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Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

thriftytraveler.com

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Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#191

Post by bluGill »

proee wrote: post #185

This must be a new thing, because I've experienced the opposite. I needed to book 7 tickets, and the price was much higher than a single ticket. So I ended up adjusting the quantity and saw the price increase at around 4 tickets. So I ended up splitting the purchase into two transactions. However, after purchasing the first 4 tickets, the following price for single ticket was now slightly increased - so they were rea…

They are trying to charge as much as possible while filling the plane. If you take too many seats they need to up the price for the next person because someone needs to say too expensive and not fly on that plane

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#192

Post by mike_d »

IshKebab wrote: post #63
darth_avocado wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We as a society already penalize people without families: 1. Higher taxes and fewer deductions 2. Higher workplace performance expectations 3. Higher costs in every aspect of life 4. Fewer options eat out, expensive solo tickets at events etc. This is just one more example in a long list of examples of how being by yourself is penalized in the society.

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…

> Yeah I used to think that until I had a family.

It is amazing how blatantly people will just admit "I agree with politics that benefit me even if they exclude others."

> Taxes are more punishing because you're spending half your disposable income on children

I probably spend on my dogs what you do on your children. Gosh life sure is hard because of my decisions. Where are my discounts and tax refunds?

> It's called price discrimination.

...and when is discrimination ok? Lets all say it out loud.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#193

Post by alexey-salmin »

n8cpdx wrote: post #20
Aurornis wrote: post #2

I never would have understood this as a young, single person. Now that I have a family there are several times per year where we price out the cost of a solo ticket for one parent, the price of taking one or two kids, or the cost of all of us going for something. Having a quantity discount would absolutely tip the scales for us for certain trips. People will look at this as penalizing single travelers and want everyo…

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?

> I guess as a family be grateful that all hotel rooms come with a 50% (or more) discount per traveler?

This is not always the case. A two-bedroom hotel suite on average costs more than two standard rooms. This happens because the vast majority of rooms are twin/double and cheap hotels often don't offer suites at all.

At a given location two travellers would be chosing from e.g 100 options and at least some of these would be budget/discount offerings. In the same location a family of four would have to chose from 10 options and likely none of them are budget/discount.

Now consider that you HAVE to travel during the school holidays so competition for these damn 10 options increases and the price for both hotels and tickets easily goes up 2-3x.

There are some situations where a family of four would get a better price per person but most of the time it's the other way round.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#194

Post by stmw »

Here is why I think these kinds of dynamic pricing practices are bad: it may be perfectly fair and legal, but it forces a non-negligible number of humanity to waste time and/or energy to figure out if it's happening, how to work around it if it is, and just generally waste human potential on something that should be a simple commodity.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#196

Post by IshKebab »

mike_d wrote: post #192
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…

> Yeah I used to think that until I had a family. It is amazing how blatantly people will just admit "I agree with politics that benefit me even if they exclude others." > Taxes are more punishing because you're spending half your disposable income on children I probably spend on my dogs what you do on your children. Gosh life sure is hard because of my decisions. Where are my discounts and tax refunds? > It's called…

> dogs

Dogs are not people. Society does not rely on the continued existence of dogs. Do you see any governments enacting policies to make people have more dogs?

> when is discrimination ok?

When it makes things more moral/fair. Do you object to student discounts? Progressive taxes? You seem to be having a knee-jerk reaction to the word "discrimination". It's also called "price differentiation". Maybe that sounds less bad to you?

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#197

Post by authorfly »

os2warpman wrote: post #146
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-sto…

What's your patient/flexible technique? Let me know.

And you are not a liar - but your claim isn't true at all in Europe - see increased per-flight legislated fees and the loss of budget airlines. Price of flights between 2 destinations has increased by 25-40% in the last 5 years in most of Europe.

Thanks to efforts like increasing the per-flight fees "because of high inflation" (these fee increases are still going up several years later): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/why-travel... and loss of airlines like Flybe.

You can still get the madly cheap hop flights, but they are often pricing in income from our flights (or accepting even negative returns by pricing above the per-flight fees) because the planes need to be where you are going to fly a profitable flight later.

So the old status quo where genuinely cheap flights could be booked on a 7 day basis (e.g. cheap thursday-thursday flights) has been replaced by convoluted patterns to get the cheap flights (you usually need to leave on Monday, return on Saturday (if your source airport has lower demand than the destination) or vice versa. I suggest based on flights in the US becoming cheaper, that this is due to government intervention.

I get saving the environment and all that. But let me pay more taxes monthly, don't charge the airline £15 minimum making a bunch of flights unviable. Don't make booking a holiday or conference flight so unpleasant and annoying. I always have to tradeoff wasting a day or two with paying 50-150 euros extra.

It's not the worlds biggest problem, but making that decision is a regular additional dilemma I didn't want in my life. I wish for the days when you could get just normal timetabled flights at good costs if the month (e.g. February) was unpopular for travel. Now those months really aren't cheaper.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#198

Post by IshKebab »

hypeatei wrote: post #174
dlisboa wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'll ask this in response: why does society need to exist at all? Obviously ideas like yours are ingrained into us at a biological level and it logically makes sense if we want to survive as a species... but there is no inherent reason other than "just because" right?

Well yeah, because of our ingrained sense of morality & self-preservation. But we're talking about the policies of society so it's kind of pointless discussing them if you don't accept that society should exist in the first place.

Also... it's not society, it's the human species.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#199

Post by authorfly »

dlisboa wrote: post #91
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are correct. As much as we like to bash airlines and their decisions, and liking low fares and quality service myself, it's objectively one of the worst businesses imaginable. Extremely high risk, low margin. Every year about a dozen airlines go bankrupt, get merged or bailed out. A small increase in the price of oil is a major risk for most of them. Most of the more profitable markets have high competition not o…

You'd like Milton Friedman and his take on pilot Unions too.
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