Logan Airport Flights and Airlines Discussion

kmp1284 said:
If the markets were remotely comparable in size I would be inclined to agree with you but they're not. What makes you think that Boston would be higher-yielding?
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It's a route with fares that aren't much different from SFO and MIA while those routes are 30-60% longer. I'm not sure how SFO and MIA compare, but you'd have to see a local market many times the size of BOS-BRU to make up for the increased distance/flying time and decreased aircraft utilization with fares like that. I also think it's pretty telling that no carrier has ever served SFO-BRU nonstop and only recently has MIA-BRU seen the announcement from a Belgian charter airline for 2x weekly service.
 
Buses to make Back Bay to Logan run

By:
Donna Goodison

The Massachusetts Port Authority plans to launch a new express shuttle bus service between the Back Bay and Logan International Airport.

The agency is soliciting proposals from operators to start the route in April, initially to help mitigate the impact on airport passenger access when the MBTA’s Government Center Blue Line Station closes in the spring for at least two years of renovations.

The proposed fare is $5 for the shuttle service, which would run from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. from the Back Bay and from 6 a.m. to midnight from the airport.

The service is subject to approval by the Massport board once proposals are submitted by the Jan. 23 deadline, according to spokesman Matt Brelis.

The shuttle bus service tentatively is slated to make Boylston Street pickups at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center and the MBTA’s Copley Station, outside the Boston Public Library, before heading to Logan.

Return service from the airport would drop off passengers on St. James Avenue, across from the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, and on Boylston Street at the Hynes. The stops are subject to approval from the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and the city’s Transportation Department.

At the airport, passengers would be dropped off at designated Logan Express stops at the upper-level departure areas of Terminals A, B1, B2, C and E, while pickups would occur at stops at the terminals’ lower-level arrival areas.

Massport has reserved the option of extending the service contract for up to three one-year periods after the initial two-year run.
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http://bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2013/12/buses_to_make_back_bay_to_logan_run
 
Good places to find flight data

Short intro:

My company is currently looking into some questionable travel expenses registered over the past few years. Specifically, what appears to be someone milking the system for personal travel tacked on to the beginning/end of a business trip. The employee, on multiple occasions, was traveling to Asia for work and booked far more expensive flights that connected in Hawaii vs. the more affordable options of connecting in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, etc. In addition, this employee spent 1, 2 and sometimes 3 nights in hotels in Hawaii and charged them to the expense account. The reasoning behind the flight choices was "Hawaii is quicker and more direct." The reasoning behind the hotel stays vary from weather cancellations, missed connections, overbooking, and "rest" (we do allow for rest periods after long travel, but not 2 days in Hawaii).

Now obviously it appears someone is abusing the system. However, in order to pursue it further, we'd like to gather as much information as we can. I know many of you have great websites that you use to check flight data. I'm hoping you can share some of them. Specifically, historic arrival/departure times for past flights (within the past 5 years)- whether they were on time or delayed is a plus. While it's less likely to have this info public, a place to check on the percentage of seats filled on a particular flight (or even if it can simply indicate full/ not full) would be great. Basically any resource that could provide useful information to verify/discredit this employee's story would be useful. Thanks.

*mods, I posted this here because I figured it's where the most knowledgeable people on this topic would be. Move to wherever you see fit.
 
I know in booking sites (I have seen it on Kayak, but also on flight tracking sites) you can see the historical ontime performance of the flight. I don't think you can look at individual flight histories, but may be a decent way to start.
 
Re: Good places to find flight data

Lrfox said:
Short intro:

My company is currently looking into some questionable travel expenses registered over the past few years. Specifically, what appears to be someone milking the system for personal travel tacked on to the beginning/end of a business trip. The employee, on multiple occasions, was traveling to Asia for work and booked far more expensive flights that connected in Hawaii vs. the more affordable options of connecting in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, etc. In addition, this employee spent 1, 2 and sometimes 3 nights in hotels in Hawaii and charged them to the expense account. The reasoning behind the flight choices was "Hawaii is quicker and more direct." The reasoning behind the hotel stays vary from weather cancellations, missed connections, overbooking, and "rest" (we do allow for rest periods after long travel, but not 2 days in Hawaii).

Now obviously it appears someone is abusing the system. However, in order to pursue it further, we'd like to gather as much information as we can. I know many of you have great websites that you use to check flight data. I'm hoping you can share some of them. Specifically, historic arrival/departure times for past flights (within the past 5 years)- whether they were on time or delayed is a plus. While it's less likely to have this info public, a place to check on the percentage of seats filled on a particular flight (or even if it can simply indicate full/ not full) would be great. Basically any resource that could provide useful information to verify/discredit this employee's story would be useful. Thanks.

*mods, I posted this here because I figured it's where the most knowledgeable people on this topic would be. Move to wherever you see fit.
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Flightaware.com has free flight information available for flights up to four months old, and information available for sale on flights through 1998.
 
Re: Good places to find flight data

Lrfox said:
on multiple occasions,...traveling to Asia for work... booked far more expensive flights that connected in Hawaii vs. the more affordable options of connecting in Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, etc. In addition, this employee spent 1, 2 and sometimes 3 nights in hotels in Hawaii and charged them to the expense account. The reasoning behind the flight choices was "Hawaii is quicker and more direct."
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I'd start with that last statement, which is untrue for most trans-pacific trips.

I think it would be as simple as saying "pick any two endpoints, Hawaii will always be *longer* and take more time" unless your employee were going to one of the *very* *rare* places in asia that is both on the great circle and having a non-stop from Hawaii.

Hawaii is NOT more direct--it only looks that way on flat maps. On a 3-dimensional globe, the fast & direct routings are the "great circle" routes. To/from the USA these routes almost always go over polar regions and do, indeed, favor connections at Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo.

I'd challenge whether the employee ever actually looked at competing connecting options (or is counting that you won't). On both time-in-the-air and connecting times in terminals, Hubs in SFO, LAX, NRT, ICN (Incheon Seoul) will beat a connection in Hawaii on almost any possible routing because Hawaii is so out of the way for trans-pacific flights.

And then there's the problem that places that *are* on the Great Circle route(s) from the USA to Asia end up being places like Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia--places that--because of the small size of their economy are unlikely to have nonstops from Hawaii.

so I'd start with a list of airport codes and Karl Swartz's Great Circle Mapper as a way of doing a quick draft:
http://gc.kls2.com

You use it by entering the airport codes for possible routes (like BOS-LAX-HNL-SYD vs BOS-LAX-SYD) or BOS-SFO-HKG vs BOS-SFO-HNL-HKG

Hawaii is "on the way" only from the US west Coast to Papua New Guinea / New Caledonia. For almost everything on the mainland of Asia, polar routings and boring hubs are more direct, offer short connections, on the same airline, and so are faster and cheaper. And the great circle route to Australia and New Zealand swings well *south* of Hawaii
 
Another thing to consider is price - I'm not sure what your company's policy is, but for my company, we have to take the cheapest flight (within $100 or so) rather than the most direct. So if it was $200 cheaper for me to go BOS - LAX via ATL rather than direct, I'd have to go through ATL.

I'd look up prices via Hawaii vs. prices via SFO, LAX, etc. and compare. My guess is that Hawaii is significantly more expensive.
 
Unless you're saving a large amount of money, I fail to see how connecting via Hawaii makes any sense. As mentioned, you're adding in roughly 1,000 miles of travel distance, plus the additional time required for a layover.

I could not see a company asking their employee to tack on 6-9 hours of additional travel time for the sake of saving money (unless the savings were going to be massive).

Unless this person were going to a smaller Asian city that lacks non-stop service to the US, making 2 stops on the way to Asia makes no sense.

As already mentioned, Flightaware is a pretty solid site for looking at historical data for flight info.
 
Thanks guys.

Without getting into too much detail, the company does have a cheapest flight policy but at the time they were fairly liberal with giving senior employees the ability to handle their own itinerary should they want to. It was only after an internal audit that anyone really noticed just how much was spent on one individual's travel.

It's not so much a matter of "did the employee abuse the system?" It's a matter of "the employee abused the system in the past, but we need to prove it." The destinations were major Asian cities and Hawaii makes no sense. We just need to back that up with more than saying "it's obvious." Using kayak and airline websites it's clear as day that Hawaii is absurd, but we just want some more concrete data.

Flightaware looks good.
 
Lrfox said:
Thanks guys.
...It's not so much a matter of "did the employee abuse the system?" It's a matter of "the employee abused the system in the past, but we need to prove it." The destinations were major Asian cities and Hawaii makes no sense. We just need to back that up with more than saying "it's obvious." Using kayak and airline websites it's clear as day that Hawaii is absurd, but we just want some more concrete data.

Flightaware looks good.
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I think the easy way to shift the burden of proof onto your traveler is to ask: "By what process did you determine that Hawaii was 'better' than available alternatives". Then the traveler is stuck: there is no such process commercially available that would favor a Hawaii stopover, and any that they'd concoct to cover their trail will be obviously wrong. Let the employee try to come up with a better "made sense" answer rather than assume the burden of proving it "makes no sense"

It also avoids the unprovable question: "what were the options available for sale at the time?" (i.e. there was no BOS-NRT nonstop "back then"). You won't quite be able to document what better connecting options were available on the day that your traveler booked the Hawaii connection, but you shouldn't need to because:

1) Options today are roughly the same and you'll be able to see that connections via hubs:
a) come up automatically in online booking sites
b) are shorter by miles and air-time
c) offer faster connections
d) tend to be cheap compared to constructing your own
e) are plentiful (many competitors and many good connecting opportunities)

2) Hawaii connections are none of these, especially if going to an Asian commercial center
a) You have to build them yourself, because booking engines exclude them from top results (or entirely) because they are sooo inferior.
b) Add up the miles or hours and Hawaii will be longer on nearly 100% of trips by about 2 hours of air time, and probably 2 hours more of connecting time (because it forces an unneeded connection probably a 3rd or 4th compared to the many 1stop and 2 stop options.)
c) Hawaii trips are expensive because they'd get constructed as "multi-city" itineraries, and therefore priced as, essentially, 4 one-way tickets (or two round trips (US-HNL-US and HNL-Asia-HNL)
e) and rare...at least in the sense of comparison shopping...any traveler would have to pass up scores of trips that are superior on every dimension (time, connection, cost) in order to get to Hawaii...that's the core of why your employee's selections make no sense.
 
Arlington said:
I think the easy way to shift the burden of proof onto your traveler is to ask: "By what process did you determine that Hawaii was 'better' than available alternatives". Then the traveler is stuck: there is no such process commercially available that would favor a Hawaii stopover, and any that they'd concoct to cover their trail will be obviously wrong. Let the employee try to come up with a better "made sense" answer rather than assume the burden of proving it "makes no sense"

It also avoids the unprovable question: "what were the options available for sale at the time?" (i.e. there was no BOS-NRT nonstop "back then"). You won't quite be able to document what better connecting options were available on the day that your traveler booked the Hawaii connection, but you shouldn't need to because:

1) Options today are roughly the same and you'll be able to see that connections via hubs:
a) come up automatically in online booking sites
b) are shorter by miles and air-time
c) offer faster connections
d) tend to be cheap compared to constructing your own
e) are plentiful (many competitors and many good connecting opportunities)

2) Hawaii connections are none of these, especially if going to an Asian commercial center
a) You have to build them yourself, because booking engines exclude them from top results (or entirely) because they are sooo inferior.
b) Add up the miles or hours and Hawaii will be longer on nearly 100% of trips by about 2 hours of air time, and probably 2 hours more of connecting time (because it forces an unneeded connection probably a 3rd or 4th compared to the many 1stop and 2 stop options.)
c) Hawaii trips are expensive because they'd get constructed as "multi-city" itineraries, and therefore priced as, essentially, 4 one-way tickets (or two round trips (US-HNL-US and HNL-Asia-HNL)
e) and rare...at least in the sense of comparison shopping...any traveler would have to pass up scores of trips that are superior on every dimension (time, connection, cost) in order to get to Hawaii...that's the core of why your employee's selections make no sense.
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These are all very good points, but if you want to insulate yourself from a lawsuit, you need a rock solid case. You need actual proof the employee lied and abused the corporate policy. The kind of person who books company trips via Hawaii with 2 day layovers is the kind of person who sues when they're fired because of it.
 
FenwayResident said:
These are all very good points, but if you want to insulate yourself from a lawsuit, you need a rock solid case. You need actual proof the employee lied and abused the corporate policy. The kind of person who books company trips via Hawaii with 2 day layovers is the kind of person who sues when they're fired because of it.
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I'm not a lawyer and I'm not offering legal advice, nor even suggesting what actions by the employer are warranted. There are lots of options that don't involve firing:

Often its a matter of retro-actively disallowing expenses (or at least the difference between what was paid and what it should have cost) as being not those of the business and asking for return of the reimbursements. Or declaring them to be a taxable benefit to the employee.
 
FenwayResident said:
These are all very good points, but if you want to insulate yourself from a lawsuit, you need a rock solid case. You need actual proof the employee lied and abused the corporate policy. The kind of person who books company trips via Hawaii with 2 day layovers is the kind of person who sues when they're fired because of it.
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You don't need to be an attorney to be a prospective juror serving on a jury in such a lawsuit. How do you think 2-3 night stays in Hawaii are going to look to jurors? How is the Plaintiff (i.e. the terminated employee) going to prove that he was wrongfully terminated? As mentioned above, no such evidence exists because under no circumstances does it make sense to connect in Hawaii and spend multiple nights there unless you are gaming the system.
 
You may also wish to ask about this on flyertalk.com. You'll find many, many travel experts there--these are the people that know frequent flyer and other travel affinity programs backwards and forwards, and are able to spot a deal or 'mistake' airfare a mile away.
 
LR,
Not to condone what appear to be abuses "of the system" and violations of company policy (written or otherwise) . . .
But as a frequent traveler (250+ flights per year, about 120 nights per year away from home . . .), I'd only ask that you consider the following points (I am assuming you don't travel a ton for work--if my assumption is incorrect, my apologies):
Business travel, especially trans-oceanic travel, SUCKS. It is not glamourous, it is not fun. It is, at best, tolerable. At worst, it is down-right crappy. Having done this for well over a decade, I have seen it get the better of scores of co-workers who end up moving on or out.
It has always ground my gears when folks who do not travel a lot (if at all) make travel policy rules, especially if those most impacted by said rules do not have a voice in these policies.
Any good, successful company will strive to attract and retain good employees. Retaining good employees that have to travel quite a bit is even more difficult. As another AB poster suggested, perhaps options other than termination (if this employee is otherwise an asset) are worth exploring.
Further, maybe the company travel policy could use a review, too (though not really knowing the specfics of it, I acknowledge I might be talking out of my ass) . . .
 
buju b said:
Business travel, especially trans-oceanic travel, SUCKS. It is not glamourous, it is not fun. It is, at best, tolerable. At worst, it is down-right crappy.
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With the perks of First or Business class aside, I agree with you BUT I'm more surprised that this particular employee took these 1-3 days in Hawaii with the travel that they were doing instead of taking a couple of days off from work instead.

I can't see doing 5000+ miles in travelling (example Hong Kong-Hawaii) staying in Honolulu for a couple of nights and then hopping back on a plane for another 5000+ miles which will always be two flights back to Boston. That's a bunch of time changes for a person over a short period of time.
 
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