While the Eastern Airlines strike drags on, and suitors for the carrier appear and disappear, Continental Airlines finally devised a program to pay back travel agents who made cash refunds to holders of Eastern tickets purchased on or before March 8. Eastern, of course, is under the same corporate umbrella as Continental, Texas Air, which is headed by Frank Lorenzo.
Under the program, outlined in Travel Weekly, a trade publication, travel agents will receive coupons in denominations of $50 in exchange for the face value of each wholly unused Eastern Airlines ticket.
Bob Lepisto, Continental`s vice president of sales, explained that an agent who made a cash refund to a client for an unused Eastern ticket worth $300 will receive six $50 vouchers. The plan permits the agent to apply the coupons toward the purchase of a Continental or Continental Express ticket worth $250 or more for U.S. mainland travel. Travel Weekly cited these restrictions:
Travel on excursion tickets (Friday or Saturday stay required) must begin by June 10 or after Sept. 4, with travel completed by Nov. 16.
Travel on unrestricted tickets (Sunday through Friday of the same week)
must be completed by July 14 and may not originate in Houston, the carrier`s home base.
”We think the program will take care of 99.9 percent of the value of Eastern tickets held by travel agents,” Lepisto told the publication.
Agents will have until June 15 to submit their Eastern documents to Continental.
Before the strike, Eastern carried most of the cruise passengers bound for Florida on fly-cruise packages. The lines since have turned to Delta Air Lines, Midway Airlines and United Airlines, observed Nancy Kelly of Kelly Cruises.
Shortly after the strike began, cruise lines and travel agents found it touch-and-go, getting their passengers to ports. ”It`s gotten better since the crunch of Easter vacation and spring break,” Kelly said.
Other tidbits from the world of travel:
Today marks the start of National Tourism Week, a promotion aimed at heightening public awareness of the industry`s scope. According to estimates from the U.S. Travel Data Center for 1988, tourism generated $313 billion, $37 billion in local, state and federal taxes, and accounted for 6.6 percent of the Gross National Product, the amount spent for goods and services.
The center said tourism nationally accounts for 5.5 million jobs and an annual payroll of $70 billion. More than $24.5 billion are new dollars pumped into the nation`s economy by foreign visitors.
The week-long event takes on many promotional gimmicks, from big luncheons to special projects. In Goose Lake, Ia., for example, the week will be celebrated by having a mural depicting turn-of-the-century Goose Lake painted on the back wall of the Goose Lake 66 gas station by local students. Carl Homstad, artist-in-residence at the Northeast School District, will direct the project.
But the basic language of tourism always seems to boil down to money.
In Hawaii, for example, the Japanese accounted for 43 percent of the tourist spending in the state, according to the Hawaii Visitors Bureau. The average Japanese visitor, said the HVB, spent $586 a day, compared with the $119 by the average American mainland visitor.
In 1988, 1.35 million Japanese visitors came to Hawaii, a 17 percent increase over the year before. Hawaii ranked as Japan`s No. 1 overseas destination, followed by Hong Kong and South Korea.
In the most recent Air Travel Consumer Report compiled by the Department of Transportation, the best on-time performance records for March compiled by carriers at 29 reporting aiports gave America West the edge with an 85.9 percent score at the 11 airports it listed. Northwest ranked second with an 81.8 percent average at 28 airports. Continental, Alaska and Delta rounded out the top five.
The 12 largest airlines reported that 72.3 percent of their flights were on time in March. Delays caused by mechanical problems are not counted in the on-time statistics.
In the mishandled baggage category, carriers in March showed a slight increase, averaging 7.53 reports per 1,000 passengers compared with 7.36 in February. Leading the list: Eastern Airlines, TWA and American.
Complaints against airlines dropped to 933 in April, a 4 percent decline from March and a 56 percent decline from the 2,100 complaints logged by the department in April, 1988. Carriers receiving the most complaints per 100,000 passengers were Pan Am, TWA, Hawaiian, Braniff and Continental.
Consumers interested in on-time performance data for specific flights can call airline ticket offices or their travel agents, the DOT said.
With several states such as New York and Illinois prohibiting car rental firms from selling collision damage waivers, and most charge card companies providing coverage, consumers often are unclear about what to do to protect themselves, Consumer Reports Travel Letter says.
”Problems result from a misunderstanding of how charge card protection works and how it differs from the CDW sold by car rental companies,” the May newsletter points out.
”No charge card `provides CDW.` In buying CDW, you obtain an agreement from the rental company to waive its contractual claim against you for the costs of any collision damage you might sustain. Thus, CDW can be sold only by a car rental company, and no rental company `accepts` CDW from an outside source.
”Your protection is in the form of an agreement the charge card company has with you, not with the car rental company, to reimburse you for the costs of damage repair.”
