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Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

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Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#141

Post by dlisboa »

hypeatei wrote: post #99
IshKebab wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I used to think that until I had a family. In reality it's more like: 1. Taxes are more punishing because you're spending half your disposable income on children, and most of it probably comes from one earner. You can say "don't have children if you can't afford it" all you like, but you wouldn't be alive if nobody had children, so it's quite selfish of anyone to be anti-children. 2. For men performance expectat…

> you wouldn't be alive if nobody had children, so it's quite selfish of anyone to be anti-children. It gets into philosophical territory, but the default "having a pulse = good" thinking is pretty shortsighted IMO. Life is inherently suffering and no one got a yes/no prompt before being born.

For a society it's not philosophical. If it wishes to exist past a few decades then it needs children, simple as that. Therefore societies are (and should) be skewed towards that.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#142

Post by agosnell »

6stringmerc wrote: post #107
paulgb wrote: post #6

I think this is fair play, they can charge how they want (within reason) and it’s not too different than other bulk discounts. But someone should totally make a site for finding strangers to book the same flight with :)

Ride-Along Roulette

AirUandMe

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#143

Post by mysterypie »

geverett wrote: post #33

Tbh this makes perfect sense. As someone who worked in airline revenue management for 11 years, it always seemed a little odd that the sales tactics people use everywhere else - group discounts, BOGO, etc - weren't being used by airlines (yes, group bookings could often get discounts, but usually for much larger groups). What's remarkable here is that airlines waited this long to do it. Sad news for me as a usually s…

> As someone who worked in airline revenue management, it always seemed odd that the sales tactics people use everywhere else weren't being used by airlines

Remember the really old days when air miles were awarded solely by distance flown rather than by dollars paid? This made no business sense. It meant that someone who flew the cheapest tickets could rack up as many points as a last-minute first class business traveller who spent massively more ticket.

With the airlines I’m familiar with, it seems that pricing anomaly has been corrected. Air miles are much more correlated with the price of the ticket these days. Eg., you don’t even get air miles on the cheapest tickets on one airline I know.

But I still wonder why the airline industry created an air miles formula so disconnected from the value of the passenger in the early days.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#144

Post by marcosdumay »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #59
sidewndr46 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really find this relevant in the US because airline pricing is already the ultimate brutal form of pricing. Not only are they allowed to bill you whatever they want, they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane.

This seems surprising to me. I was under the impression that airlines are pretty low profit margin industries, pulling in only around 3-4% in a decent year, and that of that the airline tickets themselves are the lowest margin items percentage wise, with other things like baggage fees being much more load bearing.

They are a low profit business, and that kind of liberty is stuff that pushes their profits even lower. They also always fail to differentiate from one another and are always competing on only price and how much fees they can keep hidden.

Personally, I do argue that it's worth it having tickets 10% more expensive and forcing the companies to always allocate all passengers, treat people humanely and etc. It's even worth it the 25% increase to make them let people carry luggage and avoid all the troubles that come with the optionality. But most governments seem to disagree.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#145

Post by decimalenough »

Singapore Airlines has been doing (used to do?) do this for ages: "GV2" was a Great Value fare for 2 people, "GV4" for 4.

I also don't find this particularly outrageous. Lots of companies do volume discounts, and traveling as a family gets very expensive very fast.

Finally, the fare bucket system used to price flights usually works the other way to penalize groups. If there's 3 seats left in the cheapest bucket, and you try to book for 4, you don't get 3 cheapest plus 1 more expensive, your entire group gets priced at the more expensive bucket.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#146

Post by os2warpman »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #59
sidewndr46 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really find this relevant in the US because airline pricing is already the ultimate brutal form of pricing. Not only are they allowed to bill you whatever they want, they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane.

This seems surprising to me. I was under the impression that airlines are pretty low profit margin industries, pulling in only around 3-4% in a decent year, and that of that the airline tickets themselves are the lowest margin items percentage wise, with other things like baggage fees being much more load bearing.

Airfare is the cheapest it has been in the entire history of commercial aviation except for immediately after 9/11 and the initial weeks of the global covid lockdown-- but both you and I know those periods don't count.

Most people are ok with terrible service because they save money.

Doesn't stop them from complaining, though.

And yes, "cheapest" includes taxes and all fees.

You can fly from New York to Paris non-stop for $150 if you are patient and flexible. (Please please please call me a liar.)

If you are not patient $500 is more typical.

Twenty years ago was a $800 ticket.

Thirty years ago that was a $1000 ticket.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#147

Post by ghaff »

tshaddox wrote: post #101
n8cpdx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling solo is already brutal because hotels and Airbnbs are priced on the assumption of two travelers. Traveling solo essentially costs double automatically because of lodging, and it kind of sucks there’s a double whammy with airfare where, unlike lodging, the penalty doesn’t actually make any sense. I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?

It's probably also worth noting that the majority of these hotels and Airbnbs are also designed to accommodate two or more travelers. Thus the complaint isn't really "single-person rooms are priced that same as two-person rooms," but rather "single-person rooms don't exist, which means I have to pay for more space than I need." In this sense it's not really any different than any other product that you wish was sold…

It's probably a bit of a mixed bag. Beds are reasonable for two people (Usually a queen/king or a couple queens). But there may be only one sitting chair. Two people can manage but hotels split the difference a lot of the time.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#148

Post by jltsiren »

al_borland wrote: post #69
n8cpdx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling solo is already brutal because hotels and Airbnbs are priced on the assumption of two travelers. Traveling solo essentially costs double automatically because of lodging, and it kind of sucks there’s a double whammy with airfare where, unlike lodging, the penalty doesn’t actually make any sense. I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?

Cruises are especially bad for this. I’ve never gone, but I’ve looked at but after I had 3 independent people tell me to take one in the span of a few months. Most are priced assuming 2 people in the room and if you’re solo it seems like they expect you to buy 2 spots. I’ve seen a couple where they have a few solo cabins, but the amount of effort to surface this stuff turns me off to the whole thing. The only reason…

Ships going to Antarctica often offer single beds in shared cabins.

When I went there, I booked the cheapest bed (maybe $6500 in 2013) in a three-person cabin. It was early season and the ship wasn't full, so the company filled it with backpackers waiting for last-minute discounts in the hostels of Ushuaia. Because I had paid the full price, they upgrade me two classes to a much nicer two-person cabin. And then halfway through the trip, the ship delivered some staff to a museum. The other guy got their cabin, and I got the one we had shared.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#149

Post by coldcode »

legitster wrote: post #127
tantalor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the conclusion, they seem pretty confident that this is not "business as usual": > Whenever this pricing strategy began, this is a massive change in how airlines set prices – and one that will likely catch many travelers off guard. > Unlike shopping at retail stores or Costco, bulk discounts are unusual for airlines – at least not just for booking just two passengers instead of one. And these higher fares for on…

> Unlike shopping at retail stores or Costco, bulk discounts are unusual for airlines – at least not just for booking just two passengers instead of one. And these higher fares for one passenger are the opposite of what we typically see, where travelers booking for two passengers or more wind up getting charged more per person than a single passenger. This isn't strictly true. Airlines have long offered bulk pricing…

This was prevalent until the early 2000s, it is far less common today. Corporate discounts used to exist based on guaranteed minimum legs in some time period. This ended when airlines discovered only flying full planes made them more money, making bulk discounts more pain that they were worth.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#150

Post by jajko »

al_borland wrote: post #69
n8cpdx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traveling solo is already brutal because hotels and Airbnbs are priced on the assumption of two travelers. Traveling solo essentially costs double automatically because of lodging, and it kind of sucks there’s a double whammy with airfare where, unlike lodging, the penalty doesn’t actually make any sense. I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?

Cruises are especially bad for this. I’ve never gone, but I’ve looked at but after I had 3 independent people tell me to take one in the span of a few months. Most are priced assuming 2 people in the room and if you’re solo it seems like they expect you to buy 2 spots. I’ve seen a couple where they have a few solo cabins, but the amount of effort to surface this stuff turns me off to the whole thing. The only reason…

Go to Ushuaia, and book a normal ship just like all other folks do. You will have 100x more rewarding experience from all of it, guaranteed. Its not just destination but whole road to it that make such trips worthwhile and you will keep remembering it for rest of your days.

Cruises are for folks, how to say it politely... who gave up on any form of adventure or excitement in their lives. Dont be that person, not yet at least.

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