Have you ever been told by an airline agent that you had missed the check-in deadline, even though you arrived at the airport well before the published cutoff time? That happened to dozens of Spirit Airlines passengers this week, but it’s nothing new. Agents have been abusing customers for years and have even made them pay penalties.

A former intern of mine told me once that he was returning home to Washington from Las Vegas with a friend when an agent declared it was too late to check them in. At least the agent was honest and admitted that the fault wasn’t theirs. Technically, there was still time before the deadline, but the flight was overbooked. Because the two passengers didn’t have seat assignments and the plane was already full, there was no space for them — despite the fact that they were holding confirmed and paid tickets for the flight.

The agent was not only honest but incredibly arrogant, making the students pay a $150 change fee each to get on another flight. The young men didn’t know better as to stand up for their rights and ponied up the penalties. So the airline, which had overbooked the flight and made money from more passengers than there were seats for on the aircraft, ended up making even more money from apparently inexperienced travelers.

There should be serious penalties for airlines in such cases, because that’s a clear violation of Department of Transportation rules on overbooking. The customers should have been compensated, not shamelessly gouged and taken advantage of.

Obviously, I only have one side of the story, and while I’m not trying to excuse the airline agents who abuse paying customers in this disgraceful manner, there are two basic things the young travelers could have done to prevent the situation they found themselves in.

First, they should have had seat assignments. I realize that sometimes there are no available seats at the time of purchase, or the only seats left may require additional fees. But, as I pointed out in Decoding Air Travel, seats are likely to open up, so checking the seat map from time to time could solve that problem. The second thing is online check-in, starting at 24 hours or more before departure. I continue to be utterly perplexed by how many passengers choose to wait in lines instead.

Again, I’m not trying to excuse the apparent abuse by airline agents, but travelers should know basic rules and their rights, so they don’t allow agents to take them for a ride.

 
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American isn’t changing fare-publishing
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How airlines could make more money
How to recognize and fight airline tricks
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DOT keeps false ‘each-way’ airfare ads

The Atlantic
April 4, 2013

William J. Burns has been the secret weapon of U.S. secretaries of state for more than two decades, serving consecutively under three Republicans and three Democrats. So it came as no surprise that John Kerry wanted to be the seventh chief diplomat to lean daily on Burns, currently the country’s highest-ranking career diplomat, by keeping him on as deputy secretary of state, a position to which Burns was appointed by Hillary Clinton.

“Bill is the gold standard for quiet, head-down, get-it-done diplomacy,” Kerry said of Burns. “He is smart and savvy, and he understands not just where policy should move, but how to navigate the distance between Washington and capitals around the world. I worked with Bill really closely from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and I’m even more privileged to work with him now every single day. He has an innate knack for issues and relationships that’s unsurpassed…”
 
> READ THE FULL STORY IN THE ATLANTIC

The Huffington Post
January 24, 2013

Every president has his own way of determining who would make his best secretary of state, but all commanders-in-chief tend to focus on how a candidate would carry out his or her boss’s foreign policy. In reality, the position of secretary of state is perhaps the most complex in the Cabinet, because it requires its occupant to wear three hats at the same time.

In most government departments, the secretary is mainly the CEO. At State, he or she is also the country’s chief diplomat — or the COO — as well as the president’s chief foreign policy adviser. To be truly successful, the secretary of state must give each of these roles the time and attention they deserve, which is even more challenging when one has various crises to resolve around the world and a 24-hour news cycle…
 
> READ THE FULL STORY ON THE HUFFINGTON POST

The Atlantic
March 19, 2013

Charles Rivkin is an American ambassador of a peculiar kind. He is not a career diplomat but a political appointee, with no previous professional experience in international relations. However, unlike most of his current and former non-career colleagues, he speaks fluently the language of the county he is posted to — France — and is very well plugged-in when it comes to political and social developments there. He has received rave reviews for his performance in Paris both in official State Department audits and from his embassy’s employees.

But it wasn’t Rivkin’s diplomatic skills that landed him the coveted political ambassadorship. Rather, it was his skillful fundraising for President Obama during his 2008 election campaign…
 
> READ THE FULL STORY IN THE ATLANTIC

Foreign Policy Magazine
February 19, 2013

Imagine the following scenario: A 29-year-old restaurant manager becomes a U.S. diplomat. Five years later, he is appointed the founding director of the Arabian Peninsula office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), a major State Department program aimed at creating and strengthening civil society in a region vital to global stability.

Even though he is considered a good officer in general, the young diplomat has little idea how to do his new job. He speaks no Arabic and has never managed people or a budget outside a restaurant — let alone $2 million of taxpayers’ money. He has minimal knowledge of democracy promotion, institution-building, or grant-making, but he is expected to identify suitable NGOs in eight countries and award them grants to build an alternative to the authoritarian regimes across the Middle East…
 
> READ THE FULL STORY IN FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

Foreign Policy Magazine
September 13, 2012

The mob that had gathered at a soccer stadium descended on the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, determined to avenge Washington’s recognition of Kosovo — a Serbian province until five days earlier — as an independent state. On that day in February 2008, the Serbian riot police stationed in front of the embassy at the request of U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter conveniently vanished just before the hundreds-strong horde arrived. “The police marched away, got on buses, and drove away, so when the hoodlums came there was no one there,” Munter recalled.

A part of the embassy was soon ablaze. “One of the protesters who was drunk managed to get in and burned himself to death,” Munter said. Several others climbed the fence. The U.S. Marines guarding the compound had every right to shoot, but they managed to drive the intruders away with warnings and instructions instead. “I was very impressed that the Marines knew how to make judgment calls as well as to be defenders,” Munter, a Foreign Service officer since 1985 and until recently the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, told me in an early 2012 interview in Islamabad…
 
> READ THE FULL STORY IN FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

A United Airlines Boeing 777 at Denver International Airport.

The decision makes United the airline with the highest change fees in the affected markets. Other major legacy U.S. carriers, such as American, Delta and US Airways, still charge $150, and smaller airlines like Frontier and Virgin America charge $100. Alaska Airlines’ change fees are $75 online and $100 by phone. Those fees, which Southwest Airlines proudly spares its customers, are in addition to any fare differences. Changing the most expensive — or full-fare — tickets doesn’t incur penalties on any airline.

The United fee increase, coming just a week after the carrier was named worst in customer service in a national ranking tracking airline performance, is certain to anger United fliers even further. Industry watchers will be monitoring very closely whether other airlines follow suit — that has been the trend historically, though customer backlash and social media outrage have forced carriers, including United, to reverse controversial decisions in recent years.

The last change-fee raise — from $100 to $150 — took place in April 2008 and was also initiated by United. The other legacy carriers soon matched it. Before that, Continental Airlines, which merged with United in 2010, initiated an increase from $75 to $100 in January 2001.

In its latest and still unannounced move, United also raised the change fees between North America and South America from $250 to $300. The fees in other international markets remain at $250.

As a rule, fees are waived in the case of schedule changes imposed by the airlines weeks or even months before the travel date. Many carriers have recently increased fees for same-day voluntary changes made on the day of travel, as well as standby fees, which didn’t exist on domestic tickets until a few years ago.
 
UPDATE: Within days of United’s move, US Airways matched the fee increase. Delta and American Airlines quickly followed suit.
 
Related stories:

American isn’t changing fare-publishing
Swiss Air overplays ‘mistake fare’ excuse
How airlines could make more money
How to recognize and fight airline tricks
Did United choose the best rez system?
DOT keeps false ‘each-way’ airfare ads

American Airlines’ fare tariff between Washington and Los Angeles, as of 1 p.m. on Dec. 13, 2012. Source: ExpertFlyer.com

American Airlines’ roll-out of a new bundled fare structure this week has created some confusion among frequent fliers about what the change means to the way they book tickets. They have nothing to worry about — at least for now. American is not changing the decades-long practice of how fares are published on an airline tariff, and fears of a lack of transparency are misplaced.

You can still see in which booking class your ticket will be issued, though it’s indeed a bit confusing how exactly one would know the difference between the three new fare types by looking at that booking class, which could be the same for all three fares. So let’s break all this down and try to make sense of it.

First, what has American changed? It has bundled products and services that airlines have been unbundling for a few years, though some of those extras like certain seats are still sold separately. When you search domestic fares in the contiguous 48 states on its website, you now get three tabs: lowest fare, refundable (both coach) and Business/First Class. The default tab is lowest fare. In that category, there are three types of fares, as shown below for a one-way trip from Washington to Los Angeles.

“Choice” is the lowest available fare, with all the usual restrictions like being non-refundable and incurring a $150 change fee. “Choice Essential” is $34 higher each way and offers a change-fee waiver, though a fare difference may apply, and one free checked bag. “Choice Plus” is another $10 higher each way and also includes 50 percent bonus miles, same-day flight changes, depending on availability, and an alcoholic drink on flights where alcohol is served.

As you can see in the above image, all three fares are booked in Q class, and the price differences are fixed regardless of whether you are on a nonstop or connecting flights — the route doesn’t matter, either.

So you are essentially paying a base fare of $128 each way (plus $11 in taxes) in all three cases, as shown in the first image from ExpertFlyer.com under the headline above, which is the American tariff between Washington and Los Angeles. There is another Q fare on the tariff of $138 each way, but it has nothing to do with the new bundled structure — it’s still the most restrictive, but the difference is that it’s valid on any day of the week, while the $128 is valid only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There is even a third Q fare of $183, below the O fare, but again it’s just a base fare with all the usual restrictions — but unlike the other two, travel doesn’t have to completed by March 20, 2013.

What’s the conclusion? American continues to publish fares in the same way the industry has been doing for decades. When you search flights, you get a seat in the lowest available booking class — or fare bucket — which in this case is Q. The type of bundle you are buying doesn’t change the booking code, which is important if you are upgrading or if you are on a waitlist. In other words, there are no separate fare buckets of inventory in the more expensive bundles. If you’ve read “Decoding Air Travel,” you know that airlines don’t always offer the lowest available fare, but that’s another issue.

Now, if the booking class is the same, how do the airline system and American agents know that you paid more and are entitled to a change-fee waiver and other benefits? In theory, that should be seen in the so-called fare-basis code, which is the several-character code in the first column on the tariff, as shown in the ExpertFlyer image.

However, American is not publishing the fare bases for “Choice Essential” and “Choice Plus” on the tariffs it sends to Global Distribution Systems (GDS), which traditional and online travel agencies use — at least not yet. The carrier tells me that those codes can be seen by its agents. On the tariff, you can see that all fare bases end with the number 1. I’m told that fare bases ending with 2, 4 or 6 indicate “Choice Essential” fares, and those ending with 7, 8 or 9 indicate “Choice Plus” fares.

The only way you would see what you paid for is on your ticket receipt, which should say “Total price includes Choice Plus.”

I don’t mind American not publishing all these fare bases on its tariff — it’s much less confusing, especially when you know exactly how much more “Choice Essential” and “Choice Plus” cost on every single route. The question is: Will travel agencies be able to book the new bundles if the data they receive through a GDS doesn’t include those additional fare bases on the externally published tariff?

Currently, the new fare structure is available only through American’s direct channels and doesn’t apply to international fares or those to Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico.

Related stories:

Did United choose the best rez system?

American tries to entice top United fliers

American wins first battle in data war

How to recognize and fight airline tricks

DOT keeps false ‘each-way’ airfare ads