- CONFIRMED: American Bringing Back Carry On Bags to Basic Economy, Punishing Customers is Bad Business by View From The Wing. I’ve said multiple times that I think basic economy isn’t a winner for legacy airlines, they are basically selling good will they have built up over multiple years for pennies on the dollar. Even with heavy restrictions and upselling, American Airlines is never going to be cheaper than a ULCC so why try to compete at that level?
- Rumor: Comcast NBC Universal May Be Building a Brand New Theme Park in Orlando by The Short Final. I’m not a theme park fan, but some readers might find it interesting.
- Aeromexico Tries To Buy Back Their Loyalty Program With A Lowball Offer by One Mile At A Time. Circling like vultures, no way that offer is accepted.
- Hyatt Has Expressed Interest in Acquiring Spain’s NH Hotel Group by Bloomberg. Would be a massive increase in footprint size for Hyatt.
Deals expiring at the end of today (view the full deal calendar here):
Deals expiring at end of tomorrow:
- Kroger: 4x Fuel Points on Gift Cards this Weekend (Visa, MC & Merchant)
- Meijer Mperks: $10 Off $150 On Mastercard Giftcards
- Staples: $100 Lowe’s Giftcard For $90 + 5x (Limit Of 3)
- Best Buy: Purchase $100 In Giftcards & Get $10 Bonus Best Buy Card (Hotels.com, Uber Nike & More) + Stack With AmEx Offer
From the Hyatt article: “In March, Hyatt sold three hotels — Grand Hyatt San Francisco, the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort in Hawaii and the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort and Spa in Florida”
I had no idea they didn’t own the Andaz Maui anymore. It’s sill in their search, so I guess it’s still affiliated, but I wonder if this makes it even less likely they will ever accept points. What is less than never?
It’s still in the Hyatt brand, they just don’t own the real estate anymore. They have been moving this direction for a while now. Focusing more on the management side rather than the ownership and management.
+1
Charging for carry-on bags seems completely unfair. If I bring 160 lb on a plane including my body and a bag, and someone brings 200 lb on a plane with no bag, why should I be charged more? If I just ate the bag it’d be fine, let me put the bag under my shirt.
I agree.
The ultra low cost carriers (Spirit, Frontier) make almost half their money on so-called “ancillary revenue” — the stuff they sell you after you buy their base fare. Most air travellers are infrequent and relatively unsophisticated and buy almost solely on the initial sticker price. So the major airlines introduced Basic Economy to try to get close to some of Spirit’s prices and then have a way to ALSO collect some ancillary revenue. Otherwise, Spirit was stealing their business.
We’ll have to see what happens now that there’s no real reason for most customers to buy anything other than Basic Economy. Obviously, the majors will have to raise the price of Basic Economy, to account for the fact that fewer pax will now pay to escape it, and the folks who buy it will not being paying as much money to check bags. Nobody really know yet how this will affect the industry. I do agree with you that it will engender more goodwill for the legacy carriers. Whether than translates to “profits” is hard to know.
I feel like with Spirit it’s to be expected though, and trust me I’ve flown spirit several times and less than 10% of passengers pay for Carry On Bags, I think they actually charge more for Carry Ons than they do for checked bags up to 40lbs (meanwhile every other carrier does 50lbs for checked bags).
Spirit is just always known as a budget airline and have always been known for their “Bare Fare”. For other airlines such as AA to try to enter that market just is not what the public are used to from those airlines, not to mention they cannot match their pricing because Spirit has been in the game for a while now. I think AA’s adding of Carry Ons to their budget Flights is a smart move because they give something that budget travelers never get without lowering their rates any further.
As a side note you can get Spirit Tickets up to 30% cheaper when booking directly at the airport compared to booking online. The only downside to doing it this way is that you can’t add bags when booking you have to go online and add them which is $10 more, because they consider it not to have been done during booking.