Christmas
came a little early for those in the travel world this past weekend. Thanks to
a small regional airline in Norway, we merry travelers received many gifts from
the fare gods.
The deal
Sometime
around noon on Saturday, TheFlightDeal
(a must-read website, by the way) reported that there were some sub-$300 fares
between the U.S. and Europe…roundtrip! The flights were all on United flights
or United codeshare flights (where United slaps its flight number on a partner
airline’s flight), but they were being sold by Wideroe, a Norwegian regional
airline owned by Scandinavian Airlines. Scandinavian Airlines is a member of
Star Alliance, which United is also in, hence why Wideroe is able to sell
tickets on United. The question is though, why these cheap fares? And why only
on Wideroe?
Many fares,
especially international ones, are made up in part by a fuel surcharge. If you
look at the breakdown
of a fare, it’s called “YQ”. I have no idea what that stands for. Anyway,
when you pay let’s say $1,000 for a roundtrip ticket from Miami to London, it’s
possible that only $50 of that is actual “base fare”, and $950 of that is a “fuel
surcharge”. I don’t have a great enough understanding of how airfares are put
together to know why this happens exactly, but it’s important to know that it
does. On Saturday at noon, it was discovered that Wideroe’s website was not
charging customers these fuel surcharges for United flights (though it’s still unclear
as to why). Suddenly $1,000 airfares were pricing at $300.
The booking
I myself
went into panic mode looking for deals, but I’ll admit at first I was crushed
by the deluge of possibilities. After searching for random weekends for 20
minutes, I figured I was running against the clock before this fare error was
corrected, so I decided to narrow my focus to just spring break. My girlfriend,
fortunately in this case, had some parameters for how far she was willing to
travel given her hectic teaching schedule and short break. These were
enormously helpful. We very quickly narrowed our options down to Europe, and
from there I looked as far west as I could for a reasonable fare to a country
that neither she nor I had been to and that wasn’t easy to get to with miles.
Enter:
Poland. I found a roundtrip itinerary during her break week for just $295 per
person. I booked it with my Amex Platinum because it has no foreign transaction
fees (this is a foreign airline). Now the waiting began to see if the fare
would actually be honored.
The waiting
Wideroe’s
site quickly gave me a confirmation number that I was able to enter into United’s
site and see our flights. That was the first good sign; the booking really
existed. But the United site said that the booking had not yet been ticketed,
which meant we weren’t actually confirmed on these flights yet. My credit card
has also not been charged. We went to a movie and when we got out, still no
ticketing or charge.
About five
hours later, sometime around 1230am, I got a notification from Amex about a
possible fraudulent transaction. Probably the first time I’ve ever been excited
about one of those. Sure enough, it was Wideroe, attempting to charge my card.
While I wish this one had gone through, I’m glad Amex didn’t automatically
accept $600 charges from foreign companies onto my card.
This put us
in a bit of a situation though. It was great the card had been charged because
it meant Wideroe was actually attempting to ticket the reservation, but the
fact that it had been declined made me wonder if the airline would cancel the
booking entirely. I called Amex to clear my card for a possible future
transaction, and continued waiting.
Within a few
minutes I received an email from Wideroe saying that my card had been declined.
At least, I think that’s what it said. It was in Norwegian. The email had a
link that I followed to a Wideroe page that looked like it had space for a new
card number, so I entered it…wrong! I mistyped one of the digits and it came
back with a bunch of red Norwegian text which I assumed was an error. Oh no! I
re-clicked the link in my email and again went to the page and typed the card
in correctly. And we waited…
While we
waited, I checked our confirmation on the United website again. It had been
ticketed! I could pick our seats and everything! The only concern still was my
card had not been charged.
The outcome
Fast forward
four days to this morning and two charges for $295 magically appear on my Amex.
Not pending or anything, just straight to my transaction list.
I guess we’re
going to Poland!
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