Travelcraft - Chutzpah Awards

Chutzpah is the art of murdering your parents, going on trial, and begging the judge for mercy because you are an orphan.

Our Chutzpah Awards have been on sabbatical for a bit, but for your reading pleasure we have maintained our past awards dating back to 1998:

Chutzpah Award for Summer 2003

The airlines, the airlines, the airlines! It is unbelievable. We really do try to root for them, to pull themselves out of their desperate finances. But when we see how they take taxpayer money and then treat us with deception, it is reminiscent of "Straw Dogs". That is the old Dustin Hoffman film set in Cornwall where, at the climax of the film, Hoffman is battling to save a man from being lynched by an angry mob. And while Hoffman is battling at the front door, the man is in another room assaulting Hoffman's wife.

So what has the bee in our bonnet this month? Fly 3 and get one free!!!

Well, it ain't necessarily so. A typical buy 3 (or 4 or 1, whatever) and get one free involves when you pay for the required item(s) you get an identical item included at no extra charge. But with the airlines running these promos...and with ads paid by taxpayer subsidies...here is what you might miss in the fine print:

1) If you don't register in advance for the program, your 3 purchases don't count!
2) If you did not buy the airlines' most expensive tickets, your 3 purchases don't count!
3) If you happen to clear the hurdles and actually win the free ticket, you can only use the ticket in the airlines' 3 lowest price categories and exclusively on rules that do not match the rules applicable to the 3 paid tickets.

So what this means is that your qualifying purchases must not have a Saturday night stay and will probably run $1200 to $2400 per coach ticket in most cases. If you get a free ticket, you must include a Saturday night stay and then your free ticket is worth probably $100 to $400. That may be better than a kick in the pants, but the bottom line is that you spend 3 to 7 thousand dollars to earn a ticket that would have been dirt-cheap anyway.

Fly 3 get 1 free does not equal the 33% value the slogans imply; it is worth only around 5%. And you can only use the free ticket on a travel pattern that is totally opposite your normal itinerary structure (assuming you had the itineraries that qualified for the 3 paid trips).

Amazing that this promotion, shell games, and 3-card Monty all involve sets of 3, huh? In fact, it is almost cosmic!

Chutzpah Award for Spring 2003

Simple and sweet: This one goes to Expedia for selective language in their newspaper ads announcing that Expedia's corporate travel program "can" save corporations 20% on their travel costs. Did you know that our company, Travelcraft, can give our clients the winning Lotto numbers? Sure! And Al Sharpton "can" win the 2004 Presidential election.

Expedia gave themselves a wide berth when they advertised that they "can" save you 20% instead of saying they "will" save you 20%...because they "can not" save 20% for everybody; they can only do it for companies that had mismanaged travel to begin with. Travel Industry benchmark firm Topaz International has shown consistently that Expedia and its industry of online travel only have a lower fare 8% of the time, with corporate travel agencies beating their prices a far higher percentage of the time.

Hey, Expedia: Here is your chutzpah award. We know you "can" enjoy it!

Chutzpah Award for Winter 2003

The internet is a verbal medium. "Verbal medium" doesn't mean words of average length; it means that it is a world filled with words. Companies that make their living exclusively from selling things over the internet would, we assume, have a good command of the language in which they are selling.

Therefore, if such a company don't use good English, we must assume it is their INTENT to mislead.

So what about these multitudes of companies that are championing the little guy (or gal)? Are you fair game for them? Is it proper for them to position themselves as the company that is going to save you money!...and then deliberately mislead you to think they are doing that if they are not?

We are not saying such a condition or intent applies to Travelocity. And we hope their lawyers pay attention to that!

But...

We, the awards committee, raised both eyebrows when we heard their new radio commercial touting how people are using the Travelocity website to check fares and then try to beat that price on other websites...but that it is okay with them because they know you will be back to their site to make the purchase.

First off, we guess that if Travelocity really believed this they would not be spending big advertising bucks to tell you that. Perhaps what they really want to accomplish is to talk you out of checking those other sites. Otherwise, why would they pay money to promote something that doesn't need promoting?

But Travelocity does not win our award for that. No, we need a better performance level. And the good news is that Travelocity was able to raise the bar even further!

Their new commercial announces at its end that the reason you will be back is because Travelocity consistently has the "most low fares".

Most low fares. Gooder English would have been "most LOWEST fares"...if in fact that was true.

(In terms of corporate travel, that has not been true for at least 3 years. See http://www.etopaz.com/pdf/IC_detail_report.pdf for industry benchmarking trial).

But what does "most low fares" really mean? Well, a similar claim would be a laundromat selling the S.F. Chronicle for 50 cents and advertising they have the most low prices on the Chronicle. That is because by selling it at the cover price, no one is selling it lower. The laundromat is not selling it lower in price; they just sell it as low as everyone else.

Travelocity has the most low fares. So does just about every other travel source in the world...except that travel agents also sell Southwest Airlines, and Travelocity does not. That would perhaps be lower.

Because Travelocity chose their words SO carefully while reverse-Robin-Hood's their distribution program, we award them our Chutzpah Award for Winter 2003.

Chutzpah Award for Autumn 2002

Cruise lines have to juggle a lot of hats. They are responsible for making certain that their guests have a good time; that they are well fed, entertained, and comfortable. But ultimately the most important job a cruise line has is to ensure the safety of the passengers. The cruise lines like to make money in all aspects of their product. But is it okay to turn safety into a profit center?

Early in all cruises is the disaster drill. That's where everyone puts on the life jacket and heads to the muster station from which they would then be prepared to exit. Had we known on that first day how Costa runs their cruises, we would have indeed taken advantage of this opportunity to abandon ship. Perhaps disaster drills are not too uplifting but they are good to get out of the way.

In our recent sailing on Costa Classica, we climbed stairs to reach our muster station. (in simulating the disaster conditions, the ship's elevators are disabled.) The crew lined us up against a wall and made us wait there. Eventually the elderly worked their way up as many as 5 stories of stairs and then finally came a few in wheelchairs, having to be carried up all those flights.

With no one else coming we continued to be held in position. Then we saw it. The ship's photographer was going person-by-person taking photos of the passengers in their life jackets. These photos were clearly going to be offered for sale, at regular cruise-inflated prices, for people whose bizarre tastes would motivate them to want a souvenir of themselves wearing a life jacket.

Amazingly, it was after the photos were completed that the disaster drill was officially concluded and guests were permitted to return to whatever they had been doing.

The question comes up: Do the cruise lines make sure the disaster drill lasts long enough so they can get the complete set of photographs to sell? Are they making the elderly...plentiful on some cruises...stand around 5 or 10 minutes longer just so the cruise line can shake down a few hundred or perhaps thousand dollars in photo sales?

If disaster drills are so seriously important...and they are...that the elderly must climb many stairs and the wheelchair-bound must be subjected to being carried by others...isn't Costa sending a mixed signal by having their happy photographer taking pictures of everyone. Shouldn't that sort of activity be off-limits during drills? Or do cruise lines not need to practice that which they preach?

We understand that many cruise lines take these disaster photos, but since our experience was on Costa...and especially since their overall cruise product sucks so bad (see our Curmudgeon page) ...we decided to let them speak for the cruise industry and take home our Chutzpah Award for Autumn 2002.

Chutzpah Award for Summer 2002

You might have guessed our award would go to the airlines (doesn't it always?) and would somehow tie into their elimination of commissions to travel agents. But of course carelessness, betrayal, and mismanagement do not in and of themselves constitute chutzpah. In fact we have built our government on these very principals. So we need a special spin to reach that award-worthy plateau.

Fortunately, the airlines are always willing to step up and support us in our ongoing search for worthy award recipients.

This season we wish to salute the American carriers who chose to eliminate travel agent commissions in America while at the same time maintaining those commissions to travel agents overseas. Most of these lucky-to-still-be-in-business airlines are paying anywhere from 7% to 9% to foreigners while just stiffing American travel agents.

Our USA-based airlines need to do this overseas because in most cases, our airlines are inferior when compared to international carriers...from service to food service to attitude. So without the financial incentive, who in their right mind would board an American airline when they could fly on Singapore Air, Air France, etc.?

Of course for the American consumers this commission deal resulted in higher service fees or loss of service altogether. So all of us get affected by this.

The Chutzpah factor? Republican socialists! Remember that since September these airlines have been kept afloat by socialists who turned their backs on the Free Market when they bailed out the American airline industry with US tax dollars. So now these airlines are using US tax dollars to pay foreign travel agents commissions that the airlines say they can't afford to pay to Americans.

This month's award goes to our major USA airlines. The prize is a special customized air travel version of Monopoly, complete with a "Chance" to Get Out Of Flying Your Own Airline For Free card.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-Benjamin Franklin

Chutzpah Award for Autumn 2001

In the wake of the September attacks, our nation's airlines called for Uncle Same to grant their industry billions of dollars in relief. Some of the relief was necessary because of the attacks, yet much of it was to cover massive losses the airlines had run up even before the attacks. So the airlines took billions of dollars from the American taxpayers and used it to prop up their businesses. No, you can't win a Chutzpah Award that easily. There is so much more to this story!

In a distant corner of the world...and we are in the travel business so we like to think about distant corners of the world...is a country called Italy. To fly to Italy in business class from San Francisco, Milan for example, the round trip airfare on Delta is $6,840. United is just a bit higher, with price starting at $7,182.

However, if you live in Italy and get the same ticket (Milan-San Francisco round trip) you can buy that round trip in business class for 5,359,595 Lira on Delta. That works out to $2,433. So let's compare that: We charge Americans $6,840 and charge Italians $2,433 for virtually the same ticket.

United, who charges Americans $7,182, sells the ticket to the Italians for $1,620!!! Heck, without a Saturday night stay they won't even sell us a coach ticket that cheap!

It's not that United is partial to Italians; they offer broad discounts to Germans too.

To make sure that their well-healed American customers don't dress in costume and pretend that they too are members of the former Axis powers, both United and Delta (among others) prohibit the sale of this type of ticket in America. They won't even allow an American travel agency to send a prepaid ticket to Italy to have it ticketed there. Bottom line: If you are an American you must pay 3 or 4 times what the airlines charge the Europeans, and they have blocked most short cuts that would give Americans access to these European prices.

Well, it is their airlines and their business to do what they want, right? Hey...wait a second...didn't America just bail out these airlines with a ton of our tax dollars? Gosh, they did get our money! So why are these American companies charging Americans higher prices than they charge overseas?

It is time for the American airlines to remove the American penalty from their ticket pricing. Without American tax money these airlines would be bankrupt. Is this any way to say thanks?

To Delta and United we proudly present our Chutzpah Award for Autumn 2001.

Chutzpah Award for Summer 2001

The airline-owned websites are running up quite a championship drive here at the Chutzpah Awards. Our newest award winner...and now prestigiously a two-time winner...which is not to say they are two-timers...well, we are not saying it...is Orbitz.

The Summer 2001 Chutzpah Award comes to Orbitz for their TV commerical featuring the actor who looks like but is not Alec Baldwin (who would have cost so much more to hire). They guy is sitting in a beach chair and talking about the great ways to get from New Jersey to Maui. The smarmy beach bum taunts the other travel websites, represented by television monitors escorted by beach & Hawaiian stereotypes, because for the route from New Jersey to Maui they can only muster a couple of dozen flight options whereas, as Mr. not-Baldwin claims, Orbitz shows over 100 options, and suggests that this number is all that there is.

That Orbitz supposedly trounces their internet competition makes us very happy and restores our sexuality.

However, as there is no scheduled non-stop flight from anywhere in New Jersey to Maui, we must consider that their dead-serious marketing study and research was based on connecting flights. The travel engineers here at the WorldTravel Affliate office Travelcraft...and, yes, we still use slide-rulers...tested this concept using New Jersey's largest airport, Newark.

We found 112 flights from Newark to Maui...roughly the same number Orbitz claims to show...except we limited our research exclusively to plane changes in Los Angeles. You can also get to Maui by changing planes in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, or Orange County. But that's just California. And even if you only considered Los Angeles but were willing to make two plane changes for the 5,000-mile journey...and some price-sensitive internet shoppers absolutely would consider that...we end up with greater than 100,000 flight options to get ourselves from New Jersey to Maui.

Of this greater than 100,000 LAX flight options, Orbitz offers just over a hundred in their entire gillion-dollar system.

So who cares if Orbitz's hundred is more than Travelocity's dozen or so? This is like a slug arguing with an ant over which of them is the greatest power in the universe. And at any moment either the ant or the slug would be immediately squished into eternity by a simple application of the Kobe II sport shoe.

Well at least the shoe company hired the real Kobe!

Chutzpah Award for Spring 2001

Since the selling of real estate swampland in Florida, there has perhaps been no marketing ploy as deceptive as the advertising for online travel agencies. We currently are very impressed by the advertising for Hotwire, as they promote their folksy radio commercials detailing the vast fortunes they can save you...not only from retail, but also in comparison to their competitors in the online market.

Since they are being such a good buddy to you, the consumer, here is something we would like them to add into their precious radio time:

"The airline name and flight times will be shown only after you purchase your tickets"

...and...

"ALL PURCHASES ARE FINAL. Airline tickets cannot be cancelled, refunded, exchanged or transferred to other individuals. Credit will not be given for any unused tickets and cannot be used toward any future purchases. Change fees are not an option"

Gosh, with friends like that, who needs airlines?

Chutzpah Award for Winter 2000-1

We have been so busy saluting the American carriers that we felt it was time to pay due respects to them foreigners. We think this press item from ARTA (Association of Retail Travel Agents) speaks for itself:

"Japan has been conducting a survey of "economy class syndrome" and has found out that 100 to 150 passengers arriving in Tokyo on long distance flights are treated each year for the problem, believed to be caused by immobility and cramped seating on long flights.  The problem of flight related blood clots is becoming more severe because airlines are cramming more seats in aircraft, leaving little room for passengers to move around.
Blood clots start to circulate shortly after disembarking from lengthy flights.  The most at risk are the overweight and the elderly.  A 65 year old US airline captain collapsed in the cockpit after an eight hour flight
from South East Asia so it is not only passengers who can have this problem.  An Australian law firm warned this month that airlines face huge damage claims by possibly hundreds of passengers over their alleged failure to warn of the risks.  Japan Air Lines has posted precautionary steps passengers should take on its web site although the company has no plans to increase the leg room of its seats."

RUNNER UP: We don't usually have a runner up and this one has nothing to do with travel. But a better example of Chutzpah would be difficult to find: It is Napster, the company who advocates the free distribution of recorded music even against the wishes of the singers and musicians who created it. Napster is now suing a t-shirt manufacturer for the crime of using Napster's logo without permission. Ain't life grand?

Chutzpah Award for Autumn 2000

Jeffrey Katz wins this Chutzpah Award hands down. He is the boss man for upcoming web travel site "Orbitz". We could pop this award for Orbitz just for their dead website alone, which announces that someday they will be up and running. On their home page they announce that they are "completely unbiased" and "supported and endorsed by major U.S. airlines." Hmmmm...what is missing here?

Well, for one thing they could be more upfront and say something more complete like this, "Hey, we are supported and endorsed by major U.S. airlines because we are owned by major U.S. airlines."

Yes, we might have given Orbitz the award just for that. But CEO Katz took it to the next level during testimony where he was fighting off some of that anti-trust sentiment in the federal government. He said that Orbitz was needed for consumers because only Orbitz can be trusted to give unbiased travel information; that the CRS's (Computer Reservation Systems such as Sabre, Worldspan, etc.) provide biased information and that what the CRS's do is a bad thing.

Hmmmm...what is missing here?

Perhaps he could have mentioned that CRS's, like Orbitz, were created by the airlines themselves, and that the airlines who own large shares of these CRS's including 100% of Worldspan are the same ones who own Orbitz.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Chutzpah Award for Summer 2000

Oh, United Airlines wins this one hands down. In early September they joined other airlines in adding a $20 fuel surcharge to round trip tickets. Airline costs are usually added up and figured into something we often call an airfare. But in making this charge a fuel surcharge, it does not have to be included in the prices that the airlines advertise or list online. This means that, with other fees and surcharges, your airfares may now be as much as $62 higher than the price advertised.

But most airlines did this. The reason that United Airlines is the winner of our Chutzpah Award is for the newspaper ad they ran only 48 hours after jacking up your cost of travel. It was a full page ad announcing an 11-day sale with substantial restrictions which excluded many people including virtually all business travelers. The headline on the ad read:

"We want to make it easier (and cheaper) to fly with us again"

Chutzpah Award for Spring 2000

The fox is loose in the chicken coop. In the San Francisco market, there is a radio ad campaign being run during broadcasts of the S.F. Giants baseball games. The folksy voice tells listeners that he is Hank, and he goes on to promote this company's wares.

But the voice never gives the full name, which is intended to sound like Hank Greenwald, the Giants' beloved and recently retired radio announcer. There really is no reason to use the name Hank, so we must assume it is for the purpose of misleading Giants fans into thinking that Hank Greenwald is endorsing and promoting this great sponsor.

Misleading (or lying) ads are nothing new in America. So to have such an ad win the coveted Chutzpah Award it has to be something special. And this one is:

You see, the commerical is for a company named ValueStar, and they promote themselves as being a consumer organization. But not to be confused with the Better Business Bureau, ValueStar is a big bucks NASDAQ company that has built quite a business without telling the full story, such as the countless companies whose ValueStar ratings are tops but are supressed by ValueStar without those companies making substantial and ongoing payments to ValueStar.

They put out enough hints or careful wordings that surely many people must think this company to be non-profit or part of a research institute. Can there be an anti-consumer consumer company out there?

Let's ask Hank.

Chutzpah Award for March 2000

In a one-time departure from policy, we'll actually say something nice about an airline that is doing something good. American Airlines is reconfiguring their coach cabins to add several inches of leg room to their seat rows. This will have a major impact on passenger comfort. We think this is the first time a major airline has done this for all passengers rather than just the front rows for their top frequent fliers.

To our clients, we wish to emphasize that American is promoting a June 2000 target date for this task, but that target is a 50% conversion. That means up through June your odds are against getting these better seats. Even in June you would have only a coin toss chance. But someday that job will be complete, and we can only hope the other major airlines follow suit.

Chutzpah Award for February 2000

This month it was a little more blatent than normal. Jet fuel prices went up big and the airlines needed to recover that extra expense. No problem; we all gotta eat. But most of the major airlines, instead of increasing airfares, added a fuel surcharge of $20 to most domestic round trip tickets.

The key difference in raising prices through a surcharge rather than a fare increase is that the fuel surcharge doesn't show up in advertised prices. So while all airlines appear to have the same prices for the same cities, consumers are left unknowing which of the big airlines are really $20 higher than the smaller ones.

With a tip of the hat for perfecting their technique, this month's Chutzpah Award is given to America's major airlines.

Chutzpah Award for January 2000

We the editorial board of the Chutzpah Award sometimes feel we overdo it by picking on the airlines all the time. But with a new survey showing that 78% of American travelers distrust the airlines more than any other travel industry, we guess we can kick the airlines around a bit more.

You may recall last summer when the airlines got Congress to derail significant consumer laws protecting air travelers. The airline industry told Congress that the industry would take care of the mess on a voluntary basis. So Congress instead passed a law with gums rather than teeth, and left it to the airlines to do what they nearly promised. With the deadline for those actions having passed, the airlines didn't do a dang thing.

We (the editorial board) award The Airlines the first Chutzpah Award for 2000 not for failing to fulfill their promises...big surprise, Duh!...but, rather, for the absolute completeness of that failure; they didn't even bother with token eyewash to merely suggest compliance. They just didn't even bother!

In fact, the only significant industry change the airlines made since that legislation was to cut travel agent commission again. And, like with all commission cuts of the past, followed it with fare hikes.

Chutzpah Award for December 1999

Well, it's a tie! Airline coach seats are notoriously cramped. Too narrow and too little legroom. At least we understand it...even if we don't like it...when the airlines do it to squeeze in a couple of extra seats so they can make more money. But what if they do it without reason?

Two major airlines have taken their narrowest seats, and put them on aircraft that have the width to allow more room. So they are cramping the passengers with no benefit other than a meaningless increase in aisle width. How narrow are the seats? How about 17 inches across???!!!

For mindless bureaucrats truly worthy of government jobs, we award our Chutzpah Award to American Airlines for their 767 configuration, and Delta Airlines for their MD80 and MD90. And special thanks to consumer advocate Ed Perkins for his research.

Chutzpah Award for November 1999

It's kinda funny, but we don't know the winner's name. He is a spokesman for one of the major airlines and after he said what he said we must have passed out. By the time the smelling salts revived us, his name was already off the TV screen. The mouthpiece was commenting on the recent commission cut/fare increase, and when queried about the need for travel agents he said, "I think the flying public is generally aware of the price between cities."

Because we then slipped into unconciousness, we are not sure if he was referring to the 71 airfares offered for the 168-mile flight from Chicago to Indiannapolis or the 255 airfares offered between San Francisco and Honolulu. Perhaps he was talking about Los Angeles to London. There are 1,075 published fares by the airlines between those two cities.

If this unidentified suit will identify himself to Travelcraft, we will present him with a special Chutzpah Award prize: A free copy of the updated travel consumer report from Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) which finds "Each year, millions of consumers use travel agents and airlines to book their airline tickets. Consumers count on these agents to provide the service requested. Yet, this Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) national survey finds that even when consumers ask for the lowest airfare, travel agents and airlines provide vastly different prices for the identical trip. This report updates a similar 1996 report and finds no improvement in airline practices."

So, Mouthpiece, if you are out there...Come on down and get your prize!

Chutzpah Award for October 1999

It's been long overdue, but we are pleased to finally recognize William Shatner and Priceline.com for their questionable advertising blitz. A wildly successul IPO gave this small company a market cap greater than any airline in the world. Their game? A reverse auction (name your price).

Their radio commercials feature testimonials from alleged customers (who amazingly all have studio-quality voices) and Shatner's own stories about his friends and family (and who, afterall, would doubt that Shatner's own mother often gave him the wise counsel he quotes regarding Mom's motherly teachings on hotel prices?).

For all the hype they created and investors they sucked in...who likely will see their investments trashed the same as those who invested in Preview Travel...for Shatner's mom and his friends and the warm-fuzzies from every commercial, wouldn't you like to know that Priceline.com rejects 93% of all bids they receive?

For so grossly misrepresenting their appalling performance, we award both Shatner and Priceline.com our Chutzpah Award for this month. We especially wanted to include Shatner because, having seen the range of his acting talents, we know he won't be winning any other awards.

Chutzpah Award for September 1999

This month we are proud to celebrate the misinformation ad campaign for ValueStar. If active in your area, you may know ValueStar as a self-proclaimed champion of consumer reports. They claim that their certification only goes to highly rate companies. The unspoken implication of their ads is that companies with ValueStar certification are superior or more reliable than those without ValueStar certification.

What they do NOT mention in their ads is that a great many companies without ValueStar certification also rate as high or higher in ValueStar's own research. But unless companies contract to pay ValueStar...in travel agency cases more than $1,000 every year...companies are prohibited not only from using the ValueStar certification in advertising, but also prohibited from publicly disclosing that ValueStar did in fact find their company highly rated.

Now, we think that ValueStar has certain rights in this area. They are, after all, not to be confused with non-profit consumer rights organizations like PIRG. ValueStar is a business venture and VLST is publicly traded!

But we think their advertising is offensively misleading in that it suggests that any company they certify has higher satisfaction ratings than those not so noted. In fact, many American companies are good companies and have high satisfaction ratings...
but most of them choose not to pay extortion just to publicize it. Unfortunately, if your competitor pays the bucks so they can display ValueStar's logo, it puts the burden on your company to pay ValueStar as well.

We suggest that ValueStar add a disclaimer to their advertising, and let the public know that all ValueStar clients are paying substantial cash for the right to use their name; that ValueStar stop framing their ads and promotions to make them sound like a consumer rights group and acknowledge they are a business.

If ValueStar was truly "making the world a better place for consumers" as their website motto reads, they would not withhold truth for a ransom. Until such time, we bestow upon ValueStar our Chutzpah Award this month.

In the interest of full disclosure, Travelcraft was rated by ValueStar. We are legally prohibited from releasing the results of their rating unless we make payment to ValueStar. At any time ValueStar agrees to waive that prohibition we will modify this page to include that rating.

Chutzpah Award for August

A Delta flight was delayed for 24 minutes when Delta CFO Warren Jenson's 3 children, traveling on free passes, were escorted on board the plane and placed in first class. They bumped several revenue passengers to economy class.

We haven't heard of something like that since Jackie + Aristotle Onasis had the first class cabin of an Olympic Airlines flight bumped so that they would not have to travel with mortals.

It's interesting to know that Delta's top people consider their economy class service to be so unsuitable. We salute Delta and award them our Chutzpah Award for August, and thank "Observations & Forecasts" editor David W. Opperman for bringing us this news.

Chutzpah Award for June

This month we have an unusual circumstance. Usually our chutzpah champ earns the honor with clear evidence. This time, we can't prove a thing. We could even be wrong...though we think pigs would fly first.

Throughout this year, the major airlines have been quietly replacing their seats with a new material that allows much thinner seat backs. The airlines claim this is done without any reduction in comfort. And we believe them, given that comfort could not physically be reduced further.

With these thinner seat backs, the airlines have a clear choice...leave the seat rows intact and increase leg room for all of us...or cram the rows closer together so they can add another row of seats to each plane.

Like we said...we have no evidence...but we think we know the airlines well enough to go out on a limb here, and presume that faced with the opportunity to increase passenger comfort or to swell their record profits further, they chose the latter. For this, we present them with our Chutzpah Award for June.

And BTW, if pigs did fly, at least the airlines would have finally found passengers well matched to their cuisine.

Chutzpah Award for May

The nominations are coming in fast and furious enough that it's getting hard to figure out the best (worst) of the lot. So this month we wish to spread the wealth by recognizing ALL of the airlines for demonstrating that there isn't a nickel they feel is worth saving.

Ever wonder what happens if someone (such as you) gets seriously ill during a flight? The airline has to make a decision whether or not to make an emergency landing so you can be treated (or hospitalized) (or buried). In many cases that decision will be made not by the flight crew but by an airline executive on the ground, playing doctor by radio.

Sometimes you can get lucky and there will be a physician flying as a passenger on the flight. And the airline can save a fortune when physicians intervene to help a passenger's health, thus permitting some flights to continue when otherwise they would have to stop.

The airlines are very willing to let a physician intervene on their own. But if something goes wrong, the physician bears the total risk of intervention because... for nearly all airlines...they can't scrape together enough bucks to buy indemnification insurance for these doctors.

It's tough to get by on just a billion dollars a year in profit. So we regret to inform the airlines who collectively share Travelcraft's Chutzpah Award for this month that the award does not carry a cash prize as well.

Chutzpah Award for April

We are just out of the 1st quarter and in 1999 the airlines have raised fares two times so far. With the recent announcement of the 2nd increase, it was mentioned that the airlines had to raise prices because of the increase in the cost of jet fuel. What was not mentioned was that in 1998 the cost of jet fuel plummeted... but the airlines never lowered the fares at that time.

If they have to charge more for more expensive jet fuel, how come they didn't charge us less when jet fuel was cheap? Go figure.

So there you have that classic example, whether it's done to us at the gas pump or the airport: Price of fuel drops, you get nothing. Price of fuel increases, you cost goes up immediately (and disproportionately).

It is with great honor that Travelcraft presents the April Chutzpah Award to the Major Airlines collectively.

Chutzpah Award for March

This month we have a repeat winner...or rather, a continuing winner. You may remember that Delta impressively won our February award (see below) for their short-lived $2 penalty if you booked Delta flights outside of Delta's own website (i.e. penalty applied even if you phoned direct to Delta reservations).

Delta followed-up their retraction of the penalty by permitting you...if you are still holding unused tickets with the $2 surcharge...to get your $2 back by exchanging the ticket for a new one...if you pay a $75 exchange fee.

And as the gift that never stops giving, Delta now has taken the sandwich out of their "SkyDeli" meals and replaced it with cheese and crackers...and downgraded 80 First Class flights from meals to snacks, and dropped snacks from another 160 flights. Imagine what they would have done if they had made less than $1B profit last year.

Have a nomination for our next Chutzpah Award? Tell us about it: Chutzpah Award.

Chutzpah Award for February

This month's winner is Delta Give-us-a-break-we-only-made-a-billion-profit Airlines. It's not that they announced (and quickly cancelled) a plan to charge an extra $2 per ticket unless you book direct on their website, but rather their chickenpoop excuse for doing it: CRS booking fees were going up too much. We imagine their lead- balloon collapsed like this:

   Assistant:   Hey, boss, we got a problem with that extra $2!

   Boss:          But we need that $2 to pay those greedy CRS companies.

   Assistant:   I know, boss, but I just found out that as Delta Airlines we
                     are one of the largest owners of the greedy CRS companies.

   Boss:           Golly, that means we could probably have some influence
                      regarding how much we are charging ourselves!

   Assistant:   Brilliant! That's why you're the boss, boss.

   Boss:            Cancel that $2 fee immediately. And God bless each and every
                       one of us!

And so there was indeed a happy ending. Delta still gets our Chutzpah Award for February for following up only 3 days later with a totally coincidental increase on all airfares which was immediately matched by all the airlines.

Chutzpah Award for January

For the first time in the history of our award we have a back-to-back winner. It's our buds over at Preview Travel, the on-line non-travel agency. They launched radio advertisements trying to make you believe that one head is better than two. Their commercial acts our a conversation between a woman who wants to go to Maui and a travel agent who is pretty dense and rude. This stupid travel agent tries to send the client on a red-eye flight to Maui and book her at a hotel inside the Maui airport. Ha, ha, ha! What high comedy!

On the other hand, there are NO red-eye flights from USA to Maui, and there is NO hotel located in or near the Maui airport. The folks at Preview Travel could have avoided these mistakes in their commercial...if only they used a travel agent.

Chutzpah Award for December

We generally give this award to an airline, and heaven knows they go out of their way to qualify for this award. But because our Chutzpah Award exists only in cyberspace we thought that this month we should give it to cyber travel agency Preview Travel.

In researching on-line booking engines...and the range of results was not pretty...we happened to find this text prominent on Preview's home page:

"Preview Travel gives you free access to the same information travel agents use"

Why gets us is their omission of the word "all" as in "all the same information". On-line airline booking engines are in their infancy, and it was a premature birth at that. For someone in the industry to even suggest that these engines and the sophisticated computer reservation systems used by agents are comparable is disingenuous to the point of...well...chutzpah!

Running identical itineraries through different booking engines we found different fares every time, with the gap between best and worst price being over $800!!!

If the folks at Preview Travel are ever in need of emergency surgery they should try to make their way to our office. We have a copy of Physician's Desktop Reference, so we have access to the same information doctors use. We'd be glad to help.

Chutzpah Award for November
Special Mid-Month Award

We interrupt this month to bring you a special Chutzpah Award presentation to United Airlines. United gets the nod not just for further reducing travel agent commissions by capping international tickets...which as a predator is not unexpected...but for an unbelievable display of chutzpah in their not-very-imaginative excuse for taking the action.

They could not blame this on losses...not while making record profits...and they did not have the guts to say "We did it cause we want more money. And we own the airplanes!".

No, United claims the cut was necessary to prepare the company for "a possible economic recession".

Of course, if United really meant that then they would rescind this commission cut when the threat of such recession passes.

Because we believe the airline has no intention of ever rescinding this action even if a global economic boom occurs tomorrow, and for their absolute lack of guts and honesty we award them our special edition of the Chutzpah Award.

And to show consumers how they will benefit from this policy which is expected to increase United's annual earnings by $100 million, one day later United also announced a fare increase.

Chutzpah Award for November

Normally we pick an airline for our monthly award winner. But this month we were impressed by Microsoft, the world domination company. You may have heard that their on-line travel agency, Expedia, cost them so much to develop that it is not expected to be a profitable venture. The concept that they would be willing to take food off the table of travel agents and do so for a losing proposition to begin with...well, perhaps nothing surprises anymore.

Now it turns out that Expedia won't even let you buy airline tickets from them unless you are willing to accept cookies! If your browser defaults against cookies, then your money isn't good enough for Microsoft. And then again, after a certain point it should be clear that the issue isn't money any longer.

For all of this they are awarded our November chutzpah award.

Airline Chutzpah Award for October

October's joint winners of our award are to be admired for the simplicity and beauty of their one-way vision. In a recent joint announcement, leaders of six airlines stated their opposition to the proposed alliance of British Airways and American Airlines. They eloquently stated the reasons to oppose this semi-merger...how it is bad for the industry, the free market, the passengers, the Spice Girls, etc.

But among those six airlines were United and Delta who, just weeks earlier, had attempted to put together their own alliance and code-share agreement only to have it vetoed by one of the unions.

Clearly United and Delta thought that their program...which would have affected nearly half of the airline seats in the domestic American market...was good for the American People and family values. But American and British? That would be socialism!

Airline Chutzpah Award for September

Northwest Airlines is our winner for September, thumbs down! With their pilots out on strike, Northwest put out the word that they would protect their ticketed passengers on other airlines. That is the traditional and proper thing for an airline to do for their customers in times of inconvenience.

But when the strike actually unfolded, Northwest offered only to put passengers on other flights in discount categories that approximately matched those appearing on their original Northwest ticket. So a passenger with a deeply discounted ticket... which covered a huge number of holiday travelers for Labor Day Weekend...was only offered a new airline and flight if cheap cheap seats happened to still remain on the new flight.

And guess what? There were not a lot of flights in the popular destinations that still had such seats remaining. Inconveniences to customers were substantial, and could have been avoided if profitable Northwest Airlines had done the right thing and eaten their loss rather than pushing it onto the customers' shoulders. Afterall, it was Northwest's fault that the passengers had to scramble for other flights on short notice rather than with full benefit of their original advance purchases, whether last month or 11 months back.

Airlines are so fond of saying that a ticket constitutes a contract between the airline and the passenger. We guess that only applies when it is to the advantage of the airline.

Corporate Travel

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