The News Tribune | John Gillie | April 14 2006
Don’t leave home without clicking
Here’s an unpleasant thought: Expect to pay more for less this summer vacation season.
Airfares are rising. Airline seat capacity growth will be minimal, and planes will be flying at near capacity.
All that is good news for the beleaguered airline industry, but bad news for summer travelers.
Smart travelers, however, have a new arsenal of online countermeasures to ensure they’re getting the best fare, flying the best flight, selecting the right seat and booking the most comfortable hotel.
Some of these travel Web sites are new. Others are intelligent enhancements of existing sites.
Here are a few of those Web tools that can mitigate the potential misery by helping you avoid the “window seat” with no window, dodge the flight that’s on time less than 50 percent of the time, and prevent your paying the $200 rack rate for a hotel room that was available elsewhere for $129:
PICKING ON-TIME FLIGHTS
Just this week, Portland’s Conducive Technology Corp. rolled out a new consumer-friendly version of its Flightstats.com Web site. The site is perhaps the most comprehensive source of airline on-time statistics available to the public. It goes way beyond those monthly Department of Transportation reports ranking airlines by their overall on-time performance.
Those gross numbers, said Flightstats vice president Meara McLaughlin, don’t shed light on whether the flight you’re considering booking has a bad record.
“If Alaska Airlines’ overall on-time numbers rank low, you don’t know whether that’s because of delays in Nome or Los Angeles,” she said.
How it works: Flightstats allows diligent users to view the records of all airlines flights between two cities and ranks them according to their recent on-time records. It shows real-time reports of today’s flights. And it allows users to determine if one airline consistently outperforms others on the route or whether airport- or weather-related problems negatively affect all flights destined for that airport.
The site also allows users to set up notifications on their cell phones and personal digital assistants about late-arriving flights.
SELECTING THE RIGHT SEAT
Seattle-based SeatGuru.com has added enhancements to its site to help flyers find the truly good seats on each plane.
How it works: The site has color-coded maps of each airline’s planes showing the best and worst seats. The maps include information on power outlets, retractable armrests, exit rows and galleys and restrooms.
Tip: Make sure you understand the standards that SeatGuru uses in rating seats good or bad. Some of SeatGuru’s competitors, for instance, rate bulkhead seats as undesirable because the armrests can’t be folded up and because they lack underseat baggage storage beneath the seat in front. But in some cases, SeatGuru rates the seats good because there are no seats in front to recline into you and because on some planes the bulkhead seats have better legroom.
GETTING A GOOD SEAT ON SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
Boardfirst.com, allows travelers an automated way to be among the first to check in for Southwest flights, which doesn’t offer reserved seating. Those who check in early get “A” boarding cards that allow them to line up in the front of the queues to board flights – and get first choice of seats on Southwest’s planes.
How it works: The Boardfirst service costs a small fee, typically $5. The site checks in for you and helps give you an “A” boarding card.
GETTING LOWER TICKET PRICES
The number of travel Web sites has proliferated, and the flexibility of their sites has been enhanced.
Yahoo, for instance, is adding a travel search engine, FareChase, to its site. The engine will seek prices from multiple sites on the Internet.
Farechase is adding satellite viewing capability to its site to let customers view the neighborhoods where the hotels they’re thinking of booking are located.
If you’re looking for cheap fares within Europe, dohop.com offers better accessibility to the fares of low-cost carriers such as Ryanair and EasyJet than do the conventional big travel search sites. Those low-cost carriers can save European travelers hundreds of dollars.
GETTING THE BEST ADVICE
The traditional big travel sites such as Expedia and Travelocity have taken pages from trip-advisor.com’s book, soliciting hotel ratings from travelers who have stayed at those hotels.
Expedia is rumored to be ready to announce a further enhancement to its site by signing a major travel journalist to provide more advice to visitors to its site.
Tripadvisor is following the example of online encyclopedia Wikipedia by asking experts from among its readers to help write online travel guides to destinations around the world.
BUYING SOUVENIRS
Looking to enhance their revenue streams, several major airlines are adding online shops to their sites where customers can buy airline merchandise.
At shopBlue, JetBlue Airways’ site, visitors can order scale models of JetBlue’s A320 aircraft, tote bags, computer travel mice and a large variety of JetBlue clothing.
At United Airlines’ TheShop, customers can buy memorabilia, travel items such as luggage tags and duffle bags and apparel.
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
Source: http://dwb.thenewstribune.com/business/consumer/story/5661079p-5078089c.html
