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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

#321

Post by ncruces »

cassianoleal wrote: post #311
ncruces wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why am I forced to understand your made up currency and status system to get the full value of my money. You're not forced. This allows them to make extra money from people who don't bother, and offer discounts to price conscious people. Time is money. Convenience too.

I think you missed the last bit of GP's sentence (even though you quoted it literally on your own): > to get the full value of my money. No one is forced to understand the system, but that means leaving some indeterminate amount of money/value in the hands of the predatory airline.

I didn't.

If you wanna save money, you figure it out. If you don't wanna figure it out, you leave money on the table.

They're selling (negative) convenience, but that's pretty much by design.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#322

Post by sfifs »

listenallyall wrote: post #278
geverett wrote: post #33

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…

There are lots of things airlines could offer, that they don't. They are all obsessed with "loyalty", why not sell travelers multi-packs (6 flights over the next 12 months) or subscription-like plans? Why a 24-hour cancellation period even for flights booked months ahead... they could certainly extend that to allow for "low-risk" booking or even charging a small fee for the right to cancel up to, say, 3 months in adv…

I've seen most of these in Asia. There's a lot of experiments going on.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#323

Post by tshaddox »

chgs wrote: post #287
tshaddox wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A hotel hosting 100 single people will be roughly the same size and operating costs as a hotel hosting 100 couples, even if the rooms had a 3’ bed rather than a 6’ bed And thus could be 3’ smaller

Right, but the former hotel has half the capacity as the latter.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#324

Post by histriosum »

avidiax wrote: post #300
Matheus28 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I had this a year ago on ZRH->SFO. One way business 6,032 Swiss francs. Round trip business (with a return 6 months later) was 2,530 Swiss francs. So I screenshotted the horrible one-way price to go in my expense report, and then booked the round trip ticket.

> So I screenshotted the horrible one-way price to go in my expense report, and then booked the round trip ticket.

So… you committed fraud? Cool?

I’m all for sticking it to the corporate overlords, but careful how far out you stick your neck.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#325

Post by delfinom »

p1necone wrote: post #269

I feel like people are suspending their reasoning in order to maximally shit on airlines in this thread (because yes, they do have a history of predatory pricing practices). The problem with this isn't the difference in prices - charging less for buying in bulk is a normal thing that's probably been done by merchants since the invention of money. The problem with this is the lack of communication. There's no advertis…

It's intentional and working as designed.

The same way they have been observed to offer higher prices to iPhone users at times

They come up with schemes to rake in money based on market segmentation they run numbers on and have their booking systems setup in a way to make price comparison "difficult" for a normal user.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#326

Post by phil21 »

listenallyall wrote: post #278
geverett wrote: post #33

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…

There are lots of things airlines could offer, that they don't. They are all obsessed with "loyalty", why not sell travelers multi-packs (6 flights over the next 12 months) or subscription-like plans? Why a 24-hour cancellation period even for flights booked months ahead... they could certainly extend that to allow for "low-risk" booking or even charging a small fee for the right to cancel up to, say, 3 months in adv…

Airlines do sell multi-packs with flexible rebooking. At least United and Delta did pre-covid, I haven’t had a use since then though.

With even moderate airline status rebooking/cancellations work more or less as described. I can’t recall the last time I haven’t been credited for a flight I ended up not taking, even I did a full on no-show.

Without status airlines sell refundable tickets with similar flexible rules, but I assume there is some adverse selection included in how they need to price those fares.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#327

Post by criley2 »

mike_d wrote: post #179
criley2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulk discounts don't "penalize" smaller purchases, they reward larger purchases. Companies offer bulk discounts on basically... everything. This is like pointing out that the Dollar Store penalizes people for buying small quantities and thus suggesting that Costco should raise prices to "make it fair".

No, it is discrimination based on marital/family status. If they were willing to sell me 5 flight coupons for a discount, that would be acceptable. There is nothing I can do as an individual to take advantage of the discount.

Nonsense. The airline doesn't ask your marital/family status. They simply offer a bulk discount.

By your logic, Costco is also "discriminating based on marital/family status" by selling bulk at discount. Costco doesn't sell "buy 1/5 a toilet paper package, come back and get the other 4 1/5 later". They sell the whole package up front, use it or lose it.

That's how bulk discounts work.

Heck, you could say that a gallon of milk discriminates against you because you have to pay way more to buy a pint of it, and you can't "come back later for the other pints at the same price".

This is absurdism to the highest degree.

You are welcome to book flights with friends, or even organize a flight-share program and go in on flights with strangers. Bulk doesn't discriminate. I know folks who go in together on Costco bulk because they can't use it all. Make the system work for you.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#329

Post by MentatOnMelange »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #294
postalrat wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these discounts compared to prices before the change or did they raise the price for individual travelers?

Are grocery store discounts for six packs compared to prices before the change or did they raise the price of single items? Here they don't even advertise it as a discount, so there's no ethical problem with raising the individual traveler price by x and lowering the family price by y so that the total profit remains the same.

There is absolutely an ethical problem with charging people different prices for the same exact product/service

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#330

Post by arprocter »

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…

I've definitely come across the one-way flight costing more than a return

My guess is the airlines think one-way people are business folks (so the price doesn't matter because it's getting expensed), whereas return travelers are paying their own way

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