Airlines are in Trouble

The airlines face the following challenges in that situation:

• Keep the flights full
• Avoid price wars
• Retain high service standards
• Reduce fuel consumption

Reducing fuel consumption demands a lot of investment spending to buy new planes and to improve fuel efficiency of older planes. And this in times of weakened banks and severe problems in the credit markets. All in all, this is not a time where you want to be an airline executive. But what does that mean for expats and people who have family relationships on more than one continent?

If you have family overseas and if you want to keep the relationships going, you cannot afford not to travel. On the other hand, you cannot hope that business travelers and tourists will fit the bill for higher costs alone, especially in times of slowing growth, low job security and high unemployment. But there are still good chances to find reasonable offers if you do some things right.

Stay Away from Peak Travel Days

Avoid high seasons like Christmas and summer vacations, if at all possible.
If you need to travel during high season, book early enough, but not too early. Most airlines have changed their rules, and they require now a payment and ticketing only almost immediately after a reservation is made. But if you book at the right time, you can still save several hundreds of Euros, especially compared to the prices of high-season-tickets a few days before the flight.
January and February are good months for buying summer vacation flight tickets, and for the Christmas season are February and March, or late summer good times to buy tickets.

Look Beyond Public Booking Engines

You should be aware, that for some destinations, especially in Africa and Asia, airlines create specials adapted to the needs of people visiting their relatives overseas. These special offers contain often better luggage allowances and some extra flexibility, e.g. the opportunity to rebook a flight after ticketing instead of a “no change, no refund” policy. Please be aware that those offers are typically not featured in public flight booking engines. Only selected travel agents receive special contracts from airlines to sell these tickets. The airlines do not pay commissions to their resellers. So the travel agent fee can undo the price advantage. But in this case you have still improved terms and someone who can assist you to change a flight if needed, while you are far away from the next airline branch office. So my advice is: Look for a travel agent who specializes in air tickets and whom you can trust, then build a long-term relationship with him.

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Change Penalty only After Ticketing
If the change occurs before a ticket is issued, the airline will not charge a penalty, although the travel agent working for you may ask for a service fee. If the change occurs after a ticket is issued, a change penalty as specified in the fare rules of the original ticket applies, if you are responsible for the change. If the airline is responsible for the need to rebook a flight, obviously no change penalty will apply.

Different Rules for Different Changes
There are different types of changes of a flight reservation and ticket. Important is the time of the change. There may be a change

• before departure
• after departure
• after no show

The scope of the change is also important. There may be a change of the

• flight date
• flight route

Change Before Departure
If you change your flight before the departure date, a new ticket will be issued according to prices and rules in place at the day of the change. All conditions for the new fares must be met, including advance purchase requirements, ticketing time limits etc. You will pay the price difference between the old fare and the new fare plus the change penalty specified in the old fare. If there are restrictions in the old fare rules regarding a refund in case of cancel, the nonrefundable amount of the original fare remains nonrefundable. The last flight of the new ticket must be completed within the maximum stay specified in the rules of the original ticket.
The change before departure is pretty complicated. For this reason carry many special airfares a rule saying “change before departure not allowed.” In this case the original ticket must be canceled completely, the fare minus the cancel penalty will be refunded and a new ticket will be purchased.

Change After Departure
If you rebook a flight after using a part of the ticket, the fare rules in place when the original ticket was issued will be used. If you do not change the routing and find space allowed with the original fare for your new flight, you pay only the change penalty and a possible service fee charged by the travel agency or airline help desk for their work with handling the change. If you need to use a more expensive fare for the return flight, or if you want to change the route of the return flight, and the new combination is allowed according to the original fare rules, you will pay the price difference between the original return flight and the new return flight plus the change fee. The fare for the already used part of the ticket will not be changed.

Change After No Show
If you did not show up for a flight on time, or if you could not use the flight because of reasons within your own responsibility, and you did not cancel the reservation before the plane started, a no show happened. Many airlines refuse to honor or refund a ticket after a no show. So, if you are stuck in a traffic jam on your way to the airport and you see that you cannot reach the plane, it is important to call the airline and/or your travel agent at least to cancel the reservation to avoid a no show.

Change Procedure
If there is a need to change a flight, two steps need to be done:

1. the reservation needs to be changed
2. the ticket needs to be changed

Sometimes you will not realize that two steps are done, because the travel agent or customer support representative reissues the ticket immediately after the change of the reservation. Many airlines demand in the fare rules that the ticket must be changed immediately after the flight is rebooked.
If you rebook a flight directly through the airline website, the ticket will be changed automatically.

Delayed Change of Ticket
Some airlines allow to change a reservation without immediately changing the ticket. This can be useful if you know that you cannot use the return flight as booked, but you are not yet sure which flight you will be able to use. Your travel agent could enter a return flight and wait with the change of the ticket until you are sure. But, again, this is not possible with all airlines and all airfares, and there may be a short time limit for adapting the ticket to the new schedule after you rebook a flight.

Insiders Remain Silent
Few airlines allow it, and less travel agencies and online booking portals talk about the opportunity. Everyone is looking for a sale, and a reservation is not yet a sale. But the travel agent has to take care for every reservation in his portfolio, whether he has issued a ticket or not yet. Early flight reservations mean work for the travel, with the hope for a payment, but no guarantee for it.

Better Access to Early Bird Airfares
But for you as customer, an early flight reservation means the chance to get the early birds fare, without an immediate firm commitment. This is important if you want to travel at peak days, around Christmas, Easter Holidays, summer vacations, or as far as Asia is concerned, the Chinese New Year season, or if you want to attend a big trade show like the Frankfurt Book Fare.

For Airlines it’s Yield Management
You may ask why the airlines allow these early flight reservations for often less than half the price you pay if you book your Christmas flight a few days before travel time. Do they have money to give away?
No. Airlines sell only a very limited number of seats for these low prices. And the cheap seats for the best timed flights are gone within a few hours after being available in the reservation systems. This helps the airlines to determine very early the really hot selling flights, and raise the prices for these specific connections early on. The aim of any airline is to receive as much revenue as possible for each movement of each plane. The industry term for that goal is yield management.

Only a few Airlines
I have to admit that not all airlines allow early flight reservations combined with late ticketing. An airline which is very closely connected to its home market will know the sensible flight dates without testing the water every year again. But airlines with a relatively small domestic market and a huge global network, like Emirates or Air France/KLM do offer such opportunities.
Price Not Guaranteed before Ticketing
I have to add one word of caution: The ticket price is only guaranteed, when a ticket is issued. Before the ticket is issued, the airline may change the schedule, add a so called fuel surcharge to the ticket price, or withdraw the fare in total. If that happens, you are back on square one, and you have to pay the price as offered on the day you buy the ticket. In most cases, airlines give an advance warning before they withdraw a fare. But at times there is no prior warning.

Relationship with Travel Agent
For this reason the best way for you to save on peak season flights is to try to use early flight reservations and back them up with a ticket order as soon as you are reasonably sure that you will travel. This requires a trustful relationship between you and your travel agent. He does not want to work for free, and he will not do that many times. But he will be happy to provide this service for you if he knows you as a good customer, booking tickets through him on a regular basis. It also is important and a sign of fairness to cancel any reservation as soon as you know that you will not use it.

Single Open Jaw
A simple example for a single open jaw would be a combination of flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles with a return flight from San Diego to Frankfurt. It makes good sense to combine these air flights in one ticket. Otherwise you would have to travel on the road or railroad from San Diego to Los Angeles to get your return flight to Frankfurt, or you would have to buy two separate one way tickets.
Another variant of an open jaw flight would be an arrangement where you travel from Frankfurt to Los Angeles, and return from Los Angeles to Munich.

Double Open Jaw
This would be a combination of a flight from Hamburg to Los Angeles and a return flight from San Diego to Munich. You could buy two one way tickets, but you can save a bundle if you manage to combine these two flights into one ticket as an double open jaw flight.

How to Book an Open Jaw Flight?
Many flight booking engines have a link you can use to search for an open jaw flight, or a multi stop flight. If you click on such a button, you get a new input form, where you can ask for a flight from A to B plus from C to D, maybe even afterwards from E to F. You enter your travel plans, and with good luck, you get a reasonable offer. Reasonable is the half price of a return ticket from A to B, plus the half price of a return flight from C to D. If you find an airline is flying both routes, and B is in the same country as C, while A is in the same country as D, you should be able to get a ticket for this flight. But if you do not get a reasonable for this flight on a booking engine, you still have the chance to call your travel agent and ask him to look. The rules about open jaw flights are included in the rules text of the airfare.

Ask Your Travel Agent
Booking engines often sometimes unable to understand all fare rules, and if the engine does not understand the rule, it does not offer the fare. But a human travel agent should understand the rules text and thus be able to price an open jaw flight, even if each air segment of the journey is flown with another airline. This is often possible, if all airlines concerned belong to a single airline alliance.
Sometimes you get a reasonable offer in the fare listing of the booking engine, but when you press the purchase button, you get an error message with a new expensive price. In this case ask again your travel agent for a price quote. Chances are a travel agent can sell you the ticket for the lower price. If the booking engine cannot find it, the open jaw flight may still be available.

Not to Ask Means Not to Get It
An open Jaw flight may even be possible, if the airports concerned are located in different countries. One example would be a flight from Germany to Kilimanjaro, with a return flight from Mombasa to Germany. Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania, Mombasa in Kenya. But in this example you can still combine these flights in a single ticket. There are offers from KLM, Ethiopian Airways and Condor of Germany.

This begs a question:
Did I promote a product, which I did not like? Or ist that new product just a cheap “Me Too” ? And, why in the first place is a travel agent trying to promote products teaching how everybody can book flights by himself?

Let me answer the last question first:
We are an online travel agency, serving customers who need and want an extra service not avalable, or at least not available for free in the internet, and offline. If you have a travel schedule with 2 or three destination points, we build a tailormade travelplan for you, consisting of open jaw flights, stopover-flights and one way flights. We show you the available options and leave the choice to you.
If you need to have a reservation, but you cannot buy a ticket immediately, e.g. you need the reservation to apply for a visum, but you do not want to buy a ticket before you know that you will actually be able to travel, we can do that also.

But it is just clear, that everybody can book a simple flight let’s say from London to New York. So we reasoned, that it would be better to offer some support for people who book their flights by themselves, instead of just turning the away.

This way I came to look around for products available, and I came up with Tony Morris’ ebook. This book opens a huge amount of reseources to you. Starting with links to the big booking engines, but also providing links to seat plans for the planes of different airlines, and tips, how to search for discounts. The book is thery good in that. But the drawback is, that you need a lot of time to check all theses resources out, figure out how to use them and then go and shop around for the best deal.

Here comes “Maximum Value for Your Airfare into play: We developed a clear and simple framework, keeping you focused and saving your time when looking for the right offers, and evaluating them in the light of your own needs. It comes as a series of videos, showing you how to find the right airports for your travel, the right time to make a reservaton, where to find the offers etc. It is combined with a script calculating the complete cost of a flight, and with a glossary explaining that “airline speak”, e.g. the difference between a “direct flight” and a “non-stop flight”

So all three products, our

• Tailormade Travelplan
• Maximum Value for Your Airfare and
• my Airfare Secrets by Tony Morris

are part of the same effort: To serve the customers according to their needs, not according to our need.

Yours for more fun while travelling

Johannes Stockburger

They allow their customers for international flights:

• 1 piece of luggage weighting less than 50 pound (23 kg)

If you want to carry a second piece, they charge you 50 Dollars. This fee is payable directely to Delta at check in time.
For traffic inside the US Delta charges a fee for luggage for some time. That fee is 15 Dollars for the first piece, and 25 Dollar for a second piece of luggage.
This applies also for stopover flights for ongoing travel from the first stop in the US. Check the details of the new rules at Delta’s Website.

PS: If you are travelling a lot with Delta, you could use their SkyMiles program to avoid these extra charges.

Change of Flight Schedule before a Ticket is Issued

As far as I know, no airline imposes a penalty for a change of a flight schedule or a cancellation of a reservation before a ticket is issued. Only in case of a so called “no show”, which means the reservation was not canceled before the flights departure, some airlines charge a penalty to the travel agent, who kept that reservation. We at BestPrice.Travel certainly never charge a penalty before a ticket is issued)

Change of Flight Schedule after a Ticket is Issued

More complicated is the change of a flight reservation if a ticket is already issued. It is rarely possible to change the names passenger in a flight ticket, or even in a reservation before a ticket is issued. In the era of paper tickets this was a security measure to make a flight ticket less attractive to thiefs. And it is a safeguard that prevents a travel agency to block seats on cheap fares in order to sell them later. A name change is a “no, no”. This makes it all important to check the spelling of the names in the reservation before you order your ticket or press the “buy now” button in the booking engine. After the ticket is issued, you may have a chance to cancel it the same day for a small fee. But the next day, full penalties apply without discussion.

The rules used to change an air ticket differentiate between a change before the start of the journey, and a change after you used the first part of your ticket.

Change of the Retur Flight after Reaching Your Flight Destination

A change of the return flight after you reached your destination is straightforward: You change the flight schedule, calculate the fare as if you had this new schedule. You divide the newly calculated fare and the original ticket price by half. Add both together, and you have the new price. Deduct the already paid amount from that new price, and add the change penalty. The result is the bill you get if you a change an air ticket for the return ticket only.

Rerouting

If you want to change not only the time of the return flight, but also the destination of the return flight (e.e. because you started from Frankfurt, but now on the new date for return travel a seat is only available to Munich) you have to consider two provisions in the fare rules: Is an open jaw flight allowed, and is rerouting allowed? if both is allowed, the procedure is the same as in the case of a mere time change. If one of the two, rerouting or open jaw is not allowed in the original fare rules, you may just be not able to change your ticket in that way.
The change of the return flight according to this system is only possible. if you keep the minimum stay provision included in many fare rules.

Change before the Start of the Journey

If you want to change a flight ticket before the start of the journey, the rule of the thump is: The new price is determined at current rates, taking account all rules including advance purchase provisions. The change fee is added to the new price, and the price already paid is applied to the new ticket. You are billed the remaining amount after applying the old fare.

Example:

You booked a flight from Frankfurt to Singapore, and the ticket had to be issued at least 60 days before departure. Now, one week before the originally booked flight, you want to change your air ticket. In this case, you cannot use the old fare any more, even if you want to change the return flight, only. To change an air ticket in such a case, you have to buy a new ticket, and you use the old ticket minus the change penalty to pay for the new ticket. If you want to change the return flight only, you may consider in this case to wait with the change until you reached Singapore. This may be cheaper, but you may run the risk, that after reaching Singapore your desired return flight may be no longer available, because somebody else may have taken the seat.

Changes between the time the ticket is issued and the start of the journey will be considered as a change of an air ticket only if it is not allowed to cancel the ticket, or if the penalty to change an air ticket is lower than the cancellation penalty. In special fares distributed by wholesalers a change before the start of the journey is only in very rare cases allowed. This makes the penalty for cancelling a flight ticket even more important, because you be very well forced to pay that penalty not only in case you stay at home, but also if you need to postpone your flight, or you need to fly a few days earlier.

No Show

This article does not relate to cases, in which somebody does not show up for his flight on time, comes without a needed visa, or forgets his passport. These no show case are governed by a different set of rules outside of the scope of this article