Boarding passes with ads by Claudia Sonea

The current situation of America’s economy seems to have no ending. The credit crunch, the sluggish housing market and the oil price that topped $145 a barrel are the main issues that have made things crumble like dominoes. The good’s price rose sharply, the consumer index fell, the unemployment rate soared, companies filled bankruptcy and so on and so forth.
Airlines have also been affected and their reports on Wednesday show big time losses in spite of job cuts, higher fares, a charge for the second checked baggage. They will continue lying off employees, canceling flights, but they will also add ads on boarding pass to compensate the expensive fuel.
Delta Airlines is the first of the six airlines (American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways Group Inc., Continental Airlines Inc. and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines) who partnered with Sojern and will begin selling online boarding passes displaying ads and coupons, weather information and promotions for their destinations. It is left at the customers’ decision whether the boarding passes will have ads or not. Starting Tuesday the ads will be available for flights to Las Vegas and soon for all flights.
Rumor has it that the airlines will get 40 percent of the revenue and will be split between them (all six), but there has been no confirmation. Mainly the interest of the airlines is to not upset the customers and Josh Weiss, managing director for Delta's Web site and self-service, added that that is the meaning of being optional. The boarding pass will be limited to one page as before. Up to this moment there are no personalized ads, but probably somewhere in the future that will be possible.
It doesn’t harm anyone and it might prevent fares from going up, so I strongly recommend for people to do it. I know I will. Enjoy it!



related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20080715/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_boarding_pass_ads;_ylt=Al9cfk9U_ukS2wIUqYZB9uWs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Lucia Adamova