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As a general rule, I love the non-airline travel sites, mainly because they are easier to use and I like the feeling of being in control, of making my own choices. Back in the dark ages when one called up a travel agent to book a trip, you never really knew what all the options were. The agent would say, “There’s a flight at 11 and another at 1, which would you prefer?” and you’d have to make an immediate decision whether it worked out as you wanted or not. Also, you never knew if there were lower fares or a more direct flight plan, etc. The tools were in the agent’s hands, not yours.
A good travel agent tried to help you find the best, but you still had to rely on the spotty information being given over the phone. In my work during those days, we got hold of the OAG, the Official Airline Guide, and it was like someone had handed me a new kind of drug. I loved being able to see the whole flight schedule and then figure things out for myself. When online travel booking came along in the late ‘90s, I was primed and ready to do it myself. (There are many advantages to using a travel agent, mainly saving time when you are busy, and agents can provide some rather nice back-up benefits, so I would either look at the OAG or later an online guide, then call the agent for the flight I wanted.)
Turns out, however, there are significant disadvantages to using Expedia and other online sites. Just as with travel agents, if you need to change your flight schedule while traveling, you are stuck calling Expedia and trying to get it done that way. During the current mass cancellation mess across much of the east coast, thousands of people have been trying to reach their online booking service to make changes. How well this has worked out I don’t know, but most online companies are not set up to handle thousands and thousands of calls per hour.
I found another huge disadvantage in the spring of last year when traveling back from Mexico. I needed to change my flight back by one day. I called Expedia on an expensive international call and gave my information to the person on the phone. I also provided the flight I wanted to take and my credit card number. The person seemed to be in India somewhere and was speaking in a kind of sign song English that made it difficult to understand what she was saying. Having supplied my flights, name and credit card number and being concerned that my phone was going to go blank from running out of minutes, and after waiting for awhile, I thanked the agent and hung up. Big mistake. I neglected to say, “Is this all finished now?” Even though the agent had my credit card number, she did not go through and finish the transaction. The result is that I was still on a flight I didn’t want to take and when I showed up at the airport two days later, I was told I had no reservation and no ticket (I was listed as a “no show” for the previous day.)
How could the Expedia agent take all of my information, including credit card number, and not complete the change? Well, if you are 10,000 miles away, the needs and requests of these strange people, Americans, must seem really weird indeed. Any service that requires being contacted by phone and can’t supply people who speak English clearly as their first language is not one I want to deal with. Ever. This is the kind of cheaping it out that doesn’t bother corporations (they save money), but it puts what were to me critical functions in the hands of someone far away who can’t handle them. I found myself in Mexico without a flight reservation or a ticket back.
The difficulties soon got deeper. I had made the mistake of booking on AirTran because I wanted to get back early enough to see my daughter, who was visiting the DC area for the weekend. After informing me that I had no reservation and no ticket to come home, when I asked if I could buy a ticket for the flight I was supposed to be on, the AirTran ticket agent at the airport said, “We don’t take reservations.” He gave me an 800 number to call and, in effect, told me to get lost. AirTran is to consideration and service what a skyscraper is to an ant hill. (I base this conclusion on other experiences with AirTran, not this one time alone.)
I will skip the rest of the gory details, except to say I knew I could not get a new reservation and back through the long check-in line in time to make the flight. I got booked out on Delta, which, through the kindness of several actual human beings, turned out to be far, far better than going on Cheapo Airlines. The people at Delta actually helped me get home and for that I am grateful. They did so not by reading their rule book and telling me what they couldn’t do, they did it by bending rules and really providing assistance.
This brings up another negative with the discount carriers: they don’t have ticketing relationships with the legacy carriers. If you miss your flight on one of those airlines, you are stuck. AirTran (owned by Southwest) and Southwest Airlines are two of the carriers disconnected from the rest of the airline system. I am sure there are more. Your ticket is good for travel on those airlines and no other. Think about this before you take a complicated, multi-city trip or travel far from home where getting back by buying a new ticket could cost a thousand dollars or more.
So, it pays to buy your ticket directly from the airline when possible and it pays to not fly on the discount carriers, unless you feel you must. Air travel is such a screaming nightmare these days that one assumes it can’t get worse, until it does. My bet would be that in ten years time, there will be no more “first class” sections on most airlines in America as people with enough money to do so abandon them in large numbers.
People who have any level of wealth are not going to put up with this mess forever. (Of course, you get more consideration in business or first class, but how far does that go?) As for me, I am looking into a new startup service called “Wheels up” that works sort of like a country club membership and provides access to a twin prop aircraft (KingAir) as well as jets on the side. It’s not cheap, but flying private is so much better than flying cattle car style. The airlines will likely lose higher paying customers for flights around 1,000 miles or less and it could spread from there. In fact, it is happening even now as thousands who can abandon commercial airliners sign up for shared ownership of jets and “book on demand” near private jet service. Anything is better than this, if you can get it.
My parents drove long distances because there was no viable other choice. They had to do it. Then, in the 1980s and ‘90s, America took to the skies, encouraged by apparent lower fares and the idea that flying was no longer limited to the upper middle class economically and those above. The process has been anything but smooth and, in fact, no one has fully developed a way to make airlines work well following the deregulation of the late 1970s. The new way is to get someone to fly and then gouge them for every last cent. Progress.
We have crummy rail service in the U.S. and intercity bus service stinks, save for the new carriers in major city pairs like NY/Washington,DC. The intercity bus lines of old have turned into a way for the unemployed and those living on small, fixed incomes to get about and nothing more. Most of the time, the bus is the last resort of the desperate. When you go to city bus stations, looking around you are not sure whether half the people just got out of prison or are on the way there. They make the aisles of WalMart look inviting in comparison. (Craigslist seems to have a lively exchange of shared rides going on, much like bulletin boards at colleges once had years ago.)
The future is not the airlines, not for travel 1,000 miles or less. Self driving cars, at least partially self driving, could make shorter trips by road more inviting within the next decade or so. The airlines are giving up on their own business, with the president of Delta saying recently that his airline is positioning itself as something else. (I’m not sure what.)
The airlines don’t want to provide good service, they have allowed a police state to be installed between the traveler and the aircraft and they nick away every last inch of leg and seating space so they can fill up a row or two in the back with low fare paying customers. This kind of desperation does not lead anywhere good. It is, indeed, a symbol of the way American business is being driven into the ground by business school MBA graduates who strive not to produce a good product, but to get their multimillion dollar pay days and keep the stock high, the two main goals that override everything else.
It is a cynical and rather ugly game. Once American business people prided themselves on producing something better, something of increasing value without higher and higher prices. Those days are long gone. The idea of taking pride in what you produce is now a rather quaint notion. The new management of corporations does not believe that it is possible to care deeply about the “product”, the focus is on the stock price and cost cutting. So, they are in a race to the bottom and I don’t want to be there when they finally arrive.
Doug Terry, 1.9.14
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