Frommers.com Podcast: Inside Airfare with Airfarewatchdog (Part 2)

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• Deals on Airfare: Some deals are only offered at certain sites by specific airlines. Remember to search multiple sites.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

David Lytle: Welcome to the frommers.com travel podcast. For more information on planning your trip to any one of thousands of destinations, please visit www.frommers.com.

Hi, this is David Lytle, Editorial Director of frommers.com. I would like to welcome you to part two of my discussion with George Hobica with Airfare Watchdog.

George Hobica: That is another thing, David, that we do that nobody else does. And I know I'm sounding like I am patting ourselves on the back but I think our staff deserves it. We actually go into the fares system, the fare booking engines, and see if seats are available. There are a lot of other sites out there that have fare listings. Travelocity is one of them; they have something that is pretty good. It's called "Low Fare Alert."

David: Right.

George: The problem is that airlines will file fares sometimes on routes that they don't even fly.

David: Really?

George: They do this to preserve their right to fly the route in the future. And you will see this often on Travelocity. You'll see a great fare you'll click, you'll try to book it, and then you will see this error message saying, "American Airlines does not fly this route." And sometimes that message is wrong. Sometimes American Airlines did fly that route. But usually it's true. The fare is listed but there is no service.

David: That seems potentially illegal.

George: Yeah. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. So I don't know.

David: Right. No. I know. But I'm just the whole idea that you can advertise a fare on a route that you don't actually fly. Is it to keep prices competitive? To drive prices down for their competitors on that route?

George: Well certainly it makes the airline appear first in the listings. That's in the advantage. And they are not actually advertising the fares, they're just filing them. They're not actually taking the ad out.

David: Oh I see. I see.

George: They're not taking the ad out in the newspaper.

David: So I withdraw my illegal comment.

George: Yeah. [laughs]

So the other more common occurrence is that the fare does exist as shown, or as filed, but there are only a couple of seats and then the next highest fare is the one that should have been listed. And we actually go into Travelocity, which is frankly our favorite place to look for fares. I have kind of bashed them a bit, but I think they are great booking engines. We go in and we click on those calendars, when we use the flexible search. You hit that "Flexible Search" box and you put the two cities in, like LAX to JFK.

David: Yeah. I am a big fan of that myself.

George: Yeah I like it. I like it. And so you hit search and you'll see the calendar and usually green means there are seats available. If we go and we see just a few green dates, we'll click and often even those green dates are not available, and if that's the case, we're not going to list that fare. But you'll see that fare listed on all the other fare listing sites because it's supposedly a legitimate fare. If there are only a few seats available, we'll say that in our comments box on the fare details page of our site. We'll say, "You have to book after Labor Day," or "You have to book only on... Fridays are sold out, but other days are available," or whatever. Just to make it easier.

David: Right. To give them as much information as possible.

George: Absolutely. To give them as much information as possible. And the other thing that we've done, I don't know if you have noticed, which I think is so cool and I didn't think was going to be possible, but our clever programmer in Boise, Idaho made it happen. If we have something called "Deep Links" -- in other words, when you see a fare, we will bring you on Travelocity or CheapAir directly to the fare calendar for that fare. So you don't even have to plug in the cities and you don't have to remember to click "Flexible Dates." So we bring you to the flexible search area for that specific route when you click the deep links on Travelocity or CheapAir.

David: Oh, that is fantastic.

George: Yeah it's really great. You know, we used to get complaints from people all the time saying, "I can't find that fare! I can't find that fare!" Well now they can find the fare. They may not find seats at the fare -- that's always a possibility -- or the fare may have changed, but at least they know what we were talking about.

David: Right. Exactly. That's a similar problem that we even have on frommers.com when we're reporting, in any of our columns, trying to take people directly to whatever the deal is that we're reporting on. Often times sites, Orbitz is very guilty of this, it's nearly impossible to find the exact link that allows you to take people into the deal that you are writing about.

George: Right. You can't really...

David: You can send them to this site and they have to then search on their own again and hope that they can find.

George: Right. So now we're leading them to the water, and then hopefully they'll drink.

David: Yes.

George: Providing there is water left: Sometimes somebody else has gotten to the well before them.

David: Right. Listeners and readers need to know that a deal can go away at any time and our intention is never to mislead them. Sometimes we'll get their hopes up and they will get frustrated because a deal sells out, but that's part of the game actually in trying to find the best travel prices.

George: Sure. And speaking of that game, I don't know if you have seen it on our site, we have what we call our "10 Best Tips For Finding Low Fares."

David: Yes.

George: And I think one of the main steps that I am finding is useful these days is that the airlines are reserving some of their best fares only for their own site. There was a time, especially when Orbitz launched -- because they were owned by the airlines, which they are not anymore -- Orbitz insisted that if a fare was available on the airline's website then it had to be available on Orbitz. That is no longer true.

David: Right.

George: We've seen Delta Airlines have kind of private sales, where a bunch of fares are $50 or $60 less round trip on their site and not on Orbitz, not on Travelocity. Alaska Airlines does this. Of course, Southwest has always done this. The fares, their lowest fares, are only on their site, or their ding fares which pop up on your computer at southwest.com/ding.

David: Right, I actually wish more airlines did that.

George: Yeah, Frontier started to do it for a while but they have stopped doing it and they had some great fares. I think because the traffic is so high now, they stopped doing it. But also Alaska Airlines does this. SAS, the Scandinavian Airlines, does this all the time. Malaysian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Qantas -- they are in New Zealand, many other airlines, from time to time will have these private sales on their sites and you have to go to their sites. Now the corollary of this is that sometimes it's exactly the opposite way around: sometimes the fare will only be on Travelocity and not on Virgin.

Prime example, two months ago, everywhere that Virgin Airways flies to London was $400 or $470, roundtrip. We had that on frommers.com. The sale of the summer, it was just amazing. That was with taxes in the summer. $400 or $470, with taxes included, in the summertime -- actually, all your round. It was July, August, September, December, and January, for that amazing price. That fare was not available on virgin.com.

David: So it was only available through Travelocity.

George: Just for Travelocity. We were sure that it was going to available on Virgin. Nobody else matched it, BA didn't match it, United didn't match it...

David: How was a fare like that... How was that created?

George: I imagine Travelocity and Virgin got together and they just worked out a deal. It was not a mistake fare at all because it lasted many days. Why? I don't know. Did Travelocity buy a lot of seats on Virgin and promised to sell them, and then they couldn't sell them? So they lowered the price, perhaps?

David: I don't know, possibly. Right. As much as I understand about the airline industry and air fares, which always the deeper I delve the more confused I become, which I think happens often to our readers as well. I mean, can you make rhyme or reason out of air fare pricing?

George: No. I think it's pretty irrational, and that is why the airlines have not made money. We have just found that lately, they're more serious about making money. They've gotten religion. So, who knows?

David: [laughter] True. I want to point out to people listening, to find your top ten tips on Airfare Watchdog, you have just, in the left-hand navigation you just click "users' guide" and then click "top ten tips." You can get to those very quickly.

George: Right. we're always adding to those too.

David: Right.

George: In different places, whatever we can, we come up with some great tips. I think we are really crusaders for the consumer. We really are trying to change the space here because I think so many sites, and I hate to say this, but so many sites are really just driven by monetary considerations. It's true, we want to make money, but we're never going to be bazillionaires.

I think a lot of other sites, they get paid when they host a deal and somebody clicks on it. This is how they work. You click on one of those deals and the site that lists it is getting paid like 20 cents or 50 cents per click. It really adds up, but do they go in and and say, "OK, this is not a good deal. There are no seats available." No, of course not, because it does not really behoove them financially to list a deal like that and to get paid for it, and then to poo-poo it.

David: Right, right. I know that Travelzoo and ShermansTravel both do that and I don't always know that people who subscribe to their emails... Well, oftentimes they are fine deals. I always feel there's a little bit of taint because they're paid for their editorial.

George: Right, usually. For example, you will never see, I do not want to name names, but since you have....

David: That's fine. I can.

George: OK. [laughter] You will never see a Southwest Airlines deal on one of the two sites that you just mentioned.

David: That's right.

George: Because that site does not get paid by Southwest. Southwest doesn't pay anyone. One of those sites does mention Southwest, and hats off to them because they do that and they don't get paid either. The other site, the bigger site of the two, will never have a Southwest deal.

David: Right. Why does not Southwest appear all these sites?

George: They want to go on their way. They feel that they can sell their seats on their own without paying anyone.

David: Right. So for them, it is a cost saving measure for their bottom line.

George: Primarily, I actually just had a conversation yesterday with the marketing director of Southwest, and I asked her why they did not appear on Travelocity anymore. She actually made a fairly valid point, that often Travelocity would screw up. They would have a fare that wasn't quite accurate or there weren't seats available at the fare and they'd still list it, or Southwest didn't fly the route and they'd still list it.

David: Do potential travelers, do they have any recourse if you go to a site like Travelocity or Orbitz or Expedia and you see this great fare that you want, you've done your search, looked three different ways, and you find this fare, and when you click through to purchase your ticket, it tells you that that fare is no longer available. And you can repeat that search again and get the same results. Is there any recourse?

George: There isn't, unfortunately. Fares change all the time and airlines specify that this happens, and there is no guarantee until you book your seat. And sometimes there's no guarantee even after you book your seat. I mean, who knows what can happen. [laughs]

I heard so many horror stories lately about booking online. US Airways has just redesigned their site,combining American West, and they've had some problems. One woman wrote me to say that she clicked to purchase a fare and she didn't get a confirmation, nothing happened. Her computer froze. She did it again like a few hours later, and she did it again, and she ended up buying three tickets even though she only got one confirmation. Now, US Airways is now saying, "You have to eat them, you have to eat all the tickets."

David: When it seems most likely that it was a technical glitch on their side rather than the woman.

George: Right, right.

David: I had beau coup frequent flyer miles with US Air, because I've been flying with them since I was like 20 in the early 80s. I booked a couple of tickets recently. It was a red eye, so I know I would be able to get a seat. Everything went through fine. When I got to the airport, they informed me that they booked them incorrectly, and that since it was under like the two week window, I owed them another $150.

George: Oh, my God!

David: It's just frustrating when that happens. You would think that you have confirmation with an airline, and call to double check and it's fine. Of course, they're not going to let you board until you....

George: Cough up the money.

David: Cough up the money, exactly. We'd already paid a little bit, so... You go ahead and do it. Sometimes, you just feel sort of stuck.

George: Absolutely, yes. The airlines are difficult to deal with. Absolutely. I have another horror story where somebody had booked a discount ticket on Air France to go to Paris. I think I actually put this on the Frommer's site in my column. They were caught in a traffic jam. You know, traffic jams happen. There's something called flat tire rule which is an industry term for trying to accommodate passengers when something really bad happened on the way to the airport.

They were flying to France and because they missed the 60 minutes cut off for check-in just by a few minutes, Air France said, "You'll have to buy a full fare walk up ticket. And we're not even going to give you credit for the ticket you paid, that ticket is no longer valid. You're out seven hundred dollars each, round trip, and you'll get to Paris tonight."

David: Wow.

George: Now there were still seats available on their flight and they could have checked them in and there were seats on the next flight that day, plenty of empty seats, but not for the super discounted fare. So rather than give them a break and help them -- and there were other passengers as well that were in the same situation, the same traffic jam going to Dulles. Rather than do that, they said two thousand dollars round trip.

David: That's horrible.

George: Yeah, isn't it horrible?

David: Yeah, I was going to say, walk up fares are just ridiculously priced. Yeah, it is horrible. But you know, on the flip side, you're doing something good that is helping people hopefully to avoid situations like that. At least if they're going to lose their fare, possibly they found it cheaper by getting information from your site.

Now before we close out here. How can people find out about fares? How can they be notified about fares from their local airport?

George: Well we have a newsletter that we send out that's targeted to major cities every now and then. We actually haven't been sending the newsletter out that often because we've been redesigning it. We've also been having trouble with our newsletter service for reasons I won't go into, but...

David: OK.

George: We normally send out a newsletter fairly often. We do have a top thirty newsletter that we send out almost daily.

David: Right.

George: But again that's been not quite daily lately. And the best way is to just keep on coming to our site, because we actually do update throughout the day. One of our team members comes on at 3:30 in the morning. She's a real early bird. She goes to bed at six PM. She's retired.

David: [laughs] Right.

George: Yeah, really. She's a retired telephone company supervisor who was looking for something to do. She saw our site and she said, "This looks very cool. I'd like to work for you." And we said fine.

David: That's great.

George: I'm up sometimes at 10:00 checking fares, it's almost continuous throughout the day. So it's a good idea to come back and check often and you never know what's going to pop up, like those United $109 round-trip coast to coast fares popped up at noon time.

David: Right. I'm going to leave you with a final question here. It's the most asked question we receive from readers is, when is the best time to book a fare and how far out should they book it?

George: That's a great question. The best time to book a fare is when it hits its low point. How's that?

[laughter]

David: Exactly.

George: We find that these crazy fares appear usually early in the morning and they disappear around sometimes 10:00, noon time, 1:00, something like that. So we encourage people to check every day. Let's say they want to find a low fare to wherever. We suggest that people check the route every day and that they check it in the morning starting around 7:00. The fares are actually loaded three times a day, I think at 8:00, 12:00 and 8:00, something like that. Maybe 8:00, 2:00 and 12:00. Sorry, I don't know exactly. But on weekdays, it's three times a day and on the weekends, it's once a day.

So we suggest that you look three times a day kind of in those time frames, because you never know what is going to happen. So check it three times a day, in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. And, also on weekends, especially Saturday mornings. Now we have no clue why this is. I can speculate, but sometimes the most outrageous mistake fares, like the eighty-eight cent round-trip coast to coast US Airways fare appear on Saturday mornings.

David: Right.

George: And because the fares are only updated once during the day, these mistakes are going to last a long time. They last a lot longer. Now why do they happen on Saturday morning? I mean, is it because the fare typers, the fare enterer people are like party people and they go out and hang one on on Friday night, and on Saturday morning, they're a little bit woozy? I know that happens to me sometimes.

David: No comment.

George: No comment. So maybe that's what happens. Maybe they make the mistake. But certainly the other aspect of this, David, is you own an airline and you want to screw your competitor and not let them be able to respond very quickly, you're going to do that when the fares are not updated very often, which is on a Saturday.

David: Right.

George: Because if you're an airline, you want to go and you want to surprise and shock your competitor. They can't respond very quickly on a Saturday when the fares are only updated once.

David: Right.

George: So that's when you do it. And that's why we see some of the most outrageous sales. Not just mistake fares, but also legitimate retaliatory fares. They used to call them FU fares.

David: Right. [laughs]

George: And I hope I'm not... You know how like airfare codes have like there will be K767 whatever, if you're going to...

David: Q fare and F fare.

George: Right. Exactly. Well sometimes they would end with -- maybe this is impossible, but sometimes they would put an FU at the end of the fare.

[laughter]

George: Again, that may be an urban legend, I don't know. Anyway, so Saturday mornings are a great time to look for deals. Those Virgin Atlantic sales to London? Saturday mornings. They come up on Saturday mornings. So I really encourage people to get up early on a Saturday morning and grab some good fares. And also during the weekdays, the morning, afternoon and evening.

David: Great. That's good to know. George, I just really want to say thank you for talking with us today. That's some fantastic information.

And for listeners, just to remind them, you can go to airfarewatchdog.com, it's all one word. And go there often. You'll find some really fantastic information, some great fares and money saving tips on getting a cheap flight. Thanks George.

[music]

George: Thank you very much David, and it's been great talking to you and great working with you, too.

Announcer: This podcast is a production of frommers.com. For more information on planning your trip or to hear about the latest travel news and deals, visit us on the web at www.frommers.com and be sure to email us at editor@frommermedia.com with any comments or suggestions.