Is Unlimited Flying With OneGo A Good Deal?

I assume no premium cabin option?

@Ryan

No premium cabin at this time , FAQ says might be an option in the future.

@Lucky

"What airlines can I fly?

You can most certainly choose which carrier you prefer to fly with as long as there is a seat available within the designated class fare. OneGo currently offers seats on the following major US commercial carriers offering regional and cross country travel:

– Alaska Airlines
– American Airlines
– Delta Airlines
– JetBlue Airways
– United Airlines
– Virgin America"

So possible to request a specific airline, but no guaranties?

"How can I customize my current plan with Add-Ons?

Yes in the near future you will be able to customize your plan to include several Add-Ons:
Last-Minute Booking
– More Open Bookings
– Unlimited Changes

More details will become available when we release the add-ons."

Wonder what they are going to charge for Last-Minute Booking and Unlimited Changes?

So if you are loyal to one airline, it's not for you. If you fly mainly in business, you would possibly need the flexibility and wouldn't know your schedule that much in advance anyways, it's not for you. If you travel for vacation a few times a year, then it is not for you. So who the hell is it for? I wonder whether the guys who come up with the idea are actually frequent travellers, because I don't see why anyone would use it. Further, the hassle-free booking platform is a joke, the hassle is part of the fun 😉

Maximum depends a bit on the website interpreation - front page mentions 8 flights at a time, and FAQ mentions at most 4 reservations. Can each reservation be round-trip, or just one-ways? At the extreme, you can do as many as 34 flights per month (if the flights are short enough and you're willing to fly 8 segments every 7 days).

Similarly, by picking routes carefully you can likely guarantee a couple of airlines or so. I also wonder how booking works when choosing non-stops. Do you pick a 3hr time window and they pick cheapest flights within that time? Larger/smaller window? Many business travelers can likely tweak departure times a bit to get the desired airline to be cheapest within a particular (small) time window. FAQ mentions "You can most certainly choose which carrier you prefer to fly with as long as there is a seat available within the designated class fare." and "With OneGo, you can book any non-stop flight route that is included in our service area as long as there is an available seat within the designated class". This seems like a fare cap per ticket though.

The other big catch is only 76 major airports are supported, so you can't purposefully book exorbitantly priced flights to some tiny airport.

With that said, if sticking to each region, $44/57/68 per segment doesn't seem bad (but you'd get worse numbers if you actually stay somewhere or spread your flights apart).

If you're working on three projects how do you expense each flight to each customer?

Further reading FAQs: "You simply select the available flight that best fits your schedule from your favorite airline and then book it."

If there's really no restrictions other than coach (airline and flights of choice), than this becomes even more tempting. It's not that hard to find near full-fare tickets a week out.

Hmm, this is a bit bizarre. But I guess I could see it being of value to those who frequently have to travel to smaller cities with correspondingly small airports. Low supply but often-high demand at these airports can put nonstop, round trips booked a week out well above $500. So if you're making these kind of trips often, this seems like it could be valuable. That's a lot of hypotheticals, though!

Thought of an interesting scenario: what if one is Alaska's MVPG? Could you potentially make the changes yourself without fees, to your desired date and route, using the ticket value of the ticket that onego bought you? One could theoretically select the most expensive date and route possible, and then make his own change to the true desired route and date, perhaps even pocketing the fare difference.
Seems like a little gap for abuse here.

What about JetBlue's Go Pack? That was similar in that it allowed to you book a pack of tickets (so limited travel) on a set set of routes. However, you could book up until the last minute and the price was already locked when you bought. Plus you could share them with friends, family, or other employees if you were part of a business.

I don't see this company surviving for longer than a year.

Mathematically, if you purchased a year of the National Plan, you could take 204 trips during that year (average of 17 per month) at a total cost of $35,895, including the $495 start-up fee. That comes out to $175.96 per flight. If that sounds good to anyone, please contact me and I will do the same for you at a 10% discount and make a tidy profit. At this business plan, I give it less than a year and would caution anyone who is in a position where this makes sense to pay month-to-month lest risking paying for services you'll never receive.

Do you know if the airline buys bulk tickets (basically acting as an airline consolidator) so they can access interesting discounts?