Posted by Seth on February 4, 2012 under Flying, frequent flyer, points | 
One of the more notable stories in frequent flyer land this week was that award inventory for Korean Air is being published into the GDSes, meaning that it is publicly visible and searchable. Both Gary and Ben mentioned it earlier today and both of them also note that folks can sign up for an ExpertFlyer account to search the inventory and setup email alerts for it. I’m a big fan of ExpertFlyer and I love the access they have to a lot of otherwise private inventory and fare data, but I’m also a big fan of free access to free data, and in the case of Korean Air awards and upgrades, getting the information for free is absolutely possible.
One of my many travel-related projects is the Wandering Aramean Travel Tools website. It includes, among other things, award inventory information for a bunch of airlines. And now that the data is accessible, Korean Air is part of that collection. You can search for award or upgrade inventory for free. And there’s even an email alert function that can be set, allowing you to get a message if the award inventory opens up.
Yes, you have to register to gain access to the data, but it is free and no strings attached.
Here’s a snip of what the search page looks like:
Not particularly pretty, but quite functional. Also of note is that sometimes the system will provide options that don’t quite get you where you’re going, but to an intermediate connecting point instead. On the above Seoul to Singapore search there are two non-stop flights (KE 641 and 643) that are both available, but there is also KE 683 to SGN, from which you might be able to pick up a connection on SkyTeam partner Vietnam Airlines, another of the carriers searchable in the tool collection. Displaying more than just the non-stop options should help folks with flexibility to better find awards that work.
Coach award inventory is not currently available in the system and first class isn’t available to partners, but otherwise the data should be accurate for redemptions.
Give the tools a try and let me know what you think.
Tags: award, frequent flier, frequent flyer, Korean, points, Seoul, Singapore, SkyTeam, upgrade, Vietnam, Vietnam Airlines
Posted by Seth on September 24, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
The proposed merger of South America’s two largest carriers, LAN and TAM, precipitated many questions. Perhaps the most significant from frequent fliers was the future of the loyalty program. LAN is a member of the oneworld alliance while TAM recently joined Star Alliance. A merged program will have to pick one of those with the decision having great significance in the South American travel market.
Thanks to the Chilean government it appears that the decision has been made and that the carrier will be remaining in oneworld.
The Chilean Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia (Court of Defense of Free Trade) handed down their approval for the two carriers to merge this week with a laundry list of conditions attached. Here are details on a few of the most significant conditions:
Numbers 1 & 4 require that LATAM give up 4 landing slots in Sao Paulo to allow another carrier to establish service on the Sao Paulo – Santiago route in order to maintain a competitive fare environment on that route. Additionally, LATAM is prohibited from dumping inventory onto that route within 15 minutes of the newly scheduled service once the new entrant has declared their interest in operating the service. Rule 13 also prohibits the new carrier from raising fares on the route versus their aggregate historical averages for one year.
Number 9 requires that LATAM not oppose any foreign carrier’s application to operate with additional freedoms on domestic Chilean routes or to provide service that would otherwise be seen as cabotage. This would effectively allow tag-on flights for long-haul carriers or regional flights within Chile for other airlines in South America. LATAM is required to endorse such requests without demanding reciprocity.
And then there is number 6:
Latam deberá renunciar, dentro de un plazo que no exceda 24 meses contados desde la fecha en que se materialice la Operación consultada, al menos a una de las dos alianzas globales en que a esa fecha participan sus partes, LAN y TAM. En ningún caso podrá pertenecer a aquélla en la que también el grupo Avianca/Taca sea miembro o asociado, o se encuentre en proceso de ingresar.
Within 24 months of realizing the merger the airline is required to resign from at least one of the two global alliances in which is currently participates. Moreover, the carrier must not be in the same alliance as Avianca/Taca, the other powerhouse merging carrier in South America. With Avianca/Taca moving rather quickly down the path of joining Star Alliance this clause leaves oneworld the only rational result.
The other options are to go independent, a tough move to make in that region, or to try for SkyTeam. But with Aerolineas Argentinas set to join SkyTeam it doesn’t seem likely that the competition courts would be too happy to see such a move. They could also try to thwart the entrance of TACA/Avianca from Star Alliance if they want to stay with the group. That would be a most interesting political move and a most unlikely one as well.
The court ruling lays out a pretty clear framework for the carriers to work within and a reasonable timeline through which the changes must be made. Unless the Brazilian government comes up with a major surprise on their conditions for the merger it looks like this one is ready to happen in early 2012 with all the details finally falling into place.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on September 20, 2011 under Flying, News |
Every now and then I find myself wondering if there isn’t a better way to get access to some nugget of data related to travel. More often than not I’m disappointed to find out that the answer is generally that the tools aren’t available. When I can, I try to change that. Welcome to my latest effort: The Round-the-World Fare Comparison Tool.
The tool holds nearly 13,000 data points for fare pricing from 197 different airports around the world (one per country for most countries). There are nearly 100 different fare types in the system, including not only RTW fares but also some regional options like Circle Asia, Circle Pacific and Circle Japan options.
That’s a whole lot of data that needs to be managed and filtered. I certainly won’t go so far to claim it is perfect yet – the site is very much in beta right now – but there are options to sort by point of origin, fare type and cabin of travel available right now and more in the works.
Currently there are six different airlines being used as data points for the fares, two each from the three global alliances. In nearly every case the fares match but there are enough quirks and variances that I’m keeping all the data in there and available. The fares do not include taxes, fuel surcharges or aircraft-specific fees but the goal of the tool is to facilitate comparing prices between alliances or to figure out the best place to start a trip rather than get to final pricing.
Here’s what it looks like if you choose a specific origin country/airport:
The different cabins are color-coded so you can quickly see the different types of fares available to you.
Want to search by fare product. Here are the nearly 100 available to you:
Pick one and you’ll get a clickable, color-coded map:
The green icons represent the cheapest 20% of the markets for that specific fare while the red are the most expensive 20%.
I’m still working on options for other ways to "slice and dice" the data. Got a suggestion or an idea of a view that would be useful? Leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.
In the mean time, give the tool a whirl and let me know what you think. And check out some of the other tools while you’re on the site. You might be surprised at how useful they can be.
Posted by Seth on June 6, 2011 under frequent flyer, News |
In what is likely the most significant frequent flyer-related news to come out of the annual IATA World Air Transport Summit meetings this year, the oneworld alliance announced that they will be adding Malaysia Airlines to their fold in late 2012. Malaysia Airlines currently offers codeshare flights with future oneworld partners Royal Jordanian and Cathay Pacific; these partnerships will expand in the coming months leading up to the full membership in the alliance.
Malaysia has been the subject of alliance talks off and on over the years with most rumors touching on the SkyTeam alliance which has very weak coverage in the SE Asia region. There are many rumors about why that never happened but few official statements have been made. With this move to oneworld Malaysia now closes that chapter of its history and joins a group with a strong global presence. This also means that it will be even harder for SkyTeam to expand in the region as there aren’t many other carriers left there large enough to have a significant impact on an alliance’s footprint.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on April 5, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Given today’s announcement that American Airlines and Expedia have reached a deal putting AA’s inventory back online I figured it was finally time to finish up this post I’ve been working on related to direct versus indirect distribution for airlines and travel agents.
There has been a lot of noise recently on this topic. Most visible has been the tiff between American Airlines and some of the bigger names in online travel agents. But they aren’t the only carrier fighting this fight. Even when the airlines agree to new distribution agreements with the Global Distribution Systems ("GDS") operators there can be fallout based on the associated press releases. There’s a pretty large industry group, Open AXIS Group, that represents a number of the the airlines in this battle. They happened to be having their annual conference last month and their twitter account was pushing the associated propaganda out. I happened to engage with them, disputing some of their blanket claims. After a couple rounds back and forth we took the discussion off-line, eventually resulting in me having a conversation with Jim Young, the Executive Director of the organization. The call was quick but quite informative. I’m still not completely convinced of their claims, but there are some possible upsides worth at least considering.
In the past dozen or so years the balance of airfare sales has shifted dramatically towards the airline selling direct to consumers. What used to be a relatively small portion of tickets sold is now up around half. That’s a huge shift. And the travel agents that used to be selling those other seats are feeling the pinch. They no longer get commissions on most air tickets so there are pain points there. At the same time, the cost to the airlines of providing all the data out to the GDSes is high and is prone to errors in data entry and other problems. Another pain point.
But most significant is that the GDSes have essentially commoditized the travel industry. Whether this is good or bad probably depends on your point of view but it is certainly an indisputable fact.
With the recent, rapidly developing trend of breaking out services that were traditionally included as part of the airfare into ancillary fees the booking process has become significantly more complex. It is not possible to easily compare the total costs for a trip across multiple carriers now; the GDS doesn’t know that I have elite status in Star Alliance and not in SkyTeam, for example, so it doesn’t know which of those extra fees I’ll be paying. It also doesn’t know what those fees are because the GDS systems were built in an era before such things existed and getting them integrated into those legacy systems is a tremendous battle. The new systems that Open AXIS is promoting solve those problems.
Read more of this article »
Posted by Seth on January 13, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points |
The past week has been a busy one for carriers in the Middle East and Central Asia. In addition to the move by Saudi Arabian Airlines to join the SkyTeam alliance (covered here and here), Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq have gotten in on the action.
In Iraq a consortium of investors will be working with Greek charter carrier Viking Hellas to establish frequencies and destinations between Iraq and Europe. Most of the service will be focused on moving passengers between Western Europe and northern Iraqi cities located in the Kurdish Regional Government Area. This is notable mostly because it shows a continued growth and recovery of that market. Air service to Iraq has been quite limited for a long time now and seeing that move back a bit towards normal is quite a positive sign.
The other significant announcement this week involves the major shift in traffic between THY Turkish Airlines and Pakistan International Airline. PIA will be cutting service to New York City, Chicago, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. Customers looking to reach those destinations will now be routed on Turkish Airways-operated flights via Istanbul under a new joint venture that the two carriers recently signed.
PIA will be keeping one long-haul destination in the West with 3x weekly service to be operated from Istanbul to Houston. It is also expected that PIA will add seven weekly service frequencies to European destinations from Istanbul, either in addition to or in place of Turkish service.
Other notes from the announcement include:
- Both airlines will exclusively use catering facilities of the partner airline, when applicable, on flights between Pakistan and Turkey.
- The operating carrier will arrange special food, reading material to the taste of marketing carrier’s passengers.
- The two airlines will cooperate in maximum utilisation of each other’s engineering, maintenance and training facilities.
- The two airlines will immediately test/integrate interline e-ticketing.
- Both airlines will provide all assistance/transit/business class lounge facilities to passengers at their home stations.
So there are obvious back-office benefits to an agreement such as this one. In some ways this is just another code-sharing agreement and some minor shuffling of flight hardware to better serve passengers at both ends of the trip. But the announcement also includes this little tidbit
The two airlines will also integrate their frequent flyer programs for mutual benefit of the airlines and passengers travelling on two airlines.
Certainly it is too soon to claim that the frequent flyer programs are merging or that anything major is happening here on that front, but it does open up a number of quite interesting possibilities. Most significant, perhaps, is that aligning the loyalty programs and integrating interline e-ticketing brings about the very real possibility that PIA could make a move to join a global alliance, with Star Alliance being the most obvious target given Turkish’s membership there. The Central Asia region doesn’t have a lot of coverage from the alliances and this sort of move would be a major change on that front.
Also of note is that, while Chicago is largest global gateway in the United States for Star Alliance, Turkish does not currently offer service there. With the PIA service being cut in favor of Turkish this seems like a route that just significantly improved its odds of being announced.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on January 10, 2011 under News |
SkyTeam, one of the three major global airline alliances, is growing again. The Middle-Eastern carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines has joined the group, according to reports. This is not unexpected; the potential for this move was reported a month ago when the carrier signed an agreement with SkyTeam member Air France to establish a significant code-share and joint marketing agreement. Then again, the Saudia website only mentions the code-share agreement, not the alliance shift, so it is not particularly clear that this really is a move the alliance can claim as growth.
If the story is true it would be the first major Middle-Eastern carrier to join one of the global alliances. The other carriers in the region have, to date, all remained independent with specific bilateral agreements where appropriate.
Still looking for confirmation from any of the associated press groups (SkyTeam is somewhat notorious for not updating their website with changes like this) and hoping to nail this down shortly.
UPDATE: A press release was issued this afternoon confirming the move. The carrier is expected to be integrated into SkyTeam in 2012.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on December 14, 2010 under frequent flyer, News |
Star Alliance is already the largest of the global airline alliances but they appear to be showing no signs of slowing their growth. At their regular CEO summit this week, held in Queenstown, New Zealand, Virgin Blue CEO John Borghetti was in attendance. Only Qantas, a member of OneWorld, is in an alliance currently in Australia so there is room for either Star Alliance or SkyTeam to make a move with Virgin Blue.
Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand have tried to link up already once. Their application to cooperate on trans-Tasman service was rejected by Australian competition authorities in September. Still, the carriers are looking to move forward with a partnership that could benefit both sides as much as possible.
An additional quirk that might come into play with the possible Star Alliance move is that Virgin Blue has some existing partners that could confuse the situation. Their loyalty scheme, Velocity Rewards, is shared with long haul carrier V Australia. V Australia currently is partnered with Delta, a SkyTeam member. Having one half of the Velocity Rewards program working in Star Alliance and the other in SkyTeam would be quite unusual, though it is possible.
If Virgin Blue – and V Australia along with it – were to leave Delta it would be quite a blow to the SkyMiles program. Currently the V Australia option is one of the best redemption opportunities that SkyMiles has.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on November 18, 2010 under frequent flyer, News, points |
Earlier this week saw two announcements regarding growing alliances in the airline world. Russian carrier S7 joined the OneWorld alliance while JetBlue added another interline partner, Emirates.
The S7/OneWorld deal adds 55 destinations and 9 countries to the OneWorld route map, nearly tripling the alliance’s coverage in Russia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. That’s a big chunk of the world that is now open to OneWorld partners. Additionally, frequent flyer reciprocity – including EQMs – is now in place for travel on S7 and credit to other OneWorld partners.
The Emirates/JetBlue deal continues the efforts of JetBlue to grow their airline partner portfolio for interline connections. The deal covers only ticketing and baggage check-through for now. Discussions about frequent flyer reciprocity are ongoing, as is the potential for ticketing through JetBlue channels; currently the interline itineraries are only available via emirates.com or other 3rd party booking engines. Emirates is the 6th interline airline partner for JetBlue, joining South African, El Al, Lufthansa, American Airlines and Aer Lingus.
In both cases it is nice to see partnerships grow. Ultimately that’s better for customers in just about every case.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on November 4, 2010 under News |
Details are a bit sketchy right now as there isn’t a lot of public information about the change, but there are multiple reports that Delta’s company intranet is offering up information about a new Y+ section on the carrier’s international fleet. There are many different ways that the cabin could be offered, ranging from the United Airlines/JetBlue version of just extra legroom up to the legroom/seat width/catering upgrades that carriers like SkyTeam partner Air France offer. Initial indications suggest that the new product will only be increased pitch, but it is not yet certain.
There are many other questions still to be answered beyond the above uncertainty about which type of premium economy product the new cabin configuration will represent. Most notable for frequent flyers is the question about upgrades. Will getting a seat in that section require an upgrade instrument for all passengers? Just non-elites? Is Coach to BusinessElite now considers a two cabin upgrade? What about earning points in the new section of the cabin? Will they earn at a premium rate commensurate with the higher cost of the seat or just the regular economy rate? And will the regular economy section become even tighter as a result of the new product?
Lots of questions but still some mostly positive news in the world of airline passenger comfort.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on October 22, 2010 under frequent flyer, News |
The SkyTeam alliance, oft faulted for their lack of coverage south of the equator, is working to rectify that situation with the announcement this week that Aerolineas Argentinas is expected to sign an agreement to join the alliance later this month. The carrier will aim to be fully integrated into SkyTeam at some point in 2012.
The move will open up a number of new destinations for SkyTeam in South America. It will also open up a number of routes to connect the dots between other cities served by the alliance. With the uncertainty presented by the recently announced LAN/TAM merger and those carriers participating in OneWorld and Star Alliance, respectively, this move ties up one of the larger carriers in the continent as part of SkyTeam.
Personally, I’m hopeful that they can be integrated quickly and that I can use points from various SkyTeam programs for interesting frequent flyer redemptions, including Ushuaia and the antipodal routing of Buenos Aires – Auckland – Sydney. I don’t know why, but I really want that line on my map.
Related Posts
