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Most of the discounts are in the 20 to 40 percent range, but better bargains are available for savvy shoppers.
©Associated Press
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 5, 2001
MINNEAPOLIS -- People waiting to fly on the cheap got their chance Thursday as airlines began deeply discounting tickets to help rebuild passenger loads that have been down sharply since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Delta Air Lines, the nation's third-largest carrier, kicked off the global fare sale. Northwest Airlines quickly matched, as did United, American, Continental, US Airways and America West.
Most of the discounts are in the 20 to 40 percent range, said Ken Smith, chief executive of the travel agent Travel Depot Inc. in Boston. The airlines offered another 10 percent discount for fares purchased through their Web sites. Tickets must be purchased by Monday.
"This is going to be a blow-out, super sale -- the question is are they going to extend it past" Monday, said Tom Parsons, who monitors fares for the online travel agent Bestfares.com.
"This is the clearance sale," said Terry Trippler, airline expert with OneTravel.com. "There are some people who will never travel at any price and there are some people who have a price at which they will travel. For many people, not all of them, this is the price that will get them to travel." The new sale is not the first sale launched by the airlines since the attacks. Nor does it include the lowest prices available on every route. But the various fare sales and promotions introduced within the past week have been more modest campaigns aimed narrowly at business travelers and frequent fliers, Trippler said. The new sale introduced Thursday is broadly aimed at price-conscious leisure travelers.
Trippler called the leisure sale launched by Delta "decent" but warned travelers to shop around.
Using the Orbitz web site owned by a group of major airlines, he found a $99 round-trip fare between Nashville, Tenn., and New Orleans. He then checked the Web site for Southwest, which is not listed on Orbitz, and found an $84 fare.
"It's not a super-duper, read-all-about-it sale, but it's okay," Trippler said. "This will hit some people at a price where they'll go. But it's critical that people compare."
The nation's airlines are scrambling to fill seats in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. September traffic, or miles flown by paying passengers, declined 32 percent from a year ago.
Planes were 59 percent filled on average, down from 70 percent last year. Traffic dropped 33 percent on the carriers' U.S. routes and 29 percent on their international flights.
Delta's passenger traffic fell 32 percent last month as the carrier cut its September flight capacity by 18 percent. Northwest said its planes were about 56 percent filled last month after the attack, down from 76 percent before the attack. Traffic at TWA fell 55 percent in September from a year ago, although part of the decline may be attributed to the fact that TWA has eliminated some routes since being acquired by AMR in April.
One travel professional questioned the wisdom of slashing prices in a down economy.
"We think the danger of the price war is, how does that help airlines become financially solvent?" said Doug Cody, spokesman for Carlson Cos., which counts travel agencies, hotels, resorts, restaurants and cruise ships among its operations.
The fare sale is good for domestic travel through Dec. 15. International fares are good for travel through March 15 on Northwest. On Delta, the end date for international travel ranges from March 14 to May 13, depending on the destination. Holiday blackouts apply.
In recent days most carriers have also offered additional incentives to their frequent fliers, such as additional mileage and lower thresholds for getting free trips.
-- Times staff writer Steve Huettel contributed to this report, which includes information from Bloomberg News and Knight Ridder Newspapers.