excellent idea and a much needed service. there are just so many traveling who are not as aware/experienced that would love the customized assistance. i was just curious, how would you be able to handle all that demand? i can see you getting flooded left and right!

So far so good, but I have had very good demand. I am currently talking to people about joining once the demand gets high enough. I, of course, need to be very careful about who I involve.

I think if your notification service is automated you could charge a monthly or annual fee for just that. Then maybe offer a 10%discount on the human interaction side of things.

The automated notification systems are crap, crap, crap. Cranky has said previously (I’m not sure where) “The flight information business is a terrible one. … I’d like to see an airline take a more open approach.”

The simple fact of the matter until Cranky Concierge gets really big and can start tracking most of the flights by default, automating this won’t be really useful. The information I got from Cranky on one of the delayed flights I had was really worth it, and gave me a great background to what was actually happening, and automated system can’t do that.

I’ve always suspected that someone–with either more time than I or more knowledge of the sneaky ways that airlines manipulate ticket availability–would be able to figure out some itinerary that would use up the “free” ticket with the least amount of add-on fees. I would gladly pay $30 for that!

I totally agree. I think if your notification service is automated you could charge a monthly or annual fee for just that. Then maybe offer a 10%discount on the human interaction side of things. Keep a CC on file and then charge if anyone emails you. Anyway, just talking out loud.

From my perspective – there would definitely be value in some kind of “a la carte” offering. When I’m traveling on business, I probably don’t need the disruption assistance or planning since I have to go through my corporate TA, but having the notification would be cool. . . .
Also, have you considered some kind of sliding scale pricing based on the complexity of the itinerary? To me, at least, it would seem that a complex multi-carrier, multi-stop itinerary would take more of your time and energy than a simple non-stop city pair.

As a former airline pricer, I have thought about nearly every possible way of segmenting my pricing and I’ve resisted every time. I need to keep my pricing simple, so that means having a price which will fall in the middle. That means that some people will get more value out of the service if they have massive flight problems, but everyone will still get great value by having piece of mind along with the notification service. I would potentially look to break out the notification piece, but it does create some problems about where you draw the line between notification and assistance.