Ten Dollars Each Way

Step aside Southwest Airlines there is a new budget airline in town. That new budget airline is Sky Bus, where at least ten seats on every flight are ten dollars.
The tickets for each of the ten dollar seats sell out with in hours of going on sale. While the airline is fairly new it seems to have tapped into the budget no frills costumer base. With being no frills this means you pay for everything.
The standard prices on services that you would typically get on another airline such as Continental for beverages you receive on a flight on another airline you get for free Sky Bus charges two dollars for soda. If a passenger wants to check a bag they will pay five dollars each way for each piece of luggage.
According to Sky Bus’s CEO, John B. Carnett, said in Popular Science, they charge each passenger separately for what services and goods they receive to make the flights cheaper since on competitor’s flights they would have been charged on the ticket price. This in their minds makes it fairer as the passenger is only paying for goods and services they receive.
There is one major problem in the Sky Bus airline, that to some makes this too good to be true. Sky Bus has no call center and operates its costumer service center only by email. This creates a major problem since on its web site Sky Bus gives a disclaimer that it does not have time to answer personally, and that is a question is answered on their Help Center board they will not respond.
There have been reports of inexperienced, untrained staff, with less than satisfactory customer service. Employees in multiple cases have been reported as receiving on the job training mid-flight. Not a comforting thought for frequent flyers.
Out the gate (no pun intended) Skybus’s reputation has not been improving. Yet, the prices may still be the attracting force for the majority of their business.
I had the privilege to talk to Mr. Lackey, an English teacher at our very own SHS, who has recently booked a flight on Skybus.
“It was easy” he simply stated when I asked him about his booking experience online. “I booked a flight there (Skybus) for $100 less as on Southwest and similar other airlines for the same date.”
A topic that Mr. Lackey announced displeasure towards however was the lack of airports Skybus chooses to use. “We’re going to Columbus before we fly out… You can check online to see a list and map of all the airports they’re at.”
The locations of the airports Skybus uses are a very important consideration before booking. In Ohio, the only airport that Skybus is located at is in Columbus, which, being at the Southern center of Ohio, makes it a rather long journey even before the flight for Skybus customers in the Cleveland area.
But lets focus on what would be involved in taking a trip with Skybus with our starting location in Strongsville Ohio.
First, you would of course need to log on to the Skybus website and look for available dates and prices for flights. Say we wanted to visit family in San Francisco for Christmas. You choose to book the flight for the 16th of December. The initial price of the flight is listed at $120.
According to costumer complaints on elliot.org an internet group dedicated to making sure that consumers can contact the companies they have done business with and are dissatisfied or have a problem with can contact those companies in an efficient way. Sky Bus’s offices are hard to locate and even harder to contact.
One customer of Sky Bus, Ron Markarian, posted on the elliot.org website that his reservation had mysteriously disappeared and after try a couple times at Sky Bus website’s help site he went to the corporate offices address that elliot.org provided and managed to surprise executives by showing up and pleading his case.
Another customer, Justin Korbak, said he had an issue with the sky bus webpage. It timed out on him and he hit the refresh button. The screen reverted back to the default, which was fort Lauderdale, when he trying to get a ticket to Fort Meyers. He emailed them many times, but the company refused to do anything. Justin also reported that the company changed his flight times from the originally scheduled flight. He wants to thank them for sucking.
Skybus also does not fly into major airports, such as LAX in California. Instead they use the smaller airports. You have to fly into Burbank California instead of Los Angeles. This inconveniences many travelers, but Skybus says this gives their flights more opportunity to take off and land on time.
Skybus’ problems do not end however in simply the scheduling and booking of flights, the flights themselves have received severe criticism.

The 16th rolls around and you pack up your car for the two hour trek to Columbus to then begin your flight to San Francisco. You arrive at the airport after your two hour journey and go to the check in desk for Skybus manned by a attendant wearing all but a Skybus T-shirt. After significant delay you finally get to the baggage claim and are forced to dish out a significant amount of money for checking your baggage. Once aboard, the cramped spacing is not relieved by the $2.00 pricing for drinks on the flight attendant’s cart mid-flight.
Relieved to be off the plane after the extremely long flight you are not thrilled (but not surprised) to find that your baggage did not come on the flight with you. You retire to your hotel later that evening after retrieving the luggage and rest from a very hard day of traveling.
The choice is simple, save money and do it the hard way, or simply pay standard airline fees and avoid the hassles of Skybus. Started in 2005, the company has had little time to improve but they should have the incentive at least to try. There is no doubt that in the future there will be plenty of price seeking travelers looking to make the sacrifice to ride on Skybus, and hopefully they will provide the feedback the company needs to make much needed improvements to the lacking airline.