Tom Parsons
Tom Parsons, a trailblazer in the business of sniffing out
inexpensive airfares, passed away at his home in Dallas on Dec. 3 after a long
illness. He was 67.
"He was so far ahead of his time with what he did,"
said longtime friend and protege Stewart Chiron, president of CruiseGuy.com. "He
taught people what was really going on and how to beat the airlines at their
own game."
Parsons founded Best Fares Magazine in 1982 and expanded his
offerings to include Bestfares.com after the internet took hold. For decades,
he was a go-to source for print and television journalists looking for expert
commentary on airfares, or on the airline industry at large.
Parsons' entry into travel stemmed from a stint as a
traveling executive at Pier 1 in the late 1970s. According to promotional
material that Parsons used at Best Fares, during frequent trips for Pier 1 he
noticed the wide variance in ticket prices, even within the same flights. That
led Parsons to investigate how to obtain the cheaper tickets.
When Pier 1 adopted Parsons' recommendations, its travel
budget dropped from $2.5 million to $800,000 in a single year.
Chiron credited Parsons with developing innovative
techniques to get around airline practices like selling cheaper tickets on
itineraries that include Saturday night stays (a practice the airlines no
longer use).
To beat that practice, Parsons encouraged readers to
purchase what he dubbed "back-to-back" tickets -- two roundtrip,
Saturday-inclusive tickets between the same cities but with different
origination points. In so doing, travelers who didn't want to spend a Saturday
night on the road could still spend less than the cost of one ticket while
maintaining optimum control of their schedule.
Linda Rutherford, who is now the chief communications
officer at Southwest, said she met Parsons in 1991 while she was a reporter at
the Dallas Times Herald. Their relationship grew after Rutherford moved to
Southwest, the original low-cost airline.
"He certainly understood how our business worked,"
she said. "He would pride himself on calling me to say, 'I'm just guessing
that the time is coming for a super low-fare sale for SWA.' He was usually
right."
Parsons is survived by his children Stephanie, Michael and
Bryan Parsons as well as a grandson and three siblings, Chiron said. His burial
service will be held Wednesday at 2 p.m. at Dallas-Fort Worth National
Cemetery.