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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

#211

Post by smeej »

paxys wrote: post #97
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 :)

Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.

You're going to end up sitting next to a stranger anyway if you're flying alone. Nobody says you have to become friends, but I wouldn't mind having in common with my seatmate that we're both the kind of people who don't take the standard option at face value.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#212

Post by brailsafe »

paxys wrote: post #97
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 :)

Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.

I've always thought there's a difference between who you book with and who's on your itinerary. Very rarely do I say I'm traveling with anyone unless we're staying in the same room. I guess these fares do specifically state that, but I have a very hard time imagining anyone at the gate would care, they're typically doing the bare minimum as they should.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#213

Post by ttoinou »

al_borland wrote: post #112
ttoinou wrote: post #17

Huh if this becomes mainstream there's an opportunity to make a social media website to purchase in groups and make friends for the flights

There are already websites, like Going, for getting flight deals. As a solo traveler who doesn’t have to coordinate with anyone and can pack light, I can jump on the deals when they come up and save a lot more than what a regular price group rate probably is. Looking at my upcoming trip, I got it for 50% off the current pricing, for solo or a couple. Coordination with others also makes booking take longer and tends t…

I "used" Scott Cheap Flights in 2018 for a few years and never found a good deal

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#214

Post by scienceman »

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.

you get a yes/no prompt every day after you are born though -- and most people keep saying yes until they're ripped out

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#215

Post by tshaddox »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #186
tshaddox wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference in costs between accommodating one person and two people is pretty minimal. Even things like breakfasts are prepared in bulk. Most single people own and sleep in double beds, so there's no sense in which a double bed is "designed to accomodate" two travellers. The issue is more that discounted single room rates would encourage unofficial double stays, which would lose significant income.

I doubt the difference is minimal. Forget the size of beds, the point is that a hotel with 200 single-person rooms has twice the beds, twice the bathrooms, roughly twice the walls, etc. than a hotel with 100 two-person rooms.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#216

Post by akudha »

stmw wrote: post #194

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.

Also, just because something is legal, doesn’t make it ethical, moral or fair. It is just that, legal

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#217

Post by Marazan »

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…

Many airlines operate on the following model. Imagine the plane has a hundred economy seats. The seats will be split into groups of 10, each group has it's own price.

Group 1 seats cost 100 dollars Group 2 seats cost 110 dollars ... Group 10 seats are 350 dollars

Your group order got the last seats in group N and the first seats in group N+1

This is where the myth of "booking late gets you the cheapest seats" comes from. If an early booking passenger cancels their Group 1 seat it becomes available to buy again and it is still a group 1 seat even if every other seat has been sold. So late cancellations can make cheap seats available again.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#218

Post by DangitBobby »

wallunit wrote: post #54

"Penalizing solo travelers" is a hell of a spin on quantity discounts. If this isn't click bait what is?

You can call it penalizing solo travelers, you can call it inventivizing group travelers. If you look at them relative to each other, both are true.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#219

Post by DSMan195276 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #30
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…

Everything hinges on filling the airplane as often as they can. A blend of solo and group travel is probably easier to fill planes. Looking at prices alone is only part of the picture, imo. Group travelers are also more likely to pay for at least 1-2 bags, which brings in some extra $$.

To add on to this, the issue in the article is really more about one-way tickets than single passenger, if you buy a round-trip ticket for that flight the difference in price goes away. In fact, a single passenger round-trip ticket that includes the flight in the article is cheaper than buying the one-way ticket on its own (as in, both tickets _together_ are less than the one-way, it's cheaper to buy the round-trip and skip the return flight). Google suggests that one-way tickets get uniquely screwed because they're often used for business-related travel, but I don't really see anything definitive.

You can also get screwed in the other direction where groups are more expensive - airlines will sometimes bump every ticket in a group to a higher fare level even if they still list one or two tickets at a cheaper price for smaller groups.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#220

Post by akudha »

dbuxton wrote: post #140

I find it weird that this is news and not: - That it's still way cheaper in most instances to book a return (especially where the "trip" straddles a weekend) rather than a one-way fare when travelling long haul - even if you just throw away the return flight. - That you can sometimes get access to totally different inventory by booking a package including accommodation, even if that accommodation is one night in a sh…

Isn’t it a waste to book accommodation and not use it? If it is a popular place, maybe they’ll give it to walkins or something, but otherwise?
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