Legion of Angels News Archive

They’re elusive. The airlines don’t like to talk about them (we asked). And determining their legitimacy from among the myriad websites that claim to specialize in them is a Herculean task. We’re talking about consolidator fares, those secret airfares the airlines release in limited “buckets” to companies that re-sell them for big discounts.

Yes, they do still exist and you can get them, but as with any purchase (such as “grey market” electronics), you’ll always trade something for the price break . There are reliable ways to get them, just as there are ways to get burned. And just because they’re specially negotiated deals doesn’t mean you might not be able to find a better published fare on your own.

The Backstory

To understand what consolidator fares mean today, you’ll need a little history. Decades ago, it became clear to airlines that only selling highly visible, published airfares to travel agents and consumers made it easy for competing airlines to beat their fares and make off with their customers. To ensure they could fill up less popular flights, airlines began quietly selling discounted seats through consolidators. They reasoned that a little revenue per seat was better than none, and because the discounted prices weren’t published, other airlines wouldn’t be able to swoop in and drive down overall prices.

You’d often find these fire sale fares in ethnic storefront travel agencies or even bodegas, which offered them only sporadically. According to Bob Harrell of New York airline consultancy Harrell Associates, the airlines employed plenty of tactics to get around pre-deregulation rules about tariffs, which required large numbers of seats sold this way to be part of a tourism promotion. “They’d print up five brochures, pass them around, and call it a tour,” he says.

Consolidators Today

Consolidators have come a long way since those early, often risky times. Airlines now see consolidators as a reliable distribution channel, negotiating annual contracts with them, establishing revenue targets, and tightly controlling ticket sales through a specific kind of booking class, or “bucket.” If you were wondering, consolidators and bucket shops are essentially the same thing, though the name, like the practice, has been refined over time. The fares are also known as “private” and “bulk” fares. But for the record, not every unpublished fare is a consolidator fare; military discounts, corporate discounts, and other specially negotiated fares – such as cruise and package fares – are also considered “unpublished” and are almost never consolidator fares.

Airfarewatchdog.com talked to Greg Rholl, Vice President of Pricing and Distribution for Minnesota consolidator Centrav, one of the largest consolidators, with contracts with more than 30 airlines, who ran us through the process:

A consolidator will have a contract to sell private fares at a lower price than the published fare. If there’s a printed ticket, only “bulk” generally appears on the receipt. They generally can’t – or won’t - sell the ticket straight to you, but will offer it through a travel agent (including an online travel agent such as Travelocity or Expedia), or agencies such as the ones that advertise in Sunday newspaper travel sections.

The agent adds their markup – keeping the margin slim so they’re not out-priced by published fares – and passes the remaining savings on to you. True consolidators don’t buy in quantity or ahead of time. Rather, they pull availability from their assigned class until the airline decides to close the window. It can be a great way to find a fluke fare, and consolidators now keep each other honest.

Centrav, for instance, is a charter member of the United States Air Consolidators Association, which requires that its members sell at least $20 million in consolidator fares and have uninterrupted sales of at least two years. This may not mean much to you, since you can’t buy tickets from the USACA, but it should: If your trusted travel agent chooses a dicey consolidator that reneges on the deal or goes under, you’ll be relying on your credit card or your agent’s integrity to buffer you from the loss.

In the second half of this article, the best ways to shop for consolidator tickets.

Source — Aviation

PHOENIX - With the price of oil still above $100 a barrel, everything from wood chips to chicken fat is being scrutinized as an alternative to traditional fuel. But when it comes to airplanes, finding the right mix poses a special challenge.

“When you’re in an airplane, you don’t want your fuel to start solidifying,” said Robert Dunn, a Department of Agriculture chemical engineer who is studying biodiesel jet fuel.

The airline industry is aggressively pushing for homegrown alternatives to petroleum-based jet fuel, while leaning on customers with a variety of new travel charges to help control a projected $61 billion industrywide fuel expense this year. A number of alternatives to standard jet fuel have been studied for years, though aircraft manufacturers say the challenge is to find ideas that will work now.

Jet engines can be retrofitted to run on hydrogen, for example. But hydrogen does not pack the same punch as traditional jet fuel — kerosene — and would require airlines to buy planes designed with massive tanks. That is a tough choice for cash-strapped carriers, said Billy Glover, managing director of environmental strategy at Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

The best bet right now for non-conventional fuel comes from South Africa, experts said. The country has powered its airline industry for a decade using a coal-based jet fuel blend developed by petrochemicals group Sasol. It’s technically a “synthetic” fuel, which means it can be used without altering engines or other aircraft equipment.

A number of U.S. companies are developing a variety of similar synthetics. Airline experts say three companies in particular could provide as much as three million gallons a day of synthetic fuel by 2012: American Clean Coal Fuels of Portland, Ore., Baard Energy in Vancouver, Wash., and Rentech Inc. of Los Angeles.

Though significant supplies will not be ready for several years, the Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) — a coalition that includes the Federal Aviation Administration, airline, manufacturing and airport associations — wants to set standards by the end of the year for a 50-percent synthetic jet fuel. CAAFI wants standards for a totally synthetic fuel ready in two years.

Executive Director Richard L. Altman said the push for new fuel standards is meant to show investors that airlines will buy synthetic fuel. Doing so will send needed dollars to energy startups that may one day replace foreign oil, Altman said.

“Nobody will invest unless the fuel is certified,” he said. “So we have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.”

With more companies investing in alternative energy, the thinking goes, the more synthetic jet fuel eventually becomes available. The more fuel available, the easier it will be for airlines to unshackle themselves from volatile petroleum markets.

Meanwhile, Boeing and Air New Zealand later this year will test a biofuel made from the oil-rich seeds of the jatropha tree, a Mexican plant that grows in warm climates. Other synthetic fuel tests will follow on Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines flights. In February, Boeing partnered with Virgin Atlantic to test a flight that included a biofuel mixture of babassu oil, which comes from a palm tree in northern Brazil, and coconut oil.

“We’re looking for something that is so correct in its performance that it can be interchanged with petroleum-based kerosene,” Glover said. “From a distribution standpoint, from a technical standpoint, it needs to fit without modifications or special handling.”

Many biofuels may create more problems than they solve, however. Using edible feedstocks such as corn and sugar could raise the price of food. And palm trees for babassu and coconut oil could lead to clearing large chunks of rain forest.

These are some of the reasons why algae-based synthetic fuel is getting a lot of attention.

Algae is inedible, and it has a relatively high yield compared with other crops, using less land to produce the same amount of oil.

“It can be grown anywhere you can have a pool of water and expose it to sunlight,” said Stanford Seto, an expert in aviation fuels who works with ASTM International, a Pennsyvania-based organization that develops standards for jet fuel.

Investors have pumped almost $84 million into companies developing algae-based fuel so far this year, up from $29 million in all of 2007, according to the Cleantech Group, an industry research firm.

Despite its promise, it will be years before algae biofuel could be sold at a price that would make sense to an airline, said Dave Jones, co-founder of LiveFuels, an algae fuel startup in San Carlos, Calif.

“If anyone is below $50 a gallon, I’d be stunned,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea on how to grow algae. The biggest challenge is in the harvesting and how to extract it from the water.”

Even if prices come down, most airlines see synthetic fuel as a chance to run a greener airline, not necessarily a cheaper one, said Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs for the Air Transport Association.

More fuel sources could temper the effect oil speculation has on gas prices, and they could give carriers fuel at a cost they can count on, she said. But “you aren’t going to find a fuel that’s pennies on the dollar than what we find today,” she said.

For travelers, that means that fewer flight options and charges for checked bags, drinks and other items are here to stay.

“Even if we were to double the volume we were to make in biofuels every year for the next 10 years, we’re still looking at maybe this will impact 15 percent of the overall fuel supply,” said Brian Fan, Cleantech’s senior director of research.

“Realistically, for anything to be happening at scale, enough to actually impact an airline’s bottom line, we’re years away,” Fan said.

Source — Yahoo!

The national average for gasoline prices recently edged over $4 a gallon, airlines are cutting flights, temperatures are climbing, storms are disrupting travel and the airport is as brutal a place as it’s ever been. It makes you think about just staying home this year — and why not? These days, folks “think local,” “buy local,” even “bike local.” It’s not set in stone that you must venture far afield to have a great vacation; done correctly, a local vacation can rival any far-flung international trip you’ve ever taken.

Don’t buy the local angle? Ask yourself what most people do on vacation. A high-grade summer vacation might include a few good restaurants, a nice hotel room with clean sheets every day, sleeping in, a long hike, maybe some horseback riding, lounging by a pool, a boat ride, maybe a night in a tent and some visits to funky stores. Chances are, you can do many of these activities less than 25 miles from where you live; I’ve been to all but four or five states in America, and nowhere did I find a place where there was absolutely nothing entertaining to do very nearby.

Money saved globally is money well spent locally
Perhaps the most compelling reason to give local travel a shot is to get the most from your vacation budget. One critical upside of staying near home is that you save on the actual traveling part of travel — airfare, rental cars and, of course, gasoline. These are almost always going to be among your biggest expenses. Say you save a modest $800 on airfare for two people, or $1,600 for a family of four. Then there’s another hundred or two for a rental car, and up to another $200 for gasoline.

So let’s agree for argument’s sake that by not leaving town you can save $1,200 for a couple or $2,000 for a family; that’s a lot of money to divert to making a local vacation a great vacation. If you’re willing to spend some of that money upgrading everything else you do considerably from your normal standards, you can afford a much more luxurious experience than you could otherwise.

The corner suite at the hotel around the corner
For example, say you typically budget $100-$150 per night for lodging. If you upgrade to the corner penthouse suite at the best hotel in town for $300 a night, it will take you a week or more to burn off all the money you saved on airfares alone.

Thus, I have essential one recommendation on lodging near home: Get the best room in town. The best room with the best view right in the center of things, or attached to a spa or golf course, or right on the water, or whatever makes you happiest, is the best money you will spend in the entire project, and it will still end up being less than what you would have shelled out to an airline.

There’s plenty to do within range of a gallon of gas
I live in anything but a national hot spot, but I did some research this week, and within eight miles of my front porch is a horse ranch that is open to the public, a network of trails that a bloodhound could get lost on, a historic hotel surrounded by a great little village, five or six canoe/kayak rental outfits, a famous fictional movie location, at least four Zagat-rated restaurants (and probably more, I didn’t look that hard), a vineyard with free tasting hours, a family-friendly orchard, an outdoor amateur theater, an Olympic-sized outdoor pool, a parachuting company, a waterskiing school, countless running and other participatory athletic events, two small oddball museums, a local arts center featuring regular concerts, a golf course, a skate park, a year-round ice rink, and three killer ice cream joints, one of them one of those all-natural buy-local places that people drive dozens of miles to visit. Within 15 miles, there is also a minor league baseball stadium, a revered concert hall, a rock quarry open to swimming with slides and rope swings, a bunch of decent nightclub bars, and a full-on spa.

If truly local turned out not to be good or varied enough for you, it’s about 35-40 miles to the nearest beach town, where two gallons of gas from here I could pull into the valet parking drive of a famous oceanfront hotel. If we expand out to 50 or 60 miles, we arrive at major international destinations, which isn’t the point of this column, but you probably get the point. I can take a $13 train to what is arguably the greatest city on the planet. Not everyone can do this, I understand, but I’d bet that within 50 miles of the front door of almost anyone in America is something people would pay good money to see, do or visit.

A big part of the allure of travel is novelty; new sights, sounds and smells stimulate the senses in ways that your “own backyard” does not. This is the only possible reason a street festival in some other town is somehow better than one in your own town. The trick is to make the familiar seem novel, and this can be as simple as merely stopping at places you’ve seen so many times you barely notice them anymore. There’s a small farm near here that we drive past all the time; a recent unplanned stop with our boy ended up with him feeding carrots to horses, watching them get new horseshoes, helping to milk cows, jumping on top of hay bales and “driving” an old tractor. Who needs to trek all the way to Amish country or some “authentic towne” or recreated village when the locals do the same stuff every day?

Research
How did I find all this great stuff to do? It was almost too easy — the Yellow Pages, the local weekly newspaper, the local tourist office and, of course, the Web. It took me about a total of two hours to find maybe a month’s worth of attractions, interesting lodging options, eating establishments, and activities I had never seen, tried, visited or even known about. Compare that to the time it takes to research and book some flights, find a hotel, reserve a rental car and pick a few restaurants, and it’s pretty much a wash. And I can do all of them for less money than I would spend just getting somewhere else to do all the same stuff at some distant destination.

Slow travel, volunteer vacations and other recent trends
Slow travel, educational travel, and volunteer vacations are among the trendiest approaches to theme travel in this century, but none of them require going far away. For instance, scrambling through airports and jetting at extraordinarily high speeds across an ocean and six countries only to slow down for six nights in a villa in southern Italy seems more like a slow travel sandwich on hyper-speed white bread to me. What could be more slow than never venturing more than five or six miles from your home? This is a big part of what slow travel is all about, after all — going somewhere to live like the locals. You have a pretty good head start in your own home town.

I’m not trying to denigrate the “international” version of slow travel that has gained considerable currency lately, of course; I think it is a really neat idea, and I’d done my fair share before it had a name and a Web site. Similarly, while I find volunteer vacations to be an admirable use of your time and money, there’s no reason why you can’t take a volunteer vacation in your own community. Sure, it’s more exotic to travel farther for your volunteering opportunity, but it’s not necessarily more needed than delivering meals to homebound or disadvantaged folks nearby. Spending Thanksgiving Day serving meals to poverty-stricken people near your own home is no less transformative than doing the same in Ecuador. And the same goes for educational travel — why not take a cooking class or learn to play a musical instrument in your own community?

Go the distance (without going the distance)
Do everything you would do on a regular trip before you leave home — stop the paper delivery, hold the mail, change your voice mail, turn on your vacation e-mail auto-responder. When you are 10 miles from home, behave just like you would if you were 1,000 miles away.

The gravitational pull of your daily routine can be every bit as strong as the centrifugal force that makes you want to escape it; both are balancing evils to avoid. What you are going for is stability. As the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are — take care to make sure of it.

How are high gas prices, increasing airfares and crowded planes and roads affecting your summer plans? Have you canceled a trip due to costs? Was your vacation budget slammed by high prices?

Source — MSNBC

BRUSSELS, Belgium - European Union and Danish officials named seven online travel operators and airlines Thursday in an ongoing crackdown against misleading ads and price schemes.

Online travel sites run in Denmark by Ryanair, Air Berlin, Air Baltic, SkyEurope, Aer Lingus, Brussels Airlines and Seat24 were singled out for violating European consumer law.

Consumers are being “let down by the airline industry,” despite the EU investigation into online sales practices launched in September, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said.

“There are serious and persistent problems with ticket sales throughout the airline industry as a whole. It is completely unacceptable,” Kuneva said in a statement.

The seven operators, some already criticized for Web sites run in other European nations, were accused by Denmark’s consumer ombudsman of misleading consumers on booking procedures, notably on prices and terms under which flight tickets can be used.

Henrik Oee said his investigation involved 13 foreign companies that run online travel services in Denmark, five of which have already moved to change their practices.

The seven others were still in violation, he said in a statement from Copenhagen.

“Consumers have the right to know where to keep a close watch,” he said.

Kuneva’s spokeswoman Helen Kearns said online booking agency Seat24 pledged to bring its Web site inline with EU rules by August, but that Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair and German low-cost airline Air Berlin had disagreed with the Danish conclusions.

Kuneva said in May that a third of people who shop for flights online in the EU were being cheated by misleading ads and prices. She gave airlines and travel operators one year to fall in line with EU consumer rules or face legal action.

The EU investigation so far has indicated that the main problems are misleading pricing and vague conditions and contract terms. Airlines and other travel companies often add airport taxes, handling fees, baggage and seating charges and other costs on top of the prices that first appear on Web sites.

Source — MSNBC

Key members of Congress are siding with the airline industry and moving to block the administration from forcing airlines to take fingerprints of foreign visitors before they fly home.

The opposition is setting up a clash over a final Bush administration effort to tighten security and immigration by keeping better track of when visitors fly out of the country.

U.S. and foreign airlines say fingerprinting 33 million visitors a year would devastate them financially, costing $12 billion over 10 years, at a time when soaring fuel prices have helped put some airlines out of business and forced others to cut flights.

“U.S. airlines obviously cannot bear the staggering additional costs,” the Air Transport Association, which represents major domestic carriers, wrote last week.

The House plans to vote this month on a measure barring the Homeland Security Department from requiring airlines to take fingerprints until the department tests a fingerprint system with airlines. The House Appropriations Committee approved the measure last week as part of a bill funding the department for 2009.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., plans to hold a hearing this month to explore alternatives such as setting up government-run fingerprint kiosks near airport checkpoints. Fingerprinting departing foreigners, which Congress has mandated, should be done by the department, not the private sector, Thompson said.

“A lot of us are concerned that they are now trying to pass off responsibility,” Thompson said.

Thompson questioned the legality of forcing airlines to take fingerprints and said border and immigration security “have always been federal responsibilities.”

The department fingerprints visitors as they arrive and tracks their departures using paper forms that are sometimes inaccurate.

Others opposing the department’s plan include Germany and the United Kingdom, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Travel Industry Association.

“This global opposition will hopefully provide a wake-up call to the department,” said Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 airlines.

Homeland Security policy chief Stewart Baker said the department “is open to being persuaded there is some other more effective and efficient way” to take the fingerprints.

Source — ABC