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Fare models emerge: Air Canada, Spirit alter pricing; buyers seek work-arounds to Web-only offerings.

Article Excerpt
Air Canada last week began selling unlimited-travel passes between the U.S. and Canada for a flat monthly fee. Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines this month said beginning in June it would unbundle fares, allowing customers to add or omit such services as checked baggage or in-flight beverages generally included in airfares.

The new offerings buck conventional fare models, spur users to book directly with airlines and, in some cases, work against managed travel practices. Air Canada last year introduced other similarly nonconformist products as unbundled fares--a move Spirit is initiating in the United States--and prepaid corporate flight passes.

Air Canada's Web-only offerings are drawing travel buyers, travel management companies and technology firms to create workarounds that help track such bookings. Meanwhile, Spirit is charging buyers more for global distribution system transactions.

Guylaine Lavoie, Air Canada director of marketing innovations, the department that develops and oversees its pass programs, last week said the carrier launched an unlimited pass in Canada last fall. Although the product is not specifically geared to the corporate market and is unavailable for negotiated discounts--that's the realm of the Corporate Pass (BTN, Oct. 23, 2006)--Lavoie said some Canadian companies have deployed the unlimited passes for their most frequent travelers.

"We know that we have some customers who work for large corporations or smaller corporations, where the company will pay for them,"...

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