Airlines to Offer Cheaper Flights, but Are They Worth the Savings?

"Great news for you and your wallet, right? The answer isn’t so clear-cut."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/travel/cheap-flights-american-airlines-united-delta.html

For me the primary problem with all this is that the global booking systems and interchange agreements don't properly identify service levels beyond the traditional three class options. So if you have to interchange between carriers on coach ticket you're forced to accept the worst possible fare class between them. There's no easy or logical method for bridging premium economy tickets across multiple carriers. Thanks to consolidation among airlines and alliances the number of international trips requiring transfers is only growing over time. By the time you've paid all the relevant penalties and punishment fees just to get back to where you started you're actually spending more than in the past. But that's what happens when airlines are chasing contortionist millennials who consider even minimal physical space and basic services to be irrelevant luxuries. Which I guess makes sense with so much unproductive debt and no income beyond a minimum wage service economy job. Makes me wonder where this all ends. Paid toilet access? Standing room only tickets? People paying to stand inside the toilet whenever it's not otherwise in use?

I think the biggest problem at this point is the fact that unless you really know what you're doing (usually involving cross-referencing several websites which carry the relevant information), it is extraordinarily hard to sort through fare classes and select one over another, even on an airline website. Handy example is Virgin Atlantic, which offers "Lowest" or "Flexible" for Economy, Premium Economy, and Upper Class (e.g. Business Class). Well, unless I use a specialist website like ITA Matrix I have no way of knowing whether "Lowest" is actually eligible to upgrade or not, for example. Ditto Travelocity and so on. I use Virgin Atlantic as a handy example but I find this sort of situation is rather common.

Given market demands, it would be nice if there were at least a standardization of various fare classes across carriers (e.g. so an "N" fare on United would get the same rights/privileges for changes, upgrades, and as one on Delta), with the "un-standardized" fares being clearly listed as such and passengers being able to specify at all purchase venues which class they wanted (presuming availability) across all legs and carriers. Oh, wait, that would be painfully like pre-deregulation practices...

Devil's Advocate said:

But that's what happens when airlines are chasing contortionist millennials who consider even minimal physical space and basic services to be irrelevant luxuries.

Click to expand...

:blink: It isn't only millennials who choose their air tickets based on the cheapest fare (or price, considering the fare vs. fee gamesmanship out there) over all other considerations.

As far as I can tell, only Y, J and F seem to be standard across the board. Everything else is basically proprietary, and hence no alignment present or intended. The alignment on Y, J and F are also at most notional since there is no specific service lelvel that is legislated for any, but roughly one has an idea what to expect, specially with regard to change/cancellation rules and such. And of course if you are looking for cheap fares you probably won't find it in Y, J or F.

Life becomes considerably easier when you are able to stick to a single airline or to some extent same airline group. But that may not always be possible or easy.

John Bredin said:

Devil's Advocate said:

But that's what happens when airlines are chasing contortionist millennials who consider even minimal physical space and basic services to be irrelevant luxuries.

Click to expand...

:blink: It isn't only millennials who choose their air tickets based on the cheapest fare (or price, considering the fare vs. fee gamesmanship out there) over all other considerations.

Click to expand...

If you're not a millennial how do you fit in those perpetually compacting rows of seats without bruising a leg or a rib? Did I forget about middle aged midgets?

More to the point, we're all being sold a shapeshifting bag of tricks whether we like it or not. Each airline is building a proprietary solution featuring a growing list of silly knots to untie and hoops to jump through. The price may look cheap at the start only to end up costing far more than in the past after you've added even half of the previously included services back again. If you're a live at home millennial or a retiree with endless free time then maybe you can find a cheap zero frills option that works for you and have no regrets. On the other hand if you're a working age passenger who has a schedule and lives on their own then this whole process is starting to become a bit of a joke at this point. I'm not interested in playing airline roulette as if I was a broke college kid. I have hundreds of flights across dozens of airlines under my belt and yet even I have a hard time keeping track of an ever growing list of potential pitfalls. Heaven forbid you miss something at booking time and have to spend triple or quadruple the original fee as punishment.

I suppose I just got to take advantage of these lower fares, ironically for my trip to Washington DC for the Spring NARP Meeting. Originally I had planned to book Sleeper on the Star for the trip in April. But just for the heck of it I looked at what was available on United since I am happy to collect as many BIS miles as possible on United these days. And lo and behold, with a little adjustment in times I was able to get a round trip fare that came out to be lower than lowest bucket Amtrak Coach fare, and saves me one vacation day to boot. Of course the downside is I forfeit the 200 odd dollars if I don't go as opposed to getting a voucher for the 750 odd dollars by SS. The other downside is that now almost certainly I won't even make Select on Amtrak this year. C'est la vie.