My first record store will always be my favorite. Though it has long since closed, CoOp Records was a pivotal part of my childhood – and one of the few places in Iowa where you could find independent music. My friends and I used to ride our bikes down to the college square mall to spend hours in the store –listening to music, or just drooling over the band posters and shirts. They had a couple of stereos there that anyone could use to check out any used album (the new ones were all shrink wrapped) and we certainly took advantage, listening to everything we could get our hands on. You could also swap old records for store credit – making it entirely possible for me to walk in with a handful of my sister’s hair metal CD’s and walk out with the new Beastie Boys joint. I used to buy albums for all the wrong reasons (I bought Helmet’s Betty because I had a weird crush on the cover art girl and I bought Big Black’s Songs about Fucking for obvious reasons) but more times than not I ended up with something I liked (I still have both of the aforementioned albums). If for some reason I didn’t, well I could always sell it back to the store and find something else. These days you can pretty much do everything I did at CoOp much easier and more quickly online, but honestly I am glad that that wasn’t an option back then because the afternoons I spent at CoOp Records as a kid are ones I wouldn’t give away for anything.
HOTELS AND AIRLINES OFFERING SPECIAL RATES FOR THEIR OLDER CUS TOMERS.(Travel)
Albany Times Union (Albany, NY) February 28, 1993 Byline: BETSY WADE New York Times In a survey of the current crop of discounts for older travelers, probably the most entertaining is the weekend hotel discount offered by SAS International Hotels. A guest 65 or older can claim a discount equal to his or her age; at 73, the guest gets 73 percent off the regular price, and so forth. Yes, people 100 years old stay free.
Nils Flo, spokesman for Scandinavian Airlines System, which owns the chain, says that at least one 100- year-old has have claimed her due since the program began last year. An American, she stayed free at the Oslo SAS Scandinavia last summer with her daughter and grandson.
SAS operates 30 hotels in nine countries, mostly in Scandinavia, with newer ones in the SAS Portman group, formerly the Portman Inter- Continental in London and the former Inter-Continentals in Cologne and Dusseldorf. The discount is available on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
In other developments affecting this group of travelers, earlier this month United Airlines pushed American into abandoning the last vestige of its “simplified fare system” instituted last April, which was intended to wipe out all sorts of promotional and discounted rates in favor of four basic fares. On Feb. 4, United jumped in with a 10 percent discount for travelers over 62, and on Feb. 5, American came tumbling after.
United’s program provides a discount of 10 percent for a traveler of 62 or over and a traveling companion of any age on the same itinerary. The discount is applied to excursion round-trip fares – tickets that require advance purchase and specify length of stay – for travel in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada. American’s plan similarly applies to travelers 62 and over and a travel companion on the same itinerary.
American’s offer is “generally worldwide,” in a spokesman’s phrase – most of Europe, within the United States and Canada, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, but not the rest of the Caribbean. It is not offered where a flight originates in one of the few countries that do not allow the discount, according to Marty Heires, the spokesman.
A former American Airlines promotion, which gave a 10 percent discount to members of the American Association of Retired Persons, who can be as young as 50, has not reappeared.
United and American are the last of the major U.S. airlines to revive some form of discount for senior citizens. Northwest Airlines revived its offer last fall. People who are 62 should always ask an airline about a discount; at Southwest the age limit is 65. Once you turn 62, tell your travel agent to put that fact into your passenger data file for automatic use. see here american airlines promotion code
Most older travelers who make domestic trips regularly, to a seasonal home, for instance, or to see grandchildren, prefer to buy coupons sold by the airlines specifically for this age group. Each coupon is good for a one-way ticket, though Hawaii or summer travel may require two. The buyer must be 62 or older.
Trans World Airlines charges $496 for a book of four coupons good on trips in the United States and to Puerto Rico. A companion book for someone under 62, sold at the same time, costs $620. The coupon book comes with a bonus certificate that allows 20 percent off any ticket to Europe. America West sells four coupons for $430, or eight for $720. Continental charges $549 for four, or $949 for eight, and also has Freedom Passports for more trips at a higher price. American, USAir, Northwest, United and Delta sell books of four coupons for $568, or eight for $984. this web site american airlines promotion code
Flights must be confirmed 14 days ahead of time, although a coupon user can fly standby at any time. USAir allows children ages 2 to 11 to use a coupon when making a trip with the person who bought the coupon. Many lines have when coupons may not be used.
The coupons, like most tickets sold at a deep discount, have “capacity controls,” meaning that only a limited number of coupon holders are accommodated on a single flight. Lillian and Louis Schiff of Brooklyn go regularly to Florida and buy books of Delta coupons for the flights between Kennedy International Airport and Fort Lauderdale. Early in February, Lillian Schiff called to say that she was unable to get two seats with coupons on Delta’s Flight 1052 back from Fort Lauderdale for Jan. 6.
Thinking I had misheard, I replied: “March 6?” No, she said, Jan. 6, 1994. She said that she started to make her reservation at the first possible moment, at midnight Jan. 6, 1992, or 11 months and 30 days before the flight, the outer limit for reservations of all sorts. She was told then that the number of seats for coupon users had not been established, but that she could call in the next morning. She did, she said, and all the seats for coupon users were gone.
She said she held tickets for flight 1052 for April, July and August, and she was baffled by the January problem. So was I, since flight 1052 leaves Fort Lauderdale at 1:10 p.m., not exactly during business hours, and Jan. 6 will be a Thursday.
Neil A. Monroe of Delta shed some light. That flight, which is due at Kennedy at 3:48 p.m., is an important feeder for flights to Europe leaving from Kennedy in the late afternoon and early evening. Several tour groups, he said, had already booked on it, and the flight had sold half its capacity on Jan. 7, a year in advance. Jan. 6, just after the holidays, is still a time of heavy traffic, he said.
Then the question was: How many seats of the 180-odd on the narrow-body 757 are set aside for coupon-holders? Monroe said not many, although he would not put a number to it. Is it possible that no seats are set aside for coupon holders?
“Never,” he said, adding, “Although I never say never.” Monroe agreed that the number of seats assigned for coupon users, frequent fliers and other travelers producing little revenue was determined by how easily the line could sell the other seats for a more profitable price. “We make every effort to fill the plane at full fare,” he said. “We’d be foolish not to.” If the Schiffs wanted to come into La Guardia on the same day, leaving an hour and a half earlier and arriving about an hour earlier, he said, that would be no problem.
In December, Howard Johnson’s began a new travel club for travelers over 50. It provides discounts of 15 to 50 percent off regular room rates at 600 Howard Johnson’s, HoJo Inns and other properties. Hotel discounts are also capacity controlled, although the phrase is “subject to availability.” The company already had a Road Rally club providing discounts for people over 60 belonging to senior citizens’ groups, but this program offers discounts on airline tickets, tours, vacations and car rentals, plus a newsletter. For those who join in 1993, annual membership will cost $19.95; information: (800) 547-7829.
Novotel in January began offering single or double rooms at its nine hotels in the United States and Canada to people over 60 for $60 a night, except for the New York Novotel, where the discounted price is $99.
The Novotels, part of the French Accor group, said that the $60 rate represented a 50 percent discount on its regular rates.
In addition to New York City, there are two Novotels in New Jersey, one of them in Lyndhurst near the Meadowlands in East Rutherford and the other in Princeton; five in Ontario, including two in Toronto and one each in Mississauga, North York and Ottawa, and one in Montreal.
Choice Hotels, the franchiser for Comfort, Quality and Sleep Inns and Clairon Hotels, has adopted a 30 percent discount for its 69 hotels in Europe for people over 50, providing they reserve through a travel agent or call (800) 424-6423. Otherwise, the senior discount is 10 percent.
