Yapta Prepares Firefox Download for Launch Just in Time for the Holidays

Given the sky-high cost of airfares, plenty of new Web sites abound to make finding the cheapest prices on airline tickets as painless as possible. These new sites offer innovative approaches to finding cheap tickets, and one of the most innovative has been Yapta, which publicly launched earlier this year. Yapta is a site that offers a very interesting service to customers. Unlike another travel start-up, Farecast, which helps consumers by predicting when the lowest price on a particular flight might be available, customers can use Yapta as they shop for tickets on most US airline websites and set pricing alerts on specific flights.  By combining fare tracking and automatic email notification technology, the site allows customers to "tag" the flights they're interested in and receive notifications if the price drops. But, not only does Yapta send notifications before customers purchase a ticket so they can purchase it at a low price, but after they've purchased as well. Airlines have consumer-friendly policies called guaranteed airfare rules that enable customers to receive a travel voucher if the price of their ticket falls (net of any ticket change fee) after they purchase it. With tickets becoming more and more expensive, Yapta offers a great way to insure oneself from a major decrease in the price of a ticket.

But for some customers, one of the drawbacks to using Yapta has been that flights can be cumbersome to enter into Yapta's system. Yapta needs flight numbers, the airline, dates, and several other bits of information which can be fairly tedious to enter, especially if one is monitoring many flights. To make the system easier for customers, Yapta developed a download that allows customers to tag a flight directly from the airline's reservation page. After customers download Yapta, they can search for flights on most major airline Web sites and click a button that tags the flight. It makes the process much, much simpler. Previously, Yapta had only offered a download for Internet Explorer, but with more and more Internet users choosing Firefox, a new download was developed and will be launched to the public in a few days.

However, I recently had the opportunity to "test-drive" the new Firefox download for Yapta and was amazed how easy it was. The download was quick and painless, and I was tagging flights within a matter of minutes. The instructions were straightforward and helped me make sense of Yapta's concept. It's a bit strange at first, because the download creates a button on the airline's reservation page that allows you to enter that flights information onto Yapta with one click. At first, the button seemed a bit out of place, since I wasn't used to seeing it on different sites, but after tagging flights at a couple of different Web sites, I got used to its appearance.

After I tagged a flight, a sidebar pops up showing the other flights I've tagged and their prices. This is an incredibly powerful tool that enables me to view all the flights I'm monitoring on one page so I can determine whether I need to tag additional flights. I can then go back to the Yapta site, log into my account, and compare my different flight options, looking at more than just price, but also schedules, airports, and brand reputation of the carrier. This download makes finding the perfect flight much easier.

Yapta does have its downsides, for instance, the site currently does not offer the ability to tag flights on Northwest or Southwest Airlines. However, the company appears to be working on fixing this problem, and once it is resolved, the tool will become all the more powerful. If you're planning on booking airline tickets this holiday season and haven't done so yet, I strongly recommend that you consider Farecast for your initial flight search, and Yapta when you've homed in on some of the flights you're interested in. When used together, these two sites offer very powerful tools for customers to find the best prices on flights.

Book Multi-City for Considerable Savings

While Airline Bulletin typically doesn't cover information on how to get the best fares, I recently discovered a trick that was quite shocking. On most legacy carriers, due to the differences in some one-way and round-trip fares, customers can obtain significant variation in prices depending on how they search. Airline Web sites enable customers to search for a typical round-trip (say between San Francisco and Richmond) in several ways. Most airlines will let customers search by fare and schedule, but they also enable customers to make a multi-city search, if they are making several one-way journeys. If customers are searching by schedule, they can get widely differing prices for similar round-trip flights, but a multi-city search can help moderate prices.

Take the San Francisco to Richmond example. If you search by schedule for travel August 4 and returning the 8 on the American Airlines Web site, you get differing fares depending on whether you search by schedule, or do a multi-city search. If you do a multi-city search, you need to enter in the points of connection (since there is no nonstop flight between San Francisco and Richmond on American Airlines), which for purposes of this post are Dallas/Fort Worth in both directions. The flights I used are 2008, 1286, 1763, and 463. On the first multi-city leg, you would enter in SFO-DFW on August 4, on the second, you would enter DFW-RIC on August 4 and vice versa on the August 8 return. If you enter in flights via the multi-city tool I received a price of $556.60 (since ticket prices change so frequently, I don't guarantee that these prices will be the same if you choose to replicate my experiment, but please trust me). If I do a standard search by schedule from American's home page with the same flight numbers, I receive a price of $674.60. These are the same flights on the same days, but the only thing I did differently was that I changed the way I searched for the flights on American's Web site.

American isn't alone in this practice, I have found the same to be true on United, Delta, Northwest, and Continental, all of which offer fares specially designed for round-trip travel. While most low-cost carriers have one-way pricing on all flights, most legacy carriers still offer fares that can only be purchased if travelers are traveling round-trip. Sometimes, fares that are purchased as round-trips are more expensive than fares which are purchased as four one-ways (which is what the multi-city function enables travelers to do). One caveat with this trick is that it only works if you have a connecting flight. If you aren't connecting, this trick typically doesn't work. However, it's important to note that this feature of legacy carrier pricing systems works both ways. Often, especially for lower-priced round-trip fares, booking your travel as a multi-city journey of four one-ways is considerably more expensive than booking a round-trip via a search by schedule on the home page. But if the flights you're booking are expensive, then chances are that booking flights through the multi-city tool could save you a considerable amount of money.

Information About Fares and Travel Tips

Here are some of my latest tips on purchasing a cheap ticket: If you're looking for the cheapest airline tickets for domestic travel I recommend you use Airfarewatchdog, Farecast, and respective airline Web sites. Airfarewatchdog offers the cheapest unadvertised fares in a human-edited fare database. Farecast offers some of the cheapest fares from most US airlines, using sophisticated data analysis technology first developed at the University of Washington. Airline Web sites are typically the best sources to go for the cheapest tickets, once you've narrowed down which flight you want. And if you want the cheapest price and don't care about flight times or airlines, consider Hotwire. If you're searching for some of the best available airfare deals, and not necessarily specific tickets, consider Airfare WatchBlog (affiliated with Airfarewatchdog). Also consider purchasing my ebook, Take Control of Booking a Cheap Airline Ticket, which offers step-by-step information on purchasing inexpensive domestic and international airline tickets. The ebook also includes information on consolidators, vacation packages, and frequent flyer programs, as well as travel tips. I hope this helps, and if you have any additional questions, please email me.

Thanks!

Sam Sellers

www.airlinebulletin.com

Spirit Airlines Is Movin' And Shakin'

Spirit Airlines is on the move today. The airline has applied for service from Fort Lauderdale to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos. The airlines plans to start the service in time for the Winter 2005-2006 season, which probably would be sometime in December. This is just the latest in a series of moves by the airline to develop a strong Caribbean and Latin American presence. The airline has service to Cancun from Detroit and Fort Lauderdale and plans to start service from Tampa to Cancun in November. Spirit also has service from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau in the Bahamas, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, San Juan in Puerto Rico, and plans to start service from Fort Lauderdale to Kingston and Montego Bay in Jamaica in November. The airline is actually replicating an idea by U.S. Airways for a Fort Lauderdale mini-hub that would serve Central America and the Caribbean, but that idea only somewhat materialized, and U.S. Airways actually applied for this very route to the Turks and Caicos, but never started service. It will be interesting to see if JetBlue expands its Caribbean service which is currently Aguadilla, Nassau, San Juan, and Santiago in the Dominican Republic. 

Spirit Airlines also ordered three move Airbus A321 aircraft today which should be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2008. The aircraft will be used to facilitate the airline's increased rate of growth especially to higher capacity destinations such as Cancun, New York, and Orlando.

Like many airlines, Spirit has launched its fall sale by littering the internet with banner ads advertising $34 fares each way between Fort Lauderdale and Nassau. JetBlue has also launched its clearance sale for the fall season. Planes will certainly not be as full during the fall months as during the summer, but both airlines compete on many routes, especially in the New York to Florida and Boston to Florida markets and both airlines have things going for them. JetBlue has generally higher fares than Spirit, but a very large customer following, terrific service, leather seats, and of course the DirectTv. Spirit generally has lower fares and offers more services from La Guardia airport which is considered more convenient for many in the NYC metro area. Both airlines should do fine though since it's such a hot market. If you want to book, the cheapest place to do so is at www.jetblue.com and at www.spiritair.com. Happy travels!

The Lowest Fares On The Net-This Is The Place!

The internet has created a revolution in the travel industry, and with consumers wanting to travel by air more than ever, cheaper, there is increasing competition among consumers for the lowest fares. But now, I have located a source that does much of the work for you. This site is highly recommended as a good starting point to find low fares for travel, particularly if your dates are more than 21 days out, however, there are some deals for weekend travel. The site will only list fares from your home city that are considered deals, and colored red if they are steals. Keep in mind, however, that the blog will try to lead you to Travelocity or another affiliate, which doesn't necessarily offer the lowest fares. Instead, if you find a fare you like, go to that airline's website, which will most likely offer the same fare, but without the $5.00 Travelocity surcharge. Check it out!

Sales!

AirTran

AAI is lauching a 48-hour fare sale to all its destinations. That's valid only through tommorow at midnight.

Southwest Airlines

LUV is lauching its own systemwide fare sale (except Orange County, which is standard practice from Southwest due to capacity limits) where tickets can be purchaced through December 16.

Expedia

This is their weekly fare sale: 

Frequent Flier Benefits!

This is a short, and basic summary about frequent flyer programs, and useful if you fly a lot, or even if you don't (most miles on major carriers don't expire at all as long as you gain/spend miles every three years).

Shorter Rides, Less Cost. With most of the major carriers, a standard roundtrip award is 25,000 miles. However some carriers are offering discount award travel on shorter markets (750 miles or less), to compete mainly with Southwest Airlines, LUV, which traditionally files flights less than two hours long. American, AMR and United is offering this discount travel award in markets such as Seattle/Tacoma-San Francisco, and Chicago to New York.

Ways to Get Miles!
There are many fliers out there who are unsure about what to do with the miles that they have amassed from business trips, and there are just as many who need to know how to get miles. Many major carriers offer 1,000 miles just for booking at their websites. When some of these carriers, Continental CAL and Northwest, NWAC have the guaranteed lowest fare at their websites, it's a win-win. Most carriers also offer web check-in, and 1,000 bonus miles when you do it for the first time. In addition, many airlines offer self-check in at the airport, although most airlines don't offer bonus miles for doing that anymore, however you should check. In addition, most airlines offer credit cards (with an annual fee) where for every dollar you spend on the card, you get 1 mile. Still, airlines will give even travelers who purchase most discount fares frequent flyer miles.

Other Frequent Flyer Programs. Look at Frontier Airlines FRNT, for a great frequent flyer program, where if you get 15,000 miles, you get a round trip ticket in the U.S. In addition, if you amass 15,000 miles in a year, you get to the next level of membership, which includes the benefits of free DirectTv service on its flights. Alaska Airlines ALK has a frequent flyer program where free travel starts at 20,000 miles, and although that does include some flights cross country, those are mostly from Seattle/Tacoma, where the airline is based. AirTran Airways AAI, and Southwest Airlines, offer similar programs, where at AirTran, those who fly in Business Class can earn miles at an increased rate, otherwise is identical to Southwest. People who fly 16 one-way flights of any distance, and regardless of connections earn 1 credit, for example Denver-Atlanta-Orlando is 1 credit. After 16-one way flights, or 8 round-trips, the passenger earns a free round-trip flight. JetBlue Airways JBLU offers a similar program, but a little different where flights are classified by distance, and a point value is awarded accordingly. For example Buffalo-New York is 2 points, but New York-Oakland is worth 6 points. When you have reached 100 points, you have earned a free-round trip flight. None of the low-cost carriers who offer these point/credit programs offer many other bonus credit opportunities, such as self-check in, or buying a ticket online, however, AirTran and JetBlue are offering double credit/points however JetBlue is ending their $3 one-way discount due to the weak environment (and for most travelers, assuming that they do redeem their points for a reward, that's about what they are worth). However Southwest is the exception, passengers who purchase tickets on Southwest.com can earn 3 for 2 credit for roundtrip purchases. Southwest also offers many more ways to gain miles from car rentals and hotel stays than JetBlue or AirTran.

It's important to see what city you live in, and know where you fly to find the right airline to choose to a frequent flyer program. You can certainly use more than 1, and if you buy a discount fare on one airline and get miles, and keep saving towards an award on that airline, even if you use other programs and are saving there. Keep in mind that low-fare carriers offer frequent flier programs that are just as good, or better than what the majors offer, however many of those credits expire within one year, so keep that in mind.

Tips on Finding Low Fares

Low fares can usually be found. All it takes is a bit of work, some flexibility, and keeping some basic facts in mind.

Low Fare Carriers. Your best bet is to first check out the low fare carriers. Keep in mind that some of the low-fare carriers don't post their fares on sites such as Expedia, Travelocity, etc. They post them on their own websites, cutting their costs. However, those sites occasionally have special close-out fares that the airlines won't post on their own sites. Otherwise, it's not worth buying there, since you must pay a $5.00 service charge.

Low Travel Times. Low fares are often available on flights which aren’t getting many flyers. When an airline launches a sale, they will allocate a certain percentage (generally around 10%-20%) of the seats on the flights to be offered at the low fare. Often, the amount of the discount will vary by how popular the day of the week is for traveling. Days that are the least popular, and therefore have a greater number of unfilled seats at lower prices are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Thursdays and Saturdays are somewhat more popular than Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And, as we all know, discounts will vary as to how popular the arrival and departure times of the flight are.

Competitive Routes. Also keep in mind that not all low fares belong to the low-fare carriers. The major carriers also offer fares to compete with the low-fare carriers, but only on the specific routes the low-cost carriers fly. For example, New York to Omaha might be $400 round-trip, but Baltimore, where Southwest flies, to Omaha might cost only $200. If you live in a smaller community that's not served by a low-fare airline, then you might be out of luck, or you may have to drive to a more distant airport. Many metropolitan areas have more than 1 airport serving it, and in an area such as the Los Angeles Basin, the fares to Ontario, Orange County, and LAX might be hundreds of dollars apart. Remember that Southwest and most of the major carriers all serve those airports, or at least 2 out of 3. If you want the best fare and have the ability to drive, then you will want to check the fares at all those airports, as well as San Diego, Burbank, and Long Beach. This phenomenon is also true in and around: San Francisco, Houston (though Hobby is mainly Southwest, but it's there with sometimes lower fares), Miami, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, and to a lesser extent Boston (With Providence and Manchester becoming low-fare hubs). If none of this makes much sense then just listen to this last point: Check the airline's website first!

Midwest Air

Today, Midwest Airlines MEH may be heading off course with their reported third quarter loss of $13 million compared to last year's same quarter loss of $3 million after restructuring charges of $5.9 million. Midwest Airlines used to provide premium service, a nostalgic effort to go back to those happy days when airlines provided full meals and comfy seats to all their passengers. Midwest succeeded, but realized that they couldn't compete with the low-fare carriers. So they reconfigured some of their aircraft to hold more seats and put them to work on low-fare destinations such as Florida, Las Vegas, and Denver. Their load factor and revenue per seat mile are abisimal, and if they can't improve that most basic of airline profitability benchmarks, their future remains uncertain.

Fare Sales: AirTran is launching a fare sale today: http://www.airtran.com
Southwest too: www.southwest.com

Delta's & Flyi's Different Deals

Delta: After reporting some "weak earnings," (translated: a huge loss for the quarter of around $650 million), today Delta appears to have reached a tentative agreement with their pilots' union, whose members receive the highest pay in the industry. The pilots have appeared to agree to the $1 billion in concessions that Delta management was asking for which they claimed was necessary to avoid bankruptcy. In addition, Delta announced new service between Salt Lake City (hubsite) and Baltimore, Cancun, and seasonal summer service between Fairbanks, Anchorage and Salt Lake City.

Flyi: The upstart Independence Air is announcing a sale. (I will define the airline's fleet, routes, etc. at a later date). They are offering fares from $34 between Wash/Dulles and select markets, or fares as low as $59 connecting through Wash/Dulles. These fares don't include taxes/fees which would probably amount to around $10-15, (typical for most domestic flights).