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Thread: The fun theory

  1. #26
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    Re: The fun theory

    I liked the pilots in the simulator.

    "You might want to buckle in, I've had a few whiskies this morning."

    Then there was that guy doing barrel rolls. That was some good comedy.

  2. #27
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    Re: The fun theory

    Quote Originally Posted by Theophilus View Post
    I liked the pilots in the simulator.

    "You might want to buckle in, I've had a few whiskies this morning."

    Then there was that guy doing barrel rolls. That was some good comedy.
    It's damn funny. I also liked when bitchin Betty started up with Pull Up Pull Up and the interviewer asks the pilot, "what does that mean?" and he says, "It means I better pull my underwear up" and then he starts giving himself a wedgie. lmao Then the other pilot who was asked, "so how long do you train?" and he says, "well like 10 years and then you just get out there and do what you can." lol It's all very funny.

  3. #28
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    Re: The fun theory

    Quote Originally Posted by Seriously? View Post
    It's not all the mergers, hub changes, gates closing and openings driving me crazy... It's the spin our "partners in travel" like to put out. Have you seen the crap AA is putting out about Direct Connect? Ugh. AFA controlling NMH - not possible.
    YEAH!!! The little dino is back!!! Love that thing!! Sorry I didn't respond sooner, had another overnighter. Partners...hmmmm........screwers more like it. I was reading about that little hot mess when they won their court ruling back in December and their restraining order was lifted. Bye Bye Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. Travelocity's Daddy Sabre wasn't too happy with this. They don't wnat TA's using anything like Galileo and Worldspan et al and just to go directly with them. DAL dumped CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com and BookIt.com around the same time. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what other carriers jump on this. How has it been for you booking flights now?

  4. #29
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    Re: The fun theory

    Quote Originally Posted by A Life Aloft View Post
    YEAH!!! The little dino is back!!! Love that thing!! Sorry I didn't respond sooner, had another overnighter. Partners...hmmmm........screwers more like it. I was reading about that little hot mess when they won their court ruling back in December and their restraining order was lifted. Bye Bye Orbitz, Travelocity, etc. Travelocity's Daddy Sabre wasn't too happy with this. They don't wnat TA's using anything like Galileo and Worldspan et al and just to go directly with them. DAL dumped CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com and BookIt.com around the same time. It will be interesting to see how this plays out and what other carriers jump on this. How has it been for you booking flights now?
    No difference for the moment. But people who don't work on a GDS just don't get why this is a big deal. I think AA is counting on the fact that there is now quite a large percentage of home based TAs that don't and never have worked on them. for most who don't, they don't do a lot of air. But for those of us who do corporate and air/hotel/car is a large part of what we do... If we have to start booking everything on each supplier's website... Ugh. I can't even imagine the efficiency loss. Plus the fact that on the supplier website you see what they want you to see. Only.

    When I was on Apollo, they came out with a version that was essentially 'point and click'. I took one look at that and said NO WAY. This is basically the same. It's hard to explain...
    Don't take life too serious. You'll never escape it alive anyway.
    ~ Elbert Hubbard

  5. #30
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    Re: The fun theory

    Quote Originally Posted by Seriously? View Post
    No difference for the moment. But people who don't work on a GDS just don't get why this is a big deal. I think AA is counting on the fact that there is now quite a large percentage of home based TAs that don't and never have worked on them. for most who don't, they don't do a lot of air. But for those of us who do corporate and air/hotel/car is a large part of what we do... If we have to start booking everything on each supplier's website... Ugh. I can't even imagine the efficiency loss. Plus the fact that on the supplier website you see what they want you to see. Only.

    When I was on Apollo, they came out with a version that was essentially 'point and click'. I took one look at that and said NO WAY. This is basically the same. It's hard to explain...
    I think I understand this, but correct me where I may be off track. As I understand it, AA wanted Orbitz to stop displaying fares the way they had been and switch over to Direct Connect only. Orbitz looked at the AA system and told AA to basically pound sand. AA then just pulled their tickets from them. Then Expedia got peoed and stopped selling AA's tickets, I believe for the same reason. Then Sabre started de-preferencing, so to speak all of AA's tickets and sticking them on the bottom of the choices for customers. lmao You gotta love this crap....it's a little soap opera unto it's own.

    Betty took at a look at the Direct Connect for me today for funsies and she says in her professional opinion that "it sucks". lol I think what has been really crappy for some time is the way the the airlines don't disclose/display their zillion fees even to TAs in a comprehensive or realistic way. It's like they withhold the fee information and wait until the end of the reservation to disclose it, because they stand to make a lot more money because their tickets appear less expensive and they can pocket all the profits from the extra fees that they charge later. TA's want access to ALL the information upfront I would imagine and to be able to disclose it earlier so they can keep their customers from being surprised by these fees at the airport and being pissed off. As you well know better than anyone, the last two years have been all about the fricking fees and it's getting worse by the moment. Look for more of them this year. One carrier starts it and they all jump onboard. I read somewheres recently that DAL made, get this, over one billion (that's seriously a billion, not a million) just on overweight baggage fees alone last year. I was floored! Over a billion dollars on overweight fees alone!!! Bejebus! This is really interesting because I happened to be talking to a scale weight measuring guy (whatever their title is) guy from L.A. County not like two weeks ago at BUR at the Starbucks there and he says that DAL's scales are the worst and like 45% of them weight bags heavier by an average of 3 pounds and sometimes 4 or 5 pounds than they should. lmao It's cheaper for DAL to pay the puny fines for this and keep racking in the fees from the flying public. Can you believe that crap? lol He also said it's as bad in several counties here in So. Ca., so I can only assume it's the same at SFO, ORD, LGA, DWF and other major airports.

    I imagine that the worst thing for you now is the research and time that you have to spend will be much longer and that easy comparisons go right down the toilet with the Direct Connect system. The carriers are all bastards though. They want to have closed systems and hidden pricing/fees. It would be nice if DOT got off their collective asses to make some kind of ruling that would require any airline to quote an all-inclusive price for an airline ticket right up front and let customers/agents compare the true cost of travel across all the airlines. Like that's ever going to happen.

  6. #31
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    Re: The fun theory

    Although I gotta say, that between less service and more costs at the airlines, more overbooking of reserved flight seats, and the hassle of the TSA, it's really been a boon to Charter flying. lol

  7. #32
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    Re: The fun theory

    Quote Originally Posted by A Life Aloft View Post
    I think I understand this, but correct me where I may be off track. As I understand it, AA wanted Orbitz to stop displaying fares the way they had been and switch over to Direct Connect only. Orbitz looked at the AA system and told AA to basically pound sand. AA then just pulled their tickets from them. Then Expedia got peoed and stopped selling AA's tickets, I believe for the same reason. Then Sabre started de-preferencing, so to speak all of AA's tickets and sticking them on the bottom of the choices for customers. lmao You gotta love this crap....it's a little soap opera unto it's own.
    You have it essentially correct, although the "de-preferencing" is more complicated than what it sounds like. It depends on whether you are talking de-preferencing by schedule or fare. I'm not sure about how Sabre was doing it (I spent a long time on Apollo and now on Worldspan). When schedules are loaded into a GDS system, each system has a 'priority' ladder on how schedules will show. Part of the availability entry is time, so if I put in 7a, flights will show for that time (if I don't put in time, it reverts to current time of day). Next it will prioritize by non-stop/direct/connection. Then there are other things that come into play. In any case, any TA that knows their biz doesn't need to have the system prioritize these things for them. They will know immediately whether or not everything is showing in a market they know, or they can certainly figure it out. Personally, I tend to look at schedules by airline - I will specifically request in the availability call AA or DL or UA... So that way I see all their flights. I can also request by connection city, multiple airlines, airline alliance... lots of options for pulling schedules. So for a well-trained agent, AA's complaint is a paper tiger - as long as they are in the system, we can find them. But it certainly makes good press.

    They can also "de-preference" by fare display. Currently, the systems display base fares only and usually default low to high. There are currently actions going on against Travelport (Galileo/Apollo/Worldspan) by American stating that Travelport is loading fares including some fees as base fares, thus making their fares appear higher than other carriers and so show up farther down on the fare displays. Again, another paper tiger. We know this happens. Even before baggage/seat/etc fees came in, there were fuel surcharges and other fees. Sometimes they showed up as part of the base fare, sometimes not. It's fairly dramatic in the international market, where a fuel surcharge may be $150-200 each way. One carrier may come up as $400 roundtrip, another $550 in the same market. If I know (and it's easy enough to figure out if I don't) that the fuel surcharge is $75 each way, I know that's the difference. They both have the $400 RT fare, they just show the fees differently.

    Now, there may be something to their complaint, but it would be very technical...

    Betty took at a look at the Direct Connect for me today for funsies and she says in her professional opinion that "it sucks". lol I think what has been really crappy for some time is the way the the airlines don't disclose/display their zillion fees even to TAs in a comprehensive or realistic way. It's like they withhold the fee information and wait until the end of the reservation to disclose it, because they stand to make a lot more money because their tickets appear less expensive and they can pocket all the profits from the extra fees that they charge later. TA's want access to ALL the information upfront I would imagine and to be able to disclose it earlier so they can keep their customers from being surprised by these fees at the airport and being pissed off. As you well know better than anyone, the last two years have been all about the fricking fees and it's getting worse by the moment. Look for more of them this year. One carrier starts it and they all jump onboard. I read somewheres recently that DAL made, get this, over one billion (that's seriously a billion, not a million) just on overweight baggage fees alone last year. I was floored! Over a billion dollars on overweight fees alone!!! Bejebus! This is really interesting because I happened to be talking to a scale weight measuring guy (whatever their title is) guy from L.A. County not like two weeks ago at BUR at the Starbucks there and he says that DAL's scales are the worst and like 45% of them weight bags heavier by an average of 3 pounds and sometimes 4 or 5 pounds than they should. lmao It's cheaper for DAL to pay the puny fines for this and keep racking in the fees from the flying public. Can you believe that crap? lol He also said it's as bad in several counties here in So. Ca., so I can only assume it's the same at SFO, ORD, LGA, DWF and other major airports.

    I imagine that the worst thing for you now is the research and time that you have to spend will be much longer and that easy comparisons go right down the toilet with the Direct Connect system. The carriers are all bastards though. They want to have closed systems and hidden pricing/fees. It would be nice if DOT got off their collective asses to make some kind of ruling that would require any airline to quote an all-inclusive price for an airline ticket right up front and let customers/agents compare the true cost of travel across all the airlines. Like that's ever going to happen.
    I don't think anyone who hasn't worked on a GDS can even imagine what it's like having all that info in one place at your fingertips. When the airlines stopped paying commissions, many agencies simply stopped selling air and dropped the GDS. Anytime they need air now, they go to the airline website. So there are a lot of agents out there who are not being trained on a GDS and have no idea what they are missing. I have a colleague that (in private) says that anyone not trained and working on a GDS is not a 'real' agent, and I can't say I disagree. I can't even imagine trying to do my job without it - a website run by an airline can never match what I can do on the GDS. (And the airlines know this ;))
    Don't take life too serious. You'll never escape it alive anyway.
    ~ Elbert Hubbard

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