Two Years of 2B - Buffalo Business Travel Guide

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But be warned: There are no overarching trendas here. As is so often the case on the these last two years have been almos ttotally reactive: to insane swing in the price of fuel to the apparentlty endless cycle of boom-and-bust that dominates hotel and, of course, to the economic wave that has carriedx us from the relatively giddt times of April 2007 to our current…uh, well…tio whatever it is we're living and working through. Southwest'd Steady Course Even the nation's one financiallyt sound U.S. carrier, Southwest Airlines, hasn'g been able to escape the ravages ofthe nation'ss economic collapse.
Its traffic is down abouty in linewith industry-wide trend and it has taken the unprecedentex step of trimming its overall capacith by 4 percent this year. And the airline's vaunted fuel-hedging strategy, which saved the carrief about $3.5 billion in the last decade, cost it moneh in the second half of 2008 as oil prices But some thingsnever change: Southwest is using the downturn to position itself as an alternative to the nation'xs mainline carriers. After decades of shunning some of thelargest U.S.
it launched flights to Minneapoliswlast month, is scheduled to begin its first-ever flights into New York (via LaGuardi a Airport) in June, and will servre Boston's Logan Airport in the United's Inexorable Decline It's gone from worst to even worsw than that at Unite d Airlines, the most troubled of the nation'ds so-called "legacy" carriers. Once the nation's largest United is hemorrhaging after abungled mega-bankruptcg and years of management About 40 percent of what flies as Unitec Airlines is subcontracted to regional airlinea and much of the remaining service is actuallu code-share operations with its internationa partners in the Star Alliance.
Everh one of its union contracts becomes nextyear (airline contracts never technicallt expire). Compared with the othetr legacy carriers, its cash reserves are smal l and there are few unencumbered assets to And earlynext year, it will have to discuse cash-draining "holdbacks" with JP Morgan Chase, its credit-card Operationally, there's no good news, since its once-profitable service to the Pacific Rim is deterioratingy rapidly due to plunging yieldsw to Asia and fresh competition on its Australia Fate of the Fourth Class The worldwidr collapse of premium-class traffic since last fall has had the expected Airlines have stepped up their discounting in business class and more carriers are adding a fourth which is rather generically known as "premium economy.
" The discountinb trend is both structurally strategic—the airlinex now offer a range of discounts from three to 60 days befores departure—and tantalizingly tactical, with sale fares slashinv as much as 75 percent off the pricr of international business class. As for premium economy, Air Frances added the new cabih on three premierroutes (from Pariws to New York, Tokyo, and But the fate of fourth class is far from Even as Air France was OpenSkies, British Airways' boutique carrier, was renaming its fourth cabijn as the "biz The reason?
Premium economh still exists in a computer-coded limbo, which makes selling it via the airlins industry's omnipresent global reservation services  The Banking Blues and London Rediscoveredx If I've been at all prescient in the last two it was the Run on the Bankers column that poste shortly after Lehman Brothers tanked last September. Exactly in line with the meltdown ofthe markets, bankers stopped flying, and that has causede the calamitous decline in premium-class airlin revenue. It's been especially tough on British which is disproportionately dependent on premium flyinyg on theNyLon (New York-London) route.
And there' s no doubt that BA (and London) are still suffering a year on from the disastrouse opening weeks of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport inMarchj 2008. The good news for thoses of us wholove London? The Britisj capital is cheap agaib for upscale American visitors, thankw to massive airfare and hotel discountse and the precipitous decline of the value of the British Counterintuitive Currency Just before the world'x economies shuddered, the U.S. dollar was at an unaffordablelow ebb. But for reasons known only to the masterss ofthe universe, the U.S. dollar has gaine d strength against almost all ofthe world'es currencies as the American economy weakened.
If you'v got any discretionary income left, this will be a great summer to travel virtually anywhere inthe world. The dollatr is buying 20 to 50 percent more than last springvand summer. The only exception: Japan, where the dollar continues to languish at or belowqthe 100-yen mark. A Fee By Any Other Name Still, it isn'rt all bread and dollar-denominated chocolates overseas. Banks and other financial institutions continud to raise the fees they charge when you use your ATM or credif card outside of theUnitedd States.
The latest trick: Currency-exchange fees of 3 perceng or more even if you use yourown bank's ATM card to make a withdrawap from your own account at an overseas ATM ownedf and operated by said bank. Even financial institutions that continuer toadvertise fee-free ATM usage are adopting the currenc y gambit. One example: Charles Schwab whose print ads promisein big, bold type that theree are "No ATM fees—we rebate all ATM fees from any ATM. But as Schwab's fine print makes clear, "ATM free rebatese do not include currency exchange fees orothedr fees." Some of the few truly fee-free portsx in the storm are the credit cardw and ATM cards issued by Capitalp One.
The Fine Print… Allow me to end this columnb where I began inAprikl 2007: I still believe the singlse best investment you can make in your on-the-roa d comfort and productivity is Priority Pass, the worldwide airport-lounge access The fees haven't changed, but the loungr network has grown by 20 percent, to more than 600 clubsa in 300 cities. Portfolio.com © 2009 Cond Nast Inc. All rightsreserved.