M
MoGambo
Here ya go General, you seem to like the newspaper articles. These free tickets should bring customer satisfaction to an all time high when most find out that their chosen locations and/or dates are near impossible to redeem. Will be interesting to see how many get burned by this "bait and switch" tactic.
These round-trip tickets pose challenges to bargain hunters
By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 2/1/2004
American Airlines and Delta Air Lines are blanketing Bostonians with promotions offering a free round trip anywhere they fly, but Peter Bronk of Newton reminds travelers to read the fine print closely before packing their bags.
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The promotions, designed to counter the arrival of jetBlue Airways here, offer a free round trip anywhere the airlines go to passengers who fly two round trips out of Logan International Airport by April 15 to either Florida or California.
With round-trip fares as low as $200 to Florida and $278 to California, the free trip can be had for as little as $400. Dream destinations abound. American flies to 250 cities in 40 countries. Delta offers 285 destinations in over 30 countries.
The full-page ads promoting the offer set Bronk's mind racing. He and his family were already flying on Delta to Fort Myers over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. Just one more similar trip and they'd all qualify for the free flight. Maybe, Bronk thought, it was time to visit his brother-in-law in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"It was almost too good to be true," he said.
But as Bronk began poring over the promotion's fine print and asking questions of a Delta customer service representative, he quickly learned it wasn't going to be that easy.
First, Delta doesn't fly to Kuala Lumpur. The airline does fly to Tokyo, so Bronk began researching what it would cost to fly free to Japan and then pay for a connecting flight to Malaysia.
Second, the promotion had a number of restrictions. To qualify, applicants had to be frequent-flier club members and take those two qualifying round trips by April 15. (Also, Delta shuttle flights did not qualify.) Applicants who qualified for the free flight would receive their award certificates four to eight weeks after April 15, or about the beginning of June. That would leave 10 months until April 15, 2005, when travel on the free flight had to be completed.
Ten months sounds like a long time, but eligible free seats under the promotion are not plentiful. The seats are the same ones frequent fliers are trying to reserve. As the ads state: "Inventory is limited and seats may not be available on all flights or in all markets." Reading between the fine print, that means the more exotic the destination, the more improbable there will be seats available.
Bronk said the Delta agent told him there were almost no seats available to Tokyo when he wanted to fly in early June, and returning was even more problematic.
With a wife and two children, finding travel dates to other destinations at other times of the year wasn't going to be easy, either. Travel under the promotion is prohibited around Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, as well as February and March school vacation periods next year.
Officials at American and Delta declined to itemize the availability of seats on any specific flight, but said travelers with flexible travel plans should be able to take advantage of the promotion.
"Customers have an entire year to cash in the award ticket, so we think there will be ample opportunity to find a flight, especially since the award ticket isn't limited to any particular destination," said Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for American.
Delta officials noted their SkyMiles members redeemed 2.8 million award travel tickets in 2002, a 17 percent increase over the previous year.
"Popular destinations during peak travel periods may be a greater challenge for our customers seeking to use free award travel," said Delta spokeswoman Katie Connell. "We advise our customers to plan well in advance and be flexibile in their travel plans."
Alan Krensky, president of Colpitts World Travel agency in Dedham, hailed the promotion as a great value. "There is a reasonable amount of inventory if you have a flexible schedule," he said.
A Delta official also tracked down some seats to Tokyo for Bronk and his family in early June, but cautioned that they may not last until June, when award certificates under the promotion get mailed out.
It didn't matter. By then, Bronk had returned from his trip to Florida to discover that the return leg of his flight was a low-cost "T" fare that didn't qualify for the promotion, so he was back to square one.
"They can do whatever they want, but I think it's sort of setting a trap for people," Bronk said. "Anybody that's counting on it, it's a real bait and switch."
Gareth Edmondson-Jones, vice president for corporate communications at jetBlue, said he had no way of knowing whether the American and Delta promotions had cut into his airline's sales, which he characterized as strong. Like Bronk, he advised travelers to read the fine print of any promotion.
"If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true," Edmondson-Jones said.
These round-trip tickets pose challenges to bargain hunters
By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 2/1/2004
American Airlines and Delta Air Lines are blanketing Bostonians with promotions offering a free round trip anywhere they fly, but Peter Bronk of Newton reminds travelers to read the fine print closely before packing their bags.
ADVERTISEMENT
The promotions, designed to counter the arrival of jetBlue Airways here, offer a free round trip anywhere the airlines go to passengers who fly two round trips out of Logan International Airport by April 15 to either Florida or California.
With round-trip fares as low as $200 to Florida and $278 to California, the free trip can be had for as little as $400. Dream destinations abound. American flies to 250 cities in 40 countries. Delta offers 285 destinations in over 30 countries.
The full-page ads promoting the offer set Bronk's mind racing. He and his family were already flying on Delta to Fort Myers over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. Just one more similar trip and they'd all qualify for the free flight. Maybe, Bronk thought, it was time to visit his brother-in-law in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"It was almost too good to be true," he said.
But as Bronk began poring over the promotion's fine print and asking questions of a Delta customer service representative, he quickly learned it wasn't going to be that easy.
First, Delta doesn't fly to Kuala Lumpur. The airline does fly to Tokyo, so Bronk began researching what it would cost to fly free to Japan and then pay for a connecting flight to Malaysia.
Second, the promotion had a number of restrictions. To qualify, applicants had to be frequent-flier club members and take those two qualifying round trips by April 15. (Also, Delta shuttle flights did not qualify.) Applicants who qualified for the free flight would receive their award certificates four to eight weeks after April 15, or about the beginning of June. That would leave 10 months until April 15, 2005, when travel on the free flight had to be completed.
Ten months sounds like a long time, but eligible free seats under the promotion are not plentiful. The seats are the same ones frequent fliers are trying to reserve. As the ads state: "Inventory is limited and seats may not be available on all flights or in all markets." Reading between the fine print, that means the more exotic the destination, the more improbable there will be seats available.
Bronk said the Delta agent told him there were almost no seats available to Tokyo when he wanted to fly in early June, and returning was even more problematic.
With a wife and two children, finding travel dates to other destinations at other times of the year wasn't going to be easy, either. Travel under the promotion is prohibited around Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's, as well as February and March school vacation periods next year.
Officials at American and Delta declined to itemize the availability of seats on any specific flight, but said travelers with flexible travel plans should be able to take advantage of the promotion.
"Customers have an entire year to cash in the award ticket, so we think there will be ample opportunity to find a flight, especially since the award ticket isn't limited to any particular destination," said Andrea Rader, a spokeswoman for American.
Delta officials noted their SkyMiles members redeemed 2.8 million award travel tickets in 2002, a 17 percent increase over the previous year.
"Popular destinations during peak travel periods may be a greater challenge for our customers seeking to use free award travel," said Delta spokeswoman Katie Connell. "We advise our customers to plan well in advance and be flexibile in their travel plans."
Alan Krensky, president of Colpitts World Travel agency in Dedham, hailed the promotion as a great value. "There is a reasonable amount of inventory if you have a flexible schedule," he said.
A Delta official also tracked down some seats to Tokyo for Bronk and his family in early June, but cautioned that they may not last until June, when award certificates under the promotion get mailed out.
It didn't matter. By then, Bronk had returned from his trip to Florida to discover that the return leg of his flight was a low-cost "T" fare that didn't qualify for the promotion, so he was back to square one.
"They can do whatever they want, but I think it's sort of setting a trap for people," Bronk said. "Anybody that's counting on it, it's a real bait and switch."
Gareth Edmondson-Jones, vice president for corporate communications at jetBlue, said he had no way of knowing whether the American and Delta promotions had cut into his airline's sales, which he characterized as strong. Like Bronk, he advised travelers to read the fine print of any promotion.
"If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true," Edmondson-Jones said.
