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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

#241

Post by WalterBright »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #204
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.

Especially when your industry is so "critical" that it has repeatedly received bailouts from the government.

Airfares were much more expensive when the government regulated them.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#242

Post by deanCommie »

wallunit wrote: post #54

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

Yup. It's funny how this stuff evolves.

You used to see "surcharge for visa" but visa made that illegal.

So now you see "discount for cash/debit", and everyone is happy!

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#244

Post by _heimdall »

brian_herman wrote: post #232
_heimdall wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to bailouts for airline operators or Boeing?

Both

Boeing is, for better or worse, pretty critical to our military. I'm not sure why they'd consider any one airline company critical though.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#245

Post by margalabargala »

b112 wrote: post #231
yadaeno wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with points systems. Why am I forced to understand your made up currency and status system to get the full value of my money. There might be some benefits to price discrimination (which is in effect what a point systems achieves) but the collective time wasted dicking around with points isn’t worth it. Make all point systems illegal.

The entire point behind reward cards, is to track every purchase you make. They're the original evil tracking device, so the airline makes money with those points. They do it by selling data, by points expiring, and by often only allowing points when seats would be empty otherwise. And often retailers pay more at POS terminals! This all ties into any rewards program. It's part of the package, even if points are grant…

> And often retailers pay more at POS terminals!

This is really the whole point. The sale of data is much less lucrative than the purchases by the customers themselves, especially for the "nicer" cards.

If you are a CC company with wealthy clientele, they tend to spend more. This means that retailers are willing to offer deals/rewards to attract those clients, and also that you want to offer rewards to keep those clients.

This is why e.g. American Express has cards with great rewards, high annual card fees to keep the riffraff away, and retailers willing to take a larger % cut in order to have those cardholders shop at their store where they presumably purchase more.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#246

Post by sidewndr46 »

os2warpman wrote: post #135
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.

>Not only are they allowed to bill you whatever they want, they are never under any actual obligation to put you on the plane. With exceptions, once you have paid for a ticket all commercial passenger airlines are obligated to transport you under their contract of carriage. All airlines must do this, I even looked up the contract of carriage for the shittiest airline I could think of and Frontier has this to say: >In…

"denied boarding" seems pretty key here. What about when the airline decides you aren't on the flight in the first place?

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#247

Post by garciasn »

tshaddox wrote: post #209
garciasn wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but my point is that you're now no longer complaining about the concept of offering discounts for room-sharing. Now you're complaining that there's no one you would be comfortable sharing a room with.

No; I’m complaining about the alternatives listed.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#248

Post by stackskipton »

_heimdall wrote: post #244
brian_herman wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both

Boeing is, for better or worse, pretty critical to our military. I'm not sure why they'd consider any one airline company critical though.

Because most airlines have become monopolies at their respective hubs so their loss would severely inconvenience a ton of people so government is encouraged to prop them up.

For example, if Delta went under, Atlanta, Detroit and Salt Lake City would lose a total of 50%+ of their flights. That would be absolutely devastating.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#249

Post by Matheus28 »

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…

Do you have any examples of a one way direct being more expensive than a round trip, with both of them sharing the same outgoing flight?

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#250

Post by mobilemidget »

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 :)

I personally think it's fair if they charge by weight. The post office does it, why not airlines?
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