May 2008 Archives

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal last week about the rise of travel delay insurance. Basically, you buy insurance that will pay for hotel rooms, rescheduling flights., meals, etc. if your flight becomes delayed or cancelled and you end up spending the night in some godforsaken place like Dallas.

American Express offers this service for $9.95 a trip when you buy the airline tickets using your Amex cards. We talked it over and Mary was of the opinion that since we have hardly ever get delayed overnight (though two or three hour delays are pretty common) it's probably not worth it for us. And we're rarely on a schedule that would leave us with no recourse - we can usually delay a day or two, though in that case we'd still be out of pocket. We often schedule our trips so we get to wherever we're going a day early, especially if there's something critical we need to be there for like a sibling's wedding or a nephew's arraignment. And finally we attempt, to the largest extent possible, to avoid scheduling flights that transit through a hub like Dallas or Atlanta or most especially, Chicago. This isn't always possible - Orlando from either Denver or Colorado Springs, pretty much cannot be done without a trip through Dallas or some other intermediate stop. Still, it's been probably five or six years since we were delayed overnight somewhere.

After some more thought it occurred to us (well me, Mary's still not in bed with my thesis), that many of the changes airlines are introducing recently are to charge separately for things that used to come included in the price of the ticket. Remember the old days when people in coach got a hot meal? Or if you're flight was delayed or cancelled the airline would get you on another flight as soon as possible, booking you on another carrier if nothing else was available? It's hard to believe, but once upon a time, in the dim, misty ages before airline deregulation, this was a common event. If your flight was delayed, or cancelled, the airline would rebook you quickly on another one of their flights or if that wasn't possible they would book you on another (gasp!) airline. If you look at it logically and I kind of have to as I am an engineer and such, what you're paying for, the ability to get accommodated in one form or another if a delay occurs, is just bringing the cost up a bit closer to what it was a long time ago. Airplane tickets today are a fraction of what they used to cost. People lose sight of this, they lament the long gone days of the romance of flying. But we used to pay a lot more money back then. So paying for delay insurance is just restoring the balance a little, perhaps. Maybe, it's a bit hard to find the information on what travel used to cost. I remember it as being pretty expensive and it was somewhat unusual for many people to fly. Now, everyone does.

Recommendation wise on the delay insurance? I'd say if you're one of those people that doesn't handle uncertainty well and likes the warm protective blanket that comes with paying other people to take care of you, then you might find the insurance worthwhile. If you like to save a few bucks and live free and adventurously, hang the insurance!

Oh, this is certainly looking to be one humdinger of a summer, as grandpappy used to say, if grandpappy had lived on a farm in Kentucky or something. Since mine lived in San Francisco I'm pretty sure he never used the term "humdinger" in his life. But I like it, so I've appropriated it.

Anyway, digressions aside and all, from the looks of it it's shaping up to be another summer horribilis for those who have a desire or desperate need to fly somewhere. American Airlines has announced that on top of the $25 charge for a second bag they're adding a $15 charge for the first checked bag. And they're cutting domestic flight capacity by 11 percent.

This means that the conditions in the main cabin on many American flights will resemble something from one of those movies where everyone's trying to get out of the capital city of some Third World nation before it falls to rebel forces. If you're not one of the first couple of dozen people boarding then good luck on finding that empty overhead bin.

Well, with oil surging to over $125 a barrel something has to give. It's inevitable that the prices the airlines have to charge are going to increase, probably substantially. That's why Mrs. Foolish Questions and I are going to spend the summer hunkering down up here in the mountains and restrict our travel to road trips for the most part.

Sorry for the long hiatus. I could come up with some cleverly thought out explanation for my lack of posting, but if it didn't entail procrastination and distraction by other, probably less important issues, then I'd just be lying.

So back to the Grindstone. Thy name is Foolish Questions. Lots of travel related stuff percolating around the Intratubes lately and we've actually done some travel recently which I will generate some articles and random musings about shortly.

In the meantime, one trip we did finish as opposed to the Round the World trip, was a jaunt to Walt Disney World to check out some stuff for Mousesavers.com. I've commented on a several of the restaurants we visited and the links can be found at here.