LAX likely to be No. 1 in delays
Little change is expected from last year’s Thanksgiving period, when it led all other airports.
Los Angeles International Airport, the nation’s second-busiest airport, is expected to be No. 1 in an unfortunate category: the percentage of delayed flights during the long Thanksgiving travel crush.
Flightaware.com, a flight tracking website, concluded that LAX outranked all other airports during last year’s Thanksgiving holiday in the percentage of flights delayed more than 15 minutes.
LAX reported 27% of its flights delayed, followed by San Francisco International Airport with 26%. Newark Liberty International Airport ranked third with 25%, and McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas was fourth with 22%.
There is no guarantee that LAX will report the same rate of delays during this holiday period, but airport officials note that the total number of landings and takeoffs this year will be little changed from last year’s — 18,230 scheduled compared with 18,020 flights in 2016.
Also, Flightaware.com points out that there are no major storms forecast across the nation for the holiday week.
Still, no matter how many delays are reported at LAX, the airport will be packed with frustrated travelers.
LAX is expected to serve 2.38 million fliers during the 11-day holiday period, up 2.3% over the same period last year, according to LAX officials.
Who buys costly last-minute tickets?
Airlines reserve a handful of seats on each plane for those last-minute travelers who will pay top dollar to get to an important meeting or event.
Those last-minute travelers tend to be in the professional service fields, such as lawyers and consultants, a new study concluded.
Of the tickets purchased by such professionals, only 28% are booked more than 15 days in advance of the flight, according to a study by Concur, a Bellevue, Wash., company that sells corporate travel expense reporting services.
These fliers booked 26% of their flights within three days of departure.
“The volume of lastminute travel is higher in business services, which can likely be attributed to client meetings and activities that are more difficult to anticipate in advance,” the study concluded.
On the other hand, travelers who work in higher education, such as university professors, are most likely to book early, with 69% of their tickets booked more than 15 days in advance, the study found. They booked only 7% of their flights within three days of departure.
Fliers in the retail and restaurant business booked 46% of their flights more than 15 days in advance and only 13% of tickets within three days of departure.
Various studies have suggested that the lowest price for a domestic airline is available about six weeks before departure.
Travel site looks for cheap error fares
A computer error caused Delta Air Lines to offer super-low fares a few years ago that were up to 90% below regular prices, including a $35 one-way ticket from Raleigh, N.C., to Philadelphia. The Atlanta-based carrier caught the mistake within a few hours but not before the cheap flights were booked by some lucky travelers.
A travel website announced this week that it is adding a service that can look for and display errors that lead to extremely low fares.
Cheapflightsfinder.com said it can find error fares by tracking the lowest fares on “over 1,200 sources” and then comparing those prices with the price for the same flights on other search engines.
The website, based in Britain, said it has already found several super-cheap deals, including a round trip from San Francisco to London for $367 and New York to Paris for $346.
“Error fares can occur due to a multitude of reasons — sometimes it is due to a misplaced decimal point, a currency conversion mistake or even human error during data entry,” the company said in a news release.
But the travel website warned that airlines are under no obligation to honor the error fares. The site offers this advice: “Book quickly before the airline figures out what’s up.”