Nicholas Kralev

Political ambassadorships hold at 30%

nkralev — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:57:27 +0000

The middle of the summer is a good time to review the balance of political appointees vs. career diplomats in ambassadorial posts around the world. Not surprisingly, the familiar 30-percent quota for political appointments of the last several decades remains largely intact.

Actually, for some people, continuing the tradition of awarding presidential campaign contributors with embassies may be surprising, given President Obama's promise to change the way Washington works during the 2008 election.

However, as I wrote a year ago, reality set in soon after Obama took office. According to a list maintained by the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the diplomats' union, of all ambassadors Obama has nominated so far, about 40 percent are political appointees.

That number, though, is a bit misleading, because almost all political appointees change when a new president moves into the White House -- unlike career diplomats, who typically remain in their posts for another year or two. It's more appropriate to look at all embassies around the world -- not just Obama's nominees -- and the AFSA list shows 29.7 percent political appointees out of 185 positions globally. That number is slightly lower than it was during the last years of George W. Bush's presidency.

Another interesting number is that of the nominated but not-yet-confirmed career diplomats under Obama -- there are 40 in each category. In contrast, of 55 political appointees, 52 have been confirmed by the Senate.

This issue is understandably controversial for Foreign Service members, and there was a time last year when the White House was on its way to nominating more than 30 percent political appointees. As I reported then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to interfere.

“Why is ours the only profession where it’s considered acceptable to appoint someone without any experience?” Steven B. Kashkett, AFSA's acting president, said at the time. “Would you appoint someone to head a hospital without medical experience?”

When an airfare sale is not quite a sale

nkralev — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:24:44 +0000

How do airlines decide what fares qualify as "sales," and why do they advertise certain fares, but not other, much lower ones? Why is United Airlines promoting a "sale" between Washington and Boston for $109 each way, when there are currently six published lower fares in that market, beginning with $49 each way?

For the most part, I don't bother to figure out why airlines do certain things anymore. I just gather all the information I need about what they do and try to work with it -- or around it. Years of watching fares have taught me not to fall for those "sales," because in many cases, I can find a much lower price to the same destination, on the same dates and on the same carrier.

Both United and American Airlines are currently advertising two fall sales on their websites. My review of the American fares showed that most of them are indeed the lowest available prices at this time. There are a few small exceptions -- for example, I found a fare from New York to San Diego that is $5 lower than the advertised $164.

There are many more and much bigger differences on United. The unadvertised -- but published -- fares between Washington and Boston, in addition to $49 each way, are $54, $64, $74, $84 and $99. They all have fewer restrictions than the $109 "sale" price.

I say between Washington and Boston -- not from Washington to Boston -- because domestic fares are the same in either direction, unlike international fares, which are usually very different.

Let's take another example. The advertised fares between Denver and Los Angeles in two separate United "sales" are $99 and $89 each way. However, I found $68 each way. In addition, Denver-New Orleans is on "sale" for $123 each way, but there is also $109, and even $89.

Some of the advertised United fares are truly the lowest published at this time. For example, $88 each way for Washington-Chicago, $108 for Chicago-Denver, and $157 for Chicago-Los Angeles.

There is another catch that could increase the benefit of the unadvertised fares to you. Typically, "sale" prices require a round-trip purchase. In contrast, most of the lower fares I found have no such condition. In fact, the major U.S. carriers have been publishing more and more truly one-way fares in recent months, which has always been the case with Southwest Airlines and other low-cost carriers.

To United's credit, some of its current sales don't require a round-trip purchase. That is, indeed, the prudent thing to do. If a round trip is mandatory, why advertise one-way fares? Of course, for marketing purposes, but I've always found that a bit dishonest and deliberately misleading.

I mean no criticism of United for promoting as "sales" fares that are higher than other published fares. I wrote this to warn travelers that they should check all existing fares between two cities before settling for what they think is a "sale" or the best deal.

Those of you who have attended my "On the Fly" Seminars know how easy it is to bring up on your computer screen all fares published by every airline on a certain route in just seconds.

Seminars in Birmingham, Wichita and Omaha

nkralev — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:57:29 +0000

It's time to take the "On the Fly" Seminars on the road -- well, on the fly -- again. These may not be the most obvious cities or states to count among my first seminar venues, but I'm going to Birmingham, AL, Wichita, KS, and Omaha, NE, in August anyway, so why not use the opportunity to educate more people how to be smarter travelers?

Why go there in the first place? Good question. I'm trying to visit all 50 states, and I've been to 35 so far. I had airline discount vouchers to use for all my tickets, so my cost for air travel was minimal.

I used hotel points for accommodation, with some decent savings there, too. Hilton was offering a so-called point-stretcher award at one of its Hampton Inn properties in Birmingham -- for 18,000 instead of the regular 30,000 points for one night. Priority Club had the Holiday Inn Wichita on its "PointBreaks" list, which meant that I needed only 5,000, rather than the usual 25,000 points per night.

I thought a good way to get the word out in each city would be to find a local PR agency with good media contacts, and pay them a percentage of total receipts. That way, they would have an incentive to work harder to make sure more people sign up. If you have any suggestions, feel free to e-mail me. I'm also open to ideas about possible affordable venues.

I've created a new calendar page on the seminars' site, so do pay a visit and register if you so wish. Here are the dates:

AUG 17 — Birmingham, AL

AUG 26 — Wichita, KS

AUG 29 — Omaha, NE

Clinton pulls off diplomatic rarity in Asia

nkralev — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:18:47 +0000

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week accomplished a diplomatic feat that her immediate predecessors tried but failed repeatedly to pull off: visiting South Korea, but skipping Japan and China on the same trip. It may sound immaterial, but defying protocol is a tricky thing in diplomacy, especially in Asia.

For years, I've been very amused when the State Department would send us in the traveling press corps a note about the secretary plans to visit just South Korea or just China or just Japan. Every time, I'd smirk and bet that he or she would end up going to all three countries -- and I was right. That had become a tradition -- the Japanese in particular considered it an affront to be ignored by their staunchest ally in favor of Seoul or Beijing.

In early 2008, Condoleezza Rice had to go to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's inauguration, and initially had no intention of stopping in Tokyo or Beijing. But after diplomatic pressure from both capitals, she caved in. I skipped Tokyo on that trip.

Clinton herself fell victim to protocol in May. She had to co-chair the so-called U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in Beijing, and to drop by the 2010 Shanghai Expo in Shanghai. For months, her aides said that no other stops were planned, but in the end, she went to Japan and South Korea, too.

It seems that this time Clinton successfully defied protocol. It helped that she met with her Japanese and Chinese counterparts at the annual meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Vietnam. But I have little doubt that, in spite of those meetings, the Japanese and Chinese still lobbied for her to drop by their capitals.

By the way, this ASEAN meeting was the first I've missed in years. I always thought attending a high-level summit in Southeast Asia in late July was a misery because of the very hot and humid weather, but DC is much worse these days.

FOX 5 DC: Summer travel tips

nkralev — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:27:02 +0000

Nicholas Kralev talks about saving on airfare, achieving elite airline status and his upcoming "On the Fly" Seminars on FOX 5 in Washington, DC, on July 22, 2010.

British leader flies to DC commercially

nkralev — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:56:44 +0000

British Prime Minister David Cameron surprised many this week by traveling to Washington for his first official White House visit since taking office on a commercial British Airways flight, instead of taking a dedicated plane, to save money. Now some Americans are wondering if U.S. officials could follow suit.

Having traveled around the world with four U.S. secretaries of state -- Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright -- over the last decade, I can see how commercial flying would save the State Department millions of dollars a year. However, it would also guarantee a logistical nightmare.

Most people don't know that Clinton has been taking commercial flights since she became secretary of state, but that happens only when she goes home to New York from DC. Work-related flights to New York are flown on small Air Force planes.

On foreign trips, the security detail and the staff accompanying the secretary make for a large entourage that would be hard to accommodate on one commercial aircraft in business or first class. Knowing the security requirements, I'm guessing regular passengers would be required to board two hours before takeoff.

More importantly, the secretary often visits more than one country in one day, so trying to accomplish that commercially is practically impossible. Not to mention that nonstop flights don't exist to many destinations most of the time.

Last year, I wrote two columns detailing Clinton's first trip as America's chief diplomat.

Rice used to take a smaller plane than the C-32 -- the Air Force version of the Boeing 757 -- on quite a few trips. That required most of the staff and press corps to fly commercially, which was fine with me, since I flew much more comfortably and got tons of frequent-flier miles.

Apparently, Cameron didn't have the limitations mentioned above, and there are plenty of nonstop stop between London and DC. It's impressive, though, that he flew in business class -- not first -- and his meetings in DC were arranged around the British Airways schedule, according to the British press. His two immediate predecessors, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, also flew on a BA plane, but it was chartered and dedicated to them.

Speaking of the State Department and saving money on travel, I've witnessed excessive spending of taxpayers dollars for years, but that's a topic for another column.

US Airways hears feedback, fixes website

nkralev — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:02:13 +0000

US Airways has set a good example of listening to customer feedback and fixing a problem. In my case, there was added criticism in a newspaper column, but instead of complaining, the airline rolled up sleeves and started working.

In March, I wrote in my Washington Times column about its website's inability to display many itineraries, even when booked directly with US Airways. At the time, spokeswoman Valerie Wunder at the company's headquarters in Phoenix arranged a conference call with two in-house experts, who told me that the reason for the glitch was the site's failure to recognize some foreign airport codes.

I'm happy to report that now I can view reservations containing some of the same airport codes I wasn't able to see before. I hope the problem has been fixed across the system. That said, there are other issues with the US Airways site, but most other airlines have them, too.

Another company that has taken my criticism constructively is RCN, the cable operator. In a May column, I wrote about a massive April 26 outage that reportedly affected not only D.C. but several states. Because most customers have “bundled” services, they lost all of them for about five hours beginning in early afternoon on a Monday — those included businesses and many people working from home, who could do little with no phone and Internet in the middle of a weekday.

I concluded that RCN hadn't improved its customer-service policies since a previous incident, which I reported a year earlier. In that case, my entire building lost phone, TV and Internet service around 7 p.m. on a Saturday. Service was not restored for more than 18 hours. Customer-service agents in the Philippines gave me and my neighbors conflicting information about the problem and how long it would take to fix it.

After my latest column, I received a call from Richard Beville, vice president and general manager for the D.C. area, who invited me to lunch to discuss how RCN can improve its customer service.

I try to hold companies in different sectors to the same standards everyone expects from airlines, which probably get more criticism than any other industry. While some of that criticism is deserved, the high visibility of thousands of front-line employees with customers around the world every day magnifies even a mundane incident, especially if splashed on Facebook or Twitter.

Avoiding luggage and other airline fees

nkralev — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:48:46 +0000

A new survey by the Consumer Travel Alliance released this week found that luggage and other additional airline fees increase the average ticket price by up to 50 percent. The truth is, there is a relatively easy way to have most of those fees waived -- if only travelers were better educated and more open-minded.

My impression during almost constant global travel for most of the last decade is that people think they know how to travel -- but then they complain about being "scammed" by the airlines. My approach has been to learn as much as possible about rules, restrictions and fees, and then to look for ways to waive them and generally make the system work for me.

One of the reasons I started the "On the Fly" Seminars was to educate people how to be better travelers -- and to change negative attitudes toward travel. In fact, my FLY 201 class covers exactly how to get those extra fees waived: by achieving elite airline status.

Many people think they don't travel enough to get elite status or it's cheaper to fly a different airline every time. I find both of these arguments valid in very few cases.

First, you don't need to fly 100,000 miles a year. The first elite level in most frequent-flier programs will get your baggage fees waived. Moreover, because of elite benefits offered and recognized across global airline alliances, a silver membership with one carrier will secure those waivers on every member-airline. You can fly on any Star member and credit your miles to any of the Star loyalty programs.

However, mileage requirements to achieve status vary greatly. For example, you need 25,000 miles for Premier on United Airlines, which will give you Star Alliance silver status -- but you only need 4,000 miles on the alliance's newest member, Greece's Aegean Airlines. Not all fares on United earn 100 percent mileage in Aegean's program, but right now it gives you 1,000 miles just for signing up. I'm sure if most of you looked at your flight history in the past year, you'd see that you could have qualified had you kept your miles in the same place.

Second, relying on Travelocity or Priceline to tell you which airline has the cheapest ticket and go to a different carrier every time is not the best way to fly in the current environment. Even if you had to pay a bit extra to stay within the same alliance -- but if you managed to secure elite status -- at the end of the year you most likely spent less money because you didn't pay luggage fees.

There is no question that airlines should make all those extra fees more transparent earlier in the booking process. There is also little doubt that their frequent-flier programs were created to make money. But they do reward their loyal customers, so if you are going to give them your money, why not learn how to benefit from your loyalty as much as you can?

Hilton or Starwood? Not even a close call

nkralev — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:27:45 +0000

How do you decide which hotel to choose in the city you are visiting if you want to redeem your points for a free night? I had to make that decision this month, and unlike in many similar situations, it wasn't even a close call.

I usually start with the chains where I have top elite status -- Hilton HHonors and Starwood. Hilton's Diamond benefits are inferior to Starwood's Platinum perks -- Hilton doesn't give you suite upgrades and free Internet. The only advantage with Hilton is that award stays count toward elite status, which is rather significant in my book.

However, in January, Hilton devalued its points by raising both the categories of many hotels and the number of points needed for a free night in some categories. Even though the affected properties weren't as many as the unaffected ones, the average traveler wouldn't know that, because those that remained unchanged are in places few people visit. I have the full list, but have yet to come across a hotel that stayed the same while making reservations.

Even before the devaluation, I thought all Hilton properties in Anchorage, AK, were a bit overrated, but I had stayed at three of them on points nevertheless. When I looked at the new categories last month, I was horrified -- not only was the Hilton now Category 6 (previously the highest until a seventh tier was created this year), but the Hampton Inn, the lowest-end brand in the chain, was Category 5, requiring 35,000 points for one night.

By contrast, the only Starwood property in Anchorage, the Sheraton, is Category 3, which means only 7,000 points per night. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer the popular cash-and-points option.

So let's compare the two full-service hotels -- the Hilton and the Sheraton. At the first -- Category 6 out of seven -- I need 40,000 points out of a maximum of 50,000 for the highest category. At the second -- Category 3 out of seven -- I need 7,000 points out of maximum 35,000. Naturally, I chose the Sheraton.

There was another factor in my decision. I needed a conference room for my "On the Fly" Seminar, so I called and left messages for the sales managers at the Sheraton and four of the Hilton properties -- the Embassy Suites, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Homewood Suites and the Hampton Inn. Of the last four, only the Embassy Suites -- one of the newest and nicest hotels in town -- bothered to call me back, but their price was too high. The Sheraton offered me a much better rate.

So I was happy with the Sheraton. Although it's not a very attractive building from outside, it underwent a major renovation recently and is quite decent inside. I got a suite, lounge access, free Internet and free breakfast. My only cash expense was on the conference room.

What would you have done?

Preserving upgrades in case of rebooking

nkralev — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:51:55 +0000

Dealing with flight delays and cancellations is challenging enough for travelers, but for some of us it has an additional complication: How to preserve our upgrades in case of rebooking. My trip to Alaska this week provided a textbook example.

As experienced and creative as I might be in handling flight disruptions, the weather is always my worst enemy. I've rarely felt more helpless than I did in Denver on my way to Anchorage. My plane had diverted to Colorado Springs because of a thunderstorm, and my departure time kept being pushed back more times than I cared to count.

I was sitting in United's Red Carpet Club watching other planes take off and land, but the one I needed was still at another airport. The only reason to smile was the double rainbow that appeared at one point -- you can see it in the photo above.

I had no other options. United has only one flight to Anchorage a day from Denver, though it also flies up there from San Francisco and Chicago. Those flights, however, had already left, so connecting was impossible, even if I could make it to those two cities.

At least I didn't have to worry about missing another flight, rebooking and potentially losing a previously confirmed upgrade, as this was my last segment for the day.

Things were very different, though, on my way back home. The plane coming to Anchorage from Denver was late -- another patch of bad weather had diverted in to Wyoming. It was clear I'd miss my connecting flight, so I called United to get rebooked. The flight I wanted was to Washington National (DCA) -- there was no upgrade space available, but they were still selling two revenue seats in first class. An alternative was a flight to Dulles Airport (IAD), which had four revenue seats in first class but nothing to upgrade, either.

A supervisor refused to open upgrade space for me despite the second long delay I was experiencing in three days and was only willing to waitlist me for first class on either flight -- there were 22 people waitlisted for an upgrade to DCA, and she didn't think it was fair to jump me over them.

I got really angry -- but not because of her refusal. The plane to DCA was a Boeing 757 and had 24 seats in first class, and the one to IAD was a Boeing 767 with 34 seats in first. Until recently, it was very likely that those flights would have had at least a couple of upgrade seats the night before departure.

But in March, United implemented free domestic upgrades for all elites, which they don't even need to request. So by the time a top elite member needs a seat because of involuntary rebooking, those seats have been given away to customers with much lower status.

When I got to the Anchorage airport, I saw that I was first on the waitlist, and with two seats still open at 4 a.m. Denver time for an 11 a.m. departure, I thought I was pretty safe. But when I landed in Denver, those two seats were gone. I was still at the top of the waitlist, and three people with reservations on the flight hadn't checked in.

I did get the upgrade at the gate in the end, but this was the closest I'd come to flying in coach in years.