United slashes walk-up fares By Dan Reed, USA TODAY United Airlines on Monday cut the price of walk-up fares 40% on about=20 12,500 domestic routes in a move company officials expect to increase=20 revenue by making last-minute business travel a better bargain than it has= =20 been since the early 1990s. The new walk-up fares =97 and new, even lower-priced seven-day advance=20 purchase fares also aimed at business travelers =97 are available on most=20 routes in and out of the carrier's biggest hubs, Chicago O'Hare and Denver.= =20 They also apply to more than 10,000 domestic connecting routes. Jamie Baker= =20 of J.P. Morgan Securities estimates that the changes =97 which United says= =20 are permanent =97 affect fares that previously generated more than a third= of=20 United's revenue. They come at a time when United, in bankruptcy=20 reorganization, is struggling to compete with low-fare carriers and=20 industrywide revenue is weak. Rival American matched the new, lightly restricted fares on routes to and=20 from Chicago, where it also has a hub, and on competitive connecting routes= =20 nationwide. To varying degrees, others, including Delta and Continental,=20 also matched United's new business fares, which, unlike most discount=20 fares, can be bought on a one-way basis. The new United fares are designed to make it competitive with discounters=20 like Southwest and American Trans Air, which compete with United from=20 Chicago's Midway Airport and other airports, and Frontier, which focuses on= =20 Denver. United's price cuts are the biggest move yet by one of the large=20 network airlines toward a fare structure that reduces the yawning gap=20 between leisure and business travel prices. But it's not the first. America= =20 West, the nation's eighth-largest airline, adopted such a pricing structure= =20 systemwide in mid-2002. American, Delta and Continental have been=20 conducting experiments with similar plans since early fall. Chris Bowers,=20 United's senior vice president of sales, says corporations still will=20 receive negotiated discounts off the new 40% lower walk-up fares =97 but not= =20 on the new seven-day advance purchase fares pegged at 70% off the old=20 walk-up fare. Hal Rosenbluth, CEO of corporate travel management company Rosenbluth=20 International, says that's likely to change soon. "Corporate discounts of 40% will be replaced by regular fares 40% lower,"=20 he says. "The airlines are just taking an incremental approach to getting=20 there." Historically, airlines have been reluctant to cut business fares,=20 believing doing so won't stimulate enough extra business travel demand to=20 offset the reduced ticket revenue. While it's not clear how many more=20 business trips will be taken because of lower fares, the high cost of=20 unrestricted fares has been blamed for depressing business travel. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.hilofoodstores.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************