V Australia to start trans-Pacific flights
April 1st, 2008 by Tim Uden
V Australia, the latest offshot of Australian low cost carrier Virgin Blue, started selling tickets for its first route (Sydney-Los Angeles) yesterday. The first flights on the new airline will be in December 2008.
V Australia was set up by Virgin Blue to serve the Australia to USA market, which has long suffered from high prices due to very little competition. It was hoped that the introduction of a budget focused airline to this route would shake things up a bit and introduce a much needed price war. With just a handful of airlines flying between Australia and the United States, the relatively short 14 hour flight from Sydney to Los Angeles often costs more than the much longer 24 hour Sydney-London flight. Unfortunately the introduction of V Australia does little to lower the price.
The first 1000 return tickets are selling for AUD $999. I did a test booking to work out what the regular fare on their Sydney-LA route will cost and came up with a return fare of AUD $1898.
I understand that there is little competition on the Sydney-LA route, even with the launch of V Australia, and that the new airline wants to be profitable as quickly as possible. But I expected much cheaper fares.
To put things into comparision, Sydney-LA is only a 14 hour flight in each direction and you can fly Sydney-London (not on an a LCC, but on a full service airline) for around the same price, which is a much longer 24 hour flight. In other words a return Sydney-LA flight on V Australia costs around the same as a return Sydney-London flight but you get around 20 hours less in the air.
Twenty fewer hours in your airline seat should account for much lower fares. The standard return fare between Australia and the California should be around AUD $1000, but instead V Australia want to charge you almost double.
We need a real low cost carrier on this route. Air Asia, Tiger, Jetstar, Ryanair, anyone?
Megabus discontinue their Phoenix and Tempe to Los Angeles service
January 7th, 2008 by Tim Uden
It’s the end of cheap LA to Phoenix bus fares. As of today, Megabus will no longer be operating the Los Angeles to Tempe and Phoenix bus route.
Aparently not enough people travelled on this route to make it viable for Megabus. I would have expected it to be quite popular. With fares starting at $1.50 for the seven-hour bus ride it was a great deal. However the Phoenix/Tempe area isn’t such a popular travel destination and the bus isn’t the most popular way to travel in the Southwest USA.
Why can’t I rent a manual in the US?
August 13th, 2007 by Tim Uden
I love driving a manual (what Americans would call a stick shift or a standard transmission).
Like most people living outside North America, I hate driving an automatic. The only people I know who drive automatics are all aged over 60 and I would be really surprised if more than 10% of people outside the US aged under 45 would ever choose to drive anything other than a manual.
I guess I like the control. I want to drive. I’m certainly not a hoon (I prefer small cars and usually keep within the speed limit), but I want to feel the car hug the road as I take the corners. I want to be at one with my car. I don’t want to be taken for a ride.
Automatics make it too easy. If I wanted everything easy I would take a taxi. I can’t remember the last time I took a taxi.
Besides it’s the way I learned to drive so it just feels natural. When I drive I instinctively change gears which drives me nuts when I’m behind the wheel of an automatic.
In America it’s all back to front. Americans actually perfer driving automatics. But then Americans like to drive big bland cars that are designed for comfort not performance. The number of cup holders is a bigger selling point than styling or fuel economy. Besides, a lot of Americans like to keep a hand free to hold onto their cheeseburger.
Americans say they need automatics because their roads are so congested. I really don’t see the point. American roads are a dream to drive on. The lanes are wide (to accommodate their enormous cars) with their Interstate motorways crisscrossing the country and getting you around their cities with far less congestion that you would find in places like Milan, Naples or Rome where manuals out-number automatics like tourists outnumber locals in Piazza San Marco.
This brings me to the point of this post. Why can’t I rent a manual in the US?
Sure a lot of Americans don’t know how to drive a manual. But apparently around 15% of Americans drive manuals so you would expect that at least 15% of rental cars would have manual transmissions, right? Nope, not a chance.
About a year ago I was considering a trip to the US and started looking for a rental car with a manual transmission. What I thought would be a simple phone call turned out into hours on the web and hundreds of emails and phone calls. The result was either rent a car in Mexico and drive it across the border (something the rental companies down there don’t let you do) or rent a car from the only rental company I could find in the US that has manuals.
Adventures on Wheels is the only rental company that would rent me a manual. Their website shows and all-automatic fleet but when I emailed them they said that they keep a few manuals for Europeans that request them, but I would need to contact them in advance to reserve one.
I could not find a single other rental company that would rent me a manual.
I got all sort of reasons from rental companies about why they don’t have manuals. Here are a few:
- Americans don’t know how to drive (now I’m not suggesting this for a minute but that’s what the rental company told me)
- Manuals have a lower resale value. Fair enough but why not charge more for them. It’s not rocket science. If 15% of people want something and less than .01% of rental agencies can supply it then you can charge more. It’s basic economics.
- People used to rent manuals to learn to drive so the cars came back all f**ked up. Well why don’t you rent to people who already drive them? I don’t know if American driver’s licences distiguish between manual and automatic but you could at least restrict manuals to customers who can prove that they are the legal registered owner of a manual or who have a licence issued in a country where most cars are manuals. At the very least rental companies should have a record showing that you have previously rented manuals from them outside the US.
Then there are the car sharing companies. They are like rental agencies but a little different.
They operate primarily for inner city residents who don’t own a car and may only need to use a car a couple of times a month. You can rent by the hour or by the day and rather than pick up from the office of a rental company you just find a car parked nearby, scan your membership card on the windscreen and drive away. The car has to be returned to the same parking space you got it from so its not really practical for long trips but the cost is inclusive of fuel and insurance and they don’t charge an excess to rent to people aged under 25 so for many travellers it is a good alternative to a traditional rental for a shorter trip. The whole concept seems like a cool idea and I wanted to give it a go if only I could find one with manuals.
I thought there may be some hope with the car sharing companies so I checked around. I figured that there was a better chance since the membership application for these car sharing agencies involve a rigourous check of your driving history. It wouldn’t be too difficult for them to check that you previously owned and drove a car with a manual transmission; they could then limit the computerised membership card to only allow experienced drivers access to cars with a manual transmission.
I checked the two big car-sharing agencies (Zipcar and Flexcar) and all the smaller ones I could find.
Zipcar seemed promising. It is one of the few rental outfits in the US that actually has nice, stylish small cars instead of the big bland cars that most other rental companies have. I’m talking about the Mini, the Toyota Yaris and the BMW 3 series. But all their North American cars are automatics! For crying out loud, the BMW calls itself the Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s a car for people that love driving so why on Earth would anyone want an automatic Beemer and miss out on the driving experience that goes along with such a great car? I mean, what’s the point?
They now operate in London (with a mostly manual fleet) so my hope is eventually enough of that their UK-based members will visit the US and demand a real car to drive.
Flexcar. No luck here. They’re similar to Zipcar but with a bland all-auto fleet.
If I am going to make the effort to join one of these car sharing companies (I have to pay a membership fee and then wait up to a week to become a member so it is no walk in the park), then it makes sense to join a larger one with national or international coverage. Flexcar and Zipcar fit the bill here, but with no manual cars it’s time to look at the smaller outfits.
Autoshare in Toronto, I-GO in Chicago, City Car Share in San Francisco and a bunch of others. All automatics.
Philly Car Share in Philadelphia sounds promising. As well being a bit cheaper than other car sharing companies, their Audi A4, Minis and Mazda Miatas are available in what they call “Manumatic”. Never driven one of these so I’m not sure if it is really like a real manual but I would certainly give it a go.
So what are my options?
If I just need a car for a couple of days and I’m close to the Mexican border I would try to find a flexible rental company in Mexico that will let me take a car to the US. If I’m in the northeast I would try one of the “manumatics” from Philly Car Share. Otherwise I would probably get something small and zippy from Zipcar and just put up with the fact that it is an automatic.
If I need something for a much longer trip - say a month or more - then I would just buy a damn car. Sometimes it is just too much hassle to try and rent what you want.
USA Coast-to-Coast for under $125
August 13th, 2007 by Tim Uden
Cheap travel deals like Chinatown buses and the cheap advance purchase fares on Megabus make it cheaper than ever to travel across the USA. By combining the cheapest advance purchase point-to-point tickets you can travel coast-to-coast for just $122.25 seeing a lot of America en route.
Sure there are some great flight deals. When I wrote this Southwest Airlines were selling LA-New York flights for $119.80. But most travellers want to see America, not just visit two cities.
Here how you can do it:
- Los Angeles-Tempe $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach
- Tempe-Phoenix $1.75 Valley Metro local bus
- Phoenix-Kansas City $73 (Greyhound) coach
- Kansas City-Chicago $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach
- Chicago-Pittsburg $1 (plus 50c booking fee) (Megabus) coach1
- Pittsburgh-Philadephia $32 (Greyhound) coach
- Philadelphia-New York City $12 (Todays Bus) Chinatown bus
That’s a grand total of just $122.25, assuming you book all the Megabus fares at the same time to save on the booking fee.
In most cases you need to book online around one month in advance to get cheapest fare. These are adult fares so you may get it cheaper with a student discount on some sectors.
Some of the fares are dirt cheap. For instance the seven hour bus ride from LA to Tempe is cheaper than the short hop on a local bus between Tempe and Phoenix (both Tempe and Phoenix are in the same metro area).
Three of these sectors can be travelled overnight, which means that you can save on three nights’ accommodation. That’s especially handy if you want to spend a day exploring Kansas City before catching the next overnight bus (you save a lot on accommodation here as there are no hostels in Kansas City).
The $1 Megabus fares are the cheapest fare that you can generally get by booking three to four weeks in advance. You would generally count on paying $8-20 for each segment if you book with shorter advance notice. Megabus fares incur a 50c booking fee, but you should be able to save on this by booking several trips at once.
The two Greyhound segments keep the price for this coast-to-coast jaunt above $100. If Megabus introduce Phoenix-Kansas City and Pittsburgh-Philadephia routes then the whole trip will drop to under $20!
- when I checked there were mostly $8 and $15 fares available on this route [↩]