Monday, March 27,1989
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"EL BRUJO" BEGINS HIS
CEREMONY TO SUMMON THE
EVIL SPIRITS FROM
THE “PIT OF FIRE../'
NED, DRUGGED INTO A STATE
OF SUBMISSION, STARTS TO
LOWER WALDO TO HIS DOOM...
THEIR PLANS TO IMPLANT
THE FUHRERS BRAIN IN
ELVIS' BODY COULD
DESTROY THE WORLD.'
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66
Airline fares expected to rise
during summer, officials say
HOUSTON (AP) — With the approach of summer
— typically one of the busiest flying seasons of the year
— and Eastern Airlines on the brink of collapse, airline
travelers can expect t<y see fewer discount fares, more
restrictions and higher full fares, industry officials say.
Airline officials insist that great bargains are still
available provided the traveler plans at least two weeks
ahead, is agreeable to stops along the way, and will
travel at off-peak times.
Even then, you still may end up seated next to some
one who paid hundreds of dollars less than you did for
the same service.
“It just plain stinks,” Dan Smith, spokesman for the
International Air Passenger Association in Dallas, told
the Houston Post. “The prices assigned to each seat can
change on a daily basis.”
It’s also common for customers to be quoted two dif
ferent prices within a day.
Airline officials call that practice “yield manage
ment,” a computerized fare system that continually
switches prices based on the number of passengers
booked on a flight.
“Airlines are getting so sophisticated in their yiekL
management programs that they can go into their com
puter system and tell a week in advance how many seals
they’ll sell for that flight,” Tina Ruffeno, presidentof
the Texas Passenger Travel Association in Houston,
said.
“Then they’ll take out all the cheap or discounted
seats and force the corporate traveler to pay it or ravel
on a less-traveled flight they’re trying to fill up” she
said. “And two days before that highly traveled flight
leaves, they’ll go back into the system and see they
haven’t sold as many seats as they wanted and discount
the fare again,” she said.
This airline alchemy has flourished since the 1978
Airline Deregulation Act began to phase ait govern
ment involvfifTrent in the airline industry.
Before deregulation, the cost of an empty seat was
passed on f> all the other passengers, said David Swie-
renga, assistant vice president for the Air Transport As
sociation, which represents the country’s largest air
lines.
Air c.Triers now reserve a few seats for the last-min
ute flie' at a higher price and reward passengers who
buy tiotets in advance with lower fares.
Tlv result has been discount fares never before
dreaded possible and skyrocketing standard fares. To
day about 90 percent of the nation’s air travelers are
flyhg on a discounted fare.
The losers in this game of supply and demand are
cffporate and emergency travelers who don’t have the
lixury of planning their trips weeks in advance or the
lexibility to comply with fare restrictions, industry ob
servers say.
“The business traveler is in an T gotcha,’ ” Ruffeno
said. “They’re frustrated because they don’t have a lot
of choice. The airlines know that and take advantage of
it by jacking up the price.”
A traveling salesman at Houston Intercontinental
Airport last week lamented the price of his $860 round-
trip ticket from Washington.
“I try to plan in advance to keep the fares low,” Willie
Brown of Reston, Va, said. “Yet sometimes a customer
says, ‘Be here tomorrow,’ and you have got to go. It’s
cheaper to fly to Hong Kong. I flew there, round trip,
for $729.”
Airline officials, however, insist they care about cor
porate travelers, who fill up at least 50 percent of their
flights.
“The business traveler has to have a seat available at
the last minute because they can’t always plan ahead,”
David Messing, a Continental Airlines spokesman, said.
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‘Quick Response’ advocates claim
system will save money for retailers
DALLAS (AP) — Advocates of a
concept dubbed “Quick Response”
claim the system could save retailers
$9.6 billion a year, and at the same
time help the nation’s apparel and
textile industries battle foreign com
petition.
But analysts are divided on
whether retailers will sign on in high
enough numbers to reach the levels
needed to reap those savings.
Two studies released in Dallas this
month tout the advantages of Quick
Response, a concept generally cred
ited to Roger Milliken, chairman of
textile manufacturer Milliken & Co.,
as an offshoot if his Crafted With
Pride campaign to bolster the do
mestic textile and apparel industry.
Milliken conceived of textile and
apparel manufacturers and retailers
sharing product and sales informa
tion across the board in an effort to
“play the competitive advantage (of
U.S. manufacturers) — time,”
according to Doug Smith, a partner
in the Dallas office of Andersen
Consulting, which opened a perma
nent exhibit on the concept at Dallas’
Infomart trade center.
Andersen Consulting, a unit of
Arthur Anderson Sc Co., and Kurt
Salmon Associates, presented results
of separate studies to about 100 top
executives of apparel, textile and re
tailing companies in Dallas recently.
The studies were done for the
Voluntary Industry Communica
tions Standards Commttee, which is
seeking to develop uniform methods
of gathering and sharing sale and in
ventory data among the industries.
Advocates concede that despite
the technological demands of the
system, the key is a willingness for all
parties to share information, for ex
ample, of competing retailers telling
a common supplier how sales are
going. /
“Quick Response is, first and fore
most, a new and different way of
doing business,” Andersen’s study
says. Companies/must “create new
partnerships across the pipeline,
with the manufacturers and textile
mills, and . . . share sales information
through the entire pipeline.”
Monroe H. Greenstein, a retail
analyst with Bear, Stearns 8c Co. in
New York said he doubted fashion
retailers would be willing to partici
pate, althoqgh he said retailers who
sell basic apparel, which makes up
the bulk of the tnarket, probably will
go along.
But Kay Norwood, who follows
retailing, apparel and textiles for In-
terstate-Johnson Lane in Charlotte,
N.C., said the competitive advan
tages offered by Quick Response will
force competitors to go along.
“If your competitor is doing this,
and has a better apparel assortment
than you, and getting sales because
of it, for you not to be involved is
cutting off your nose to spite your
face,” she said by phone.
Under the VICS system, retailers
would daily gather sales information
generated from using Universal
Product Scanning, point-of-sale ter
minals.
That information would be used
to reorder needed products immedi
ately, all using computer tie-ups with
apparel suppliers. The apparel in
dustry, in turn, would be tied simi
larly to textile manufacturers who
supply the material to make the
clothes.
The system can significantly re
duce the lead time needed to order
and restock items, with some studies
indicating the time from making
fabric to shelf can be reduced from
66 weeks to 30 weeks or even fur
ther.
Andersen Consulting’s study says
department stores could save $3.7
billion a year, after an initial invest
ment of $1.6 billion and annual
maintenance of $139 million. Mass
merchants would save $3.9 billion,
after $ 1.3 billion in startup and $ 159
million annual costs. Speciality stores
could reap $2 billion in annual sav
ings, with startup costs of $684 mil
lion.
/T
‘Tuesday, March 28 7:30pm
3{pom 201 MSC
nid^ets are on sa(e at the tRudcCer Office for $2.30
T*
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