18 September 2008

Air Canada: Money for Nothing and 2nd Bag for Free

The Canadians are all aglow as their national airline - Air Canada - has responded to lower fuel costs by eliminating the second bag fee AND incorporating the fuel surcharge into the base fare.

Alleluja - thanks to Professor John for the tip and Professor Jared for actually blogging this first.

But wait a second... this is not a freebie. Actually it is in SOME cases a stealth fare increase. We checked a few city pairs and found that the previous price was actually INCREASED as a result of this new lowering of fees... (Isn't cached availability and pricing a wonderful thing!)

Tell me you didn't really believe that an airline would actually GIVE back money.

So Air Canada gets today's Sultan of Swing award for bravely changing the game. Bravo chaps. Being the somewhat cynical person that I am - I suspect that there are many advantages to this for Air Canada and I suspect that more than one legislative body wanted to look into this. Remember that the European Community demands transparency for full costs of a ticket from the end of this year. Finally as Air Canada has a very convoluted pricing system, simplifying it is good. If you would like to see just how complex - compare on the respective airlines websites a Vancouver-Toronto flight display on AC compares to a display for Southwest from Houston to Los Angeles.

Now if we could only do something about free chicks...

(This is a joke and so please don't flame me for making a sexist remark, it is a quote from the Dire Straits song. No I am not putting lipstick on ANY pigs or any other animal either)

Cheers

Timothy

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