Keeping Down Spring Airline Costs

Image: Jan Stromme

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It sounds insane, but most of the big airlines bet oil prices would fall this year and have fewer fuel hedges in place today than they did in the first quarter of 2007. With prices settling in around $100 a barrel, independent analyses say the U.S. airline industry now faces as much as $10 billion in extra costs this year.

Travelers, of course, are the ones who will take the hit. Last week, two airlines (Delta and United) announced they were grounding some older, less-fuel-efficient aircraft in their fleets. All of the big carriers are shrinking their seat capacity, flight schedules, and route networks. They added a comparatively massive (as much as $50 roundtrip) fare increase, the sixth fare bump of the year. And they began searching for new ways to cheapen the flying experience and raise nuisance fees. Delta, for example, jacked up prices for overweight and oversized bags, then joined United and US Airways in charging customers $25 if they deign to check a second piece of luggage.

How do we cope? Here’s some of what I’ll be doing this spring to keep my business-travel costs under control.

Exploit the Two-Seat Coach Scenario
As the big airlines increase the retail price of seats for walk-up coach flyers like us, history shows that they’ll mount deep-discount sales to keep price-sensitive vacationers flying. If you’re able to plan ahead, you can take advantage of that dichotomy. Buy two sale-priced coach seats, which will cost less than one walk-up. That will guarantee the seat next to you will be empty, allowing you to spread out and affording you some privacy. But you need to call the airline and alert them to your two-seat purchase. One example: A walk-up coach roundtrip between Chicago’s O’Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth currently costs $923. Buy your tickets 7 days in advance, however, and you can score a pair of coach seats for just $436 roundtrip. In other words, twice the comfort for less than half the price. They’ll flag the second seat as an empty one; some will even assign it to Mr. E. Seat.

Fly Alternate Airlines
The days when the major carriers could dominate the skies and the business-travel agenda are long gone. Domestically, AirTran Airways, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue Airways have all gone after business travelers with terrific value-added features. Last week, for example, all-coach JetBlue added legroom to several rows in the front of its Airbus A320 aircraft and sells upgrades for just $10 to $20 above the going fare. (With 38 inches of legroom, these chairs are roomier than some carriers’ domestic first-class seats.) The rest of JetBlue’s Airbus fleet has 34 inches of legroom, more than any other standard coach seat in the domestic skies.

Internationally, smaller airlines offer equivalent comfort to the big guys at a fraction of the price. Air New Zealand, for instance, sells business class on its Los Angeles-to-London flights for about half the price of the U.S. and British carriers on the route. And I recently paid just $1,500 roundtrip in business class on Eurofly, which flies between New York and Italy several times a week. That’s a fifth of what the big guys charge.

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