Fed Ex Airlines

WAAYYY back in May, 2007 - FMV had this thought:

FMV considers [the idea of] carriers partnering with the baggage shippers to provide more customer options and deflect complaints about baggage fees.

Well - it's come true courtesy of United, who introduces their "Door-to-Door Baggage" Program:

Stop lugging your luggage around. Instead, send it ahead with Door-to-Door Baggage. Purchase this service at united.com, and FedEx will pick up your baggage from your home or office and ship it directly to your destination. Or if you prefer, you can drop off your baggage at a FedEx Office location or any other FedEx authorized shipping center.

The unique feature about this program is that United has tied FedEx into their passengers' itineraries. Once you sign in to your United.com account and press the "Door to Door Baggage" link - the site automatically starts the FedEx process using the dates and cities of your itinerary.

The kicker is the boastful tagline:

United is the first airline to save you time and money with this simple and convenient service.

Save you money?!! How much do they charge for this?? Starting at $149 !! (vs. $15 for a first bag fee??). Hey, thanks for the money savings United !

Hence, this program isn't really about cash savings. It's about time savings. This is for the guy that kind of wanted to send his golf clubs ahead to avoid the hassle of checked bags. He also didn't trust the airine not to lose his clubs. The same logic could hold for business people who don't want to shlep business materials and simply say "eh, I'll just ship it and expense it".

However, the real winner here is FedEx, who picks up some highly qualified leads over its competitors. If UA can skim some of that value, and spin it as a positive for their customers, good for them. It's time to fly.

Poke in the Eye (4 Travel)

We were at the Eye 4 Travel North American Conference – that now combines 3 conferences into one: Distribution / Ancillary Revenue / Revenue Management. Man has this conference really taken a hit. Fairly brutal in terms of content (weak), speakers (boring) and attendance (low), and there is only ONE thing that saves it from being a complete waste:

VEGAS BABY !!

By our definition – any trip to Vegas is time well spent. And since the craps tables were kind to us this year, we’d probably categorize this as a great trip overall – even if the conference was pretty much a waste.

Basically – the morning has only two items of note, both from Frontier Airlines:

Jim Young – VP Distribution had some actual numbers regarding:

1) Travel insurance. Finally !! It looks like only 0.5% of travelers buy insurance if it outside the booking path, and about 5% if the option to purchase travel insurance in within the booking path.

Finally – some real hard numbers that make sense. 1 in 20 buy insurance – those are numbers we can believe in.

2) Also – Frontier says that 50% of travellers check in a first bag, and 5% check in a second bag (which is down from 11% since they instituted a fee).

Young was asked, if oil continues to go down – will the baggage fees stay? While noting that carriers always have to keep an eye on competition, he believes fees are here to stay now that they are introduced to the market, are big money for airlines, and seem to be accepted as a cost of doing travelling now. Can't beat honesty ! We concur. No one pulls a legit revenue stream (except maybe Blockbuster late fees).

CWT and UA Make Nice Nice

This is mostly to close up an ealier post and let everyone know that CWT and United has once again agreed to be friends. From the Travel Weekly (which is updated daily):

"Carlson Wagonlit Travel and United Airlines have come to terms on a preferred-supplier agreement...CWT spokeswoman Shannon Coughlin said no further comments or deails would be released...."


Sheesh - they made their spats so public, but then take their make up private. How's a blog supposed to make a living??