How Much Is That Free Ticket?

I was once lectured by an airline customer service agent when I complained about a fee he proposed to charge me for booking award tickets. “Those tickets are worth at least $1,200 each,” he said, adding that I was getting them “practically for free.”

It was a ridiculous and infuriating argument. Award tickets aren’t free at all. They’re purchased with a currency called frequent flier miles.

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Delta Adding $50 Fee To Award Tickets

Award tickets that you buy with frequent-flier miles used to be otherwise free of charge. Then there was an additional $10 charge to cover the Sept. 11 security fee. Now Delta has announced plans to tack on a  fuel surcharge — $25 for domestic tickets and $50 for international travel.

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Northwest Cancels Bradley To Amsterdam Flight

Northwest Airlines has canceled its daily flight between Bradley and Amsterdam — Bradley’s only transatlantic flight. And that comes hard on the heels of Delta canceling Bradley’s only transcontinental flight.

Wish I could say I was surprised.

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Bradley Losing Direct Flights To Los Angeles, Houston

The only direct flight from Bradley International to the West Coast will end in September, along with the only direct flight to Houston.

Continental will discontinue the daily Houston flight as part of a drastic nationwide cutback announced this week, and Delta has quietly dropped the four-times-weekly flight to LAX as of Sept. 1.

[Thanks to Mark for pointing out the loss of the LAX flight, which I missed in the first version of this post.]

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Bradley Loses Direct Fort Myers Flight

Delta has canceled its direct daily flight between Bradley and Fort Myers, Fla. The last flight was Monday.

That route was flown on an MD-88, so that’s 144 seats lost out of Bradley daily. And there are no other direct flights between Hartford and Fort Myers.

We already knew that Delta is also dropping 10 flights a week to Columbus as of early June, leaving no direct flights for that destination. Frontier is dropping Bradley’s only direct Denver flight in September.

Southwest is cutting one of its nine direct flights from Bradley to Baltimore as of May 10.

That’s how things are going for smaller airports these days, as fuel prices rise and capacity continues to fall.

Delta Gets Freaky With Seats

Delta is looking to do some freaky reconfiguring of seats on its 767s and 777s on international routes, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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As The Airline World Turns …

Tonight’s episode: Continental vows to stay single and leaves United weeping at the altar. Continental claims there was nobody else, but turns out to be planning to move in with British Airways and American Airlines. U.S. Airways, which had been seen flirting with American, steps in with a ring for United. Delta and fiancee Northwest plan their honeymoon, despite opposition from the kids. 

Goodbye To Northwest Web Site Confusion

A most utterly annoying thing about Northwest Airlines is its Web site address: www.nwa.com.

Over the years, I have repeatedly typed in northwest.com, which seems only logical. Except that northwest.com is a tourism portal that throws up scads of advertising daughter windows when I try to close it. My anti-virus software tosses out warnings and I curse myself as I click the whole mess shut.

You would think I’d remember after making this mistake a zillion times. But I don’t.

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