Fare War Can Cut Cost of Trips to Europe

Business travelers planning fall and winter forays to Europe are discovering a peculiar twist on the major airlines’ usual pricing and promotion patterns.

Fares for business travel to Europe have declined substantially, albeit within a narrow window of opportunity. Lavish frequent-flier program incentives, however, have virtually disappeared.

This reversal of fortune breaks a decade-long airline policy of dividing off-season vacationers from business fliers. The airlines traditionally have lured leisure fliers to Europe during the slow fall and winter travel periods by offering extraordinarily low fares with heavy restrictions. The conditions were carefully designed to ensure that business travelers could not use the cheap fares.

Business fliers were forced to pay inflated, unrestricted fares to get to Europe. To induce them to fly in the fall and winter, the airlines offered huge frequent-flier mileage bonuses or a free domestic ticket for each pair of full-fare transatlantic round trips purchased.

This year, if business travelers act quickly and plan wisely, they too can take advantage of this European fare war. And they might as well do so, because frequent-flier program inducements probably won’t be offered.

“The fare structure in Europe is so incredibly low that none of the fares--not one of them--are compensatory” for the airlines, said Bob Cozzi, TWA’s senior vice president for marketing. “There’s nothing left for promotion.”

How low are this year’s fares?

A major Europe fare sale, started last Thursday by American Airlines and promptly matched by the other international carriers, reduced to $598 the restricted round-trip coach fare between Los Angeles and most European destinations. An earlier fare war had already knocked Los Angeles-London fares down to $529 round-trip. A third fare skirmish has priced certain connecting flights to Paris and Frankfurt below $500 round-trip.

The $598 fare, on average, is about 20% less than the previous lowest fares to Europe and it carries less stringent restrictions. Moreover, it is about 80% below the price of unrestricted, full coach fare in most LAX-Europe markets.

Most surprising, however, are the relatively moderate restrictions on that $598 fare. Although the fare is not refundable, it requires only a seven-day advance ticket purchase and a seven-day minimum stay. (The fare is valid for travel between Mondays and Thursdays.)

The only fly in the $598 ointment is the purchase date. The fare is valid for travel until March 15, except for a holiday “blackout” period between Dec. 15 and Jan. 6, but all tickets must be purchased by Oct. 22.

Planning trips as much as five months ahead within the next 10 days is no easy task for business travelers, but there’s even a glimmer of hope in that area.

“Last year, the airlines quietly kept extending the purchase date on the Europe sale fares,” said Gary Topping, president of Gulfstream Travel, a Gulf Shores, Ala., travel agency with a nationwide clientele of business travelers. “Traffic is slow enough that it’s reasonable to assume the airlines might keep extending the purchase date this year, too.”

The trade-off for this unexpected fare bonanza seems sure to be the frequent-flier promotions that business travelers have come to know, love and exploit during the fall and winter.

In fact, frequent-flier promotions this year have been few and far between, and most are weighted toward business travelers who fly on full-fare and premium-priced tickets.

British Airways, for example, is offering a onetime, 20,000-mile bonus in its Executive Club program for travelers who take a transatlantic round trip before March 31. The bonus is offered only to travelers who fly in business class.

TWA is offering automatic upgrades on transatlantic flights, but only to full-fare passengers. Full-fare coach fliers get bumped up to business class, while travelers who buy a full-fare business-class ticket get to fly in first class. The upgrade promotion runs through Dec. 31.