Business travelers switch to ride sharing
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft are gaining popularity among business travelers, but they still take a back seat to rental cars.
That was the conclusion of a study by Maine-based Certify, a software company for business expense management that looked at 8.5 million expense reports filed in the July-through-September quarter.
Over that reporting period, business travelers used car-rental services 44% of the time and ride-sharing services 34% of the time, followed by taxis 22% of the time, the study reported.
Still, ride-sharing services have gained ground on rental cars as the preferred mode of transportation among business travelers. In the first three months of 2014, ride sharing was the preferred way to getting around only 8% of the time among business travelers.
Ride sharing has surpassed all other transportation expenses in several cities, including San Francisco, where business travelers used ride sharing 85% of the time, versus 6% for taxis and 12% for rental cars, the study found.
One reason for the growing popularity may be that ride sharing is typically less expensive than taking a taxi. The Certify study found that the average the travel expense for a taxi ride was $35.28, compared with $27.61 for an Uber ride and $23.94 for Lyft.
“Traveling for work can be stressful, and our goal is to ensure that getting a ride is easy and hassle-free in the more than 330 cities and 60 countries where Uber is available around the world,” said Max Crowley, an Uber for Business spokesman.
Airlines boost prof it by ‘unbundling’
Bad news for airline passengers who hate to pay bag fees and other charges for extras on a flight: Carriers that rely heavily on passenger fees are among the world’s most profitable airlines.
Based on operating profit margins, ultra-low fare airlines like Allegiant (24% margin), Spirit (21%), Frontier (17%) and Ryanair in Europe (20%) surpassed the biggest U.S. carriers, including American (15%), Delta (14%) and United (11%) over a 12-month period ending in June.
Seth Kaplan, managing partner for the trade publication Airline Weekly, reached these conclusions after crunching the latest financial data. One of the key reasons for the healthy profit margins is the move by the airlines to “unbundle” fares to charge separately for food, drinks, entertainment and other extras, he said.
“There is no question that unbundling has been very profitable,” Kaplan said.
One advantage for the carriers is that airlines pay the government higher tax rates for revenue from airline tickets than they do for revenue from so-called ancillary fees like food and drink sales, he said.
But Kaplan said he doesn’t expect larger airlines to add too many more passenger fees. He noted that US Airways began charging for coffee, water, juice and soft drinks during the economic recession a few years ago but ended the practice because of complaints from passengers.
“Consumers are willing to accept a lot of things but they will vote with their wallets,” he said.
US Airways brand is f lying into sunset
Say goodbye to US Airways.
The carrier that began in 1939 as an airmail service in Pennsylvania and Ohio and gained fame when Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed one of its planes on the Hudson River in 2009 will be absorbed into American Airlines, helping to create the world’s largest airline.
Once all reservations from US Airways passengers are transferred over to the American Airlines system Saturday, the US Airways website will disappear.
The transfer will be one of the most important steps in the merger of American and US Airways but it won’t be the last. The two airlines still need to merge several labor groups, maintenance systems and flight operations, among other behind-thescene changes. A common uniform for all employees is now being tested.
US Airways is merging its mainline fleet of 297 planes but so far only 156 have been painted with the new American Airlines colors and logos. The paint jobs should be completed by late 2016.