Be your own travel agent: tips for saving online

Justin Wastnage quoted in the following article, which originally appeared on October 24, 2007 in ninemsn Travel byDanielle Veldre

Still think it's cheaper to book flights and accommodation separately on the net? Not so, says Danielle Veldre. With a little bit of savvy, travellers can beat travel agents at their own game and create their own holiday packages online.

The birth of the Internet had the travel industry worried. If people could book their own flights and accommodation online, what role did the travel agent serve, and would it become an entirely redundant one?

Judging by the number of travel agency storefronts in any local shopping mall around Australia, though, it's obvious there is still plenty of demand for the human touch that agents provide.

But dynamic packaging just might be the killer app which makes life difficult for the traditional travel agent.

Right now in Australia, consumers can book their flights directly with an airline or one of the companies which offer comparisons between airlines. And people might also book their accommodation online, separate to their flights.

What dynamic packaging allows people to do is combine flights, accommodation, tours and activities on the fly to create a whole holiday package online. Just like you would in a travel agency.

Katrina Richardson, marketing manager of online travel agent Expedia.com.au, says "Dynamic packaging on Expedia enables consumers to build a holiday tailored to their needs and save money".

She says dynamic packaging gives people greater flexibility and freedom to choose the flight, the hotel, and car that forms their holiday.

"By booking these components together the consumer saves money and our pages will actually show them how much they've saved," she says.

If you were to book your flights and accommodation and car hire separately, you might get a special on a flight, but dynamic packaging gives you the chance to take advantage of deals the online travel company has made with its suppliers and which wouldn't be offered to the general public.

Richardson uses the example of a holiday for two adults for travel dates between February 4 and February 8 next year.

From Sydney to Fiji staying at the Outrigger on the Lagoon would cost an average of $1006 per person using an online package. But booking flights and accommodation separately would cost around $1087 per person. That's a saving of more than 7.5 percent.

A Perth to London trip on the same dates, staying at the Grand at Trafalgar Square would cost an average of $2584 per person using an online package. But booking flights and accommodation separately would cost around $2736 per person. That's a saving of 5.6 percent.

You'd think massive Internet savings would be an immediate hit with holidaymakers. But it's been a relatively slow start for dynamic packaging in the Australian market, whereas it has been popular in the US and UK for some time.

The way dynamic packaging works overseas is that the online companies keep all their data on you, with the idea that each time you go back you get a bigger discount. They also learn your preferences from your bookings and offer suitable options based on your previous choices.

Justin Wastnage, news editor of industry magazine Travel Weekly, says a number of factors have caused Australia to be slower on the uptake of dynamic packaging.

"It's very difficult to get people to book a hotel at the same time as a flight. They disjoint the transaction in their own heads," Wastnage says. "And people don't like having to make the choice right away."

He says another reason for the late take up of dynamic packaging is that the technology hasn't been available to make it a reality, including the fact that broadband speeds in Australia are much lower than comparable countries around the world.

A further complicating factor is that tour providers and hotels don't have all their products online, which makes getting the best deals difficult.

Wastnage also says there are really only a few companies, such as Expedia, which offer "true" dynamic packaging, rather than just booking hotels at the same time as you book a flight. Qantas Holidays is bundling flights and accommodation, as is lastminute.com.au, and Webjet is also dipping its toe into the dynamic packaging waters.

If the rest of the world is anything to go by, however, it shouldn't be long before Australians are cottoning on to the savings online packages can bring them.

Read original article here.

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7.30 Report - Pilot safety

Justin Wastnage interviewed as part of Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 7.30 Report current affairs program.

Broadcast: 25/09/2007
Reporter: Mark Willacy

The recent fatal plane crash in Phuket has raised new concerns about air safety and pilot training. Australia is considering a new licensing system for co-pilots which puts more emphasis on flight simulators over actual flying time. But critics warn this training is inadequate.

Transcript

KERRY O'BRIEN: Fatal plane crashes in Indonesia and Thailand this year with more than a hundred deaths, while still being investigated, have both put the issue of pilot competency in the spotlight. In Australia, there are warnings that our own commercial air safety could be compromised by a proposed new licensing system for co-pilots. Australia's air safety watchdog is overseeing a trial of a new system in Brisbane, which involves a greater emphasis on flight simulators over actual air time. Its supporters say it gives budding pilots a better idea of extreme conditions behind the controls. Others claim it means trainees with just 10 hours actual flying time could receive what's called a multi-crew pilot's licence.

Mark Willacy reports on this controversial scheme.

MARK WILLACY: By any standard, 2007 has been a horror year for commercial air safety. It started on New Years Day, with the crash of an Indonesian 737 which killed everyone on board. Two months later in Yogyakarta, another Indonesian airliner exploded after careering off the end of a runway. 22 people, including five Australian, died. Earlier this month, 89 people were killed when a Thai plane crashed in bad weather on the resort island of Phuket. Hundreds more have died this year in accidents in South America and Africa.

PETER GIBSON, CIVIL AVIATION SAFETY AUTHORITY: One of the factors that's behind 80 or 90 per cent of accidents are mistakes by people on the flight deck. Now if we can train our crews from Day One in their pilot training to look for those errors that they're making, to look for the mistakes they can make, to look for the threats to safety and to identify those accurately and take actions to avoid them, then we can avoid accidents.

PILOT TRAINER: Alpha Echo Alpha, you're cleared for take-off, runway left. We note that there are thunderstorms in the area.

MARK WILLACY: This is how the Civil Aviation Safety Authority hopes the pilots of the future will be trained to avoid accidents. In Brisbane, the Airline Academy of Australia in conjunction with Boeing is trialling a new training regime involving one of the most advanced flight simulators in the world. If the new regime is implemented in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation guidelines, trainees could qualify for a commercial copilot's licence after just 10 hours solo flying in an actual plane.

JUSTIN WASTNAGE, NEWS EDITOR, 'TRAVEL WEEKLY': ICAO has introduced this new class of licence called a multi-crew pilot's licence, which really is a speeded-up version of the commercial pilot's licence, essentially spitting out some copilots rather than fully-trained captains with a lot of work done in simulators rather than flying small aircraft.

MARK WILLACY: This sounds like a great plan to turn out a lot of pilots rapidly, but there are some who are concerned it may compromise safety.

PETER SOMERVILLE, AUSTRALIAN & INTERNATIONAL PILOTS ASSOCIATION: There is a question mark over it, in our view. There is no, so far as we're aware, scientific basis for it or to prove that it will work as well as the current licensing arrangements. And clearly in Australia we've got one of the safest commercial aviation environments and in those circumstances we as airline pilots will stand up to make sure we keep those safe standards.

STEWART CAMERON, AIRLINE ACADEMY OF AUSTRALIA: This is a Diamond 40 which we're using for multi-crew pilot program.

MARK WILLACY: This is the man running the trial which could lead to Australia adopting the multi-crew pilots licence or MPL. A former RAAF commander, Stewart Cameron is the CEO of the Airline Academy of Australia and a keen advocate of changing the licensing system.

STEWART CAMERON: This is the first time in nearly 50 years we've actually looked at a way of changing the training. It's competency based, you know, again I come back again to the issue of safety. No one in this industry is going to do anything that's going to put the travelling public in jeopardy.

TRAINEE PILOT: Note that the weather is raining.

MARK WILLACY: The academy simulator can certainly test would-be pilots by replicating some of the most challenging flying conditions. Here the pilots are doing battle with blinding rain and severe cross winds but old hands warn that nothing beats the real thing.

PETER SOMERVILLE: There's something to be said for a young pilot flying solo, getting an idea of the dangers and how dangerous the activity of flying an aircraft can be. But it may be that the MPL program doesn't give people that level of training.

PETER GIBSON: Simulators today are incredibly sophisticated. You can do things in them that you simply can't do in an aircraft. You can pretend you've got an engine failure in a 737 by shutting down the engine and making the pilots go through that drill. You can't do that in a real aircraft.

MARK WILLACY: Last year the Federal Opposition was so concerned it called for a Senate inquiry into the multi-crew pilots licensing, pointing out that the September 11 hijackers had more flying hours than the 10 required under the proposed system. But the civil aviation watchdog argues that under the current system many would-be commercial pilots spend too much time flying irrelevant, single-engine aircraft.

PETER GIBSON: It's a mix of flying in aircraft. You've still got to do your basic flying training, but then you'll move more quickly into simulator where you can learn to fly in the environment that you're going to be operating in, in other words in 737s, 747s and most importantly, with two pilots, learn to work as a crew.

MARK WILLACY: At the Airline Academy of Australia, the CEO Stewart Cameron, says the trial of multi-crew pilot licensing is more stringent than the one suggested by international authorities, meaning the pilots who graduate there will have 100 hours more training than the guidelines recommended.

STEWART CAMERON: In fact, the students here will be doing about 140 hours - a mixture of flying and high-fidelity simulation. The licence is issued at the end of 12 take off and landings, in this case in a 737.

MARK WILLACY: With the economies of China and India booming, and more people flying than ever before, there's a huge shortage of pilots, meaning the pressure is on to train more.

STEWART CAMERON: If we look at what the national civil aviation organisation is telling us, for the next 18 years or thereabouts we're looking at a deficit of about 80,000 odd pilots.

MARK WILLACY: Richard Chen from Taiwan hopes to graduate from the Airline Academy of Australia in six months and then head home to fulfil his passion for flying while also landing a lucrative job.

RICHARD CHEN, TRAINEE PILOT: Aviation is cool. In Australia is the best in the world, the whole world. The instructor here, they are amazing. They have a lot of knowledge to teach us.

MARK WILLACY: The trial of the multi-crew pilots licensing system will wrap up next year, then CASA will invite the community to comment on it. After that, the decision will be made whether or not to implement it.

PETER GIBSON: We'll make sure that the standards, if this goes ahead, require the pilots to reach a level of skills, knowledge and competencies that mean they will be able to fly whatever aircraft they're qualified to do in exactly the same way as pilots can today. Really the standards may end up being higher than they are today.

PETER SOMERVILLE: At the present time this new, synthetic training is not proven and it needs to be done carefully and cautiously. And at the present time Australia is leading the world in the introduction of this licence. That's why we're concerned. We simply don't want the first multi-crew pilot licence arrangement, we want the best.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Mark Willacy with that report.

While Asia rears more budget carriers, fewer pilots are left in the wings

Originally appeared in the Opinion pages of the Sydney Morning Herald on September 18, 2007


New Year's Day is a good time for resolutions for the year ahead. For aviation safety, 2007 did not get off to a good start. An Indonesian airliner operated by the low-cost carrier Adamair went missing during a domestic flight on January 1. The Boeing 737 had crashed into the sea killing all 102 passengers.

Fast forward nine months and aviation safety is in the news again, with the crash of a Thai low-cost airline, One-Two-Go, in Phuket.

In the intervening months, there have been 30 other fatal accidents killing a further 520 people, according to US crash-watchers, the Aviation Safety Network. Last year there were 27 fatal crashes, the lowest figure for a decade. Many had been predicting an even safer year for 2007, despite traffic growth.

What has made 2007 a particularly bad year for Australians is that many of the crashes have happened in our region. The horrific fireball that engulfed the Garuda Indonesia 737 at Jogjakarta in March would have made the news in any event, but the presence on board of Australian diplomatic staff and journalists indelibly branded the accident into the national psyche.

To read the full article, click here to go to SMH.com.au