Haven’t the airlines penalized us enough already?
Between the cattle-car conditions and the nickel-and-dime charges on everything from checked bags to commercial-filled “television” to meager snack food, air travelers today can’t help but feel beleaguered.
Add in the inane TSA rules — why can’t we take more than 3 ounces of a liquid through security unless, of course, we break it up into as many 3 ounce bottles as we like? — the still-lengthy security lines (11 years after 9/11), and the shoes-belt-watch-wallet striptease, and flying today has all of the allure of a root canal.
Now, Frontier Airlines says it will charge a “penalty” to passengers who book their flights through third-party travel websites, even while the airline industry continues to teeter on the brink of financial ruin as a failed business model.
So Frontier passengers who use Travelocity, Expedia or Orbitz to compare airfares and purchase tickets (along with the one-stop convenience of booking hotels, rental cars and attractions) will lose the ability to select their seats in advance, pay more in fees, and earn half as many frequent-flier miles.
The Denver-based carrier argues that it wants to avoid paying the websites commissions of $10 to $25 a ticket that eat into profits, although it and most of the other carriers sell their unbooked tickets to the websites at steep bulk discounts. In other words, they are underselling themselves in the first place.
Even though the websites sell a majority of airline tickets — consumers enjoy the convenience of comparison shopping and advantages such as discounted package deals — the carriers want to reclaim the money they pay in commissions and lose on selling discounted bulk tickets in the first place. They also claim to want to gain “customer loyalty” by driving them back to their own websites.
(Here’s some unsolicited advice to gain customer loyalty, Frontier: Run the airline better. Set ticket prices at fair levels and end the game of musical chairs. Instead of charging people to check baggage, charge them to carry on bags — it’ll speed the boarding and disembarking. And, come on, bring back the flight magazine.)
It’s not as though fliers are particularly fond of the travel websites, either, filling Web page after Web page of vicious criticisms and biting complaints that can become almost humorous in their volume and variety.
Just last week, my traveling companion and I found out firsthand how quickly things can go awry. In a confirmation e-mail, Travelocity told us our return flight to Denver, originally scheduled at 6:55 p.m., would actually depart at 7:55 p.m.
We arrived at the airport in what we thought was plenty of time, only to be told the flight was departing at the earlier time after all and we were “too late” to board. It had been the last flight of the evening back to Denver.
Because the website’s great deal on airfare was non-refundable and non-transferrable, we were forced to buy completely new $250 tickets directly from Frontier on top of paying $100 for a night at an airport hotel.
Frontier representatives both that night and in the following days were unsympathetic, suggesting that we should have talked to a gate agent that night (we did after we hunted her down, but she was particularly unhelpful) and that our beef was, perhaps correctly, aimed at Travelocity.
Calls to Travelocity that night were routed, after a half-hour on hold, to a “customer-support representative” in India, who told us that we couldn’t file a claim until our travels were complete. The next day, after we arrived back in Denver, a different Travelocity agent told us to go back to the airline; a third suggested writing an e-mail to the complaint department.
It’s a game of hot potato designed to discourage all but the most agitated wayward traveler from actually being reimbursed for their mistake. At some point, they figure, most people will give up the fight. I know I did.
The lesson in all of this is obvious: Next time, I’m driving.
Steve Lipsher of Silverthorne has worked as a Denver Post reporter and was an editor of the Summit Daily News.
