Am I crazy to book a flight on Ted?
 

I had read that United's Ted airline was going to ceased to exist shortly. I was looking at airfare for a trip for May 2009 and flights on Ted came up.

Am I crazy to book with Ted? Should I just pick another airline all together?

Just curious.
Thanks.

United's going to convert the Ted planes back to mainline configuration through 2009. Most of the Ted routes won't go away; they'll be replaced by United mainline or United Express service. There could be schedule changes and frequency reductions between now and then, but I wouldn't be too concerned.

I would be plenty concerned.

They might not even exist.

They just cut Denver to Heathrow and LA to Frankfurt. That's not good because those should be very profitable routes.

They only flew DEN-LHR for a couple of months. As for LAX-FRA, that direct flight needs longer range planes that can be used on other routes. They service LAX-FRA with shorter range planes via ORD and IAD.

I did the same thing on Song Airlines once, not knowing they were being eliminated. Delta's staff were really helpful about the transition... I still flew on a Song jet, but eventually those flights were taken over by Delta.

Call United and ask them. It's highly likely that you'll get a United flight for a Ted price, which is pretty cool.

Maybe I'm just skeptical, but I'm not expecting the phasing out of Ted to go all that quickly, although we can always hope! After all, United introduced its new livery in early 2004, and on any given day at O'Hare, about half the planes are old gray and half are "new" white (not including Ted, of course).

<i>It's highly likely that you'll get a United flight for a Ted price</i>

As someone who has to fly Ted frequently, I can tell you that Ted isn't always priced like a LCC!