Your 2 Cents Worth Buys Foreign Travel on Skybus
Saturday, May 26, 2007 10:16 PM PDT
By Los Angeles Times
Printable version
E-mail this articleHow low can air fares go?
Try $10 for a one-way ticket from Burbank, Calif., to Columbus, Ohio. Or $9 from Los Angeles International Airport to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Better yet, there is a one-cent fare for flights from L.A. to Guatemala.
Yes, those are actual fares offered by a new generation of carriers that are redefining budget travel by taking "low-cost, no-frills" service to new heights.
Like $15 for a pillow. Or two bucks for water. Don't want a middle seat? You can pay $10 and you can jump ahead of the line to board a Skybus Airlines plane.
And the flight attendants are paid partly on commission based on in-flight sales.
"It's the extreme example of a la-carte flying," said Michael Boyd, an airline industry consultant.
Even so, flights on these cheapie airlines, now officially dubbed ultra-low-cost carriers, can be a bargain and quite a trip even if you missed out on grabbing one of the limited number of $10 teaser fares.
"The seats were comfortable, and the flight went pretty well," said Allyx Kronenberg, a Santa Monica, Calif., resident who paid $105 for her round trip ticket on an inaugural Skybus flight from Burbank to Columbus, Ohio, last week. "But you do have to pay for everything."
These flights have been around Europe for several years but now they are making a splash in the U.S.
Skybus offers 10 seats on every flight for $10 with the vast majority of the fares ranging from $50 to $175 one way. That's about half the cost -- or less -- of other airlines flying to Columbus.
Spirit Airlines, which flies out of L.A., has promotional fares that range from one cent to $24, including the $9 tickets to Fort Lauderdale and Detroit.
The Skybus fares were so much less expensive than other carriers' that Shahla Salamat decided to fly her family to Columbus and then drive eight hours to Atlanta for her cousin's wedding during Memorial Day weekend.
Renting a car and driving that distance with her sister and three sons -- Andres, 8, Antonio, 4, and Adrian, 2 -- was worth the estimated $2,000 savings, the Chino Hills, Calif., resident said.
"It's kind of crazy I know," Salamat said, explaining how she chose the $200-round-trip fares on Skybus. The least expensive alternative she could find from Los Angeles to Atlanta was $600.
"But when you think about the savings," she said, "it doesn't sound too bad."
The savings were so substantial for the Salamats that they didn't mind paying $2 for bottled water.
Besides, Skybus had warned them ahead of time in a stark reminder on the company's reservations Web site: "No, the drinks aren't free. Give us a break -- some of you paid $10 for your seat."
Skybus says it gradually will expand its network to Oakland, Calif., and Seattle, among other cities, as it gets new Airbus A319 planes on order. The airline hopes to be profitable within a year, even with its rock-bottom fares.
"We don't think the same way as everybody else," said Bill Diffenderffer, Skybus' chief executive and former attorney for now-defunct Eastern Airlines.
"Major carriers are going to say Skybus is going to have terrible service because you have to buy everything but what makes passengers happy is having low fares and on-time, nonstop flights to their destinations. They don't need all that free stuff."
In many ways, Skybus doesn't seem much different from Ryanair, an Irish carrier that has shaken up European air travel by offering dirt-cheap fares with virtually no amenities or service. It is now the largest European airline.
Diffenderffer said that Skybus initially considered modeling itself after Ryanair and U.S. low-cost behemoth Southwest Airlines. But then it decided to start from "scratch and try to improve on everything."
To generate additional revenue, it will allow a company to paint a logo on its planes for $500,000.
To keep costs down, the airline doesn't have a telephone service center. Everything, from booking a flight to changing or canceling a reservation must be done on its Web site.
The airline flies only to secondary, less-crowded airports that have lower fees and can turn Skybus planes around in fewer than 25 minutes. Major carriers typically have their planes at the gate for about 45 minutes to an hour. The longer the plane stays on the ground, the less passenger revenue it generates.
Skybus also flies new, fuel-efficient Airbus planes, which keep maintenance and operation costs down.
Its labor costs are also among the lowest in the industry. It has one of the lowest hourly rates for its flight attendants, but they get a 10 percent commission on what they sell on the plane.
With the commission and stock options, the overall compensation is higher than competitors', Skybus said.
Airline consultant Boyd said he was skeptical that the airline could survive, arguing that low-cost carriers such as Southwest are going the other way by beefing up service and amenities.
"Once you start nickel-and-diming things and having flight attendants hawking food, passengers might not want to try it again," Boyd said. "It's novel but most pipe dreams are."
Moreover, the eye-popping fares often have caveats that could create ill-will. For instance, the one cent deal from Los Angeles to Guatemala on Spirit Airlines was available only on certain days and didn't include a bevy of taxes that totaled $84.70.
A flight to Guatemala recently was available for one cent but the return one cent fare was sold out. The next best fare was $109.50. In the end, the total round-trip fare was about $200, or about half the prevailing fares at other airlines.
Even with the super low fares some passengers wondered if they had indeed saved as much money as they had initial thought.
As Andrew Jones of Thousand Oaks, Calif. carried his 9-week-old infant son through airport security at Burbank airport, he began mentally adding up other costs like the $99 DVD player he bought before the flight for his 3-year-old son because the airline has no entertainment system. And then there was the $20 charge for checking an infant seat and two pieces of luggage as well as snacks on board.
With the anticipated savings, the Jones' also decided to check into a hotel instead of staying with their family in Wheeling, W.Va.
"We saved $700 on the airfare," he said, "but at the end of the day, it'll probably come out about the same."
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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