Traveling Chimp

Matt Phillips at WSJ.com’s Middle Seat blog discusses the numerous airlines who have announced new service through Boston’s Logan Airport in ‘09. New flights have been added by JetBlue, American, Spirit, Porter, US Airways, and Virgin America.

Anyone who’s been through Logan knows it has more than it’s fair share of delays, especially this time of year. So it will be interesting to see how the additional volume affects reliability, but it will also be interesting to see how prices behave with new service to the popular business hub.

I’m convinced US Airways is keeping their executive bonuses afloat solely on the revenue they generate by screwing business travelers going between Boston and Philadelphia. Just prior to the holidays in 2007, airfare on the popular business route tripled. I routinely grabbed last minute tickets between the cities for about $150 each way. At that time the weekday rates went to at least $500 each way, and they’ve been there ever since. Although it was infuriating, it also introduced me to the wonderful world of Amtrak, but I’ll opine on that some other time.

One of the more interesting additions will be Spirit’s daily service to Atlantic City. AC is about a 60 minute drive from Philly (under 45 if your jonesin’ for the craps table) and they’re trying to boost business through the struggling city by luring more carriers. The potential is there to create an alternative route, much like Providence and Manchester are to Boston. Then again, there’s already service from Philadelphia to those two locations, and I can’t seem to bring myself to utilize them. AC is as close to Philly as Providence is to Boston. Will the glorious buzz of those casino floors change my habits? Will it have any affect on fares? Guess we’ll see in May…

The angry ones over at Travel Rants have advocated fining airlines for overbooking flights, citing greed and money as the main motivation for the practice. I’ve been bumped from flights before, and it certainly is frustrating, so I’d have to say I agree with them to some extent…

Overbooking is a fact of life for airlines. Thin margins and increasing costs force them to squeeze every last dollar out of a flight that they can. For a long time this created what really seemed like an abusive system that clearly valued full planes over goodwill towards the customers filling them. This practice has been on the decline however. In the first 9 months of 2008, the rate of seat bumps was nearly half what it was for the same period in 2000. The reason for this is obviously – we all know we get rocked with charges if we miss our flight and have to reschedule, so of course we’re doing everything we can to make the flights we’re booked on.

Unfortunately, overbooking still happens, and it always will as long as it’s legal and there is a non-trivial passenger no-show rate. It seems as though the airlines aren’t doing enough to recognize when and where these issues occur, since they always seem to happen at the same time and place. There’s plenty of data out there, and plenty of smart people to analyze it. A 2002 study at Duke, sponsored by American Airlines, advocated a significant reduction in the rate of overbooking. Airlines have to get smart and apply these types of evaluations to specific schedule and traffic patterns. And cost considerations should go beyond the airline’s operating numbers. To a business traveler with a tight schedule, the value of a timely and reliable arrival is far greater than the sum of fuel and labor.

Smarter algorithms with lower overbooking rates and a greater vlauation of a bumped passenger would go a long way to improving goodwill while maintaining maximized profits. Sweetening the deals for voluntary bumping would go a long way towards cushioning the issue as well.

By the way, know your rights when you do unfortunately get into one of these situations, and take heed, we’re almost out of the holiday travel season…

As of today, passengers are no longer permitted to pack loose nonrechargeable lithium batteries in their checked baggage due to concerns over fires that the automated supression systems cannot handle.

Passengers can still check baggage with lithium batteries if they are installed in electronic devices, such as cameras, cell phones and laptop computers. If they are packed in plastic bags, batteries may be in carry-on baggage, but there is a limit is two batteries per passenger.

I tend to carry a lot of batteries for equipment I have to travel with. It will be interesting to see how stringently this rule is enforced…

Click for airport site

A free shuttle service has been added at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), connecting all terminals with the city’s light rail system. The shuttle will have a daily schedule from 4am to 1am, and will be scheduled to coincide with the trains to which it’s connecting. Those trains connect to downtown Phoenix at a cost of $2.50, making it far less expensive than a taxi ride. Officials hope to eventually replace the shuttle with an automated train, connected directly to each terminal, but for the time being this is a welcomed option.

Officials at Neward Airport annouced they will be the first to install a new navigation technology that promisses to reduce delays by allowing planes to fly closer together without reducing satefy. Honeywell has been talking about their Ground Based Augmentation System for a while now, so it’s encouraging to see it going into operation at one of the worst bottlenecks on the East Coast.

Hertz has introduced a new car sharing program, Connect, ala ZipCar or CarShare. Pilot programs will run in NYC and Hertz’s hometown in NJ. I’m a loyal Hertz customer and have definitely run into instances where an hourly rental would be ideal, depending on how the price structure compares to daily rentals…