Yapta Yapta Blog

This week, in Phoenix, was the annual PhoCusWright Conference where folks from all corners of the travel industry gather to share ideas, forge partnerships, and announce some news.  Well, we had some news of our own to announce.  Here it is, as reported by Tnooz (the travel industry’s top trade news outlet):

“Yapta and MasterCard plan to begin a beta in December in which MasterCard consumer and small business cardholders purchasing flights with their cards would be able to receive Yapta’s price monitoring and price assurance services.

Yapta pledges that its services get air travelers refunds on the difference when the airfare drops below the price the flight was booked for.

The beta is a prelude to a full-fledged launch of the service with MasterCard in early 2011, Yapta says.

The MasterCard-Yapta partnership punctuates a shift for Yapta, which has been focusing in recent months on supplementing its consumer offering with business to business services.

“This is a significant partnership that will deliver real savings and value to a broader audience of travelers,” says Yapta co-founder and CEO Tom Romary. “It’s also consistent with our strategy to power travel services for travel management companies, online travel search companies and financial services companies.”

The beta will be available to a subset of MasterCard cardholders in December.

Yapta and MasterCard plan to implement a series of collaborative services early next year.”

Here’s some more news you can use:

• Airport security body scanners used by the TSA continue to gain negative publicity.  John Tyner, a California software engineer, became an instant web celebrity this week when he declined both a body scan and the alternative – a groin check – and then used his iPhone’s video camera to capture the event.  Tyner told TSA agents: “If you touch my junk, I’m going to have you arrested.”  He evaded the junk-touching, but wasn’t allowed to fly.

• John Tyner apparently isn’t alone in his detest of airport security body scanners.  Others are organizing a “National Opt-Out Day” slated for November 24th — the day before Thanksgiving and probably busiest day of air travel this year. It’s a protest against the full-body scanners at airports.  For all you planning to participate, you should know your rights.

• AirTran today launched a “Giving Thanks to Our Customers” airfare sale good for tickets purchased today through Monday.  Fares are priced based on “peak,” “off-peak” and “super off-peak” travel dates. The lowest fares are for travel on Nov. 19, 21, 22, 26 and Nov. 30, with some discounts offered for flights on Thanksgiving Day. Also, there are no advance purchase requirements for this sale.

Less than a week after a high-profile safety mix up where a Delta plane landed on the airport taxiway at the world’s busiest airport, rather than the parallel runway – there’s been another instance of cockpit carelessness reported by The Wall Street Journal:

“Federal officials are working to sort out whether pilots of a Northwest Airlines flight dozed off or were simply distracted Wednesday night when they fell out of contact with air-traffic controllers for more than an hour and overshot their destination by 150 miles.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, among other things, whether the two pilots fell asleep at the controls. The pair told law-enforcement officials who interviewed them upon landing in Minneapolis — and apparently told fellow pilots later — that they had been engaged in a “heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness,” according to the NTSB.

Whatever the reason, the plane may have flown out of range of one air-traffic-control center and failed to take steps to get back on course and resume radio contact with controllers, according to industry and government officials close to the situation.

During the 78-minute radio silence, controllers became so concerned about the fate of the 149 people aboard that they asked pilots of other aircraft in the vicinity to see if they could rouse the Northwest crew, according to industry and government officials. When that failed, the Federal Aviation Administration and military official began to consider having fighter jets scrambled to intercept the twin-jet Airbus A320, these officials said.

When an aircraft fails to respond for such a long time, it is routine procedure to send fighters to try to determine the problem.”

Here’s some more travel news you can use:

• The New York Times blog InTransit notes that Club Med is offering seven nights for the price of three. The Seven-Day Weekend deal starts at $799 a person and is available at any of Club Med’s all-inclusive resorts in the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Mexico and Florida.

• A Utah congressman upset he had to go through extra screening is shown in newly released video footage going through airport security.  Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, says screeners at the Salt Lake City airport targeted him for an additional search because he refused to go through a whole-body imaging machine.  The union representing airport security workers says he was trying to kick start a confrontation.

• Alaska Airlines began nonstop daily service today between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.  Flights leave Seattle at 9:10 a.m. and arrive in Atlanta at 5:10 p.m. local time.  Return flights leave Atlanta at 6:10 p.m. and arrive in Seattle at 8:30 p.m.