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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?

#141

Post by dllthomas »

mikeash wrote: post #136
dllthomas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"people who don't understand that being on the airplane earlier doesn't make you arrive earlier pay more for no reason" Being on the plane, where I no longer need to be paying attention, is less stressful. That's not worth a lot to me, but it's not worthless. On the topic more generally, my biggest objection to piling on the fees after the fact is a lack of price transparency - it makes it much more difficult to comp…

Well then if it's worth something to you then it should be worth paying for. Price transparency is a problem, but not a huge one in my own experience (yours may, of course, vary). Airlines are rarely close enough in price for things like baggage fees to tip the scales, and when they are it's not too hard to see just what their policies are.

"Well then if it's worth something to you then it should be worth paying for."

Agreed - that wasn't intended as an objection to paying, but as response to your implication that it was silly to want to. I understand that it wasn't intended very strongly; I was just sharing a view from the other side. I'd happily pay ten cents to board first. I wouldn't pay $100. Whether I'd take any given intermediate price depends on a lot of things...

"Price transparency is a problem, but not a huge one in my own experience (yours may, of course, vary). Airlines are rarely close enough in price for things like baggage fees to tip the scales, and when they are it's not too hard to see just what their policies are."

I've definitely spotted a case or two where different baggage fees made the difference as to which flight was cheaper, and even when I'm not looking for the absolute lowest price I'd like to know just how much I'm trading away against all the various other variables (time of day, number and length of layovers, past experiences with the airline, &c).

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

#142

Post by zo1 »

izacus wrote: post #35
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…

> To be fair, they're not forcing anyone into anything. I see this argument a lot of time but I still don't really know how exactly that redeems companies bad business practices and user hostility. What is the purpose of this argument? Saying that it's ok? If not, what else? Also, what is the alternative? Use a cargo ship over seas? Choose from another 5 companies with same crappy business practices?

>"I see this argument a lot of time but I still don't really know how exactly that redeems companies bad business practices and user hostility."

It's not supposed to redeem them, that's where you took a wrong turn.

>"What is the purpose of this argument? Saying that it's ok? If not, what else?"

I believe the purpose is to tell people to "relax, it'll solve itself", or perhaps: "relax, if there was no coercion, then this is precisely what the market wants, or is willing to bear"

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

#143

Post by cmurf »

ethomson wrote: post #128
jcfiala wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I fly Southwest so that I can take advantage of the two free checked-in bags you get per ticket. Not having to wrestle several overfull bags of clothes on and off of the plane makes Southwest a great bargain for my piece of mind.

You should never have to pay for checked bags: just gate check the bags instead. This new checked bag pricing has made the (already crowded) overhead compartments even more crowded. If your flight is full, or nearly so, there will not be enough overhead space for the carry-ons and the flight attendants and gate agents will start gate checking bags. Even if there is space, it may be toward the back of the plane, possi…

Frontier: Checked baggage $25 web / $30 at airport. Carry on $30 web / $35 at airport. Gate check $50. Basically you're punished for gate checking, rather than committing in advance to either a carry on or checking before security. And it means no matter what you're paying for anything other than a personal item.

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

#144

Post by robotresearcher »

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

and using the short lines at the airport, and the lounge.

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

#145

Post by notahacker »

TillE wrote: post #131
ubernostrum wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When all airlines have the same tiny seats and no alternative that isn't 5-10x more expensive, that is collusion, not competition. People like you have been saying this for a long time. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of airline customers have been saying, much more loudly, much more consistently and with money rather than words (i.e., in how they book and what fares they book) that all considerations other than…

> all considerations The market has been doing a terrible job of making such considerations visible. I'd like to book a flight from city A to city B on an A380. There are two possible routes on two different carriers, and I'm happy to pay the (fairly small) premium. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to actually do that, to manually go and find the flight times and numbers that correspond to an A380, and then t…

Again, the market does a terrible job of making such considerations visible because not enough consumers care. It's not like online travel agencies don't want to distinguish themselves or airlines don't want people to know they're operating A380s

There shouldn't be any difficulty in adding an "A380" filter to a search engine (even for third parties, it's a field in the schedules datasets), but the set of people searching for flights mostly by aircraft type, on routes where A380s actually operate isn't necessarily larger than the set of people who will check the A380 box out of curiosity, be surprised at how few options they get and then book on a different site.

It's perhaps telling that SeatGuru, with its excellent and unique rich data on airline seating, comes with a pretty bog standard search tool.

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

#146

Post by khuey »

monksy wrote: post #55
chrisseaton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's United Club - that's not the first class lounge at all. If you read the wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Club it says you can buy access to United Club, but doesn't say that about the first class lounge. In fact it says: "the access rules are significantly more restrictive than for United Club. Access to Global First Lounges is generally restricted to United Global First passengers, Star Alli…

That's because they're a huge international airline and they have to keep things kosher. GS is a special invite status reserved for celebrities and high ranking politicians. My assumption is that they need that space so that they can load the person from the tarmac or have them check out of the airport. Thats speculation, but those individuals do have different needs from an airline. [Also onboarding needs as well as…

Global Services is just a set of people who spend a ton of money on United. It's not only people who have interesting personal security requirements.

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

#147

Post by geverett »

mb_72 wrote: post #126
geverett wrote: post #90

I've always thought it was ridiculous that people would go to a site like Expedia or Kayak, type in a date and destination, and just hope that they get the cheapest fare. As this article explains so well, prices are fluctuating constantly and the chances that you'll be lucky enough to be searching for the flight at the optimal time are close to nil. Most flight search engines now let you set up alerts to track prices…

Installed it - it crashes each and every time I search for a destination, find the destination, then tap on the selected destination name.

Are you on iOS or Android?

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

#148

Post by gghh »

saosebastiao wrote: post #92

There is a big problem with trying to game the system with the airlines: The pricing is done using control theory. In fact, they have the most mature application of control theory to pricing out there, probably by virtue of being to first to apply it in that way. Practically, that means that you can only game the system if nobody else knows how. If you are the only one that knows how, the algorithms probably can't de…

The article mentions "yield management" as the analytical background behind airfares http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_management

Do you know of any referential book/article/blog to learn this kind of things?

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

#149

Post by geverett »

phantom784 wrote: post #122
geverett wrote: post #90

I've always thought it was ridiculous that people would go to a site like Expedia or Kayak, type in a date and destination, and just hope that they get the cheapest fare. As this article explains so well, prices are fluctuating constantly and the chances that you'll be lucky enough to be searching for the flight at the optimal time are close to nil. Most flight search engines now let you set up alerts to track prices…

Just installed it. Is there a way to set multiple home airports? There's a bunch of airports near me that I'd drive to if a good flight were available.

There is in v2.3, which is the latest on iOS (Settings>Home Airport>select up to 10 nearby airports). We haven't gotten that far on Android yet but should have it in January.

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

#150

Post by ExpertFlyer »

What no one is telling you is that the actual published fare tariffs don't change that often. What does change and is dynamically managed by the airlines revenue management departments is the availability of different fare classes that the tariffs book into. It's the combination of fares and fare class availability that determine the current fares available for a flight (and not just the lowest fare).

On ExpertFlyer, we show all of this hidden raw information that normally only travel agents have been able to see as we buy the data from the airline reservation systems. The first few pages of our education guide give a simple overview of how this works: http://www.expertflyer.com/edu-guide.pdf

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