Posted by Seth on November 22, 2011 under frequent flyer, News, points | 
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.
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Tags: Avianca, Chicago, Continental, Copa, frequent flyer, houston, Los Angeles, Lufthansa, Newark, Panama, points, Star Alliance, Taca, United, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on October 16, 2011 under Trip Reports |
Eero Saarinen was an architectural genius. This is generally an accepted fact and one that I have never had reason to dispute. Passing by the TWA terminal he designed has always been one of my great pleasures in flying out of JetBlue‘s T5 facility at JFK Airport. But those interactions were always fleeting, leaving little time to admire the facility and never permitting access inside to truly get a feel for what it is like and just how amazing it is.
That changed this past weekend thanks to the folks at Open House New York and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. For a few hours on a beautiful, clear Sunday afternoon the Saarinen terminal at JFK (officially named the Trans World Airline Flight Center at John F. Kennedy Airport) was opened to the public. I was one of several hundred aviation, architecture and history buffs who made the trek out to the airport to explore the terminal and bask in its glory.
The sunken seating area in the main section of the terminal.
Saarinen, who also was the architect behind the incredibly utilitarian Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, never got to see the TWA terminal completed. He died in late 1961, several months before the facility opened in May of 1962. Almost immediately after it opened the terminal was recognized as being too small to serve the passenger loads it was seeing. Additional space was added on outside the main lobby and lounge area and a second "people tube" was built arching over the roadway to the end houses where passengers boarded their airplanes and embarked on their journeys. But the beauty was in the Flight Center building. That beauty still very much exists today.
The curves in the building are incredible.
A number of former TWA employees were on hand as well, drawn to the history of the building just like the rest of us. One pilot, Richard Siano, arrived in his full uniform. Siano chatted with anyone and everyone asking about his history with the airline and the operations of the facility. He also was able to recount some of his fondest memories, including showing up to work one day in January 1964 with barely more that 1000 hours of flying experience and no multi-engine rating. He was placed in the right seat of a Constellation and after 500 hours as a First Officer he was made Captain. A couple years later the Connies were retired as TWA became the first major carrier to be all-Jet and he was flying as a Captain on the 727s. Towards the end of his career he would often commute from his home in Western New Jersey to JFK in his private Piper Cub and then switch over to a 747 to fly around the world.
Lenny (left) and Captain Richard Siaro catching up on old times at the event.
There was also Lenny, a driver for the carrier, and Tom who worked maintenance for them up until the assets were purchased by American Airlines. A number of JetBlue pilots and other crewmembers who showed up to pay their respects to the previous generation of aviators and I had a great chat with a pilot from Continental who had come for similar reasons.
The tiny, round tiles are everywhere, and they are amazing.
There were a couple officials at the event as well. One was Jim Steven, the Manager of JFK’s Physical Plant and Redevelopment for the PANYNJ and to talk about both the future and the history of the building. In addition to gushing that he "has the absolute best job in the world for a civil engineer," Steven was quite excited by the renovation efforts that were completed thus far and even more so about the future redevelopment efforts in store for the building. The Port Authority is in discussions with a couple hotel developers to repurpose the facility in a "completely outside the box" manner in the coming years. Seeing the building potentially being placed back into use is an incredible development.
The departures board has been updated to tie in to the current JFK schedule, but the architecture is 100% original.
Charles Kramer, the architect leading the restoration efforts from Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners was also on hand talking about the history of the building as well as the challenges faced in the renovations. In many cases the challenges were literally the little things, such as the half-inch round tiles that cover many of the surfaces. These tiles were impossible to source new as no one makes them that size any more. The roughly two million tiles needed in various areas were contracted out to be produced from scratch.
The non-slip skids on the stair nosing was similarly unique to the building and was more or less destroyed in the last years of the Terminal’s functional life, eventually covered with a rubberized sheet to meet the functional, though hardly the aesthetic, needs of the building. These, too, were rebuilt and restored to their original designs.
The striations in the concrete are form the individual boards used to shape the forms from which it was originally cast.
There was also much discussion of the original construction process. Each side of the structure was produced as a single pour of concrete which took roughly 30 hours start to finish. This pour was made over significant amounts of re-bar and into enormous, custom-built wood forms to create the shape seen today. If you get up close to the facility you can actually see the markings from the original wood forms still on the underside of the concrete faces. It is simply amazing the amount of detail that went into the construction effort.
Inside the original "People Tube" connecting the Flight Center to the gate area across the way.
Faced with the impending renovations of Delta‘s facilities at JFK, including the Pan Am Worldport (now known as Terminal 3) there was some discussion about whether that, too, would be maintained given its historical significance. The answer was a rather frank and un apologetic "no." Essentially the Port Authority had to pick one building that would be kept on as a historical landmark and homage to the previous era of aviation and the TWA Flight Center is that choice. I certainly can understand why. Don’t get me wrong – the Pan Am Worldport has plenty of history as well – but it has nothing on the TWA Flight Center as an icon of aviation.
I’m very much looking forward to when the building is fully renovated and developed so I can have a new hang out at the airport, even if that is a few years down the line.
Posted by Seth on October 12, 2011 under Flying, News |
The deal for US Airways and Delta to trade large chunks of their operations at New York City‘s LaGuardia and Washington, DC‘s National airports has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. The swap, which has been in limbo since it was initially proposed about two years ago, will see Delta increase its market share significantly in the New York area, bringing it on par with United Airlines which has held a significant lead thanks to the hub operations at Newark by its Continental subsidiary.
The final agreement calls for Delta to gain 132 slot pairs at LaGuardia in exchange for 42 slot pairs that US Airways will gain in Washington. An additional 24 slot pairs – 16 in NYC and 8 in Washington – will be divested by the carriers to competitors. The divestment plan, which pretty much matches the original proposal from years ago, will have the slots auctioned in a cash-only, blind bid offering managed by the FAA. With the Southwest buyout of AirTran and acquisition of those slot portfolios the Texas-based carrier is no longer in as strong a position to oppose the swap or the blind distribution of the slot divestiture.
In addition to the FAA review of the slot swap there is a Department of Justice Anti-Trust investigation ongoing for the transaction. The DoJ announced that they are no longer concerned with the anti-trust implications in the New York City market but they are still looking into the US Airways monopoly issues at National. If that is too significant an issue it could still result in the deal being scuttled but at this point it does seem like the deal is quite likely to go through.
This represents a significant shake-up in both markets. Delta has not been shy recently about wanting to attack the New York City market and taking a sizeable chunk of that market share from competitors. They will still be running a split hub environment with major operations at both LaGuardia and JFK airports but they’ll have significantly more traffic going forward. For the Washington, DC market the domination at National by US Airways will be much more significant (hence the continued DoJ efforts).
Still plenty of excitement and new developments to come on this front but things are finally back in motion after being stalled for so long.
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Tags: AirTran, Continental, Delta, DoT, FAA, merger, New York City, Newark, Southwest Airline, United, US Air, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on September 11, 2011 under Flying, News, Trip Reports, TSA |
I remember standing in the door way of a partner’s office at the client site I was at, watching the news unfold that fateful Tuesday morning. I remember a few hours later walking out to the river in Georgetown and seeing the smoke rising up from the Pentagon. I remember trying to figure out how to go home to NYC on Wednesday and being relieved that eventually Amtrak started operating. I remember seeing the smoke rising from the rubble as the train rolled past. I remember that thousands died needlessly. I remember weeks later, when the airports reopened, flying over for the first time and leaving my seat even though the seatbelt sign was on and there were strict rules so that I could get to the other side of the plane to see the damage. I remember many days, likely weeks, where the 1 train wasn’t running, leaving my basement apartment eerily quiet when I was quite used to the mild rumble of the trains rolling by.
These are memories seared into my brain. They are memories that I will never lose and that I have no desire to lose, despite the pain they occasionally cause. I must remember them because they are a part of my life.
But I also remember much more than the events of that day.
I remember what life was like in the days, months and years prior to the attack. I remember living in a country that wasn’t governed by a pervasive threat of unspecified and likely unrealistic threats. I remember a country not afraid to stand up as a leader in the global community rather than a country so afraid that it will kill itself whilst pretending it is still in control. And I wonder why we allowed ourselves to succumb to the fear rather than to rise up and defeat it.
Sitting in an airport lounge this afternoon, getting ready to fly just like I have some 800 times in the past 10 years I hear the talking heads on a news channel drone on and on about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and I’m more than just a bit disgusted. There is no doubt that the events that day were a terrible tragedy. There’s no reason those folks should have died. But not event, tragedy or otherwise, justifies the results that the past 10 years have seen.
Maybe my disgust is because I wasn’t sufficiently personally affected 10 years ago. Of the nearly 3,000 who died I don’t have a personal connection to any. Maybe that means my views on the topic don’t really count. But I don’t think that’s really true.
A rational response to an attack, particularly right when it happens, is hard to demand. And we most certainly did not see one. After ten years, however, demanding a rational approach is way past due. Sadly, it will almost certainly never come to pass. Instead we got the TSA, a war, tens of thousands more dead, trillions of dollars wasted and nothing to show for it.
Even though the security screening on that fateful Tuesday actually did nothing wrong the TSA was foisted upon us. The need to perform a virtual strip search of every passenger or grope them to ensure that they aren’t carrying a weapon which would most likely be detected by the same metal detectors that have been in use successfully for decades is just one of the many debacles that this tragedy engendered. There are plenty more stories of TSA idiocy (say your name out loud to pass through security, agents carrying a gun to work, agents stealing from passengers, etc.) and that’s just one of the many burdens that we now suffer with as passengers.
Even worse than the TSA, however, we have each other to deal with. No longer are we all passengers working together to survive the hours confined to the same metal tube hurtling through the air at 500+ miles/hour. Today we have passengers who have deputized themselves as part of the security apparatus, reporting that an other passenger looks suspicious for almost certainly no good reason. We have folks who are no threat to anything being removed from flights, interrogated and embarrassed because another passenger decided their own personal comfort was more important than the rights of someone else.
I read this line today and I’m surprised at just how angry it made me:
Since 9/11, I have taken it upon myself to be a vigilant American…I’ve said something about someone looking nervous, out of place, or otherwise causing alarm for me. 1 out of those 5 times I said something, the person was removed from the flight. Whether or not they were actually a threat, someone else agreed with me that they were out of place with their otherwise alarming actions. …I do know that I don’t feel bad if my judgment and the flight crew’s judgement were made in error.
There is a difference between being vigilant and being a vigilante and it is way more than the letter e. The past 10 years have served to blur that distinction for all too many making us less safe, not more. Less safe because that vigilante might just decide to respond directly against a perfectly innocent individual. Less safe because folks are ignoring real threats and focusing on imagined ones. Less safe because the concept of security is horribly misappropriated. Suggesting that someone else be removed from a plane because you are uncomfortable is quite high on my list of ludicrous behaviors that passengers have taken to in the past ten years. It is way worse than any of the air rage incidents that have been reported.
We’ve wasted billions upon billions of dollars. We’ve destroyed all too many civil liberties. And we’ve killed tens of thousands of people. All in the name of security. Sadly, what we’ve actually provided is anything but.
The events of September 11, 2001 were a tragedy in every sense of the word. The response to them as evidenced in the policies we see today is an even greater tragedy. We should all remember the events that transpired that day. And we should remember that we were a strong, proud people prior to that and we still can be, even while mourning those who were murdered.
I continue to fly. A lot. I put up with the bullshit foisted upon me by the TSA, airlines, flight crews making up security regulations as they go and other passengers. I do so because I love to travel and there’s nothing that will ever beat that love out of my system. But that doesn’t mean I have to respect the faux authority position from which these policies are handed down.
Flying today (I’m writing this on the afternoon of the 10th) or tomorrow (I will be) is not something I’m doing to make a political statement like so many others claim to do. I’m flying this weekend because I love to fly and because I really wanted to visit both Alaska and Hawaii this weekend and flying is the only way to do so.
I’m still living my life as best I can. That’s the only statement worth making.
Posted by Seth on September 6, 2011 under frequent flyer, Hotel |
I rarely read the ads in the flight confirmation emails I get. Sure, I check the flight date and time before forwarding it on to TripIt but otherwise I mostly just file the emails and move on. Tonight was different for some reason, however. I actually scrolled through the email I just received and looked at the hotel options offered at the bottom. I think that there is someone out there with a very misguided view of what my tastes are.
These were the options I just received. I don’t think I’ve spent that much on any single hotel night in my life.
Clicking on one of the links it is clear that the booking site is a white-labeled version of Expedia operated by a third party in conjunction with the airline. OK, fine. Do what you want on that front. But I cannot help but wonder how they chose the hotels to offer me. Are they based on some parameters in my profile that I’m unaware of? Are they reading my elite status and assuming that I only stay in high-priced, downtown hotels even though I’m actually flying into Dulles and if I do bother to stay the night it will be on a distressed passenger rate?
Or maybe they get plenty of conversions on those $600 hotel rooms and I’m just a fool for second guessing their algorithms.
Posted by Seth on June 15, 2011 under News |
Want access to the priority security lines at the airport without elite status or buying a first class ticket? Looks like it is time to start flying JetBlue. The carrier announced today the 15 airports at which their new "Even More Speed" program will be implemented, allowing customers access to the "priority" line that other carriers afford to elites or premium cabin customers. With JetBlue this perk will be an additional benefit of the Even More Legroom seats which are being rebranded as well as part of the move.
The initial airports for priority screening are:
Priority screening is also coming to Boston in the next 4-6 weeks as the reconfiguration of the checkpoint there is completed.
In addition to the priority screening access the company is changing the Even More Legroom moniker to Even More Space. The impetus for this change is the addition of early boarding for those customers, providing them the first chance to get at the overhead bins. The early boarding benefit isn’t particularly new but the branding is. Maybe they got a bulk discount on trademark registrations with "Even More" in the name.
Overall this is a nice addition to the offerings that JetBlue has. Combined with the previous indications that some sort of "elite" program (though they refuse to use that word) is coming and that some of these benefits are likely to carry over, it seems clear that JetBlue is working hard to woo the business traveler segment more than ever.
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Tags: Boston, Chicago, elite status, JetBlue, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, San Francisco, Seattle, TSA, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on April 7, 2011 under News |
Yesterday had a bit of a buzz on the internet regarding a piece about airfare pricing from Nate Silver that was published on his NY Times politics blog. The post, filled with mathematical analysis, attempts to use statistics to determine which airports have unfairly high fares relative to others providing comparable service. And I’m sure the math involved is accurate. I have no doubt that someone as statistically gifted as Silver got the regression analysis correct when he ran the numbers. But the findings are still miserably flawed.
Why? Because several of the assumptions made simply do not apply to air travel.
Silver acknowledges that most the other folks who have tackled this topic have made specific flaws in their assumptions. He aims to correct these but instead makes some tragic assumptions of his own.
Let’s take a look at the factors he considers:
The first factor is the distance traveled — we use the distance from the origin airport to the destination as though it were a nonstop flight, whether or not there was a layover along the way….
The first factor cited – distance traveled – is probably one of the last things that actually comes into play when airlines are figuring domestic market pricing. Should they? I can see that argument being made, but it ignores the general concept of market pricing and supply/demand dictating the going rate for a ticket. If the airlines wanted to price everything based on distance they could, but they’d be leaving a lot of money on the table for the shorter flights and they’d never sell the longer ones. Even just using the average costs to operate a flight as a price basis you’d be looking at $600+ on average for a round-trip transcontinental flight. They seem to sell a lot better in the $300 range, at least in major markets.
Silver chose to ignore whether there is a connection or not. While that is reasonable for calculating the distance traveled, it ignores perhaps the single greatest factor that drives travel bookings for business travelers, the folks paying the higher fares: schedule. When you’re a business traveler hopping between cities and trying to get to that next appointment on time and then home as quickly as possible you pay more for a non-stop flight. Should you? Maybe, maybe not. But you do. This pricing function is probably more directly traceable in cargo numbers and there is a ton of data available on that, including in Greg Lindsey’s Aerotropolis, a pretty good read. But the same concept absolutely applies to passenger travel as well. There is a very real value in speed out in the real world; there apparently isn’t one in Silver’s.
Silver found that Newark was about 25% more expensive than JFK based on his data. And there is no doubt that is the case on some routes. But when you also consider that Newark has quite a few more domestic destinations available as a non-stop flight than JFK does that price premium isn’t nearly as surprising. After all, folks pay for speed.
Certainly demand factors into the pricing as well:
Second is a variable representing the demand for travel at both the origin and destination airports. Demand is assumed to be a function of the number of origin-and-departure passengers that an airport handled (not counting passengers who passed through the airport on a layover), but with a modification for average ticket prices. In other words, if the average fare at an airport was high, the model assumed that more people would have wanted to fly there but were deterred by the cost, and if the average fare was low, that some passengers would not have flown if the fares had not been such a bargain.
Indeed, one can expect that fares to smaller destinations will be higher. And they generally are. But assuming that more people really want to be traveling to smaller cities but choose not to because the airfare is too high misses the point. They are smaller cities with lower demand for travel because they have fewer businesses, fewer residents traveling (or being visited) and generally less volume. They aren’t seeing lower air traffic because they are too expensive, they are seeing lower traffic because they are small. Lowering fares may translate to a small increase in volume but it most certainly is not a linear path.
Moreover, the ability for a new entrant to operate in a market requires a certain base level of demand. No matter how cheap the fares, you aren’t going to survive long as a startup carrier if your hubs are in Columbus, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina, for example; just ask SkyBus. This means major metropolitan areas see the up-starts, and those up-starts bring lower fares because that’s how they attract customers. Their fares go up over time – JetBlue and Southwest have proven this – but that’s where it begins. And that explains a lot of the pricing trends that are seen today.
Finally, Silver looks at the most important factor, competition:
The regression analysis also accounts for three other factors that have significant effects on pricing. These are, respectively, the market share at the origin and destination airports held collectively by the five “legacy carriers” (United, American, Delta, Continental and US Air); the market share held by Southwest Airlines; and the market share held by the largest single carrier at that airport (for instance, Delta and its affiliates are responsible for about 66 percent of all traffic at Atlanta).
…
Passengers at Newark paid an average of 12 percent more than those at J.F.K. for their trips to Los Angeles, 49 percent more for those to Chicago, 65 percent more to Dallas, and 118 percent more to Washington, D.C.
Given those numbers, it is probably useful to take a look at the competition in those markets. There is zero competition between Newark and Washington, DC. National airport is only served by Continental and Dulles is served only by Continental and merger partner United Airlines. Plus, those routes are not generally reasonable to fly with a connection. The travel time is so short that when you add the connection it is silly to fly when total travel time is important, as it often is. The Dallas route sees a bit of competition from American Airlines, as does the Chicago route. Los Angeles has a tiny bit of competition but it also has the advantage of being a long enough trip that making the schlep over to JFK to save some money on airfare doesn’t actually completely ruin the speed=value margins. Ditto for connecting flights that add a smaller percentage of time to the travel experience.
Somewhat ironically based on the first factor Silver names, longer distances traveled can actually drive down prices as the impact of connections or less desirable departure or arrival airports is decreased as the total travel time increases.
It is actually surprising that Silver didn’t note the disparity on pricing in the Newark/JFK – Boston market. For quite some time now Continental has held a monopoly on that route. Similar to the DC runs, it rarely makes sense to connect for such a short trip and Continental exploited that price disparity. Right up until JetBlue announced their entry into the market. The fares dropped quite quickly at that point. Hardly a surprise, really. Competition, not the airport, drove the pricing.
Here’s a much more simple way to figure out if an airport is expensive or not:
- Is it a mostly leisure destination? If the answer is yes then it is almost certainly not going to be as expensive on average. Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and most the rest of Florida all come to mind, and not surprisingly they’re all on Silver’s list of good value airports.
- Is it dominated (60%+) by a single carrier?
- If that carrier is United, Continental, US Airways, Delta, American or Southwest then odds are it will be a more expensive airport.
- If that carrier is AirTran, Spirit Air, JetBlue or Allegiant (and, to a lesser extent, Frontier) then odds are it will be a less expensive airport.
- Is it a particularly large metropolitan area? If not, fares are going to be higher because demand is lower.
Three easy questions that don’t take statistical regression or misguided assumptions. Silver actually gets some of these, particularly regarding the competition factor. But he also has a couple huge misses, especially around distance traveled and the price/demand curve.
It would also be interesting to compare the actual costs of travel versus just the base fare data. Spirit has a pretty incredible ancillary revenues per passenger – to the tune of an extra $35/head on average – so those "cheap" airports can come with significant surprises once the customer gets to the airport. Indeed, the airlines are quite keen to sell these ancillary bits to their customers and many are now stating explicitly that these fees are where their profits are. The airlines even want to control the way those fees are marketed to the customer by cutting the GDSes out of the pricing loop. Not a good deal for consumers.
Oh, and the suggestion he links to about searching for the best airfares on weekends is horribly wrong, too. Tuesday or Wednesday mid-afternoon is the time you’re most likely to find deals. On the weekends the airlines are raising fares and limiting the cheaper inventory in an effort to cash in on folks shopping for their vacations while their home with their family.
Silver should stick to baseball and politics, two things that he appears to understand a lot better than air travel.
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Tags: AirTran, American Airlines, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Continental, Delta, fees, Florida, Flying, Frontier, JetBlue, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Southwest Airline, Spirit Air, United, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on March 22, 2011 under frequent flyer, News |
JetBlue continues to add international interline partners, expanding the number of destinations accessible on a single ticket. Today’s addition of Virgin Atlantic brings connectivity between four airports in the United Kingdom and four JetBlue hub airports in the United States, with onward connections available.
The Virgin Atlantic routes that are being linked are:
- Boston – London (Heathrow)
- New York (Kennedy) – London (Heathrow)
- Orlando – Glasgow
- Orlando – London (Gatwick)
- Orlando – Manchester
- Washington (Dulles) – London (Heathrow)
This is an interline agreement only; there is no frequent flyer program reciprocity yet. Still, always good to see more options appearing for such connections. Flights are only bookable through Virgin Atlantic or travel agents right now but that will likely change in the near future given that JetBlue has recently started offering interline booking directly on its own website for some partners.
One interesting competition note here is that interline connecting flights between Kennedy and Heathrow are now available on both Virgin Atlantic and American Airlines. The flights on American can earn TrueBlue points while the Virgin Atlantic flights cannot. It will be interesting to see if that skews the passenger traffic one direction or the other.
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Posted by Seth on March 7, 2011 under frequent flyer, points |
Some folks love the challenge of earning frequent flyer points. To me, that’s just business. I do it and I accrue and I move on to the next flight. But when the time comes for redeeming those points, that’s where the fun begins. Part of it is because the airlines really do make it difficult to book awards. Part of it is because there are quirks and tricks and nuances in every program and understanding the rules of your specific program makes a huge difference. And part of it is that I generally feel triumphant when I can beat the airlines at their own game.
I won HUGE last week.
First up, our annual anniversary trip. Now in its 5th iteration, my wife and I have gone somewhere out of town for our anniversary each year. Ecuador, Philadelphia/Washington, DC Norway and Scotland were the previous four. This year’s goal was the Canadian maritime provinces. Turns out they’re a bit too spread out for us to hit as much as we wanted in the long weekend so we scaled back to just Nova Scotia. Not too disappointed about that at all.
With non-stop flights from New York to both Moncton and Halifax it was actually surprisingly easy to find award seats into the region. Our outbound requires a connection in Toronto but we’re waitlisted for the non-stop flight (shown in red on the map) and I’m betting that it clears. Either way, we get where we want to be on the day we want to get there and at roughly the times we want to fly. No complaints there. Coming back we picked Sydney as the departing airport. No, not that Sydney. There’s another one up in Nova Scotia. Being a tiny town with a tiny airport the prices on revenue tickets can be pretty ridiculous. So even though we’re only going a few hundred miles the cash version of these flights was pretty ridiculous. But award inventory wasn’t a problem at all. Connecting in Halifax and then back into Newark at good times and with no real issues.
As an added bonus, there are flights from Sydney to France (in the form of Saint Pierre & Miquelon, shown in purple on the map) that we just might have to try. If the flight schedules work that is definitely on my radar.
Did I mention that these were a pretty good deal in terms of valuation for the points redeemed? I like that the Continental booking engine gives you the offer to pay cash instead of redeeming miles for the trip. But I couldn’t help but laugh when this was the option it presented me:
Purchase this Reservation in Economy for $4,452.46 without redeeming miles
Instead I cashed in 50,000 points and about $100 in taxes for the two seats. I’d say that’s a damn good deal.
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Tags: Air Canada, award, Continental, Ecuador, France, frequent flyer, Norway, Nova Scotia, Philadelphia, points, Scotland, Sydney, Toronto, Washington DC
Posted by Seth on February 28, 2011 under Mileage Run, Review, Trip Reports |
It was the best of flights, it was the worst of ground service. The seat was good, getting it was miserable.The fare was phenomenal, the extortion was unconscionable. Yes, indeed, my experience flying long-haul on South African Airways was very much a study in contrasts.
The trip was relatively simple, if not entirely too short. I was flying from Washington’s Dulles airport to Johannesburg (via Dakar) on the outbound and returning to New York City‘s JFK (also via Dakar) on the return. For those keeping score at home that’s roughly 36 hours on the airplane total, and that doesn’t include the side-trip to Mauritius which, at only 4 hours each way, is a separate short-haul report. Yeah, I’m crazy.
Putting aside the problems with the ticket, the ground handling at Dulles and Jo’burg was pretty bad. Generally they do not assign the exit row seats in advance of the day of departure. These seats also happen to have unlimited legroom and are rather coveted for the ease of getting in and out without bothering your seatmate and the general comfort provided. Of course I wanted one. So I asked. Actually, first I checked the seat maps to make sure they were still available and then I asked. First I was outright told that they were already assigned. No, they aren’t. Oh, well we can hold your boarding pass and let you know.
I headed off to the lounge (Lufthansa Senator lounge in Dulles – quite nice!) and then back to the gate. Still no seats "available" even though they were still unassigned. And then they assigned one to some other random guy who walked up and asked. Yet I still couldn’t have one?!?! I persisted and got it eventually, but it was rather annoying.
On the return trip it was more of the same, with alternating reports of the seat being assigned, blocked, under airport control, under gate control and otherwise not available to me. Imaging my surprise when half way through the Jo’burg – Dakar segment I walked back and saw the seat open. Thanks for nothing, gate agents.
The crew in-flight, however, was the complete opposite. They were incredibly on the 3 segments I interacted with them (I slept the whole last segment). On one flight my seat-mate and I started chatting about the wonderful South Africa wines and the choices available on the flight. As the FA passed by to take drink orders before dinner I was having trouble making up my mind. When I mentioned my predicament, as well as my concern that the order needed to last all the way through dinner, he simply smiled, reached his hands into the cart and came out with one of everything for me. Yeah, that was nice.
The food on the flights was surprisingly good as well. There aren’t as many meals as I’ve become used to with my US – Europe flights, which is to say there was no breakfast on the eastbound redeye nor a second meal on the northbound JNB-DKR segment. I appreciated that for the first one: no need to wake up extra early when the flight is already barely long enough to get any sleep. On the return I could’ve used a bit more food near the end of the flight but they did have some snacks available in the galley so it wasn’t all bad.
I mostly ordered the lamb rather than the chicken or fish options. Seemed somewhat a safer bet. The meat was moist, not over-cooked and actually had flavor to it. I was quite surprised. Sure, it looks like most every other coach airline meal I’ve ever photographed, but it was surprisingly tasty.
The breakfasts offered (one on the DKR-JNB route and one just before arrival into JFK) were OK, too. Definitely slightly different flavors – like why were the apple-filled "pancakes" in a strawberry sauce – but overall quite reasonable. Even better is that they actually came with sides, like a yogurt, fresh fruit and a croissant. They were much more filling than I’m used to for a redeye breakfast.
The in-flight entertainment system is pretty nice, though it was also out of service on one of the segments. Rather than ads on their in-flight map they show tips about staying healthy during the trip using animations similar to the awesome guy they have in the safety demo video. When the AVOD is working the selection is rather impressive and the functionality is pretty sweet. And they have a handset controller so no one is tapping the back of your seat all flight long.
Overall I’m reasonably convinced that the good outweighed the bad, but there will always be a little worry in the back of my mind wondering if it is worth the risk to book with them; after all, paying hundreds of dollars more than expected at the departure airport isn’t high on my list of acceptable travel surprises. But in the end they’re the most direct path to Southern Africa and beyond and the in-flight experience is pretty solid.
Now about that $305 they owe me….
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