How much does your airline ticket really cost?
Admit it: You have no idea. Once you add the cost of a checked bag, a confirmed seat reservation and a day-old turkey sandwich, you’ll pay more than you expected. A lot more, probably.
Not so long ago, ticket prices included all of the above. But thanks to an industry trend called “unbundling,” many airlines are now stripping everything from the ticket but the cost of your seat.
It’s a wildly successful scheme: Domestic airlines collected an astounding $7.8 billion in ancillary fees last year, up 42 percent from 2008, while keeping their base fares artificially low. (Legacy airlines still managed to lose $2.8 billion, somehow.)
But passengers are confused and angry about being nickel- and-dimed. Finally, help is on the way.
An amendment to the current Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., that would require airlines and third-party websites to display a “complete and understandable” breakdown of an airfare, as well as any other possible fees that might be incurred on the flight, is likely to pass this summer.
The Transportation Department recently issued an administrative rule that, if enacted, would require air carriers to give their customers a more accurate price quote. Two private companies are also trying to clear up some of the confusion about fares.
Seattle-based InsideTrip, a site that rates airline flights by their overall quality, last month unveiled a feature called FinalAirfare, which factors bag and drink fees into a price quote. It’s a work in progress. A recent estimate added $12 for soft drinks to my fare, even though my airline doesn’t charge for them.
A TruPrice comparison
A second project, which has just entered the test phase and should roll out by the end of June, is called TruPrice. The site will allow you to check all optional items before you conduct an online fare search, offering the ability to see the real cost of a ticket and compare ticket prices side by side.
Christopher Muise, a former corporate-compliance manager for Delta Air Lines and president of the Atlanta startup, said that his development team has already identified 39 unique airline fees — surcharges for everything from luggage to antlers. (Yes, antlers. Frontier Airlines charges an extra $100 to check a set.) By the time TruPrice’s research is done, it expects to have 80 optional surcharges in its database.
“Right now, if you want to know how much your ticket costs, you have to use a calculator,” Muise said. “You also have to know where to look: Each airline has its own way of describing fees, and they are not always clearly disclosed. People are frustrated.”
Muise allowed me to evaluate TruPrice before its introduction, and I conducted several test searches. At any time after I generated the results, the site let me check or uncheck a fee, instantly recalculating the “true” price of the ticket.
TruPrice has a lot of potential, but like InsideTrip’s FinalAirfare, it is far from done. A sample fare from New York to Atlanta, for example, correctly identified Spirit Airlines as having the lowest fare, but when I checked the options for a seat assignment, a drink and extra legroom — all of which should cost extra — it didn’t recalculate the fare for that airline. It did for several other carriers but without reorganizing them in my display from cheapest to most expensive.
Still, considering that the company didn’t exist before March, the site is an impressive achievement. And when it launches, TruPrice will almost certainly change the way we buy airline tickets.
If there’s a sentiment underscoring the recent rule changes and private ventures, it’s this: Air travelers have the right to know how much their tickets cost, and the way prices are quoted must change now.
As airlines generate revenue by telling their customers half-truths — and apparently get away with it — there’s a sense of urgency to these initiatives. Maybe it’s because airlines are just getting started with unbundling.
“We’re waiting for them to start charging for air,” said Muise.
A good case for travel insurance
Q:My partner and I were recently booked on a cruise to the Caribbean through Carnival Cruise Lines. It was to be our first cruise, and we were so excited. Unfortunately, we had some extremely bad luck. We flew to Miami two days early to spend some time there before the cruise. That first evening, I slipped and fell on some wet plywood that had been placed in a public park.
I broke my tibial plateau into several pieces — an injury that required immediate surgery. So we had to cancel the cruise and fly home.
We had booked the cruise through an online travel agent, and they advised us that we would need to write Carnival a letter explaining the circumstances and inquiring about rescheduling the cruise or getting a refund. We did that in early May. We just found out that Carnival has decided to award us half our money back in shipboard credits if we book another cruise with them.
I find this “resolution” utterly unacceptable. I find it inconceivable that a company would willingly alienate a customer. We are not asking for special treatment; we just want to go on the vacation that we paid for. Can you help Carnival realize the error of its ways? — Jeff Allen, Denver
A: Ouch. It sounds like you took a painful fall in Miami, and Carnival’s response only added insult to an agonizing injury. In a perfect world, the cruise line would have offered you either a full refund or a redo of your cruise.
Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. Carnival’s ticket contract — the legal agreement between you and the cruise line — is clear about your rights. Check out paragraph six. “No refunds will be made in the event of ‘no shows,’ unused tickets, lost tickets, interruptions, partially used tickets, or cancellations received late or after the start of the cruise,” it says, adding, “Carnival strongly recommends the purchase of trip cancellation insurance from your travel agent.” (Here’s a copy of the contract on its site: _Templates/ticket_contract .aspx.)
Would travel insurance have helped? Without a doubt. A fall like this would have almost certainly been covered by your policy, including your return airfare, any medical attention you received in Miami and your cruise fare. Your travel agent should have recommended a comprehensive insurance policy, and in your case, it would have been a sound investment.
I remember there was a time just after 9/11 when cruise lines routinely made exceptions to their nonrefundability rule. That’s no longer the case. There’s a good business reason a cruise line would deny a request like yours: It can’t resell your cabin when you’re a no-show, meaning that it’s basically offering you a free cruise.
But there’s an equally compelling customer-service reason to cut you a little slack. The goodwill would go a long way to ensuring you’re a repeat cruiser. You would also tell your friends and family about how compassionate Carnival was, and that may persuade them to try a “Fun Ship” cruise.
Someone at Carnival apparently thought a compromise would work best — neither a redo nor an outright denial of your request. I thought it was a good offer, but could Carnival do better?
One of the hardest parts of my job is knowing when to push or when a company has done enough. This was a borderline case, but I still thought it was worth asking Carnival about it, knowing that it had already done more for you than it would for the average no- show passenger.
When Carnival re-examined your file, it found that it had miscalculated your refund, which gave you a $545 cruise credit instead of a $528 credit. That’s the good news. The bad news? It’s sticking to a 50 percent refund toward a future cruise, arguing that if it went any further, it would “undermine the integrity of purchasing travel insurance.”
I’m not sure how issuing a full credit would undermine travel insurance any more than giving you half a refund. You’re not happy with this resolution, and I’m not sure I am, either. But I think it’s Carnival’s final answer.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. You can read more travel tips on his blog, or e-mail him at celliott@ngs.org.
