Coalition Pushes For Lower Air Fares Rising Prices Attract Attention Of Lawmakers, Business Leaders
Like many airline customers, Bill Rimel is angry and confused.
Rimel, the president of American Inks & Coatings Co., a Valley Forge, Pa., company with $12 million a year in annual sales, pays $800 for a round-trip ticket between Philadelphia and Chicago on American, United or US Airways.
When his company’s sales manager, who lives in central New Jersey, goes to Chicago, he flies round-trip from Newark for $200, because the major carriers have competition on that route from little Kiwi International Air Lines.
“What’s a fair fare?” asked Rimel. “I don’t know, and I doubt we’ll ever know. … I don’t know anybody who enjoys flying anymore. When you need to go somewhere, you don’t know if it’s going to be $200 or $800.”
In recent months, lots of people have been asking the same questions as they’ve watched the cost of air travel soar to record levels.
The costs have been pushed up by a strong economy that’s driving demand for travel; the careful planning and hardball competitive tactics of major airlines; and congressional dithering over the last year about the 10 percent airline ticket tax.
But a new weapon has been enlisted to combat rising air fares.
For the first time in several years, members of Congress and officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. General Accounting Office are openly questioning why some fares are so high.
Many of the Washington officials are being spurred by a group based in the Philadelphia suburbs, representing both huge corporations and companies the size of Bill Rimel’s, all of them dismayed at what they pay to make business trips.
The organization, Business Travel Contractors Corp. (BTCC) of Lafayette Hill, Pa., is prompting the legislators and federal officials to consider whether there’s anything that can, or should, be done to create more airline competition.
Led by Kevin P. Mitchell, a former travel and conference-center manager for Cigna Corp., BTCC has been hammering at airlines about business-travel costs for more than three years.
On behalf of 45 big companies that together spend more than $1 billion a year with the airlines, Mitchell has tried a number of creative ways to force down the costs of business travel.
According to a monthly survey by American Express Co. of 215 airline routes around the country, the average unrestricted fare available to a business traveler on March 10 was $850 roundtrip, 31 percent higher than it was a year ago. The lowest discount fare available on the same routes was $298 round-trip, 7 percent above what it was 12 months earlier.
After airlines spurned previous efforts to lower costs, Mitchell began shifting his tactics, and his movement gained new adherents. One result is a “summit conference” the group has organized for April 23 in Washington.
“A lot of people three years ago thought I was crazy,” Mitchell said. “But what we’ve done is embolden corporations, who are determined to solve this problem of high air fares, with or without the help of the megacarriers.”