Airfares, classes, tickets and such

It is a well known fact that the world's airlines, and especially the good(??) old big ones, are not doing to well these days. It is said that they have too much overhead, too many people doing too much stuff that really is just... overhead.

As in any capitalistic society the salesman will always try to get the customer to pay as much as possible for the goods. The old-timers of the air have chosen to do this by creating an obscure set of different sorts of classes on their flights. I have been told that on one single flight you might have as many as 25+ different price categories, all according to who you are and what you do.

Sure. Every once in a while you might even get a bargain out of it, but most of the time it is just a burden. Like today. I tried to order two tickets from SAS. One should think that two tickets, all within Europe, should be a breeze to order over the telephone...

Nope. It took me some 30 minutes on the phone, and then in the end I had only one of the two tickets I needed. It should at this time be noted that there were some challenges here, as I needed two different tickets, one from Trondheim (TRD) to Riga (RIX) and another one from Stavanger (SVG) to Riga (RIX). The return dates did not match either.

But anyway. The very helpful (and I mean that, she was very helpful and friendly) travel consultant on the SAS Direct Hotline started by trying to find me a ticket from TRD to RIX. It was not easy. There are multiple possibilities, but in the end the ticket got too expensive, as all the different possibilities for cheap tickets were already fully booked.

At this time we gave up on me, and tried to book the SVG-RIX flight. It came out all easy. Not that the prices were as initially hoped for. Atleast I managed to pay the ticket with a customer account I use, which means that I will not see the bill - which is good as I am not going to pay anyway. The end price was slightly steep; NOK 5300, which could take you from SVG to almost anywhere in the US if desired. A comparison; the distance Oslo to NYC is 5927km (3684 mi), whereas the distance Oslo to Riga is 849km (528mi). Value for money anyone?

Or, actually, the problem was only between Oslo (OSL) and Copenhagen (CPH), but flying through SVG or Bergen (BGO) instead was not possible. (There were rules against that - or at least pricing schemes making it totally impossible.) And so we tried all possible and impossible routes, using all the different classes of the alphabet; M, Y, Q, Weekend, Campaign, Pleasure Saver and Pleasure Basic, but no... prices came no cheaper than NOK 5600 (USD 750).

Parallel to talking on the phone I used the SAS internet booking system at www.scandinavian.net, which then naturally gave me a totally different set of prices. In fact as cheap as NOK 4400. I could either choose a Youth Fare which has nice features as changeability and so on, or a Campaign Fare which doesn't. As I am under 25 I went with the first one. At this point the lady in SAS gave up. She could not match the prices.

Ok. I can accept ordering on the Internet. Infact I prefer to do it online (faster, much less hassle), but hey... one small problem... if I choose any discounted fare at all you cannot pay with the customer account. Because any organisation that might want to use a customer account should according to the rules of SAS pay the business fare (surprise surprise, volunteer organisations generally don't fly business), atleast if ordering online (which would have saved SAS money, instead I talked to a travel consultant for 30 minutes) - through the phone you can pay whichever way... So there I was, resigning after 30 mintes on the phone, paying my ticket with my own credit card...

What a waste. I wonder when SAS will wake up and actually simplify their system, or atleast let their customers order their tickets online without all the inconveniences imposed by their out-of-date pricing scheme.

Posted by ludvig at September 5, 2002 12:13 PM | TrackBack