As holiday travel and winter weather converge, the annual ritual is about to unfold at U.S. airports: Flights are canceled, and disgruntled masses throng ticket counters and flood airline call centers hunting for alternatives. Happy holidays?
A Boston-area startup, born of a disastrous ski trip 10 months ago, aims to offer an alternative. For $19 to $34, the company, Freebird, guarantees it will buy you a ticket to your destination, regardless of cost or carrier, if a flight is canceled or delayed more than four hours or a connection is missed due to an airline's delay.
This can avert what usually happens when a trip is disrupted: An airline automatically books you on another of its own flights, regardless of the time, connections, or your own wishes. That’s because airline computers typically search for the widest availability when a cancellation occurs, so you don’t always get the very next flight if there’s a chance the carrier might sell that seat for a premium to a last-minute traveler. In these cases, passengers typically queue up in the airport or on the phone waiting for an airline employee to change the itinerary.
What also happens: Seat options are limited and people get frantic, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for a ticket on another airline. There is a wedding, a funeral, a cruise ship, or an ill loved one involved. The financial hit can be harsh.
“There are certain extreme events where everybody feels helpless,” said Ethan Bernstein, a former Expedia M&A executive and the co-founder and chief executive of Freebird, which is based in Cambridge, Mass.
Freebird is much like an insurance product in that the buyer aims to protect herself from some ugly outcome. The company resists that analogy because there is no claim to file for reimbursement, unlike most of the travel protection policies sold by companies such as American Express and Allianz. Freebird touts “three clicks” to a new flight: You pay the fee, they take the hit for a new ticket.
Freebird’s current price, $19 one way and $34 round trip, will change after a winter “promotional period,” Bernstein said, with most future one-way trips likely to cost $20 to $30. Each flight will be assessed on a variety of risks of disruptions, such as the high winds common each June in the Northeast or how much of a trip involves a regional airline flight, the ones usually most at risk for delays. Airlines also have different reputations for delays. Allegiant Travel and Spirit do not operate as reliably as Alaska or Hawaiian Airlines.
And lest you wonder, Lynyrd Skynyrd fandom isn’t a direct influence on the company’s name, which aspires to convey “the spirit of what we do for customers.” But Bernstein is a Skynyrd fan, too: “Who isn’t?” he said.
