e don't often get to use the words
kudos and airlines in the same sentence these days, but such an
occasion is upon us, so here goes: Kudos to the big five.
The cause of our praise, of course, is that most of the majors
finally have figured out that the use-it-or-lose-it rule for
nonrefundable tickets is a loser.
It was just about a year ago that US Airways began this sorry
episode by declaring that nonrefundable tickets should have "no
value once the flight has departed."
It apparently was assumed that this would stop those pesky
bargain-hunting business travelers from gaming the system and
booking themselves into cheap seats. No doubt, some of those folks
opted for higher and more flexible fare categories, but a great
many found cheap seats and travel restrictions more to their liking
among the low-fare carriers.
Why it took the majors so long to admit their mistake is a bit
of a mystery.
Equally mysterious is how the airlines managed, yet again, to
snatch complexity from the jaws of simplicity.
Instead of simply eliminating this nuisance rule, the carriers
managed to create 13 variations on the same theme. Some retain the
requirement that the passenger call and cancel before departure,
some don't. At least one carrier kept that requirement for a few
days and dropped it. Delta initially said the new policy wouldn't
apply to tickets booked at third-party Web sits like Orbitz -- then
changed its mind.
We said in this space at year ago that the majors sometimes just
"don't get it." Unfortunately, even when they finally "get it,"
they don't always get it right.
• • •
The fax flap
he Federal Communications
Commission did the right thing when it postponed its new rule on
unsolicited faxing. Nobody likes "junk" faxes any more than spam
e-mail, but the FCC's attempt to update its fax rules contained a
curveball that nobody knew was coming.
For about a decade, the regulations on unsolicited faxes have
contained an exclusion that allowed a company to send unsolicited
faxes to customers or other companies with which it maintains an
ongoing business relationship. This approach allowed cruise lines
or tour operators to freely send news of special deals to preferred
agents. It allowed agents to fax news of special deals to
customers. It allowed travel agency associations or consortia to
send faxes to members. You get the picture.
Travel industry associations rightly complained that the FCC
went too far when it dropped that provision, in effect requiring
every sender to get approval in advance for transmitting these
kinds of faxes.
The task now is to rework the rule to permit reasonable
business-to-business faxes while giving the recipients some
practical avenue for cutting off unwanted material. That shouldn't
be such a hard thing to do, given that the FCC decided on a
generous 16-month postponement.
That should be more than enough time to get it right.