs offer. But that’s a pretty small consolation.

Upgrade or downgrade?

In the end, I believe that the overall changes to the program are quite negative for most customers. Yes, there are a few bright spots where award costs have gone down and those should be celebrated, but for most customers the connection penalty will be a rather steep price to pay to make the Avios retain value. That said, if you live in a hub or in a spoke with good frequencies there is the slight chance that the program can be made to work for you.

I’m quite happy that I’m not sitting on a pile of Avios right now, even being in NYC where I have the advantage of many non-stop options. If it comes to that I’ll just move some Membership Rewards points over and leverage the program that way.

Check out some other views on the changes from these noted loyalty bloggers:

• Lucky’s posts
• Avios points not pricing correctly – One Mile at a Time
• British Airways clarifies some Avios changes – One Mile at a Time
• TPG’s thoughts:
• British Airways Avios Program Worse Than I Expected

Related Posts:

• Updates to the British Airways program coming soon

EU bans nude-o-scopes as cancer risk; TSA doesn’t care

Posted by Seth Miller on November 17, 2011 under News, Screening Management SOP, TSA | 7 Comments to Read

The European Union has issued a ruling this week prohibiting the use of one type of body-imaging scanners at airports. The ruling was handed down based on evidence that the machines are producing a type of ionizing radiation that would likely cause a small number of cancer cases in the passengers scanned. The EU has decreed that causing cancer in airline passengers is a step too far in the name of aviation security.

The TSA seems to disagree.

While not commenting directly on the topic the TSA spokesman indicated that all technology is rigorously tested and that only the most advanced technologies are used. But no direct comments on the fact that multiple scientific researchers claim the systems are harmful to passengers.

The same spokesman also noted this horribly depressing "success" statistic:

Since January 2010, advanced imaging technology has detected more than 300 dangerous or illegal items on passengers in U.S. airports nationwide.

I’m going to ignore, at least for the moment, that the TSA seems excited to claim credit for discovery of "illegal" items which are not a threat to aviation security and which is wholly outside the scope of their charter. Let’s pretend that every single one of the 300 items was actually a threat to aviation security. Even then, the numbers are only one detection every other day. That’s not actually all that many. Even more troubling, the statistic doesn’t reveal any details, particularly what specific threats were discovered and if they would have been discovered by a traditional metal detector. Odds are they would have been.

So we’ve got the TSA using hardware that increases the cancer risk in passengers at a level which is statistically significant enough that a block of major, developed nations has banned the gear. And they’re doing so to realize a diminutive number of "threats" of which many are actually nothing of the sort. And of which nearly all would have likely been similarly detected by the legacy equipment at a faster scanning rate.

But that’s OK, right? Because you’re probably not the passenger who is going to get cancer from their gear. That same gear that is supposedly "rigorously tested" and yet which the TSA initially wouldn’t release the test results for and which they had to re-test because of significant issues (not surprisingly the second set showed things to be much safer). Oh, and these same machines have the TSA employees concerned for their own safety as well.

So, yeah, I ask for the grope rather than subject myself to the nude-o-scope. At least I know that the agent feeling me up isn’t giving me cancer.

Peking duck as a local specialty

Posted by Seth Miller on November 16, 2011 under Dining, Review, Trip Reports | 3 Comments to Read

There’s something to be said for enjoying the local dining delicacies when traveling. Whether Peking Duck is actually a local dish in Beijing or not is certainly the subject of some debate – there are a number of folks who suggest it is better in other cities – but given that I was in Beijing and it was available, I figured I’d give it a try. There are a few restaurants generally considered as the upper echelon of options for the experience and I chose Made In China, one of the restaurants at the Grand Hyatt Beijing.

It should be noted that ordering the Peking Duck is very much an experience, not just a meal. And as executed at Made In China it was a rather wonderful one. Not just for the quality of the food, which is incredibly high, but also for the expansive presentation and the expertise and precision with which the entire exercise is carried out.

The speed and precision with which the waiter carved and presented the duck was incredible.

My favorite part of most poultry is the skin. And that also happens to be the part that is most special when it comes to cooking the duck. The skin holds much of the fat from the bird, meaning that it can be chewy or otherwise not so great. But when prepared correctly the skin is crispy and full of flavor, without too much fat dripping off. The staff insisted that it be sprinkled with a bit of sugar to complete the effect. I’m not completely convinced that was needed. It was simply delicious.

Duck skin, sprinkled with a bit of sugar.

Next up after the skin was the breast meat, served with hoisin sauce, leeks, cucumbers and small pancakes for making small rolls. Not surprisingly, there was nearly as much focus on the presentation of the meats as there was on the quality of the preparation.

This was followed by the leg meat being carved and presented. The leg was actually my favorite bit, much like it is on other poultry. As served up at Made In China the leg meat was a full ross-section of flavors, including the skin and a layer of fat, in addition to the meat itself. Each bite was a combination of the flavors.

In the end, the amount of food presented for the order is somewhat staggering.

One of these days I’ll learn to order a meal that doesn’t require a spare stomach. That will be quite sad.

From a logistics perspective, making a reservation is highly recommended, both for a table and for a duck. Preparing the duck can take over an hour if you don’t and that’s not much fun. That said, if you do have an hour to spare while waiting you have the opportunity to sample some of the other food on the menu. Thinking that I was going to be waiting that hour I actually ordered an appetizer, scallion pancakes, to nosh on while waiting for the duck to show up. The duck actually was served first. Whoopsie. Not that I’m particularly disappointed as that was also delicious, but it was way too much food for just me.

For seating, as a single guest they managed to find room for me at one of the bars scattered through the restaurant. I much prefer that arrangement to being seated at a table on my own so that was great. Plus, rather than a cocktail bar this one was located facing into the dumpling kitchen. So in addition to the great food I was treated to the entertainment of watching the chefs work their magic on a variety of different doughy delights.

Overall the entire experience was wonderful. Yes, it is one of the more expensive meals in Beijing, but it isn’t actually all that pricey. I walked out for under USD $50, including one cocktail and fully stuffed with delicious food. Well worth it for the experience; I highly recommend it.

Read more from this Trip Report under the Dream2011 tag here.

Hawaiian launching service to New York City

Posted by Seth Miller on November 16, 2011 under Flying, News | 4 Comments to Read

Hawaiian Airlines has announced that they will offer service to New York City‘s JFK airport from Honolulu starting in June 2012. In addition to advertising free meals and blankets on the flights (my how times have changed), the carrier has also announced an introductory sale that is a pretty impressive deal: $222 each way for the month of June with no minimum stay requirements and one-way purchases eligible.

After June the low end of the fare seems to be about $860 round trip (or $540 one-way), which is similar to the pricing offered by the only other carrier running non-stop in the market, Continental. No indication yet whether other carriers will be matching this half-price sale to the islands.

Seats on the inaugural flight are readily available; I’m considering going just for fun.

Don’t forget the landing gear

Posted by Seth Miller on November 15, 2011 under News | 5 Comments to Read

Seems like a pretty simple part of the process if you’re an airline pilot, right? After all, landing without the gear down is generally not the normal approach to arrivals and it is something that these pilots have been doing a couple dozen times each month for years. Turns out that it is still confusing to a few of them.

The union representing pilots at United Airlines has circulated a 101 page memo generated internally to members of Congress critical of the new company’s management and training policies, suggesting that they are skimping on safety in the effort to provide training on policy alterations needed to unify the policies of United and merger partner Continental. Among the concerns cited, nearly forgetting to lower the landing gear is on the list. Others have suggested that the changes have caused them to not follow taxi instructions from ATC while on the ground.

The document, dated Nov. 10, lambasts United for using only individual, computer-based training to help United pilots absorb a "large volume of procedural changes, some of which are quite complex," without including classroom work or practice sessions in flight simulators.

"United’s training regime is the equivalent of the Ringling Brothers Circus introducing a new trapeze routine and training the artists via computer," says the document.

This move follows efforts by the pilots to get the training policy amended in court, a case that was rather quickly dismissed as "speculative" and the FAA has insisted that they are monitoring the training regimen.

I’m all in favor of getting the right training, but I cannot see how getting Congress involved is a way to make anything good happen.

The Delta Connection experience

Posted by Seth Miller on November 15, 2011 under Trip Reports, TSA | 6 Comments to Read

This past weekend was a quick, relatively local getaway down to Savannah, Georgia. The trip was great overall. Savannah is a lovely town, and I’ll get to writing up some of those details eventually, but the flights both ways were rather worse than expected. And I wasn’t really expecting all that much from Delta Connection.

The outbound flight (LaGuardia – Savannah) was operated on N800AY, a Canadair CRJ-200. This aircraft type should be removed from service globally as a violation of torture treaties. Seriously, they are the most uncomfortable seating and in-flight experience I’ve ever had. I also had the apparent good fortune to be seated in a seat where the seatbelt was more than 3 feet longer than necessary. Apparently they don’t stock seatbelt extenders on those aircraft so they have some that are built extra long just in case. I seriously think I might have been able to sit in the row in front of me and still use this belt. But at least that was entertaining rather than troubling.

We also had some issues with seat assignments on the flight down. We couldn’t get seats assigned at booking which is usually no big deal. At the airport we were assigned seats that were not together. Again, no big deal as we can handle 90 minutes not sitting next to each other, but when I asked about switching it up the agents said there was no chance. So what are the odds that the only empty seat on the plane happened to be next to my wife? Go figure.

The return trip was an even greater adventure. As we were getting out of the taxi at the Savannah airport (great facility, though the free wifi was busted) my phone rang and the Caller ID showed Delta’s number. Not good.

Our flight was going to be delayed. It happens some times, but the way it was handled was anything but smooth. I asked the ticket agent why the flight was delayed and he offered up that it wasn’t loaded in their computer and that it was probably ATC in the New York City area. Probably a safe bet, but in this case completely false. The issue was actually that Chautauqua, the carrier providing the service, had a rather significant systems meltdown and they were having difficulty dispatching a number of flights, with cancellations and significant delays throughout the system. So when I asked about alternate routings and other options and they suggested that it was no big deal I wasn’t all that impressed.

Two hours later, while still waiting for the aircraft to depart from New York to get to Savannah to operate our flight the agents were much more helpful, but they were also now more limited in terms of what alternate flights they could offer. Eventually we got rebooked via Atlanta with roughly 9 minutes to get through security and on to the plane. Awesome.

We did make the flight despite the best efforts of the TSA to mess that up and then were in Atlanta looking to get on the next flight to New York. With a two hour layover we headed to the gate of the earlier flight to try to get on as standby passengers. Ahead of us in line was a pilot dead-heading and the flight was full; the pilot couldn’t get a cockpit jump seat and was number 5 on the standby list when he walked away from the podium. I was quite surprised to hear the same agent who just put the pilot on the list tell me that there was no opportunity to be listed as a standby passenger and that, "There is no way I’m going to put you on this flight." Harsh.

At least we had dinner at One Flew South (my first time there and it lived up to the rave reviews I’ve heard). But beyond that the experience in Atlanta was pretty poor.

And then we caught our flight from Atlanta to LaGuardia. It was a reasonably quick, though bumpy, flight and we made it home the same day as scheduled and only a few hours late. In the end that’s great, but most of the customer service interactions along the way, save for the two women in Savannah who actually cared and tried to help us, were pretty craptacular. I doubt any other airline would do much better, particularly for a pair of customers with no elite status. Sad, but true.