[The Practical Nomad Newsletter] The Amazing Race 14 (and AmEx cardholder alert)

[Edward Hasbrouck]

(Scroll down for this week's episode of "The Amazing Race")

Urgent warning to American Express cardholders:
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001630.html

Summary:

AmEx has announced new terms under which cardholders will be deemed to 
have given consent to receive calls including robocalls, and SMS text 
messages, from AmEx, in perpetuity, at any number you ever use to contact 
AmEx, including cell phones. That could be costly, damaging to your 
relationships with friends, family, and business associates whose phones 
you might need to use to call AmEx in an emergency, and put you in severe 
danger of having your information broadcast to strangers (if, for example, 
a robocall plays a recorded message to the receptionist at a hotel where 
you've already checked out, or another guest at the direct-dial number for 
the room that you had once stayed in).

I've been back and forth with AmEx's vice president for p.r. (see the full 
correspondence in the comments in my blog). Thus far, they are treating my 
report as as a public relations problem, rather than as a report of a 
privacy and security vulnerability and potential breach.

Unless AmEx backs down, the new terms take effect  2 April 2099.  I'll 
keep you posted if anything changes; if it doesn't, I'll be cancelling my 
AmEx account rather than taking the risk of agreeing to these terms.

=====

The Amazing Race 14, Episode 2: 
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001631.html

Stechelberg (Switzerland) - Zurich (Switzerland) - Munich (Germany) - 
Ruhpolding (Germany) - Schaunau am Konigssee (Germany) - Salzburg 
(Austria)

Last week we had a lesson in European rail route planning. This week our 
focus will be on intra-European flights, starting with this lesson: If 
you're paying out of your own pocket, don't do what the producers of "The 
Amazing Race" had the contestants do in this episode.

Starting from Stechelberg in the middle of the night, the racers were 
required first to take a two-hour taxi ride to Zurich Airport (the largest 
within striking distance), and then to fly to Munich.

They did arrive faster than if they had taken the train, as early as 8:15 
a.m. rather than not until 13:30 (1:30 p.m.). But at what price? I shudder 
to think what the taxi ride must have cost, especially at the typically 
higher late-night tariff, at least if they were actually staying in 
Stechelberg. (Sometimes the racers have been accommodated at a hotel or 
resort some distance from the "pit stop" location shown on TV.) But the 
taxi ride is the lesser part of it: The one-way walk-up fare on any direct 
flight from Zurich to Munich is a minimum of 500 Euros (about 750 Swiss 
Francs, or US$650 at today's exchange rate). Any real tourist would take 
the train for a fraction of the price of flying, arrive half a day later, 
and enjoy the views and the conversations with fellow travellers along the 
way.

Most one-way walk-up fares, and even one-way advance-purchase fares, on 
traditional airlines within Europe, are substantially higher than airfares 
under similar conditions on similar airlines for similar distances in 
North America.

Much more than in the USA, it makes sense to fly within Europe only on 
routes served by so-called low-cost or low-fare airlines, where their 
presence typically prompts even their competitors to offer at least some 
seats at dramatically lower prices than on other routes.

Discount airlines' routes and hubs aren't necessarily the busiest routes 
or largest cities or airports. Low-cost airlines often look for niche 
markets and opportunities. Zurich is the largest and most obvious air 
gateway to Switzerland, for example, and that's where the racers were sent 
to find a flight. But prices are typically much lower to and from Geneva, 
where EasyJet has one of its hubs.

You might expect that London (EasyJet and others including extensive 
services on Wizz Air, the largest low-fare airline in central Europe) and 
Dublin (RyanAir and Aer Lingus) would be low-cost hubs (with a caveat, as 
discussed further below, about the multiple London-area airports, 
especially EasyJet and Wizz Air's hubs at Luton, LTN). But would you guess 
that Brussels would be the largest low-fare hub on the continent, thanks 
to RyanAir and others at somewhat distant "Brussels South Airport" (CRL) 
in Charleroi, and Brussels Airlines maintaining the former Virgin Express 
discount routes at much closer-in Brussels National Airport (BRU) in 
Zaventem?

Few low-cost airlines pay to participate in the computerized reservation 
systems used by online and offline travel agencies and price comparison 
Web sites. There are lots of lists of low-cost airlines, but none of them 
are complete or authoritative. There is no single map that shows all the 
routes flown by low-cost airlines.

The most useful compilations of rumors are Wikipedia's "List of low-cost 
airlines" (with links to lists of the destinations each serves) and the 
collection of individual airlines' route maps at AirlineRouteMaps.com. I 
don't know who is behind this latter Web site, but it has been around for 
several years, and seems reasonably well maintained. Note, however, that 
it includes charter airlines -- on which it may be difficult or impossible 
to buy a one-way ticket, or a flight ticket without a tour or holiday 
package -- as well as scheduled airlines.

Neither of these lists are complete, nor can they be relied on. They 
include defunct airlines, discontinued routes, planned routes that may 
never actually see service, seasonal services (often not flagged as such 
or distinguished from year-round routes), and simple mistakes. For 
example, they show an EasyJet route to Munich from Basel-Mulhouse Airport, 
BSL/MLH/EAP (actually just across the Swiss border in France, but closer 
to Stechelberg than Geneva, and about as distant as Zurich). That flight 
would have been useful to the contestants on "The Amazing Race", if it 
existed, but a traveller with a limited budget would have problems if they 
set off for Basel without confirming the schedule: EasyJet's Web site 
shows no flights currently operating on that route, and with no 
competition the Lufthansa fare is prohibitive. Flyer beware.

The only authoritative source of information about an individual airline's 
current schedule is that airline's own Web site or call center. To find 
out if there's a flight, look at actual seat availability for the date you 
are interested in: Route maps often show planned future routes, or those 
that have been "temporarily" suspended, while timetables may not clearly 
indicate which schedules are seasonal.

The key thing is finding the routes served by low-cost airlines. Once 
you've done that, compare the available prices on all airlines serving 
that route. So-called low-fare airlines aren't necessarily cheaper or 
better than their competitors.

To see which traditional airlines (i.e. high-fare airlines, except where 
they have low-fare competition) serve any given route within Europe, the 
best starting point is Opodo.com, an online travel agency founded by a 
consortium of major European traditional airlines (just as Orbitz.com was 
jointly founded by major airlines in the USA) and now owned primarily by 
Amadeus, the one major CRS based in Europe.

Advertised prices on any airline are meaningless, both because of 
additional fees and charges and because the lowest fare may not be 
available on your desired dates or flights. Where a low-cost carrier is in 
the market, typical total one-way prices for flights within Europe range 
from about US$50 to US$150 on low-cost airlines, or about $50 more (US$100-
US$200) on traditional airlines competing on the same routes. If you are 
trying to plan your budget before you have bought your tickets, a 
reasonable estimate is US$100 for each such flight within Europe (plus the 
cost of getting to and from the airports), roughly in line with what you 
might expect to pay, on average, if cheap flights end up not being 
available and you travel by train. That's a rule of thumb, but your 
mileage may vary: Train fares are more closely correlated with distance 
than are airfares.

While traditional airlines don't usually match their low-fare competitors' 
prices exactly, they may have other advantages that make a slightly higher 
price worth paying:

1. Traditional airlines are less likely to discontinue service on a route 
between when you buy your ticket and when you plan to fly. Even if they 
drop the route, they will endorse your ticket to another airline, at no 
additional charge to you. Low-cost airlines generally don't have any 
interline agreements, so they can't put you on another airline even if 
they want to. All a low-cost carrier can do when they abandon a route (as 
they are quick to do if it becomes unprofitable -- they aren't national 
flag carriers committed to maintaining any particular route network) is 
give you back your money, which may be only a fraction of what a ticket 
costs on another airline once the low-cost price leader has left that 
market.

2. Traditional airlines have interline baggage checking agreements, making 
it much easier to change planes quickly, unburdened by carry-on baggage, 
if, for example, you are trying to add a cheap intra-European connection 
to long-haul flights to or from America or elsewhere that you have 
purchased separately or obtained for frequent flyer mileage credits. Some 
low-cost airlines require you to claim and re-check your luggage even when 
you are making connections between their own flights at their own hub! 
Schedule changes between the time of ticketing and the time of travel -- 
more common on low-cost airlines than traditional ones -- can also wreak 
havoc with planned connections. For all these reasons, I recommend low-
cost airlines only for one-off flights, and not in cases where you need to 
make same-day connections to or from other flights at either end.

3. Low-cost airlines often fly to and from low-rent airports, typically 
farther from city centers and slower and more expensive to reach by public 
transit. From Geneva to London, for example, one-way prices on EasyJet 
start at the equivalent of about US$40 to London's Stansted (STN) or 
Gatwick (LGW) Airports, including taxes, fees, and one checked bag, while 
British Airways charges US$120 to Heathrow Airport (LHR). Express trains 
from Stansted or Gatwick get to central London as fast as the Underground 
from Heathrow, but cost about 20 pounds (US$30) more than the Tube. So the 
real price difference between the two airlines is only about $50. Still 
significant, but not as much as it appears at first glance. For an early-
morning flight that requires you to check-in two hours before an 
international departure, and before the trains are running, or a late-
night arrival, a taxi ride can easily wipe out the apparent savings of a 
"cheap" flight from or to a more distant airport.

Complicated? Confusing? Yes. As I've noted before, airlines have the most 
complicated pricing structure of any product or service in the world. For 
more information, see the updated table of types of airfares and tickets, 
including low-fare airlines (pp. 174-180) and the new section on low-fare 
airlines (pp. 185-188) in the latest (4th) edition of "The Practical 
Nomad: How to Travel Around the World".

Bon voyage!

Edward Hasbrouck


----------------
Edward Hasbrouck
<edward at hasbrouck.org>
<http://hasbrouck.org>
+1-415-824-0214

"The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World"
(4th edition 2007)
"The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace"
<http://www.practicalnomad.com>

Around-the-World and multi-stop international air tickets:
<http://hasbrouck.org/tickets/>