Travel Agents Cry Foul Over Internet Fare Deals

Remember when airlines began “Internet-only” fares several years ago? They typically gave 5% or 10% off for booking online, plus deeper discounts on a few last-minute fares.

Some people, including frequent fliers who should know better, think that’s still the case.

They’re wrong.

Internet fares are now offered for tickets bought well in advance and at prices that may be far cheaper than what the airline quotes on the phone or what is offered on a computer reservation system (CRS in trade lingo) that travel agents use to issue tickets. That’s great if you have a computer, a credit card and time to comparison shop but not so great if you don’t own those things or prefer the convenience of using a travel agent.

The disparity in fares lately has some travel agents hopping mad and has me wondering this: Are Internet fares fair to consumers?

In an organized campaign, more than 20 mostly smaller travel agencies since December have bombarded the U.S. Department of Transportation with documents that they say show hundreds of dollars in differences between Internet and CRS fares. They want the DOT to correct what they see as unequal access.

In a typical filing, Catherine Mann of Chaparral Travel in Tucson attaches printouts of CRS tickets and Internet searches that show, for instance, a $2,533 CRS fare for a Washington, D.C.-LAX round trip via New York versus $540 for the same flights and dates on Orbitz, the Internet travel site owned by five major airlines.

“My customers are being discriminated against because they do not have Internet access, do not use credit cards, prefer dealing with a human being or are unsure of how to wade through the hundreds of sites that promise ‘the lowest fare available,’” she writes in her Jan. 23 filing. “These people, often elderly and on fixed income, are being punished by having to pay higher airline fares.” (Airlines generally do not provide Internet-only fares to computer reservation systems but do provide them to Orbitz, a sore point for travel agents.)

In early February, I tried my hand at the admittedly inexact science of cyberspace comparisons earlier this month. With the help of The Times’ in-house travel agents and their CRS, I randomly compared three fares for March travel, at least 21 days in advance and including, in all but one case, a Saturday night stay. Each was checked first on the CRS, then on the Orbitz Web site and then by telephoning the airline for a fare quote, all within a half-an-hour.

I found substantial differences in prices--20% or more. For a New York-London round trip on United Airlines, for example, the Times agent’s CRS quoted $430.10 as the lowest available fare, the airline reservations agent quoted $431.03 and Orbitz showed $341 for the same flights and dates. For an LAX-New York (JFK) round trip on Delta Air Lines, the CRS and airline quoted $335; Orbitz showed $255.

The only fare on which all three sources agreed was a Chicago-Washington, D.C., round trip on American Airlines (with no Saturday stayover), at $233--the only one of the three itineraries that didn’t have an Internet-only fare posted by the airline.

The airlines are reluctant to comment on fare disparities, citing competitive and other issues. At United, spokesman Chris Brathwaite, while acknowledging that “different portals have different pricing,” says, “We just don’t talk about our pricing or fares and how we deal with that.” Delta spokeswoman Peggy Estes said that “all of our fares are the same price more than 99% of the time whether purchased from a Delta reservation agent, a travel agent or on www.delta.com.”

Airline fares and inventory change quickly, making exact comparisons difficult. The fares change thousands of times daily, industry observers say, under the so-called yield management system that adjusts prices to demand. For instance, a fare seen on the Internet may not appear on a CRS checked minutes later because the last seat at that price has been sold in the interim, not because the fare was never available on the CRS.

All of this poses a mighty challenge to consumers shopping for the lowest fare--and I haven’t even mentioned independent online travel sellers who may negotiate their own special fares with airlines or, like www.priceline.com, auction off fares. Airline expert Terry Trippler, president of Trippler & Associates Inc. in Minneapolis, speaks for many exasperated consumers when he says, “[Airlines] should just say: ‘This is the price.’”

And Mann of Chaparral Travel has a point when she says it is the elderly and less wealthy who are put at the greatest disadvantage by a system that posts the lowest fares on the Internet. On average, non-Internet users are poorer, less educated and more apt to be age 50 or older than are Internet users, according to a report released earlier this month by the U.S. Commerce Department. About 46% of Americans still aren’t online, the report found.

Lawton Roberts, president of Uniglobe Country Place Travel Inc. in Lawrenceville, Ga., and founder of a coalition called Travel Agents of America (www.travelagentsofamerica.com), which is pressing the DOT on the issue, views travel agents as victims too. The widening gap between Internet and CRS fares is a bid by airlines to drive agents out of business, he says.

“They couldn’t strangle us to death by reducing commissions, so they’re going to starve us to death by withholding the lowest fares,” he contends, referring to cuts and caps on commissions that airlines began imposing in 1995.

In fact, a travel agent can book an Internet-only fare for you, and “we tell agents to do that,” says Paul Ruden, senior vice president for legal and industry affairs for the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA). Delta has a Web site, www.delta.com/travelagent, that makes such fares available to agents.

But travel agents may balk at doing so for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they generally get no commissions from the major airlines for booking Internet-only fares. They may also be indirectly penalized by some CRS contracts that require them to book a minimum number of flights on the CRS--or face penalties of hundreds or even thousands of dollars, Roberts says. The more Internet-only flights booked, the fewer CRS flights are booked. Record keeping and itinerary changes are also more difficult with Web fares, Ruden says.

Most travel agents will get something for booking you an Internet fare, though. In a survey last year, ASTA reported that 88% of its members were charging service fees, averaging $13.21 per ticket. (Some have raised fees since then, after the airlines further cut commissions last summer.)

So when shopping for a low air fare, it pays to check the Internet or ask your travel agent to check it for you. From your agent, you may get the fare, an earful--or both.

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Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.