It looks like United and American have decided that you don’t pay enough to travel on the peak holiday travel days, so they’ve added a $10 surcharge. Is this a new fee? Nah, I think it’s just the lazy man’s fare increase.

You’re always used to paying more to travel on the holidays, right? Usually, this happens because airlines use inventory controls to make you pay a higher fare. So that $99 one way fare just won’t be available (well, ok, maybe on Virgin America). But now American has decided that still aren’t paying enough on certain days, and United has followed. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving and both the Saturday and Sunday after New Year’s, they’ve added a $10 surcharge to nearly all fares.

I’ve already seen some people wondering if this is a new fee that the airlines are starting to add, but really, I don’t see it that way. It’s simply a fare increase but instead of adding blackout dates to the existing fares and filing new fares at a higher level (which is kind of a pain), they just added a blanket surcharge to make things easier for them. Might as well do it this way – you get the same result for the most part.

The most important thing here is that you won’t see anything different as a traveler. When you price out your ticket, that surcharge will already be included, so it’s not a nickel-and-diming type of strategy here.

Airlines have used peak pricing for years. Remember the traditional Southwest $99 sales? Those were only good on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The rest of the week was $119. The difference here is that it’s just much more specific, and they’ve used a different method for increasing the fare.

One extra benefit for the airlines is that surcharges normally get added on after discounts are taken, though I can’t imagine too many people are traveling on corporate discounts or anything like that on the peak holiday travel days. I really think it was just the easiest way to do a narrow fare increase.

I suppose the news here is that technically, this is a different way of doing things, but ultimately, it’s just a fare increase. Flights on those days are always packed, so they’re just going to try to squeeze some more revenue out while they can. I imagine we’ll see more of this in the future.

We don’t see this very often, but the folks at the newly-reinvigorated Frontier have decided to make some changes. While bag fees are going up $5, the big news is that the change fee is going down from $150 to $100. Huzzah!

The $150 change fee is something that just makes me angry. Considering the fare levels that are out there today, many fares have become effectively non-refundable. I was just looking for a one way from JFK to LAX, and American had a $119 all-in while United had $144. You can book it, but it’ll cost you more to change it than it will to just throw it away and start over. That’s crap. (BTW, I’ll be having my first Virgin America long haul experience for that trip – $98 all-in.)

Here you can see a chart of domestic change fees for many US-based carriers. Yes, I realize it looks suspiciously like something you might wave at a reggae concert. On the right side, I’ve included a completely arbitrary decree regarding what’s fair and what isn’t.

Why do I say this is completely arbitrary? Well, I don’t have change fee data to back me up here. All I can do is go by what seems fair considering the fares I see out there. To me, anything over $100 is completely absurd. Anything between $50 and $100 seems possibly fair, but it still may be too much for shorter haul carriers considering the fares that are out there. To me, the $25 to $50 range is the sweet spot for short haul while anything below $25 seems like a wasted opportunity. (We’ve talked about this before regarding Southwest.)

But let’s get back to Frontier. They were in the zone of ridiculousness, and they’ve now moved down into the zone of questionability. Why? Well I asked Frontier spokesperson Peter Kowalchuk, and he actually gave a pretty straightforward answer.

We’ve always been a customer-focused company. We realized a couple things. Aside from the great experience that our customers enjoy flying with us, our customers love us for our low fares. We also understand that our customers sometime need to change their plans and the change that we made in the change fee allows them to enjoy our low fares and have the flexibility they need to change their flights. . . . This fee change makes our fees more proportional to our actual fare. Airfare has dropped but fees haven’t.

My interpretation here is that, as I said above, fares have gotten so low that the $150 change fee probably results in people just throwing away their tickets because the change costs more. So now by lowering it 33%, they’re likely hoping they’ll get more than a 33% bump in the number of changes being made. I hope this actually happens, because it gives us hope that other airlines will review their fee as well.

I can dream, can’t I? But least Frontier is moving in the right direction. Kudos to the furry little animal tails.

Think of it as a new airline within an airplane. While many airlines in the past have really liked the idea of starting a low cost carrier, El Al has decided to do it on its existing fleet. There will now be a low-cost class of service on European flights on the airline. Though this may sound unique, and I’ve heard some say it is, it’s really what Air Canada pioneered long ago.

El Al is about to face some serious low cost competition into Europe. Air Berlin started serving Israel on July 7 and easyJet starts in November, so El Al is trying to figure out how to compete. The idea was to come up with a low cost carrier but put it on the same airplane as their existing service. The seats are the same, but if you’re in regular coach class, you get frills. If you’re in the low cost coach class, everything else comes for a price. So just to make sure we’re clear, let’s get graphical. This is not what’s happening:

The seats are the same. This is the same type of bundling that Air Canada uses with its fare products. Frontier does it as well now. The cheapest fares get very little in the way of frills and the more expensive fares get more. But since the physical product isn’t any different, it’s not really a new class of service. It’s just fare bundling.

So El Al can call it whatever it wants, but it’s nothing new. It is, however, a good idea because it lets people pick and choose what’s important to them.

[Original photo via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY SA 3.0 (de)]

Why is Allegiant’s Load Factor Dropping While Others Increase? – BNET
Allegiant’s load factor dropped more than anyone else last month, but I’m not too concerned.

Southwest’s Bid for Frontier Raised to $170 Million – BNET
Southwest’s final bid for Frontier has been released.

American Exits the Orange County – San Francisco Market – BNET
I guessed this would happen awhile ago. American is pulling out after competition increased.

JetBlue offers a buffet of flights for one price – The Press Enterprise
We talk a little about JetBlue’s new $599 pass for unlimited travel for a month.

What US Airways Stands to Gain From Its Slot Swap with Delta – BNET
The title is pretty self-explanatory, no?

What Delta Stands to Gain From Its Slot Swap with US Airways – BNET
Let’s look at this slot swap from the other side.

I’m sure many of you were hoping to see a post today on Republic winning the auction for Frontier thanks to labor thwarting the Southwest bid, but I didn’t have enough time to do the research last night to write a post. I’ll have more next week either here or on BNET.
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Every so often an airline comes out with a great promotion that catches people’s attention. It’s easy to put out a fare sale, and those don’t usually get much attention, but JetBlue has put out something that’s certainly eye-catching this week. It’s the all-you-can-fly pass. One month, $599 (plus international taxes and fees), and you can fly anywhere you want in the JetBlue system.

First, I have to say that this isn’t exactly a JetBlue invention. Others have tried it in the past (some in the very distant past), and there are other types of passes like this that still exist today. Most notably in the last decade has been Air Canada’s plethora of pass products, but JetBlue’s effort here is still a great one. For $599 plus international taxes and fees, you can fly anywhere JetBlue flies between September 8 and October 8.

Want to fly every single day? Go right ahead. As long as you can afford the taxes, you’re welcome to do it. You might expect that there would be a bunch of restrictions here, and you’d be . . . wrong. If there is a seat to sell, it’s all yours. The only real restrictions are that you need to make your bookings and changes at least three days before departure. Any changes within three days (or no-shows), and you have to pay $100. That’s a deal. And you get 35 TrueBlue points so you’re a third of the way to a free ticket.

Why the heck is JetBlue putting out such a rich offer? September 8 is the day after Labor Day, and that’s when traffic tanks. Kids are back in school, there are no more holidays in September, and it’s too early for kids to be pulled out of school again for a vacation. For an airline with a huge leisure focus like JetBlue, this is an awful time of year. It’s particularly bad in Florida and the Caribbean where it’s peak hurricane season. Those are JetBlue’s bread-and-butter markets.

So they figure that they can get some people on airplanes with this move. It fits with their brand, and it will get them great press. It already has. Anyone want to take bets on how many blogs pop up with people documenting their 30 days of travel?

I like this move a lot, because it’s creative and it’s simple. Great stuff.

[Updated 8/14 @ 849a to reflect that only international taxes and fees are charge - domestic ones are included]