Kev3188
Veteran
ART's never going to know what hit them!
$2 Coach Fares And $39 In First (Merged topics)
- Thread starter longing4piedmont
- Start date
Kev3188 said:
Agreed! The loads in ART are going to go SKY HIGH!. I would have booked a few except for the fact that I have no interest in going to ART and there were no GSO-??? fares there. Had there been a few of those, I would have jumped on that in a second., especially to PIT and LAX
I got home too late to get in on the action. I was checking out a couple nice weekend trips to New England for later in the year (for $2 who could beat it?) but they must have zeroed out everything by the time I checked it out because there was nothing left.
Isnt there a "Do you really want to sell this fare for $2.00?" button before they load them? (Yes)(No). Maybe we need to invest in one.
Isnt there a "Do you really want to sell this fare for $2.00?" button before they load them? (Yes)(No). Maybe we need to invest in one.
Kev3188 said:
Really, it is such a small station and all flights are 19 seaters. Good news is, if you booked in the summer there are so many weight restrictions ( ART is near Ft. Drum, all you need are a few soldiers and their duffle bags on the flights) - that you could also end up with a RTFC.
How about that- a 30 fare and a RTFC! LOL
Good, I am glad you stuck to the CUS part of FFOCUS. Next time I get on your case for something, feel free to remind me of that.PineyBob said:
Well, my personal opinion is that as long as the base fare is above 0.00 (i.e, something was actually paid for travel and not just taxes), then the airline should honor it. The airline can't expect their customers to know which fares are 'for real' and which aren't. But I am sure management doesn't like the guys who buy mistakes like this in bulk to beef up their mileage accounts.
$2 F fares? I think you would have seen the same feeding frenzy.
like you saw from
some of your FFOCUS colleagues.jimcfs said:
(Hey I've got no problem if someone sees these and turns them into a mileage run. Be my guest. But don't spout off about how you are committed to US Airways' success. GMAFB)
I don't think US has outsourced their domestic, public fare pricing. At least not to my knowledge. I'm pretty sure this could be placed squarely on someone who works at CCY.awayfrmitall said:
US and most other airlines don't have the kind of cash laying around to invest into a more robust, safe, secure fare filing application. There is a 'Do you really want to sell this fare for $2.00?' button, it is more of the form of 'Are you sure you want to put these fares under XX.XX out there?' But the question can be addressed to you in multiple ways. You can have it error out fares under a certain dollar amount, or it can just give you a warning when fares are under a certain dollar amount. In this case, whoever did the fares asked that the system give a warning for fares under X dollar amount, but then didn't bother to look and see if there were any warnings. :down: If they had looked, it would have been caught.tadjr said:Isnt there a "Do you really want to sell this fare for $2.00?" button before they load them? (Yes)(No). Maybe we need to invest in one.
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I had been expecting more of these things to happen to US (like their $100 SEA-FCO fare recently) since they aren't in the position to hire and retain talented people in those areas of the company these days. Sadly, it happened, but honestly they can be a lot worse. Hopefully this incident will put people on their toes in CCY so they are extra careful, but they might not have the manpower.
Of course the other issue is that if you have a simpler, rational fare structure that needs less maintenance, you aren't fiddling with your fares as much and thus have fewer opportunities for screwups like this.
ClueByFour
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 3,566
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avek00 said:
The list of cities includes not just LEB and ART, but places like HHH. Gonna stop flying to Hilton Head in the summer?
That said, both ART and LEB appear to be EAS cities, which might make the suspension of service quite problematic.
Then you have the PR aspects of doing so. Not a good move.
Actually, it'd only require cancelling the existing flight in the system, and not enabling an auto-reprotect onto the "new" flight loaded into the schedule. Devious, yes, but offering refunds is almost certainly cheaper than actually honoring these tickets at a substantial loss.
ClueByFour
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 3,566
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avek00 said:
And inviting class action suits for breach of contract. Willfully, no less.
"Yes, your honor, we reprotected 'some' of the people on the flight." Dunno what you are taking law school wise, but that's not a course of action you want to try to defend (at least what you are suggesting."
Further, US would then run afoul of it's own customer commitment (by not providing alternate transportation) and their filed 120.20 docs with the DOT (yes, they still have one, and yes, that action would cost them about $400/ticket the way it currently reads).
Oh, on a final note: at least on the one ticket that I bought, it's fully changeable. I'd imagine that most of the F fares purchased are also changeable, so as long as there is service to ART, LEB, HHH, JST, AVL, etc--if they "forget" to protect me, I'll keep "moving dates." It's an arms race.
The solution is to actually build in safeguards to keep things like this from happening. I may look up which firm signed on US SarBox compliance and find out what crack they were smoking, since it's obvious that there is a massive gap somewhere in US business process/IT controls.
RowUnderDCA
Veteran
- Oct 6, 2002
- 2,123
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you sound proud of yourself
awayfrmitall
Member
- Jan 27, 2004
- 79
- 0
avek00 said:
I didn't buy a ticket but if I did it would have been SEA-PIT-ART. Let's say I bought the ticket and US cancelled service to ART. Could a passenger make them honor the SEA-PIT portion of the ticket so that they could at least get close then rent a car to where they need to go?
Just a senario...
ringmaruf
Veteran
You know what I think really sucks about this?
Not that tons and tons of people bought tickets in bad-faith, occupying perhaps thousands of seats and depriving an airline of thousands or even millions of dollars it desperately needs. Money that might help keep this airline afloat and providing jobs for its tens of thousands of hard-working employees. Oh, that sucks alright. But I wouldn't feel nearly as bad if US had accidentally sold $2 CLT-LAX fares, or $39 PHL-FCO Envoy fares.
Instead, the vast majority of these fares seem to start or stop in LEB or ART. Take ART, for example. Three airports--ART, MSS, OGS--for three cities in upstate New York--Watertown, Massena, Ogdensburg--have to share a whopping 57 seats per day into Pittsburgh for all of their air service. With the thousands of tickets apparently sold after this error, people with *real* business in those cities might find that all of the flights are sold out. More likely, residents of those cities will find that, at the very least, all of the cheap fare buckets will be gone, and they will be faced by the prospect of mortgaging the house to buy a full Y-fare, or being deprived of their community's only air service. Now that sucks.
Something to think about for all the people that bought 15 ART-SEA roundtrips to make Chairman's Preferred for $300.
Not that tons and tons of people bought tickets in bad-faith, occupying perhaps thousands of seats and depriving an airline of thousands or even millions of dollars it desperately needs. Money that might help keep this airline afloat and providing jobs for its tens of thousands of hard-working employees. Oh, that sucks alright. But I wouldn't feel nearly as bad if US had accidentally sold $2 CLT-LAX fares, or $39 PHL-FCO Envoy fares.
Instead, the vast majority of these fares seem to start or stop in LEB or ART. Take ART, for example. Three airports--ART, MSS, OGS--for three cities in upstate New York--Watertown, Massena, Ogdensburg--have to share a whopping 57 seats per day into Pittsburgh for all of their air service. With the thousands of tickets apparently sold after this error, people with *real* business in those cities might find that all of the flights are sold out. More likely, residents of those cities will find that, at the very least, all of the cheap fare buckets will be gone, and they will be faced by the prospect of mortgaging the house to buy a full Y-fare, or being deprived of their community's only air service. Now that sucks.
Something to think about for all the people that bought 15 ART-SEA roundtrips to make Chairman's Preferred for $300.
ClueByFour said:
You're probably right, but guess what? It would take YEARS before the suit came to trial, assuming it ever did. Assuming the company remains a going concern, the benefit of not losing millions in revenue while severely pressed for cash (not only from honoring those tickets, but also from turning away folks who would have otherwise used the commuter services at more normal fares) probably outweighs the cost of spending a few million several years down the line when finances will presumably be much better.
ClueByFour
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
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RowUnderDCA said:
Well, AVL is sort of my home airport, so I don't think buying a single trip was overkill.
I am of the opinion that such an event could not have happened to a better group of folks (CCY).
Edited to add: it appears that a bunch of these were booked as far as one of the US hubs in F, on United metal. That has to cost real money to someone....
