shaprkg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Bob Shapiro) (12/01/84)
I told at least 2 people in net-mail that I did not wish to write directly to the net concerning this subject but I am afraid that my cup of anguish runneth over so I hope they will forgive me. My wife and I have owned a small retail travel agency for the last seven years. (she runs it and I put the bread on the table from my computer income). I would like to respond to the discussion of "discount airlines" and the use of a travel agent. One could divide airlines in the United States into five categories. Luxury, large standard, small standard, commuter, and discount. Each serves a purpose, each has a market, and I will try to describe it to you. Luxury Airline: The only one I know is Regent Air. It is for the person who has an unlimited budget and wants to be pampered to death. They have fabulous food, limo service right to your house, computers on board for your use, and you can even get a haircut and your nails done. All for a price of almost twice that of their nearest competitors first class fare. I guess if you are a movie star or the president of a major company and the Lear jet is tied up then it is just what you want. Large Standard Airline: Examples would be TWA, United, American. These airlines provide comparible service. I know that some of you have had a very good or very bad experience on any one of them but in balance my experience is that they are reasonably similar in performance. These airlines provide a very important function called inter-lining. You may buy a ticket which has a joint fare for more than 1 airline on the routing. Thus it may be no more expensive to change airlines than to stick with a single airline and in a few isolated cases may even be cheaper. These airlines will let you write a single ticket which contains other airline legs and will at no cost to you automatically transfer your baggage to other airlines. Small Standard Airline: Examples would be Piedmont, PSA, Air Cal. There is no difference between these airlines and the large standard airline other than the size of the airline and its route structure. All of the inter-lining rules apply and the service is usually comparable. One slight difference is that the small airlines tend not to use wide-bodies while the larger ones do. A few of the small airlines even have exceptional service. Alaska Air is my best example. Commuter Airlines: Examples would be Imperial Airlines, Air Midwest, Gull Air. These airlines are almost always non-jet and serve the smaller cities. They are not necessarily inexpensive. Almost all of them have inter-lining agreements with the small standard and large standard airlines. Their service has a large range but usually it matters not because when you are using one of these airlines you rarely have another choice. One problem you should concern yourself about is that a large number of these airlines have gone under financially. Be careful when you purchase tickets. Discount Airlines: Examples would be Southwest, People's Express, Tower, and recently Continental. These airlines offer lower fares and in almost all cases inferior service. They are the typical example of "You get what you pay for". They have a definite place in the marketplace but are usually misunderstood by the travelling public. Many travellers expect to get the same service that they got from standard airlines from the discount airlines. This does not even make sense. That is exactly why the discount airlines are able to give you the cheaper prices. Therefore you get no inter-lining, you may not get any food, you may have to pay extra for your baggage, and the seats are usually more crowded. Some of these airlines - notably Southwest are a pretty good bargain. BUT!!! Almost all of these airlines have inferior computer systems resulting in lost reservations. Many of them are in touchy financial condition. Few of them have any back-up if problems arise . e.g. If a mechanical problem arises they may not have a back-up plane or an agreement with another airline to carry you. Before I leave the subject of discount airlines I would like to point out that just because an airline calls itself a discount airline does not necessarily mean it has the cheapest fare. One of the phenomenons I have seen over and over again is that when a discount airline enters a market the standard airlines reduce or even undercut the discount airline. Thus you can get standard service at discount prices. This is one of the reasons so many discount airlines go under. Also most standard airlines give large financial rewards to people who will book their reservations early. In many cases you do not even have to buy a ticket - merely get your reservation in. Examples of these would be the Q M L and K class fares. Typically they are exactly the same service and restrictions as a straight Y fare. What the airline does is allocate a portion of the economy area of the airplane (say about 35%) to the discount class. The first people who book get those seats. After that the price goes up. You may end up sitting next to a person who paid twice as much for their ticket as you. Therefore procrastinators get screwed when they buy airline tickets. I guess I should also add that agents get the same commission rates from discount airlines that they do from others so all things being equal there is no incentive to either sell or not sell discount airlines. Now for my favorite subject. I have seen several people mention that they either book directly with the airlines and in one case a person felt that it was disadvantageous to use a travel agent. Since I obviously am very biased on the subject let me vent my spleen. Now you may not be one of them but surveys taken have shown that the majority of people in the United States think that it costs more to buy a ticket from a travel agent than from the airline direct. In almost all cases this is not true. (There are a few obscure fares almost always related to stand-by situations which are sold only by the airlines). Let me assure anyone who thought this was the case that it simply isn't true. If you are wondering how travel agents get paid - they get a percentage of the ticket that they sell from the airlines. Why do the airlines do that - well once again surveys have shown that it costs the airlines more to sell a ticket in their city offices than it does to pay the travel agent. After all the agent spends time with the client discussing all of the alternatives, performs all of the paper work, guarantees the form of payment, and then does any refunds free of charge. In many cases after discussing travel plans with an agent or airline people decide not to buy. That costs money too. Finally the agent is usually locally located and has hours of business which are usually more convenient than an airline city office. One of the criticisms of agents on this net is that they are not very competent. I think that if you are unable to find a competent agent than that is a reflection on you. Finding one is no different than finding any other professional like a doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, programmer, rug cleaner, house painter, car mechanic, etc. But just like a good car mechanic, when you find one you have it made. No more hours on the phone listening to music while you are on hold, no more phoning half a dozen airlines trying to find the best fare, no more borrowing the pocket airline guide from the guy next door and missing the fact that by using a connection you could have gone at a more convenient time, and when things go wrong you have someone to champion your cause without any expense or time. Because of the complicated fare and route structures due to the deregulated environment it takes a lot of tools and a lot of research to optimize even the simplest trip. Most agencies have modern computer systems linked directly to the airlines, up-to-date periodicals such as the OAG and Airline Tariff, and are in constant touch with the traveling public to be able to spot service deficiencies or bonuses. You should watch out for specialists. Agencies which specialize in corporate travel probably won't do as well for you as one that specializes in vacation travel. The same principle tends to hold true for agencies which specialize in an ethnic market or specialize in large groups. (Unless you happen to fit into their specialty.) We make it a policy in out agency not to get into areas which we don't understand well. I am not prepared to handle General Motors corporate account or move 20 people on an elephant safari in Sri Lanka. What do you get when you call the airlines? Well first of all, all airline computer displays are extremely biased towards the airline you call. As an Eastern agent told me once when I pointed out that Pan Am might have cheaper space. "I don't work for Pan Am". But more importantly the airlines usually have several grades of people. Their least experienced people because of the seniority system are the ones who work the swing and graveyard shifts and deal directly with the public. The next level because of their seniority get the day shift (but you frequently don't get to talk to them as that is when you are at work also). The next level is on what is called the "agency desk". Some airlines have a special telephone number given only to travel agents and manned by experienced people. (After all it is a professional talking to a professional). The conversations tend to be short and sweet and the travel agent is expected to have done a lot of homework before calling. The next level is the rate desk. This set of people are the experts at the airlines in technical fare problems. They resolve all problems and also compute very complex fares. The public is almost never allowed to talk to them and agents must show need-to-know. Normally when you are talking to a rate desk person of an airline you are getting expert opinion from someone who has been around for a long time. Very rarely is it wrong. Finally somewhere are the supervisors. The reason for this long-winded tutorial is to show you that as the public you are normally talking to the weakest people in the reservation staff of the airline. Obviously the chances for error are higher. Finally, what else can a competent agent do for you? Well in this day and age of constantly changing fares the agent can monitor the booking and ticket you when it goes up. The airline can also advise you that the fare is going up but only at booking time. They may not know then and unless you call back constantly you will never know. Typically the airline will tell you to have the ticket written immediately to guarantee the fare but if you make your reservations in February for Christmas (as some of our clients have learned to do) then you may not want to loan the money to the airline for that length of time. Fares go down as well as going up. I have never known of a case when an airline called someone back to bring back their ticket in order to take advantage of a fare decrease. Why do we do it? First of all it doesn't even cost us a lot. The airlines protect our commission on the higher fare but I love to call up customers and tell them to bring back their tickets to be rewritten at a lower fare. If it never happened before they tell all of their friends and neighbors about it and what a cheap form of advertising that is. As I pointed out some airlines are not in as good financial shape as others. We try to keep close tabs on this situation and try to advise our clients accordingly. You can fly on a financially-suspect airline in certain cases at little risk but the circumstances must be right and in certain cases it is downright suicidal. I can brag by saying that no customer of ours has ever lost a cent because an airline went under. Don't underestimate the advantage of the agent as an ombudsman. If you have lost luggage, been forced to pay a higher fare because of a missed connection, bumped from a flight because of overbooking, or perhaps denied a no-smoking seat because the airline said they were all sold out then the agent can go to bat for you. We have got anything from a simple letter of apology to total reimbursement of the entire cost of the trip for clients who have been mis-treated by airlines. I hope I have made my point. Those of you who are not using agents are cheating yourselves. The point of the above tutorial is to improve the public's understanding of a very misunderstood profession and not to solicit business for yours truly. That is what the first paragraph is all about. Bob Shapiro