If you’ve ever spent time online looking for a cheap airfare, you might have stumbled across something that looks a lot like a bait-and-switch. It’s an inexpensive fare all right, but when you click on the itinerary, you find out that there are three stops and that it would be faster to drive. What a scam, you think. How could they even offer that kind of routing?
I’ve wondered about it a time or two, and so has Joe Farrell, who wrote to me recently to suggest that these multi-stops made absolutely no sense.
Check out pretty much any route at Expedia or Travelocity and even the airline sites, and you get something like $800 for a winter trip from Hartford to St. Maarten that goes Hartford-Miami-San Juan-St. Maarten. What’s the point with that insanity? No one is going to buy that. Even out of JFK or Newark, where there are non-stops, you get silly three stops and airline changes like JFK-Charlotte. What’s with that?
I wanted to write back to say that it gets much, much worse. I know because Miami used to be my closest airport and in order to get just about anywhere in the Caribbean, you had to make at least one stop. But this isn’t as much a question about airline scheduling — I’ll leave that to the aviation bloggers — as it is an issue of customer service.
Are you doing travelers any favors by offering three- and four-stop flights as an option?
Since Farrell mentioned Travelocity, I decided to ask Simon Bramley, Travelocity’s vice president of flights, for an answer.
“Yes,” he told me, “Travelers do actually buy such trips, though we display non-stops and one-stops before multi-stops.”
But why?
The savings from multi-stop trips can be significant and during peak travel periods non-stops may be sold out. While we will continue to generate some of these itineraries, our goal is to find the best trade-off between price and schedule. Ultimately, it’s the traveler’s choice and regardless of the type of trip they book, we’re available 24/7 to help them through any issues that may arise.
Let me add a few things to that. With each stop, you increase the risk that the airline will lose your luggage. So if at all possible, don’t check any luggage.
Also, with multiple connections, there’s a better chance you’ll miss one of your flights. That means your vacation or business trip could be delayed, or even canceled, because of your wacky itinerary.
Finally, if you’re contemplating a three- or four-stop flight, don’t forget the time value of money. Is it worth spending an extra 12 hours in transit in order to save $50? Think about that before you click on the “book” button.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
They also do it because usually one of those segments goes through a hub – actually winds up saving the carrier money if they do, since they can squeeze more people on smaller jets. (Think CO and all of their Embreairs out of IAH and EWR
Some people purposefully choose multi-segment flights to speed up achieving higher service levels in frequent flier plans, or to earn miles. if you can take a 6-leg flight to vegas for that bachelor party, and 6-legs back, and that puts you halfway to preferred status, then why not? as long as it’s not a time sensitive trip, and you’re not checking luggage…
I’ve booked multi-legged trips many, many times (just recently round trip to and from hawaii and the east coast where the return flight was 5 legs!) and have never had a problem with checked luggage or missed flights. the trick is that I make sure that I have at a minimum 45 minutes between flights and that I avoid multiple airlines. In fact, sometimes I look forward to layovers in order to “visit” a city I wouldn’t otherwise think of visiting. The last trip to Hawaii, I purposefully selected an 8 hour layover in San Francisco just so I could visit for the day and get a feel for if this is some place I would like to vacation at some day in the future.
I’ve been flying for over 45 years (I was almost born in an airplane) and have logged over a million miles in the air and I have to say, other than a nasty flight on Pakistan airlines (lavatory overflowing into the aisles) I have had no problems (knock on wood) of anykind when it comes to flying…And I don’t mind multi-leg trips…I like airports and as a kid would “hand out” at Dulles airport just for the heck of it!
Ed
web/gadget guru
That was me with the original post – and how about this one – Hartford – Savannah, GA = about 700nm. BDL-PHL-CLT-SAV – sure – it was USAir through 2 hubs and 9 hours. I fly my own airplane and can ALWAYS beat any connection on that route and I’m flying 1/3 the speed. But I’m going nonstop. The cross county ones [where I would fly] are very interesting – I saw one [BDL-IAH-DAL-LAS-LAX] that was $100 cheaper roundtrip that the BDL-ORD-LAX one. And you changed airlines in Dallas and had a 67 minute connecton from Continental to American – think you’d make that connection?
As for the comment about multi-leg routing counting toward segment credit for elite status – not at all true. There is not a single carrier that gives you segment credit for multi-stop routings toward a destination any longer. A segment is a continuous routing on a itinerary from one point to another with less than a 6-12 hour layover at any intermediate segment. Or any portion of an itinerary in the same cardinal direction within a 24 hour period. They have the fine print down to a science.
Now, that being said, I HAVE seen some itineraries on Expedia and Travelocity which have you fly from Hartford to Savannah with a 9-10 hour layover at a hub – OVERNIGHT. Go ahead, run the fare finder and you’ll pick them right up.
BDL-CLT lv BDL 9.30pm arrive CLT 11.15, connect at CLT @ 6.30am for Savannah, arriving at 8am. How aboout that one. I bet they do not sell alot of those tickets to anyone paying attention, unless they need a quick night time stop over to visit someone in the hub city.
Did this on US air through Orbitz this summer. Flew SDF-DCA-CLT-PBI, except that I missed my CLT-PBI connection due to a DCA ground hold. So I had to fly home to FLL. The cost for me and my sister? $220.
I’ll go one better. Why do travel sites like Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz keep trying to sell me itins on multiple airlines? I’m not talking code shares or commuter carriers, I mean like United from Chicago to Newark then Continental from Newark to London. And the connection time was something like 30 minutes, too. My personal favorite, from many years ago, involved taking United from Chicago to Cincinnati, then Delta from Cincinnati to Philadelphia, and on the return taking Northwest from Philadelphia to Detroit, then American from Detroit to Chicago. Is it really that hard to add the option to keep the displayed itins to one airline, without having to limit our searches to one airline at a time? If something went wrong on the above mentioned trip to Philadelphia, who would be responsible? Where would I go to get it straightened out?
This has become less of a problem as of late, but it still shows up often enough to drive me away.