Nicholas Kralev

Rethinking government air travel costs

nkralev — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:00:18 +0000

It's no secret that the U.S. government wastes huge amounts of money on airfare, and that waste has been institutionalized. So it's hardly a surprise that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has done the same, as an Associated Press story pointed out yesterday.

The reason for the story was the apparent discrepancy between Paul's crusade against excessive government spending and his own spending. But while he did waste taxpayers' money, he didn't break any rules. So perhaps it's time for the rules to change.

Government employees are usually required to buy full-fare tickets -- meaning Y or B booking class -- when traveling on business. The main reason for that is to have the flexibility to change and cancel those tickets for free.

Because of the massive amount of business the federal government gives the airlines, they provide it with special fares, which still carry the Y and B codes but are much cheaper than the regular published Y and B fares. For instance, the discount on a round-trip coach ticket to Europe can be over $2,500. I gave a specific example in a column last July.

However, those special fares are still much more expensive than the lowest published fares, which of course come with penalties for changes and cancellations -- and while most of them are non-refundable, one can almost always use the amount paid, minus the change fee, for a future ticket.

I would guess that buying regular non-special fares and paying the penalty if necessary would be much cheaper than purchasing full-fare tickets. History shows that changes are not made too frequently.

There is another source of waste. Although the government fares are free to change and cancel, that "free" applies only to the airlines, meaning there are no airline-imposed penalties. Booking government travel is handled by large travel agencies, which charge as much as $90 per transaction -- every time one of their agents touches a ticket to issue, change or cancel it.

First and Business Class tickets are usually allowed only on very long intercontinental flights, though each government agency can set its own policy. The rules are often bent for top management, and members of Congress certainly fall in that category.

The AP story said that Paul flew in paid First Class dozens of times since May 2009 on Continental flights between Washington and his Texas district. In addition, even when his office bough coach tickets, he often got upgraded, because Continental offers instant upgrades on Y and B fares, depending on availability.

So while it may be more prudent for Paul to put his money where his mouth is, the much bigger question is whether the current rules for government air travel need a fresh look.

In fact, any government agency could probably save millions if it used the Kralev Method from "Decoding Air Travel." Pardon the shameless plug, but I'd be happy to teach them.

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DOT keeps false ‘each-way’ airfare ads

nkralev — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:00:13 +0000

The media was full of stories last week about the Department of Transportation's (DOT) requirement that advertised airfares include all taxes and fees, which goes into effect Jan. 26. But most stories missed the detail that promoting each-way fares "based on a required round-trip purchase" will still be allowed.

This means that a $220 fare you see advertised may not be the actual final price, after all -- despite DOT's much trumpeted pursuit of transparency and consumer protection. In its ruling last April that finalized the new requirements, it only demanded that the fine print be more prominent.

"The department is codifying existing enforcement policy, allowing sellers of air transportation to advertise an each-way price that is contingent on a round-trip ticket purchase, so long as the round-trip purchase requirement is clearly and conspicuously disclosed in a location that is prominent and proximate to the advertised fare," the final ruling said.

I suppose it's easy enough to double $220 and quickly arrive at the $440 round-trip price, if there is a notation next to the fare that a round trip is mandatory. But at the same time, isn't it even easier to just put $440 instead of half that amount plus the fine print?

DOT said that its ruling "allows sellers of air transportation to be flexible in the way they advertise round-trip fares while still requiring all pertinent disclosures to consumers."

Who are we kidding? The only reason airlines use this marketing ploy is to mislead and manipulate customers. They can easily prove me wrong by ending the practice.

"While the department understands that some consumers would prefer the full round-trip price to be displayed, the department has not found that the current regime has led to consumer confusion or deception, and it does permit certain types of advertising that are beneficial," DOT said.

I've written about this issue several times, and it's hard for me to see anything "beneficial" in false each-way fare advertising -- for consumers, that is. I have no trouble seeing how this practice benefits airlines. As I've pointed out before, many airlines do advertise actual round-trip fares.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with promoting one-way fares that can indeed be purchased as such, without the round-trip requirement.

DOT has taken important steps to address false fare advertising -- including fines on carriers that break the rules -- but there is much more to be desired if it's really serious about protecting consumers.

On a somewhat different note, the new rules also increase the denied-boarding compensation airlines are required to offer passengers who are left behind because their flight was oversold. Carriers usually try to entice volunteers with travel vouchers, but if that fails, they must give the affected customers cash or a check.

If such travelers' new flights delay arrival at their final destination between 1 and 2 hours for domestic flights and between 1 and 4 hours for international ones, the compensation must be 200 percent of the one-way fare or $650, whichever is lower. For longer delays, the numbers go up to 400 percent of the fare or $1,300.

Airlines are exempt from these rules if the denied boarding is due to substituting the scheduled aircraft with a smaller plane, or if the plane has fewer than 30 seats. The rules don't apply to international flights inbound to the United States, though the European Commission has even stricter rules for flights originating in the European Union.

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Fighting airlines’ attempts to overcharge

nkralev — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:00:03 +0000

How do you know that an airline agent is trying to charge you much more than necessary to change a ticket? Two agents attempted that on me just yesterday, but they quickly realized they were messing with the wrong guy and retreated from their positions. The difference was thousands of dollars.

In my book, I explain why it helps to know what exactly you want before calling an airline, and more importantly, to know the outcome of an agent's actions. I never trust agents to tell me how much I need to pay for anything -- I call them simply to accomplish something I can't do online.

A couple of months ago, I issued a Business Class ticket for a client who flew the outbound portion but had to cancel the return. I called the airline to take him off that flight and said I wasn't ready to rebook yet but would call back when I was. The agent said, fine, call us then.

That's what I did yesterday, but the agent I got was told by the rate desk that the new flight had to be booked at the same time the original segment was canceled -- in other words, it was too late. That was the biggest claptrap I'd heard in a long time, so I hung up. After all, what was the alternative? Buying a new ticket?

I immediately called again to speak to another agent, but in the one minute that took, the first agent had managed to notate the record that changes weren't allowed. As calm as I try to stay with reservations on the phone, spiteful agents like that one annoy me hugely. Naturally, I asked for a supervisor to make my case that the rate-desk person was wrong.

First, even if the change had to be made at the same time as the original cancellation, I should have been informed of that when I made the cancellation, if that would leave the ticket with no value -- not when it was too late.

Second, the fare rules said the following: "Original reservations are cancelled prior to the original scheduled flight and the new intended travel is scheduled." If the authors of that sentence meant that both actions had to be completed at the same time, they would have put "and the new intended travel is scheduled" before the words "prior to the original scheduled flight." In that case, both actions would have been covered by "prior to…" -- as I understand it here, the first action does need to take place "prior to…," but not the second.

The supervisor didn't even argue with me. She deleted the spiteful notes and authorized the change.

But the rate desk's shenanigans were far from over. The original Z booking class wasn't eligible for an upgrade to First Class, which was available on the new flight and my client wanted it, so he had to buy up to the higher D class. I'd looked at the airline's tariff and determined that the difference in fare would be about $1,000.

However, the rate desk wanted to charge $4,000. Customers don't have access to the rate desk, so I had to reason with a reservation agent. I pointed out what I'd seen on the tariff and explained that the rate desk wanted to charge a one-way D fare, but this was a round-trip ticket, and they should be charing half of the lower round-trip D fare.

The agent suggested that perhaps the lower D fare was not combinable with the Z fare on the already flown outbound flight. I had an answer to that, too: The last three letters of both fare-basis codes were the same, so they were indeed combinable. I could also prove that by booking a new reservation in Z class on the outbound and D class on the return.

She went back to the rate desk and quickly returned with the news that I was right and the fare difference would be about $1,000.

Was this incompetence or did they try to take me for a ride? I don't know -- what I do know is that something that should have taken 10 minutes took instead more than an hour to accomplish.

So make sure you do your homework and don't trust agents, even if they tell you that they have 20 years of experience.

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FareCompare guts airfare search tools

nkralev — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:00:10 +0000

The owners of FareCompare.com have apparently decided to destroy what used to be one of the most useful websites for consumer travel. Its best features were removed last weekend, and many of the remaining ones are not working properly. Talk about fixing something that wasn't broken.

For a couple of years, FareCompare has been talking about catering more to the airline industry than consumers, proposing a system to track mistake fares and alert carriers, so they can correct them. The company has also stepped up advertising -- both on the site and in e-mail messages.

Could it be that it feels pressure to make it more difficult for consumers to find better deals and spend less money on air travel?

In both my book and my classes, I stress the importance of monitoring fares and learning when a low fare is published -- regardless of travel dates and seat availability -- so you can take advantage of it before it disappears. As I say, I want to know what's possible, and then I'll do whatever I can to get the best price. That was one of FareCompare's main strengths.

You could program your account -- in the "My Trips" section -- to keep track of various city-pairs, specify an airline, if you like, and request e-mail alerts every time a new fare on a certain route was filed. When you logged in, all your saved routes appeared on the same page, showing the current lowest fares, along with their place on an airline's tariff, and the last several lowest filings on that route for comparison. You could also rearrange the city-pairs by price or other criteria.

The "My Trips" section is still there, but most of its previous functions no longer exist. You can't rearrange the routes, you can't specify an airline, you don't see any data from the tariff, such as fare basis codes and valid dates, and you don't get historical data for comparison. In fact, as I write this, all my 65 saved routes say that a "price is not currently available."

There have been problems with e-mail alerts for years, but now they seem to have multiplied -- the problems, not the alerts.

Finally, FareCompare was great at giving us idea for trips. For example, if you wanted to get away for a long weekend, you could see a list of destinations either by total price or price per mile. However, the page that used to show how far you could fly for the least amount of money -- also known as the FlyerTalk page and incredibly useful to leisure travelers -- has been removed. There is a message that a new version is "coming soon," but no one knows why the old version was taken down before the replacement was ready.

There are already frustrated travelers who have posted in two threads on FlyerTalk. Some of them note the conspicuous silence of FareCompare, which actually started one of the threads in 2008.

To be fair, the site does have a map showing fares from any given city to any destination in the world, but I have four problems with it: First, it's very difficult to use graphically, because many fares appear on top of each other due to the cities' proximity. Second, you have to specify a month in which you want to travel, which leaves out many fares. Third, the tool that specifies an airline isn't working. Fourth and most important, some fares are simply wrong.

FareCompare is a free site, and I'm sure some people think we have no right to criticize it or have demands. But I think there is rarely a truly "free" site anymore. We pay for using it one way or another -- if not with a subscription fee, perhaps by enduring various ads. And who knows where our e-mail addresses end up?

If FareCompare doesn't restore its most useful tools, it would be handing AirfareWatchdog.com a great opportunity to fill a much-needed void.

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Airlines still think customers are stupid

nkralev — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:10:49 +0000

While most U.S. airlines have learned to be relatively honest with their best customers, many of their foreign peers have not yet realized that travelers are not as stupid as to fall for their PR spin and questionable practices.

It's time for those carriers to wake up to the fact that it's the end of 2011, and much in the airline industry is rather transparent to those of us who pay attention. Trying to persuade customers that bad news is actually good may be an essential PR trick, but in today's hyper-connected world, it's not hard to figure out someone's true intentions.

Among the airlines still using the old playbook is British Airways, which is surprising for such a major and quite good global carrier. Last month, it drastically devalued its award redemption chart, but it tried to present that negative change as a positive one.

The clue came with the usage of the world "revitalizing" to describe the changes to the carrier's frequent-flier program, Executive Club. At least they steered clear of "enhancement," which is what many U.S. carriers used in the past, inviting much derision from frequent fliers.

British Airways announced a few weeks before the changes took effect that they were coming, but what those changes actually were going to be remained a secret until the very day they were implemented. That move showed gross disrespect for the company's best customers who deserved much better for their loyalty.

In contrast, many U.S. airlines and hotel companies publish their new charts, as well as other program changes, months in advance. One recent exception was Delta Airlines, which didn't really have an official global chart for more than a year, until it finally published one in February, effective immediately -- actually, much of it was already in use unofficially.

Apparently, British Airways was afraid that many Executive Club members would rush to burn their miles before the last change -- after all, there were plenty of miles on its books, partly thanks to its giving away 100,000 miles as a credit-card sign-up bonus. So it said that the number of award miles required for "97 percent of our routes" will stay the same or even go down.

In fact, that turned out to be false. In an attempt to save face when the new chart came out, the airline said it had meant 97 percent of the nonstop routes out of London.

While some of those nonstop routes have indeed become cheaper, there are many Executive Club members outside London who earned their miles hoping to use them for trips to cities other than London. Unfortunately, they are the big losers -- the increases in those cases can be over 80 percent. Substantial premiums have been added to connecting and partner flights across the board.

Those changes, along with the huge amounts British Airways charges in taxes and fees on award tickets, have drastically devalued its miles. Just this week, I booked award tickets to Asia for two clients, and I really wanted to help them burn their British Airways miles. However, that particular award had almost doubled in price, and the taxes were over $1,200 per person. So I booked with another airline for nearly half the miles and $85 in taxes.

British Airways in certainly not alone in thinking that customers are stupid. Air Canada quietly started charging fuel surcharges on some partner award tickets earlier this fall. Did it hope no one would notice that they were asked to pay hundreds of dollars more than before? Finally, after Air Canada was exposed on various blogs, it admitted what it was doing and said that even more partner flights would be included in the new program.

And then there is the scandalous behavior of the United Arab Emirates' Etihad Airways last month.

For two days in October, it advertised a First Class fare from Spain to Australia on its website for less than 400 euro. According to Spanish media reports, about 300 people bought tickets. The first of them traveled 10 days later, when an agent in Brussels noticed the fare and alerted the appropriate department. It was then determined that the fare was a mistake, and the passenger was downgraded to coach without any compensation. The rest of the tickets were canceled.

I've written about mistake fares before, but the issue here is not whether Etihad was wrong not to honor the tickets. I said scandalous because of a letter the airline sent to the passengers who decided to put up a fight and wanted to defend their rights through the media.

Etihad hired a law firm in Spain that in no uncertain terms threatened those customers in writing with litigation, if they dared to go to the media. The last time I checked, Spain was a democracy with freedom of speech, and the United Arab Emirates was something quite different. I don't believe anything has changed since.

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Questioning conventional airfare wisdom

nkralev — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:00:46 +0000

I'm tired of all the "low-fare tips" in the media -- both hearing and reading about them, and giving them myself. Yes, I'm guilty of feeding the media's hunger for quick "Top 5 tips," and not happy about having to dumb down a very complex airfare system, which is actually more misleading than helpful.

Those of us who are trained and experienced journalists know very well how to make a specific or even technical topic accessible to a large general audience. I've been doing that during my entire professional career.

So it's understandable that editors and producers across the United States want to write stories or produce TV and radio segments that are easily understood by most of their audience. That's why I was hardly surprised the first time I was asked for tips on shopping for airfare in a five-minute interview.

While I usually warn listeners and viewers that I'm about to make generalizations, I tell them that, on average, the lowest domestic fares are published on Tuesday and typically last through Thursday. Also, on average, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays are said to be the cheapest days to fly.

Why? If you've read my book, "Decoding Air Travel," you know that domestic fares are filed four times a day during the week, and once a day on weekends. You also know that each fare is published with its own rules, one of which is day-of-the-week validity. Some fares are valid on any day but Friday and Sunday, others only on Tuesday and Wednesday, and yet others have no day restrictions at all.

So if I have to generalize, based on all my knowledge and experience, I'd cautiously say that Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday may be cheaper to fly on than other days.

Unfortunately, some travel writers are taking those generalizations to the extreme. The most recent radio show I was on just yesterday was NPR's "On Point," where a guest before me said you should never buy airline tickets on weekends.

Well, I've bought plenty of cheap tickets on weekends, ranging from $150 to $250 round trip, including transcontinental ones.

Then last weekend, I read an article about how to get low fares on a website called venturebeat.com, which was based on information provided by Kayak.com. "Don’t buy plane tickets more than 30 day in advance or within 14 days of your trip," it advised.

Really? I currently have about 10 tickets booked for future travel, and all of them were purchased months ago. The cheapest was less than $150, and the most expensive just over $300. A couple of years ago, I bought a one-way ticket from Washington to San Francisco for $110, only three days before travel.

The article also said that "the best time to buy a plane ticket for the December holidays is the first week of December, up until the 10th." I realize they didn't say "the only time," but I thought I'd mention that my Christmas ticket to Phoenix was bought last spring and cost $240 -- that was the actual total price, no discount vouchers included.

So I think very carefully these days before accepting an invitation to appear on radio or TV. I declined one just last week. I initially declined "On Point," too, but I reconsidered when they agreed to give me a 17-minute segment without another guest, for which I'm immensely grateful.

The other reason was the guest-host, NPR correspondent Jacki Lyden, who also guest-hosted "Weekend Edition" when I was on in August. She has been the only journalist so far who really understands the complexity of the system and doesn't make me dumb things down and offer questionable tips. Even in the four-minute segment on Weekend Edition, she let me explain the basics of airfares -- and that was by far my most effective media appearance in terms of audience response and book sales.

The media should never underestimate the public's intelligence and curiosity.

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India tries to blackmail Star Alliance

nkralev — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:00:55 +0000

The Indian government is engaging in apparent blackmail of the Star Alliance, following the global airline group's rejection of Air India's membership application. New Delhi's threat to take away traffic rights from Star members is about to test the diplomatic skills of both the affected carriers and the alliance leadership.

As I wrote in August, Star really, really wanted to add Air India to its network, because of the large and fast-growing Indian market. It spent more time, effort and money on helping Air India meet the membership requirements than it has with any other candidate. At the end, however, Air India’s entrenched corporate culture and internal Indian politics became unbearable, and the alliance gave up.

New Delhi wasted no time devising retaliation. Within weeks of Air India's rejection, the government informed Austrian Airlines and Swiss International Airlines that their traffic rights are in danger, as reported extensively in the Indian press. The official reason was the two carriers' ownership, in which Germany's Lufthansa has controlling stakes.

That, of course, has been the case for years, and no one believed this was the real reason for India's threat. It made another move, refusing to grant landing rights in New Delhi to Lufthansa's Airbus 380. This time, Indian officials didn't even try to hide the linkage to Air India's failed Star application, accusing Lufthansa of sabotaging the Indian bid.

A couple of weeks later, reports appeared in Indian newspapers that Star and Air India had resumed negotiations. That sort of made sense, given India's multiple threats, but the only sources in those stories were Indian officials -- confirmation from Star was suspiciously missing.

So I did a little digging, and it turns out Air India has had no official contacts with the alliance since talks broke down in the summer. There may have been unofficial contacts, but a resumption of negotiations doesn't happen unofficially.

It's high time the Indians rethought their priorities and tactics. Blackmail is not the best strategy to earn international respect and recognition for your national carrier.

In the very first column I wrote about Star in 2008, I argued that leading an airline alliance is essentially practicing international diplomacy. The main subject in that piece, then-Star CEO Jaan Albrecht, recently became CEO of Austrian Airlines, so one of his first orders of business was dealing with India again. As if he didn't have enough of that in the last four years.

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Is India going too far in curbing airfares?

UAE mixes aviation and foreign policy

Carriers lose appetite for Tokyo Haneda

nkralev — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:57:04 +0000

When I landed at Tokyo's Haneda Airport today, I had one of my easiest, fastest and smoothest international arrival experiences. But I wondered where all those airlines that last year fought and won a fierce battle over the right to fly to Haneda actually were.

It appears the industry overestimated Haneda's appeal to travelers, and it also might have miscalculated how many passengers remain in Tokyo, as opposed to those who connect to other destinations.

It's true that the March earthquake and tsunami had a negative impact on travel to Japan in general, but traffic to and from the much bigger Narita Airport has largely recovered.

Haneda's smaller size and proximity to central Tokyo provide a significant advantage. However, as I first wrote two years ago, most medium- and long-haul flights arrive and depart between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. -- not exactly the most preferred time by the majority of travelers. In addition, onward flight connections from Haneda are extremely limited.

That didn't seem to bother most airlines last year, when the rights to fly from various foreign cities to Haneda were being awarded by the Japanese and other governments. U.S. carriers in particular made rather bold proposals. In the end, the Department of Transportation gave American Airlines the right to fly from New York, Delta from Detroit and Los Angeles, and Hawaiian Airlines from Honolulu.

American's flights are nowhere to be found in its winder schedule, though they are planned for next summer. The same goes for Delta's Detroit flights. It does operate the LA flight throughout the year, as does Hawaiian on the Honolulu route. Air Canada has postponed indefinitely its plan for flights from Vancouver, even though it started selling tickets late last year.

The Japanese carriers have trimmed their plans, too. All Nippon Airways has kept only LA in North America, while Japan Airlines serves San Francisco. European and other long-haul routes are also very few.

British Airways is the only foreign carrier outside Asia and the United States that currently flies to Haneda -- and not every day. The Asian carriers include Air China, Asiana, Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, AirAsia, China Eastern, Eva Airways, Korean Air, Malaysia Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Singapore Airlines and Thai Airways.

Flights loads to and from Haneda are not what those carriers expected -- my Singapore Airlines flight was less than half-full in Economy and about two-thirds full in Business Class, where I had two lie-flat seats to myself, though even one would have been just fine.

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Airlines neglect non-flying experience

nkralev — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:00:44 +0000

Why do numerous airlines, including those aspiring to be among the world's best, keep focusing on improving the in-flight experience, but don't seem to care what kind of service their customers receive before they even step foot on a plane?

It's high time they understood that travelers are getting smarter, and mediocre reservation agents won't be tolerated much longer.

In April, I wrote about my disastrous experience with Singapore Airlines' award-booking agents, who were so poorly trained they might as well have worked for a third-world carrier. In May, I mentioned British Airways' arrogance and refusal to offer the slightest apology after losing the luggage of two First Class passengers who had paid $12,500 per ticket.

This month, it was Turkish Airlines' turn. The Star Alliance member has improved significantly in recent years, and spent a lot of money on advertising and public relations. Actor Kevin Costner, who ironically flies mostly on his own private plane -- and flew me on it a decade ago for a Financial Times story -- was hired to do TV commercials for Turkish. So was NBA star Kobe Bryant. The carrier's motto is "Globally yours."

However, in many respects Turkish remains a rather backward regional airline. It's not that its reservations agents are not well-trained -- that's the case with much more advanced carriers. The bad experience with Turkish begins as soon as you dial the number of its call center.

Even though the center is open only during U.S. business hours, all agents are in Istanbul. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, except that many of them have a very poor command of English, and the connection is so bad you'd think it's 1950. It sounds as if the airline uses cheap Internet-based technology to keep costs low. Many companies around the world do that, but I haven't experienced such poor quality in years.

I called Turkish to change the date of a flight, and I knew the original booking class wasn't available on the new flight, so the ticket would have to be repriced in the higher class. There was no change fee, so only a $265 fare difference had to be paid.

The truly global airlines have a very simple procedure in such cases: The agent reprices the ticket and -- often with the help of a supervisor or the rate and ticketing desks -- reissues it within minutes. To my utter shock, however, a supervisor informed me that the Turkish reservations center is not capable of reissuing tickets. So the ticket in question could only be reissued at an airport, no later than two hours before departure for a $20 fee -- and that's full-fare Business Class.

Seriously, Turkish Airlines? What year do you think this is? Do you really want to increase lines at airport ticket counters when something this simple can be done over the phone? So much for spending millions of dollars (educated guess) on advertising and PR -- you'd be much smarter to invest that money in a 21st century reservations center.

A few days before the above-described experience, I noticed that Turkish doesn't allow seat assignments to be made on its website, even in long-haul Business Class, and even when a booking is created on the site. I posted that on the carrier's Facebook page and was informed that seats can be assigned no earlier than seven days before departure.

Why? Isn't it more complicated to set such artificial deadlines than just allow customers to get a seat as soon as they buy a ticket? This is not a question of charging for seat assignments, because Turkish doesn't do that. But why waste time calling reservations only to get a seat? It's not like you'll have a pleasant experience.

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U.S. fares now filed four times a day

nkralev — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:00:30 +0000

North American airfares are now published four times a day during the week, after the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) added earlier this month a filing feed at 4 p.m. Eastern time to the already-existing feeds at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 8 p.m.

This means that, at any of those times, a certain fare can be put on the market, changed or pulled off the market. It also means that a fare's entire lifespan can be as short as three hours.

The 4 p.m. feed had been planned for months, as I wrote in my book "Decoding Air Travel." Although the airlines update their data 24 hours a day, ATPCO sends that data out to Global Distribution Systems (GDS), which are used by airlines and travel agencies to book flights, four times a day during the week. On weekends, there is only one feed at 5 p.m. ET.

"ATPCO started this new time for the U.S. and Canadian subscription data feed on Oct. 3," said Jay Brawley, the company's director of customer marketing. "The weekend feed remains the same."

Located near Washington Dulles International Airport, ATPCO is owned by 16 of the world’s largest carriers and the Federal Express Corp. Its only and much smaller competitor is SITA, which publishes some fares in Europe, Africa and Asia.

ATPCO sends out feeds with international fares every hour, except for several hours on Saturday night, Brawley said. Discounted international fares typically stay on the market longer than discounted U.S. domestic fares -- sometimes for weeks.

The official filing feeds don’t exclude the possibility that a fare may be changed or removed at other times on a booking source directly controlled by the airline, such as its website. In addition, the data changes in those feeds can take an hour or longer to update in various booking systems.

How do you know that a low fare to a city you need to visit has been published? You certainly don’t have to wait for the airlines to announce a sale -- in fact, as I've written before, “sale” prices are often far from a bargain. Thanks to the transparency provided by the Internet, you can actually keep an eye on fares, through websites like FareCompare.com and AirfareWatchdog.com. You can also subscribe to their e-mail alerts for fares between any two cities.

Reacting to a good fare -- meaning booking it -- quickly cannot be overestimated. In my book, I give an example of a missed opportunity from January 2008, when I was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Just before she began her speech, I received an e-mail alert from FareCompare about a $99 one-way base fare between Washington and San Francisco. As it happened, I needed to book a trip to San Francisco, but I couldn’t act immediately, since I had to write and file a story for my newspaper. By the time I was free to look into booking a ticket, the fare was gone.

Not that there was anything I could have done in this case, but the experience taught me a valuable lesson: If you get word about a really good fare, book it as soon as you can. Most domestic fares usually stay on the market at least a couple of days, but there is never a guarantee, and some vanish within hours -- the airlines can do whatever they want.

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