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How to Beat High Airfares

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#21

Post by gojomo »

georgieporgie wrote: post #4

Book your itinerary as a set of two one-way flights, rather than as a round trip. Every time I have looked, a single one-way is more expensive than a round-trip between the same locations. Maybe I've just been 'lucky'. Edit: no, I'm just ignorant. Turns out domestic one-ways are more proportionally priced versus round-trips.

My sense is that this has improved a lot recently, perhaps as a side-effect of trying to stay competitive in the travel-planning portals that can stitch together itineraries from multiple carriers.

To wit: when switching in Kayak or Hipmunk from roundtrip to one-way and vice versa, the fares roughly or exactly match what you'd expect from decomposing/recomposing the parts.

This was hardly ever the case in the past when using the airlines own portals, or Web 1.0 aggregators.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#22

Post by gojomo »

OstiaAntica wrote: post #5

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

Perhaps all carriers' in-flight magazines will retaliate next month with front-page "How To Beat The NYT Paywall" articles.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#23

Post by euroclydon »

OstiaAntica wrote: post #5

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

I don't think the unattended bag part is a big deal. Who would check a bag to some city they're never going to?

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#24

Post by enjo »

hugh3 wrote: post #16
OstiaAntica wrote: post #5

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

This guy was modded down, but are there ethical issues? If I'm booked through from SFO to DFW to MIA and I vanish at DFW, they're going to be calling my name over the PA system and trying to figure out whether or not to hold the DFW-MIA flight. This is especially true if my SFO-DFW leg is delayed -- my vanishing act might well wind up holding up a planeload of people as the airline figures out what the hell has happe…

Ya there are. I've had planes take off fairly delayed because of folks doing just this. We just sit there as the airline tries to reconcile why the number of checked-in passengers doesn't match their passenger count.

I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It doesn't matter tho, it absolutely sucks for everyone else on the flight.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#25

Post by bradly »

whakojacko wrote: post #14
bradly wrote: post #8

A couple days a found a round-trip flight from Montreal to Paris with a layover in New Jersey for $762. I tried to book the exact some flight, but starting in New Jersey, and it was over $1,400. This sort of this is crazy. Is anyone really surprised that airlines keep going bankrupt?

Its not that crazy when you look into it more. Montreal to Paris is a low yielding route filled mostly with price-conscious tourists. New York to Paris has, as a percentage, substantially more business travel, which can sustain higher fares. For each route, the airline (presumably Continental) is trying to extract what it sees as the maximum price the market is willing to bear. As another example, Des Moines to Dalla…

That makes sense, but you could argue that there is a cost associated with upsetting and frustrating your customers that maybe the airlines aren't taking into consideration. Something can't be right with their models if they are going bankrupt again and again.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#27

Post by sandipc »

OstiaAntica wrote: post #5

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

"they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied"

For those traveling with checked luggage, this "hop off" tactic won't work, unless passengers want to lose their bags.

For those without checked luggage, the airlines have no way of determining whether your carry-on bags are still on the plane or not, short of emptying the plane and reboarding (which I have never seen before).

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#28

Post by ora600 »

bradly wrote: post #25
whakojacko wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not that crazy when you look into it more. Montreal to Paris is a low yielding route filled mostly with price-conscious tourists. New York to Paris has, as a percentage, substantially more business travel, which can sustain higher fares. For each route, the airline (presumably Continental) is trying to extract what it sees as the maximum price the market is willing to bear. As another example, Des Moines to Dalla…

That makes sense, but you could argue that there is a cost associated with upsetting and frustrating your customers that maybe the airlines aren't taking into consideration. Something can't be right with their models if they are going bankrupt again and again.

It is my understanding that airlines going bankrupt again and again is a direct result of their relationship with their pilot unions:

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#29

Post by rhizome »

hugh3 wrote: post #19
r00fus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unethical? Hardly. It's just against their specific rules (which only exist so they can gouge you on certain fares). Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C?

Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C? I don't know. Is it obviously unethical for them to do so? It's a sensible observation that a subset of X should be priced lower than X, but is it a moral one? Or, if the airline can make more money by charging more for A->B than A->C via B then, heck, it's their airplane, let 'em do what they want!

Why are ethics and morality being discussed in the context of business? They have their pricing strategy, I have mine. It's my travel money, let me do what I want.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#30

Post by hugh3 »

enjo wrote: post #24
hugh3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy was modded down, but are there ethical issues? If I'm booked through from SFO to DFW to MIA and I vanish at DFW, they're going to be calling my name over the PA system and trying to figure out whether or not to hold the DFW-MIA flight. This is especially true if my SFO-DFW leg is delayed -- my vanishing act might well wind up holding up a planeload of people as the airline figures out what the hell has happe…

Ya there are. I've had planes take off fairly delayed because of folks doing just this. We just sit there as the airline tries to reconcile why the number of checked-in passengers doesn't match their passenger count. I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule? It doesn't matter tho, it absolutely sucks for everyone else on the flight.

I'm guessing this is some sort of security rule?

It's a security rule if you have checked bags. If you're gonna blow up a plane they want to make sure you're at least onboard when you do it. Otherwise it's just a convenience thing -- they don't wanna close the doors and then have you show up two minutes later, because then you're a problem they have to deal with. The one time I actually did miss a connection I wound up with a free night in a very nice hotel, but the whole thing soaked up quite a few man-hours of time at the airline's end.

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