Travel Dimensions

03/09/2022

09/22/2021

Avoid these critical mistakes when shopping for airfare!

The next time you're on an airplane, think about how much your ticket cost and then imagine how much the person next to you paid. The prices might be wildly different. That's because airfares are uniquely volatile and finding good prices has become an art form in and of itself. Airfare is unlike anything else we buy, it is uniquely priced. It doesn't behave like other things, and as a result we face uncertainty when buying.

You may buy a round-trip flight for $500, only to see the same seats going for $250 the next day. Or, you hold off on buying that $500 flight because you hope the price goes down, and end up watching it climb up to $750 the next day.

The reason is because often times people avoid making purchases against their better judgment, or allow irrational thoughts to get the better of them. Here are a few psychological and mental biases that prey on consumers looking for airfare:

DON'T PROCRASTINATE OR ENGAGE IN WISHFUL THINKING

One of the worst things you can do while searching for airfare is waiting until the last minute to purchase your seats, hoping that prices will drop because this, along with tactics like clearing your cookies or searching in a private browser tab is wishful thinking. Waiting until the last minute, in the hopes there will be a sale, is a thing of the past and has not existed for a long time, as is the bygone era of cheap last minute ‘standby flights.’ Waiting is a recipe for disaster for travel reservations.

It’s ideal to search during what is called the "Goldilocks window," which for domestic flights, is usually about three months ahead of your travel dates but not later than one month ahead of your departure time. For international flights, it's six months ahead of time and no later than 2 months ahead of departure.

Most airfares are posted about 330 days ahead of travel dates, however, if you book your flights that far in advance, those prices may not end up being the best fares. You also should consider purchasing travel insurance, in that scenario, because anything can happen in that long a period of time that could affect your trip.

DON'T TRY TO COMPARE TO WHAT YOU PAID IN THE PAST

Many travelers base their purchasing decisions on the price they paid for their last trip. Say, for example, that you flew round trip to Italy in 2016 for $1,000. Now, you want to return and you're seeing comparable fares that cost $1,100. "You might think, 'OK, that's about what I paid last time, that's a pretty good price.' That thinking is not accurate at all. Keep in mind, airfares of the past have no influence on the current fare situation, NONE AT ALL.

Airfares are determined by several factors such as, the time of year (shoulder/peak/off season), dates that include a holiday (including valentines day/ mother’s day/halloween, etc), special events occurring at your destination (concerts/shows/festivals, etc). Additionally, specific flight situations affect airfares significantly and can cause fare changes hourly, daily & weekly depending on the demand for those flights. These include departure/arrival times (AM/PM/red eye), direct & non-stop flights vs flights with connections/layovers, length of the trip (3 days/1 week/1 month/6 months). However, the biggest factor that affects airfares, in general, is the ‘advance purchase rule’, the sooner, the better!! SAFE TRAVELS!!!

05/04/2021

As summer approaches, the good signs for travel keep rolling in: The CDC says air travel is safe for fully vaccinated passengers; the TSA screened more than 1 million fliers for all except four days in March, and warm-weather U.S. destinations like Florida and Hawaii are seeing a spike in spring and summer bookings.

Such developments point to a promising resurgence for aviation, an industry that’s still grappling with losses of $118 billion during 2020. But along with the optimism and excitement among many travelers eager to hop on a plane, some also are wondering: What does the future hold for ticket prices?

In the short term, there’s good news on the horizon. According to data from the International Air Transport Association, average airline ticket prices continue to reflect a 20 percent drop compared to before the crisis. And although prices over the summer might trend upward slightly, industry experts say consumers should be able to take advantage of lower prices for a while to come.

Demand levels, at the moment, are lower than they used to be prior to the pandemic, which means that eventually drives the [ticket] costs lower. Most likely, until the end of 2021, we’ll see much lower ticket prices than what we used to have in 2019, for instance.

For leisure travelers, that trend means both good news in the near future and, further down the road, not-quite-so-good news. On the plus side, airlines have had to abandon their traditional strategy of price discrimination as a way to cover their costs and generate revenue - identifying passengers willing to pay higher fares and charge them more than those willing to pay only low fares. In the past, one way airlines have done that is by targeting the business sector, whose travelers tend to finalize plans closer to their travel date than leisure travelers, often referred to in industry parlance as “price-sensitive,” who plan further ahead.

Domestic travel for summer 2021 is expected to be very high, with as much as 72% of Americans planning to travel. International travel will be limited due to covid case spikes in several countries, so domestic flights will be in demand and should be booked as far in advance as possible to ensure availability and the best possible fares.

03/21/2021

Airlines offered so much good news last week that it was hard to know how happy to be.

Delta, United, and Alaska all made noises about soon breaking even. Gary Kelly, Southwest's CEO chirped that this "feels like the beginning of the end." (of the downside)

So along came American Airlines to helpfully prepare customers for what the end might really look like. It offered a glimpse at all the tech innovations it's bringing to the passenger experience.

Some of them may seem a little chilling, even if the intention -- officially -- is to make passengers feel good.

THIS IS THE NEW NORMAL FOLKS. A normal where you go to the airport and are encouraged to touch nothing at all.

Instead, your face is your passport to everything but another country. You check in by staring into a camera. You drop your bag off by staring into another camera.

It's surely the most glorious experience for all those who have obsessively taken selfies since toddlerhood.

"Everything you saw at our airport today didn't exist a year ago," said Julie Rath, American's VP of customer experience.

Oh, I don't know about that. Almost two years ago, I was at Minneapolis Airport watching Delta's international passengers being boarded via facial recognition. This was supposed to be optional. It didn't seem very optional at all.

American, too, has been testing the new technology on some of its international flights. Easy to do, when they're not exactly full. The intention now, though, is to install these systems for all domestic flights.

Some might mutter that it's interesting how disasters often lead to greater intrusions. And it's not as if facial recognition has an exemplary reputation thus far.

Yet here was Rath's answer on being asked if the future of air travel is your smart phone and your face: "In the future, you may not even need your phone. Just literally facial recognition can get you through the airport."

I can imagine some people will just literally feel uncomfortable about that.

It's all very well instituting COVID-19-inspired innovations such as touchless payment on board or QR codes that allow you to have a video chat with a customer service robot -- I'm sorry, I mean a real, live customer service person.

But when your face is your whole, your identity is surely disseminated even further and wider than it is now.

Ah, says, American. Please don't worry about that. All the data is completely disappeared from its systems within 24 hours.

"Oh, that's OK then," say customers who have lived a while.

Here is where your desperation to fly again meets your concerns about privacy. Do you even stop to think about any privacy risks if you can finally -- and, perhaps, safely -- get on a plane and disappear for a little while?

Well, when you've already had your whole body being intimately photographed by the X-Ray machine every time you fly, why worry about whether your face might be floating in some distant ether?

This is the future. You don't need to embrace it. It's far too busy embracing you, and never letting go.