201–210 of 533 posts
I love how the author thinks they've discovered something super secret, when they have in fact just learnt about "Group Discounts". Author will lose their mind when they buy 10+ of the same thing from AliExpress.
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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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Is it possible to distinguish between society penalizing being single and society incentivizing having children? Since society's existence requires that people have children (even in the fairly short term, someone younger has to be around to take care of the older folks) it seems reasonable to incentivize it. I guess it's all relative, lower taxes for A compared to B looks like higher taxes for B compared to A, but I…
I think even calling it "society incentivizing people to have children" is a bit of a stretch, since in most cases the tax advantages are unlikely to result in a net financial advantage given the financial costs of raising children. In most cases the thought isn't "I'm ambivalent about having children but I will do it for the financial benefits" and rather "I'd like to have children, but it's very expensive, and the…
I still think of it as incentivizing in the same way the EV rebate helped encourage me to buy my first EV, even if the cost of the car still was more than I would have been willing to pay for an ICE car. It made a difficult thing (slightly) less difficult.
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.
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 trav…
"Congratulations! You flew 100,000 miles with us!"
"Congratulations! You spent $100,000 with us!"
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2 isn’t exactly what you’d think of when you think of “Group discounts”.
You've never seen a 2+1 free or 3+1 free pricing in stores? We have them frequently here in Europe on some things. This is same thing and tbh I am surprised it took so long. And as a father of 2 small kids not complaining at all, having multiple kids these days is brutal also financially, any small thing that helps is very much appreciated.
Yes and as a solo person I can choose to buy those and take advantage of it in the same way a family can. Usually it's consumables like a 6 pack of bagels or something that might cost $5 which I'll 100% use.
This airline approach comes off much different, because as a solo traveler there is no benefit or reason why I would ever buy 2 tickets to save $80 per ticket since I wouldn't get any value from it and the cost of 2 tickets even with a discount will be greater than 1 non-discounted ticket.
Most airlines seem to also charge to pick your seats. I wonder if people who travel as a group end up paying that discount back to sit together.
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 :)
Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.
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Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.
Do they have to show up? What is the carrier policy on travelers that “miss their uber”?
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Families who travel together also share rooms and facilities, so if that's a hard pass for you then you wouldn't be happy with the "discount" of traveling as part of a family either.
I appreciate the pedantry; but, there’s a significant difference between several random someone(s) having travelers diarrhea in a shared bathroom and my family.
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Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.
Why?
People are flaky, and being on the same itinerary with the same PNR as someone else means your trip is in their hands.