United discount fare to Vietnam & Hong Kong

Photo by Chuck Kuhn
"United Airlines is providing promotional summer fares for flights between Vietnam and the US, as well as to Hong Kong.

United Airlines offers low fares for Hong Kong, US from HCM City

Northwest Airlines opens route to Vietnam

United Airlines starts to sell tickets for new direct service

Passengers at the United Airlines booking office in HCM City.
The discounted fares for Los Angeles and San Francisco start at US$770, with travel until June 14.

The American carrier is selling a round trip between Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong starting at US$138, with travel from April 1 till June 10 this year.

The summer promotion is applied for max stay of four days, and the booking class is L.

United’s regular fares for a round trip between HCM City and Hong Kong are also available, starting at US$188.

The airline operates daily direct flights between Vietnam and the US via Hong Kong. The service was launched in December 2004, making United the first American carrier to fly to Vietnam since 1975.

In related news, Northwest Airlines, a wholly subsidiary of American carrier Delta Air Lines, will discontinue flights to HCM City via Tokyo, effective from March 27, 2010.

Delta became the second US airline to fly to HCM City in June 2009, five years after United. Once Delta stops its service, United will be again the only American carrier flying to Vietnam.

Till the end of 2009, United had transported more than 700,000 passengers in the route. The carrier said it had recorded average yearly growth of 20% in passenger traffic to Vietnam over the past five years."

United Will Change Award Prices (but Only Slightly)

United Will Change Award Prices (but Only Slightly): "Let's begin with the notice of upcoming award changes in United's own words:

On April 27, 2010, we'll be making minor changes to the chart to accommodate new regions of service and bring some of our mileage requirements in line with our competition. If you book your award ticket on or after April 27, 2010, the information on the new chart will apply.

While the pronouncement appears benign, there's a long history of airlines' 'minor changes' turning out to be anything but. Here, however, the minor changes are rightly so-called.
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When comparing the current and new award charts, the most obvious change is the addition of two new award-travel regions. Where the current scheme has 14 regions, the new one will have 16: South America will be divided into Northern and Southern sub-regions; and Africa will be split into Northern Africa and Central and Southern Africa.

More important are the pricing adjustments, which turn out to be few, relatively minor, and in some cases, changes for the better. Here's a summary:

* The new Northern South America levels (35,000, 70,000, and 90,000 miles for coach, business, and first class) are lower than the current South America levels (55,000, 100,000, and 135,000 miles, respectively).
* Award travel to Southern South America will be at the current South America levels, so there's no change there.
* Similarly, the new Northern Africa award prices are lower than the current Africa prices—75,000, 115,000, and 145,000 miles for coach, business, and first class, versus 80,000, 120,000, and 160,000 currently.
* Central and Southern Africa prices rise slightly for coach and business, to 90,000 and 125,000 miles, but remain the same for first class at 160,000 miles.
* Round-trip, business-class flights between North America and Japan will increase by 5,000 miles from 120,000 to 125,000 miles.
* Round-trip, business-class flights between Hawaii and North Asia will increase from 70,000 to 80,000 miles.
* And a round-trip coach flight between the Caribbean and Central America will rise from 30,000 to 35,000 miles.

What's behind the changes?

A quick comparison with Continental's award chart suggests that United is looking to minimize disconnects with that carrier's award pricing, now that Continental and United are partners in the Star Alliance and rumored to be eventual merger partners. (Continental's award chart already splits Africa and South America into sub-regions.) Another likely factor in the realignment: the impending addition of Brazil's TAM Airlines to the Star group of airlines.

On balance, the changes are hardly onerous, and United has given Mileage Plus members fair warning of their upcoming implementation. Good. But the airline might have improved the customer experience by detailing the changes route by route, as I have done above.

That way, program members would know which routes will be affected, and which flights to book at the current price to save miles over the new prices.

And they'd be assured that, in this case at least, 'minor changes' are just that."

6,000 New Ways to Redeem Your Delta Frequent Flyer Miles

Earning frequent flyer miles is easy. The challenge is to redeem them, conveniently and for good value.

The airlines have been slow to address that need, preferring to limit frequent flyer awards to free flights. That way, they're limiting the cost of most awards to the real cost of flying one more passenger in a seat that would have been empty anyway.

The upside to that approach is that the airlines can give away a ticket with a perceived value of $400 that only costs them an extra bag of pretzels, a can of Coke, and marginally more jet fuel.

That makes the programs financially viable for the airlines, and potentially highly rewarding for travelers. It's a win-win. Or can be.

But there's a downside to the reliance on unsold seats as rewards: Award seats are limited at best, and not available at all on some flights.

Nevertheless, the airlines continue promoting the programs as though 25,000 miles practically guaranteed a free ticket. Members of the airlines' programs are confronted with a very different reality when they go to cash in their miles.

That disconnect—between program members' expectations and actual award flight availability—has gone a long way toward eroding consumers' trust and engagement in airline loyalty programs.

Airline executives are aware of the problem, and the toll it can take on their programs' health and vitality. In connection with United's recent introduction of one-way awards and "Miles and Money"—both initiatives designed to make redemption easier—Robert Sahadevan, Vice President of United's Mileage Plus program, acknowledged that award availability was a pressing issue, and vowed that "currency has to be rewarding." "We get it," he promised.

Proving, perhaps, that the world's largest airline gets it too, Delta has rolled out the SkyMiles Marketplace—an online portal where SkyMiles members can redeem their miles, or a combination of miles and cash, for more than 6,000 items, including hotel rooms, car rentals, consumer electronics, clothing, jewelry, and so on.

(For the record, the SkyMiles Marketplace is a Delta-branded version of the American Express LoyaltyEdge award portal. So the look and content will be familiar to members of the American Express Membership Rewards program.)

With the new awards marketplace, Delta has made it simple and convenient for SkyMiles members to use their miles for a wide range of travel and non-travel goods and services. The question, though, is whether the SkyMiles Marketplace delivers good value. To find out, I priced a random sampling of awards, comparing the price in miles with the dollar price charged by mainstream Internet retailers.

A Tumi Alpha FXT Hanging Travel Kit, for example, can be had for 24,300 Delta miles through the SkyMiles Marketplace, or purchased from eBags for $95. That means you're getting 0.4 cents (four-tenths of a cent) for every mile redeemed.

A TomTom XL 340S GPS receiver costs 48,800 Delta miles, or $149.99 at RadioShack, for a value of 0.3 cents each.

A Nike Golf I.C. Series 20-15 Putter is priced at 30,000 Delta miles, or $89.95 on Golfballs.com, again yielding a 0.3 cent per-mile value.

And a Saturday night stay, March 13, at the San Francisco Hilton costs 15,632 miles through the Marketplace, or $127.20 if booked on Hilton.com. That's the best value of the bunch, at 0.8 cents per mile.

As a point of comparison, redeeming 25,000 miles for a Delta ticket with a market value of $400 yields a per-mile value of 1.6 cents each, twice the value of the hotel night, four times the value of miles redeemed for the Tumi bag, and more than five times the value of miles redeemed for the navigation unit or golf club.

Or, looked at from another angle, does it make sense to cash in 24,300 miles for a toiletry bag when a cross-country ticket can be had for just 700 more miles?

To me, personally, the answer is a resounding No. But I'm inclined to do the math, and to place a higher priority on value than on convenience and flexibility.

Your mileage may vary.

United move could cost consumers $2 billion-16 July, 2009

United Airlines’ move to force some agents to pay credit-card fees when their customers buy tickets with plastic is certainly a “trial balloon” but it raises a question for agents and consumers: will it catch on with other carriers?

“Given the usual herd mentality in the industry starting way back when commissions were reduced and carrying forward to today's myriad of baggage, mileage redemption and call center fees, it would not be surprising to see this play out in a broader way,” says PhoCusWright Connect.

Business travelers may be the ultimate losers in the latest scuffle between airlines and travel agents over credit card fees, writes David Grossman in USA Today.

Some travel agents and corporate travel managers believe this is only the beginning. "It is going to be a fee that will be passed on to all travel agencies eventually," said Randy Limbacher, president of Canyon Creek Travel American Express.

Michelle De Costa, the global travel manager for Sapient Corporation, recalled that when Delta Air Lines became the first carrier to cut commissioners, others immediately followed.

"They are going to do it with some select agencies that probably don't sell a lot of United and just see what the marketplace will bear,” he said.

If all airlines adopt this policy in the U.S. it could represent a cost shift in excess of $2 billion from airlines to travel agencies, according to Paul Ruden, senior vice president for legal and industry affairs for the American Society of Travel Agents.

Agents are upset about the move and vehemently complain it is an effort to shift business costs onto their backs.

United, the nation’s third largest airline, sent notices to some travel agents saying that as of July 20, they must pay the credit-card fee when leisure or corporate customers buy tickets with credit cards.

It’s no surprise that United wants to cut costs since it lost $382 million in this year’s first quarter. Some airline analysts rank it behind only US Airways for the greatest risk of bankruptcy.
The fee proposal has drawn opposition from the American Society of Travel Agents and the Business Travel Coalition, whose leaders say they will ask federal and state officials to investigate for possible collusion if other airlines follow United’s lead.

Agent Chris Russo said United’s goal might be to shift more ticket sales to its own Web site -- obviously a long-standing airline goal.

“We look at this as a very large threat to our ability to compete at selling airline tickets,” Russo told the AP. “We are their largest distribution system, but we’re also the one they think costs them the most money.”

Report by David Wilkening

United Airlines introduces low fares to US, Hong Kong

United Airlines, the only American carrier to operate a daily direct flight between Ho Chi Minh City and the US via Hong Kong, is offering promotional fares for flights between March 15 and June 14 this year.

The return fares to fly from HCM City to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland start at US$725. Meanwhile, US$825 is the lowest return fare for flights from HCM City to Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Tucson.

As for farther destinations such as Chicago, New York, Washington D.C, Boston, Greensboro, Miami, Dallas, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia, the return fares start at US$925.

To fly to Ashville, Fayetteville, Salisbury and some other further cities that United Airlines call Zone 5, US$1,005 is the lowest return fare.

At present, the carrier is also offering a promotion fare of US$188 for a HCM City-Hong Kong return trip, not including US$50 for taxes and fees.

The Ho Chi Minh City-Hong Kong route is currently served by Vietnam Airlines, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, and United Airlines. In addition, Cathay Pacific’s subsidiary Dragonair flies daily from Hanoi to the US via Hong Kong.

VietNamNet/SGGP

Downturn puts air travelers on cloud nine - Washington Post- msnbc.com

An airfare war has broken out in recent weeks — a boon for anyone with money to travel.

Airlines have rushed out coast-to-coast travel deals for as little as $99 each way for the spring and summer as the economic downturn has taken hold. Continental Airlines and United Airlines, fighting it out on routes between Washington and Los Angeles, have priced round-trip tickets under $200. Airlines in recent weeks have cut ticket prices as much as 50 percent from a year ago, travel analysts say.

"If you are paying over $300 for an airline ticket right now, you are probably paying way too much," said Rick Seaney, chief executive of FareCompare.com. "We'll never see these prices again outside of a recession."

The fare war comes as American companies scale back business travel and skittish consumers put off vacation plans, putting new pressure on airlines that only a year ago were fighting high fuel costs.

In addition to lower fares for domestic flights, international travel has suddenly become cheaper, with many round-trip tickets to Europe priced at less than $500 for travel in April and May.

'Can I really afford this?'
Yet some travel analysts are skeptical that travelers will buy, even at those prices.

"I think people's interest in buying those fares are heading downward," said George Hobica, creator of AirfareWatchdog.com. "With 600,000 or 700,000 people losing their jobs every month, they are asking themselves, 'Can I really afford this?' "

Airlines began the year thinking the passenger market wouldn't be so bad. Many had spent 2008 cutting less profitable routes and scaling back the number of flights, giving them more room to boost prices on the seats that remained.

Operationally, flight cutbacks mean fewer planes stacking up at airports, alleviating congestion. The government has reported that airline on-time rates are at their best level in years, even at busy New York airports.

Though airlines have been aided by lower fuel prices and the recent strengthening of the U.S. dollar, the cratering economy has dashed hopes of fat profits. Globally, airlines are projected to lose $2.5 billion in 2009, according to the International Air Transport Association

Airlines began offering discounted fares in October after Wall Street banks began to buckle, grounding bankers and other financial executives who paid top dollar for transatlantic tickets. The steady stream of price cuts continued over the winter holidays. Now the discounting is spreading into the spring and summer — historically the strongest profit period for airlines as travelers take vacations.

"This is a major war," said Tom Parsons, chief executive of BestFares.com, a discount travel Web site. "We never expected airfares like this in June or July of last year. We would have expected air fares double this."

Southwest Airlines, which has a hub at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, has cut fares to $78 round trip (with $20 security fee) for nonstop travel from Baltimore to Albany and Buffalo, N.Y.; Providence, R.I.; Hartford, Conn.; Manchester, N.H.; Cleveland; Norfolk; and Raleigh, N

Looking to get away? Cheap airfares abound
March 8: If you think that jetting off to Europe during a recession is out of the question, think again. NBC’s George Lewis reports.
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Fares to Europe have also fallen sharply. A year ago, a flight from Washington to Paris would have cost about $815 with taxes and fees, according to a price check by BestFares.com. Today, a round-trip ticket on United for travel in May costs about $570. Prices on flights to London are also falling. United and British Airways are promoting fares of $510 for travel in May.

Strengthening dollar
Hobica warns that summer nonstop international flights from Washington airports still remain pricey compared with other international gateways such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. But he said prices are generally $200 lower than a year ago.

Americans traveling abroad are getting a big lift from the rising buying power of the dollar. The dollar's value has grown 27 percent against the euro and 40 percent against the British pound from last summer.

For the best deals, analysts say travelers should first look for midweek flights. And even with the sales, they should be aware that the best deals probably won't be available for Memorial Day weekend or the Fourth of July. They are cautioning that travelers should pack light because most airlines charge baggage fees that they didn't have a year ago.

And travelers with job worries need not stay home. The airlines are trying to be helpful. JetBlue, whose passenger traffic fell 8.3 percent last month, is offering refunds for ticketholders who are terminated from full-time jobs. Sebastian White, a JetBlue spokesman, said the airline won't report how many people have asked for their money back. But he notes that the deal "came at just the right time" for many customers.

United takes its jobs back from India-13 February, 2009

WASHINGTON - United Airlines has confirmed that it is closing its call centre in India and transferring 165 jobs to the United States. The move came about a month after UAL Corp, parent of the third biggest North American carrier, said it was cutting 1,000 more jobs, pushing the total to 9,000 by year's end, to help stem losses. The jobs in India will be transferred to call centres in Chicago and Honolulu, and filled by workers who now handle reservations, the Chicago-based airline said. Beginning in April, it said the workers will add customer-relations duties, said Robin Urbanski, airline spokesman. AFP reports that United shipped the call centre positions to India about three years ago as part of a trend by US companies to move such functions overseas to save costs.

Will Airlines continue to Shrink?

Will Airlines Continue to Shrink, then Merge?
United Airlines (tel. 800/241-6522; http://www.united.com/) lost $1.3 billion in the last quarter, and announced 1000 further salaried and management job cuts in addition to the 2500 job losses announced in Q2 2008. In addition, the nation's third largest carrier (after American and Delta) will further downsize, parking aircraft and reducing seat capacity. Airline ticket purchases continue to decline, despite some really amazingly low fares, as the economy deteriorates.
Some industry watchers suggest that further downsizing and consolidation is inevitable. One thing that's preventing future consolidation is that the remaining players are still too big to get government approval for a merger (e.g., if United and US Air were to combine at their present sizes, the new entity would have too large a market share to suit antitrust regulators and Congress). But what if those carriers continue to cut personnel, seat capacity, and routes? Then they might "right size" to the point where a merger would be possible. Anyway, that's the thinking of some in the industry. No predictions here about whether that will come to pass.
But airline shrinkage is a fact of life. American Airlines also reported dismal financial results for the quarter just ended, with a $340 million loss. American plans to cut total seats flown by 7 percent this year compared to last, while United plans to eliminate up to 12.5 percent of capacity in North America in 2009 and 5 to 6 percent internationally, for a total full year reduction systemwide of 7 to 8 per cent.