It’s time for another Ask Cranky question. This is one that has been asked in various forms over the years. In fact, I hope I haven’t already written about this before. But it’s a great question and it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people why this happens.

A little bit ago I was looking for a flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii on one of the random cheap flight websites. When I put in the search requirements, it came up with the cheapest flights having a layover in San Francisco. Figuring it wasn’t that far just to drive to san francisco, I picked there as my originating airport. I even chose to leave right before the layover flight would have normally taken off. The site then told me that I had to take a layover in Los Angeles to continue to Honolulu. Is this really all based on economics or just a sneaky way of the airlines getting a little bit more of your money? It’s obvious they have non stop flights from both Los Angeles and San francisco. Why the layovers? I would think it would cost more over all for fuel, and using terminals.

Michael

The first thing to keep in mind with something like this is that airlines don’t price based on costs. They price based on demand. When schedules are set at least a couple months in advance, predictions about revenues have been made and the hope is that the flight will be profitable, but airlines never know for sure. Once the schedule is set in stone, costs aren’t going to change, so it’s up to the revenue management team to simply maximize the amount of revenue that gets onboard that airplane.

One thing that we know without question is that a lot of people will pay more to fly nonstop, so even if a connecting itinerary may cost an airline more to fly, the airline doesn’t care about that. It only cares about getting as much revenue as it can on each flight, and that might mean pricing connecting itineraries less than nonstop.

This one looks like it’s probably on United from the routes involved, so let’s just pretend that’s the story. Here’s what I think is happening. United thinks that it can sell a lot of seats on those flights to passengers wanting to fly nonstop. But it doesn’t expect that it’s actually going to fill up every seat with those higher fares. It could reduce prices on the nonstop to increase demand, but then it dilutes the fares that all those other people would have paid and that could result in less revenue even if it puts more people on the airplane. So it tries to find another way to fill up those seats.

There is a segment of the population that will be willing to make a connection if it means cheaper flights. Those people might be considering flying a different airline like American or Delta or not traveling at all with the current nonstop fares being charged by United. So how can United find a way to keep those passengers without diluting the existing fares? It can route them over a connection. That means those who want to pay more for the nonstop will still pay more, but United can fill up empty seats with that connecting traffic from the truly price-sensitive traveler.

In the end, United fills more seats and makes more money, even though it may seem counter-intuitive at first glance.

I know I’ve touched on this many times before, but reader Morgan would like to know more about why I don’t consider frequent flier programs when traveling. Seems like a good time for the latest installment of Ask Cranky . . .

I’d be interested in hearing more about why you don’t consider frequent flyer benefits when making your personal travel reservations. I believe you’ve mentioned this as your policy several times, but never (that I have seen) with elaboration.

With all the turmoil going on with the SkyMiles program and speculation about major changes to Mileage Plus, I’m starting to wonder if all the effort I put into obtaining and maintaining status is worth it. You travel plenty and yet seem to feel that no carrier will compensate you adequately for your loyalty. I’d love to hear why — I’m willing to be convinced.

Morgan

There are actually a lot of things that go into my decision to not care about frequent flier programs, so let’s get started. First of all, I should stress that I’m more than happy to take advantage of frequent flier programs. I belong to many programs and always make sure to earn miles when I fly. I just don’t let those programs impact my decisions.

Part of this is probably because of where I live. From the Los Angeles area, there is no dominant airline. American, Delta, Southwest, and United can get you to most places you want to go from LAX. As a Long Beach resident, however, I often skew toward JetBlue because it’s more convenient. The point is – I have a lot of choices here in Southern California.

For most people, price and schedule end up being the most important decision factors, but for me, it’s more about schedule and product. Yes, I will pay more to fly out of Long Beach than LAX. I will also pay more for an airline that has in-seat video. Legroom might not matter a ton to me since I’m pretty short, but I’d even pay a small premium for that.

For most people, nonstop is a hugely important factor, and that’s true for me as well, but I also look for variety. If I have the chance to fly a new airline, connect in a new city, or ride on a new aircraft type, then I’ll usually jump at the chance as long as there isn’t too big of an inconvenience factor.

That’s why frequent flier programs rarely make sense for me as a decision-driver. If I want new experiences, then sticking with a single frequent flier program will prevent that from happening. It might also make me shy away from more convenient options, since the best option from LA can often be on a different airline for every itinerary.

The flip side is, of course, what I’m giving up. There are a lot of supposed benefits to being elite, so let’s look at them and I’ll show you why I don’t care.

• Upgrades – This is always the big sell, but honestly I don’t care. People think I travel a lot, but I really don’t. I haven’t taken a real vacation in over 3 years. I either travel for events with friends and family or I travel for work. When I travel for work, it’s usually on the airline’s dime so I won’t earn miles anyway.

  Last year, I traveled 34,202 miles. Had I focused on one airline, I might have reached silver status, but even then, what’s the chance I’d get an upgrade? There are so many silver elites at every airline that it’s almost impossible to get an upgrade at that level. Last time I was elite on anyone was 2005/2006 with US Airways. I got an upgrade once from Vegas to LA and another time from Phoenix to LA. That was it. Who cares?

• Priority Check-In/Security/Boarding – I almost never check a bag, so I’m always checked in before I get to the airport. I’m sure there are times I could have saved a little time with priority security, but when I fly out of Long Beach, that doesn’t matter. And when I travel, I use a duffel that can, if needed, squeeze under the seat in front of me. I’d prefer to find bin space, and I usually can, but there’s always a back up so I don’t care if I’m on the airplane that early.
• Free Checked Bags – This has never been an issue for me since I rarely check bags, though that’s about to change with a mini-Cranky on the way. (That’s right, I just dropped that casually into the post.) But it’s still not that much to check a bag.
• Priority Seating – I’ll admit that I do like having priority seating – if there are only middles left on the airplane, then it would be nice to grab that window up front that’s being held back for elites. But with most airlines these days, you can pay for a better seat if you want it. It’s a nominal fee, and I would only bother with it if I couldn’t get a window in the back anyway. As I said, I like more legroom so having Economy Plus on United is nice, but it’s hardly worth concentrating my business just to get that for free. Besides, if I fly JetBlue from Long Beach, I get more legroom automatically.

In short, the benefits of elite status aren’t enough to make me consider warping my decision-making process when it comes to buying a ticket. It’s far more freeing to just fly who I want and then pay for the extra little benefits if I ever feel that I need them.

I’ve got a follow-up for an old Ask Cranky post today. In January, I wrote about why Delta might change flight times by a few minutes here and there. I received a similar question from someone about a United flight recently, but with United, I can give a more exact answer. Let’s start with the question.

Is United slowing down its flights to save fuel? It looks like it. I had a San Francisco – Lihue (Kauai) trip booked already, but the schedule was just changed. The outbound flight now takes 16 minutes longer. The return flight takes 11 minutes longer. Unless United is afraid of getting fined for blowing arrival times, the only other reason I can think of is they’re slowing the plane down to save fuel. Have you heard anything?
Doug

The short answer is no. United is not slowing down its flights. (And it wouldn’t be fined for blowing arrival times unless it happens consistently for several months.) It’s just the way the airline handles its schedules.

When United loads its schedules, it does it in seasonal blocks. Those schedules are firmed up about six weeks before it starts and before that, they just use future schedules. (I’m told that this window is growing now that the airline is under new management.)

Future schedules are rough estimates based on past block times, but they don’t always take seasonality or ultimately, reality, into effect. Winds change seasonally as do airport operations so flight times can vary. There might also be issues around aircraft types changing since some airplanes fly faster than others. But when future schedules go into effect, they aren’t necessarily meant to be completely accurate. In this case, United’s future schedules weren’t perfect.

In fact, for Doug, the flight times in the future schedule were a bit aggressive so while it looks like United added a lot of time to the flights when the final schedules were released, in reality, these block times are 5 to 7 minutes faster than they were last year. So, no, United is not slowing down to save fuel. It’s just the way they handle schedules.

This is a great question, because I’ve wondered it myself for quite awhile. This gave me the chance to reach out there and see if I could get any more detail. Sure enough, I could. Let’s start with the question.

. . . I booked my tickets last week and got an interesting email from the online travel service this week that my return flights had been changed by the airline. The departure and arrival times were changed by 1-3 minutes, for the most part making the flights a bit longer. For example, my departure from Buffalo was changed from 4:30 to 4:27 (or it might have been the other way around).

Why would Delta make such small changes to the flights? I’m a private pilot and come from a family of pilots, so I’m familiar with airspeed versus ground speed, but there’s no way they can predict the weather nearly two months out; and I know about flying at maximum economical speed as opposed to maximum possible speed, so I’m wondering if the rising fuel prices have caused them to adjust their speeds a bit to save fuel. But that is just a wild guess.
Perry

This happens on all airlines, but I’ve certainly noticed it happening more frequently on Delta than others. You think your flights are all set and then you get a schedule change notice saying that the arrival time has moved by a minute or two. Why the heck are they doing this?

I went to Delta for the official response and was told this:

. . . when the schedule is first published, it’s not operationally sequenced, so small adjustments are made on certain routes – basically massaging the departure and arrival times slightly for the best operational efficiency and connectivity. As your reader noted, these are minor, a minute here and there.

In other words, when Delta first puts the schedule out there, it’s not perfectly timed to fit into the entire system. Little tweaks of a minute or two can make a difference. That sounds really nebulous, so let me try to fill in the blanks.

A schedule is put out there nearly a year in advance. Often, that won’t be the final expected schedule. Major tweaks happen along the way, but the big ones are usually done when you’re a few months out. There might be some new routes added since the schedule was first put out there. Some routes could be cut, frequencies could change, etc. So at a large airline like Delta, when the schedule firms up, they might find that tweaks of a minute or two on other routes can help.

There are a few other reasons I can think of that would make this worth doing. Look at it through the eyes of the reservation system. This is more of a small change than a big one, but let’s say that Delta flies from Buffalo to Tampa via Atlanta and it takes 4h32m. Then let’s say that US Airways can get you there in 4h30m. If there are a lot of people that fly that route, it might make sense for Delta to find a way to shave 3 minutes off the connection time. That could make it the fastest way to get from Buffalo to Tampa and it could actually have an impact on bookings. Of course, you only do this for larger markets.

There is also the issue of weather. Airlines use historical weather patterns to determine how long flights will take. For example, winds are much stronger in the winter than the summer, so a flight from JFK to LAX is scheduled to take longer in the winter. It’s possible that as weather data comes in, the airlines make slight changes to adjust to the new expectations.

The last reason I can think of for this is simply one of airport issues. Let’s say that Buffalo has construction going on this winter. Delta might want to lengthen the expected flight times to account for the potential ground delays, even if it’s just a few minutes.

I’m sure we have some readers who know more about this than I, so feel free to chime in below.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m working on clearing out some of the Ask Cranky question that have been piling up for awhile here. This is a great question that has probably confused people for ages. I’ll give my best answer, but I encourage customer service reps to chime in if things are different at their airline.

When I get saddled with a middle seat on a transatlantic or other long flight, my 6 foot 1 inch, 225 pound frame starts to ache before I even go through security. When I beg at check-in for a better seat assignment, why are they powerless? They always tell me to see the “gate agent” which, sometimes, is the exact same person. Is it because once the flight has closed they will have a better sense of what they can do?

Derrick M

There can be a couple of reasons why a ticket counter agent would push you off to the gate agent, one sensible and one obnoxious. Fortunately, the sensible one is far more likely.

Just think about what goes into getting a flight out from the perspective of a gate agent. Up until the day of the flight, some people have chosen seats while others have not. Airlines will usually hold back a chunk of seats for the day of departure anyway, so many people can’t get seats in advance even if they tried. Then of course there are the seats that are held back for elite members. Those same elite members are likely to get upgraded, so the seats in coach can become available when they get moved up to the pointy end up of the plane.

There are a lot of moving parts, so to help control the chaos as departure nears, the airline will put these flights “under airport control.” This prevents all different kinds of people from sticking their fingers in and making life difficult for the agents who actually have to get the flight out of the gate. So when you get to the gate, there are a lot of different things going on. Upgrades will be cleared and gate agents will try to help families sit together who have been split apart, for example. Then there are just the people who want to sit in a different seat from what they already have assigned. It can be a gigantic puzzle that’s difficult in its own right.

Now imagine trying to solve that puzzle while it’s in motion. Yeah, that sucks. So when the gate agents take control of a flight, they have the ability to make changes without worrying about others poking their noses in there as well. And that’s the sensible reason for having you talk to the gate agent.

What’s the obnoxious reason? There might not be any good seats left and if the agent is having a bad day, he might just want to push you off on someone else so he doesn’t have to deal with it. Yes, that does happen from time to time, but the sensible reason is far more likely.