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Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

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Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#71

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

Someone1234 wrote: post #56
thaumasiotes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can weigh the apple yourself on the scales that occur all throughout the produce section... but yeah, I'd be surprised to see a flat rate for fruit by species no matter the size. Fruit is sold by weight, not count, in China too.

That wasn't their point. In most of the world if a product's price tag says X then you pay exactly X at the register (e.g. £2 sandwich costs exactly £2 in cash, you hand then exactly £2 and leave). In the US that is not the case. Almost everything has a "hidden fee." You go buy a $2 sandwich but pay $2 + 6% ($2.12), if you get food in a restaurant you pay $price + 15-20%, an advertised $30/month cell phone plan is ac…

It's far from "a hidden fee." You simply have to know the rules.

In some states, there is sales tax. In others, none. Sales tax may or may not be applied to clothing depending on state. Sales tax may or may not be applied to food, or only some kinds of food (e.g., alcohol always taxed), or only to food above a certain threshold.

All in all there's nothing hidden about sales tax. It shouldn't be a surprise that people are expected to know how the sales tax system in their state works when they are interacting with it every day.

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#72

Post by jdmichal »

raverbashing wrote: post #59
michaelochurch wrote: post #3

"We did that Uber shit before it was cool." -- The airlines. Another thing that surprises most people is how expensive business and first class are, relative to coach. After all, if you're only getting 1.5-2x as much space, it doesn't seem fair that you'd have to pay 10x prices. The truth is that many of those seats are filled via upgrades to frequent fliers and more fairly priced in that view. But someone who asks f…

Sometimes you can get a business class by a nice price (something like 1.5x a regular ticket), it depends And it's not only about the space, it's the service + luggage allowance + flexibility

I've had a first-class upgrade be only $15 more than the checked bag fee. One should always check the price and compare it to the fees they are expecting to pay anyway.

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#73

Post by nhaehnle »

manacit wrote: post #11
rspeer wrote: post #4

I was hoping for something that explained the part where they get you to pay a higher fare by tracking you on the Web. But maybe an insider site like this wouldn't be willing to talk about that. There are many sites that describe this happening, such as [1]. And I've seen it happen to me: a fare would go up by $50 while I was searching, and opening a private browsing window would make it go back down. [1] http://www.…

I don't mean to sound standoffish, but as far as I know this isn't true. I have yet to see real proof that airline companies get you to pay a higher fare by tracking your searches/browsing. While I'm sure you saw a $50 difference, it was likely a slightly different search, which is almost always what happens when people claim they've noticed this. About a year ago, someone on reddit went out and offered a year of red…

Obviously this is just one more anecdote, but this exact same thing happened to me on the Iberia website about two years ago, while looking for flights from Europe to South America.

I kept track of my searches in a spreadsheet, so I know for a fact that the price went up slightly (I think it was by 20€), and went back down immediately when I switched to a different browser.

Again, this was unfortunately too long ago for me to have reasonable proof, and it hasn't happened since (perhaps because I now tend to avoid Iberia anyway; they're pretty crappy in other ways as well).

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#74

Post by jdmichal »

icebraining wrote: post #18
michaelochurch wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that it's dynamic pricing that makes people hate the airlines. It's the rash of bad-faith activity around the dynamic pricing. For example, decreasing legroom and forcing disabled people into business class tickets they wouldn't have needed, were it 20 years ago when coach seats had enough room, is bad-faith activity. Likewise, this "boarding group" nonsense where "Group 5" means you'll have no overhead…

For example, decreasing legroom and forcing disabled people into business class tickets they wouldn't have needed, were it 20 years ago when coach seats had enough room, is bad-faith activity. How are coach ticket prices now compared to 20 years ago? It's not bad faith if it's a way of decreasing prices (by packing more people) for most clients.

User canvia posted information about this in another tree [0][1]. I think a good summary would be decreasing prices up until about 2003, when they seem to level out around the high $300's, with an apparently exceptional drop in years 2009-2010.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8752643 [1] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/airfares/programs/economics_and_...

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#75

Post by xaro »

manacit wrote: post #11
rspeer wrote: post #4

I was hoping for something that explained the part where they get you to pay a higher fare by tracking you on the Web. But maybe an insider site like this wouldn't be willing to talk about that. There are many sites that describe this happening, such as [1]. And I've seen it happen to me: a fare would go up by $50 while I was searching, and opening a private browsing window would make it go back down. [1] http://www.…

I don't mean to sound standoffish, but as far as I know this isn't true. I have yet to see real proof that airline companies get you to pay a higher fare by tracking your searches/browsing. While I'm sure you saw a $50 difference, it was likely a slightly different search, which is almost always what happens when people claim they've noticed this. About a year ago, someone on reddit went out and offered a year of red…

I experienced this just the other day. My father was looking at a price in his computer that I couldn't get (I was getting one that was $500 extra). I erased the cookies of the AA site, refreshed (exactly the same flights, the same days, everything the same) and bam! $500 dollars cheaper.

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#76

Post by nhaehnle »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #71
Someone1234 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't their point. In most of the world if a product's price tag says X then you pay exactly X at the register (e.g. £2 sandwich costs exactly £2 in cash, you hand then exactly £2 and leave). In the US that is not the case. Almost everything has a "hidden fee." You go buy a $2 sandwich but pay $2 + 6% ($2.12), if you get food in a restaurant you pay $price + 15-20%, an advertised $30/month cell phone plan is ac…

It's far from "a hidden fee." You simply have to know the rules. In some states, there is sales tax. In others, none. Sales tax may or may not be applied to clothing depending on state. Sales tax may or may not be applied to food, or only some kinds of food (e.g., alcohol always taxed), or only to food above a certain threshold. All in all there's nothing hidden about sales tax. It shouldn't be a surprise that people…

Your attempted defense of the US system is ineffective because it applies to all hidden fees. Any company ever that uses trickery to load additional fees on you could say, "well, you simply have to know the rules."

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#77

Post by alexivanovs »

This is a great piece, definitely, but the question I have, do you - Americans - consider $500 a fair/reasonable amount of money to pay for a plane ticket? (I even had to lookup the average salary in the USA)

I'm from Europe myself, and it usually costs us anywhere from $40 to $150 to travel anywhere in Europe, though the prices do go up if you want to go to a place such as China, Thailand, or even India. But then again, that's Asia!

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#78

Post by [deleted] »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #71
Someone1234 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't their point. In most of the world if a product's price tag says X then you pay exactly X at the register (e.g. £2 sandwich costs exactly £2 in cash, you hand then exactly £2 and leave). In the US that is not the case. Almost everything has a "hidden fee." You go buy a $2 sandwich but pay $2 + 6% ($2.12), if you get food in a restaurant you pay $price + 15-20%, an advertised $30/month cell phone plan is ac…

It's far from "a hidden fee." You simply have to know the rules. In some states, there is sales tax. In others, none. Sales tax may or may not be applied to clothing depending on state. Sales tax may or may not be applied to food, or only some kinds of food (e.g., alcohol always taxed), or only to food above a certain threshold. All in all there's nothing hidden about sales tax. It shouldn't be a surprise that people…

[deleted]

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#79

Post by Someone1234 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #71
Someone1234 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't their point. In most of the world if a product's price tag says X then you pay exactly X at the register (e.g. £2 sandwich costs exactly £2 in cash, you hand then exactly £2 and leave). In the US that is not the case. Almost everything has a "hidden fee." You go buy a $2 sandwich but pay $2 + 6% ($2.12), if you get food in a restaurant you pay $price + 15-20%, an advertised $30/month cell phone plan is ac…

It's far from "a hidden fee." You simply have to know the rules. In some states, there is sales tax. In others, none. Sales tax may or may not be applied to clothing depending on state. Sales tax may or may not be applied to food, or only some kinds of food (e.g., alcohol always taxed), or only to food above a certain threshold. All in all there's nothing hidden about sales tax. It shouldn't be a surprise that people…

Is it in the price tag? No. Therefore hidden.

There's nothing else to say on that topic. I won't further debate what is or is not a "hidden fee." That's my definition, if it isn't in the headline price and is unavoidable then it is a hidden fee.

Re: Air Fares 101 – Why do fares change all the time?

#80

Post by notahacker »

Someone1234 wrote: post #32
spdustin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, they're not forcing anyone into anything. As much as I loathe handing over my money to airlines - an experience I sometimes have to face three times a month - they are a for-profit commercial enterprise with no requirements for how they operate beyond government-imposed ones. Want something legitimate to complain about when thinking of flying the friendly skies? Think about the airlines whining about the…

There should be a government imposed minimum seat pitch. The current distance between the back of one seat and the front of another is too small for the top 10% in terms of height of the population, disabled people, and older people. Then airlines cannot use "competition" to argue why they should make seats smaller and smaller, as all competition would have to adapt also. I don't care if they're a private business. T…

That would increase airlines' cost per-seat-mile, which will increase the average ticket costs for the majority of the public and decrease seat availability (and result in the cancellation of marginal routes).

Airlines have near universally tiny economy seats because the vast majority of people are sufficiently satisfied with small seats to be unwilling to patronise an alternative airline with slightly more expensive but larger economy seats. Why should we subsidise people that want premium economy at a lower price?

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