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How to Beat High Airfares

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#91

Post by rexreed »

kijinbear wrote: post #67
rexreed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $4 a gallon, I might even challenge that. I recently calculated the cost of driving from DC to Boston, which is regularly a $240 or so ROUNDTRIP on many airlines. It takes 2 tanks of gas each way (about a 350 mile trip, 20 miles per gallon, 15 gallons per tank). The gas cost alone is close to $240. Even if you managed to burn 3 tanks instead of 4 during the trip, you're talking 45 gallons @ $4 a gallon, which is $…

Driving can still be cheaper than flying if you have 2 or more people traveling together. It would be tough to beat trains and buses, though.

Yes - and if you have lots of baggage too. Something to consider.

Traveling with a family on a fairly short / medium-haul trip (no overnight stay necessary) with lots of baggage? Driving will trump airfare costs for certain.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#92

Post by stellar678 »

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.

Yet again the word ethics comes up when consumers attempt to act in their own best interest in a given marketplace. Why should it be ethics when it's just economics? The airline isn't chastised for being unethical when they make decisions in their economic interest, why should the consumer be?

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#93

Post by salvadors »

stellar678 wrote: post #92
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.

Yet again the word ethics comes up when consumers attempt to act in their own best interest in a given marketplace. Why should it be ethics when it's just economics? The airline isn't chastised for being unethical when they make decisions in their economic interest, why should the consumer be?

Whilst I agree with the principle, I think the argument runs quite simply:

When you buy the ticket you agree to a set of accompanying conditions. Doing that knowing you're going to deliberately break some of them is dishonest and immoral.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#94

Post by salvadors »

kirubakaran wrote: post #88
sliverstorm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 Million, 3 minutes, 100 people? I might simply take the $100 Mil, and then track down all 100 people and give them a few tens of thousands.

Intent of the hypothetical, addressing its parent's thought about moral relativism, clearly supposes that you are inconveniencing people for monetary gain without possibility of compensating or otherwise being able to undo that. Your reply is the equivalent of answering "If a genie grants you one single wish, what would it be?" with "I'll wish for a million wishes" :-) And your reply subscribes to moral relativism to…

Yes, but if you base your life on those sorts of hypotheticals you can never do anything.

If you push a button at a pedestrian crossing so you can cross the road, you're stopping potentially hundreds of cars just for your benefit. How much have you cost them? What if one of those is someone who's racing to the airport to catch a flight to see their mom who's about to pass away, and your decision to cross the road then delays them just enough to miss their flight?

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#95

Post by yardie »

somebear wrote: post #71
sandipc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

The times I've had a multi-leg flight (internationally), it's always been the same plane. The airline still makes everyone get off, bring in new clean blankets and pillows, and ensure that no one left anything behind. Feels a bit annoying when you just go back to the same seat, but I understand why.

Its a safety thing. No one (except crew) can be onboard the aircraft while its refueling.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#96

Post by yardie »

mthoms wrote: post #39
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…

Based on the principle of charging the maximum price the market is willing to bear , would you consider it ethical for a company like Amazon to charge more or less based on the affluence of the billing zipcode for each customer? /honest question

They basically do this by country code. I find Amazon.de is cheaper for some a lot of things than Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Amazon.com has the lowest prices of them all. Its usually cheaper, and faster, for me to order books and gifts from the US site, pay international shipping and customs than it is to order from the local site, who may not get it for months if at all.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#97

Post by kirubakaran »

salvadors wrote: post #94
kirubakaran wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intent of the hypothetical, addressing its parent's thought about moral relativism, clearly supposes that you are inconveniencing people for monetary gain without possibility of compensating or otherwise being able to undo that. Your reply is the equivalent of answering "If a genie grants you one single wish, what would it be?" with "I'll wish for a million wishes" :-) And your reply subscribes to moral relativism to…

Yes, but if you base your life on those sorts of hypotheticals you can never do anything. If you push a button at a pedestrian crossing so you can cross the road, you're stopping potentially hundreds of cars just for your benefit. How much have you cost them? What if one of those is someone who's racing to the airport to catch a flight to see their mom who's about to pass away, and your decision to cross the road the…

I agree. That is my point too.

Please note in my first comment I was replying to the statement: "Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes." I tried to explain that he will become a moral relativist if the 'rewards' are high enough. In the second comment, I tried to explain that handing $10K to each doesn't correct it. It just makes you feel better. Still moral relativism.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#98

Post by Zak »

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…

A potential solution to this is to hand your boarding pass for the next leg to a gate agent as you get off the plane at your intended destination and say that you will not be boarding. The gate agent may threaten you with consequences, but there's really nothing they can do; it's not like the TSA is going to force you on to a plane.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#99

Post by Zak »

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 interfering with someone's business model is inherently unethical. While intentionally booking a flight this way deprives the airline of some opportunities to make money, not boarding the next flight doesn't deprive them of anything. In fact, it saves them a bit on fuel and may even open up a seat on an overbooked flight, saving the airline from paying compensation that usually exceeds the ticket price.

What actually seems unethical to me is that airlines have contract terms forbidding getting off early. An honest and effective, though not profitable means of preventing passengers from doing so would be to charge less for one leg than for two.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#100

Post by bad_user »

aterimperator wrote: post #84
hugh3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many man-minutes of inconvenience are you willing to create for random strangers for every dollar you can save for yourself? Come to think of it, this question is about as close to an objective measure of an individual's level of morality as we can get. Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire pla…

To be fair... money has different value to different people. I doubt any billionaires would care to waste 10 minutes of other people's time to save much money, because money doesn't have that much value to them. On the other hand, college students that eat lots of ramen are already valuing money more than their own health, so it seems natural that they'd place far more value on the money, even if they place the same…

You probably don't know many rich people.

Disregarding the infamous rich brats you see on TV, rich people are in general very frugal and do care about dimes and nickels. That's how many of them got rich in the first place.

And regardless, billionaires are in a minority.

    college students that eat lots of ramen are already 
    valuing money more than their own health
On the contrary, I think college students are the ones that don't care about money.
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