Joe Sharkey writes a regular Tuesday column in the business section of the New York Times, but he also maintains a blog about travel issues. Recently, and I add, sadly, he has been on a roll about the price hikes in the airline industry. He hits the nail on the head in his 27 June entry.
Here's Your Free Ticket ... 50 Bucks Please
We have commenced upon another slippery slope.
Delta said it will ding customers $25 for frequent flier award tickets in North America and $50 for international award tickets starting Aug. 15. Delta calls it a "fuel surcharge."
Here's Delta's press release announcing the new charges for formerly free tickets. Note that it is headlined "Delta Continues to Adjust to Unprecedented Fuel Costs with Addition of Fuel Surcharge on SkyMiles Award Ticket Travel."
On June 12, US Airways made a similar announcement about charging $50 ($100 internationally) for award tickets.
The headline on its press release was: "US Airways Accelerates Business Model Transformation."
Hmmmm. "Continues to Adjust...with Addition" ... "Accelerates Business Model..." All these forward-sounding words!
Let me ask a question: Who the hell do these airlines think they're kidding? Why do they find it impossible to simply come out and say what they're doing in a straightforward manner?
I can't tell you the number of business travelers I have heard from lately who say: I wish the airlines would cut the crap, raise their fares to whatever it takes to stay in business, and stop nickel-and-diming us and insulting our intelligence. The leisure travel market is about to shrink substantially, and it's probably a really, really bad time to keep pissing off business travelers.
Hey airlines: Continue to adjust. To this.
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Today I read that US Air, United will now charge $7.00 for one of those bitty bottles of wine. Guess the fun days are over. That's way too much. And they aren't ruling out charging for the regular beverages. Pues, I suppose we should suspect nothing since we have to pay for everything on trains and there are no options on buses. Maybe as we dinosaurs who remember the elegance and excitement of flying back in the 1970s (!) die out, there won't be so much flap about the cutting of costs.
But I really would like the airlines to stop nickel-and-diming us.
It's pretty discouraging actually: last Monday I priced RT fares for December, Hartford-San Salvador and they were running $900. That's out of my range now.
5 comments:
You know I did 20 years of hard business travel... Earned a bunch of miles, used almost every damn one of them.
Thank God.
What a nightmare. This has all been building since 9/11. That said - and I am by no means defending the airlines - greed, the fuel crisis, the economy are all screwing with everything.
I lead with greed because that is the driver behind the $7 screwtop bad wine.
We are going to LA at the end of July. We booked it awhile ago and are still paying quite a bit. In December I got a last minute $300 fare.
It is really getting ugly. And I wonder how long things like Hartford to El Salvador will exist... We just lost a bunch of flights (no international here!) in Albany.
Deep sigh.
Oh, there is no direct flight from Hartford (BDL) to San Salvador Comolapa (SAL). You've got to go through Atlanta or Miami. My other options are an all-day venture from Boston through Houston, or getting myself down to NYC and taking a direct flight on TACA.
I started treating myself to the wine four or five years ago when air travel really started to go downhill but I can't justify that expense any more.
I can bury this remark here in the comments....
Listening last week in El Salvador to the pre take-off spiel with all the rules (FAA: 'You can only use the lavatory assigned to your class and you may not congregate by the doors'), I thought how anal (sorry) the TSA and FAA have become. No wonder people go bezerk; we're treated worse than a bunch of five year-olds.
And I really hate it that I no longer can bring back my favourite rum because there's no way to get it safely to my final destination now that you have to check it once you're in the US. I am waiting for the rum people to figure out that plastic bottles will do wonders for their business.
Oh I so hear you... the utter ridiculousness of it all. And yes- we are treated like cattle in a car, maybe even less than that.
From the outset- and I was flying 2-4 times per month at the time of 9/11 and proceeded to do so well into 2007, I kept finding each new "regulation" just another way of demeaning people, turning them into lemmings.
Most comply.
I remember flying to Europe when the drinks in coach were still free and then returning 2 weeks later and not knowing that they now cost something.
I ordered up a bottle of red screw top and the guy opens it and pours it and then says "$4 please."
Apparently I had been asleep during the announcements. I paid, but it has annoyed me ever since.
And yes- getting anywhere directly is harder and harder all the time.
God have mercy on us all.
'I kept finding each new "regulation" just another way of demeaning people"
And then they wonder why people go nuts at the gate or at the ticket counter?
I'm with you both. During the late '80s to late '90s I was a constant flier -- a Delta "Million Miler." Nowadays ... with what the airlines do (with their lack of service) plus what the government does in their inspections ... I will not get on an airplane unless I have to cross an ocean. Service and civil liberties have both gone out the window since 9/11. Alas. :(
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