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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

#341

Post by twoodfin »

alaxhn wrote: post #340
twoodfin wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is anyone forced to reverse engineer the pricing scheme? Simply decide if the ticket is worth the money to you. You typically have other airlines to compare to, other fares on the same airline for different itineraries, and other modes of transit entirely. Just because some people won’t buy anything that isn’t on a coupon doesn’t mean coupons are bad.

> Why is anyone forced to reverse engineer the pricing scheme? Because you can save money by getting a cheaper flight by understanding how pricing works and adapting your purchasing strategy. Many consumer are willing to spend time and effort getting a better deal.

Again, not seeing the “forcing” in that choice of time and effort.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#342

Post by listenallyall »

listenallyall wrote: post #270
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.

Flights are definitely not a "simple commodity"

Lol, downvotes.

One flight will get you to your sister's wedding on time. The other won't. They don't have equivalent value, they can't be freely exchanged.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#343

Post by JumpCrisscross »

MentatOnMelange wrote: post #329
SonOfLilit wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

One, there isn’t. One party undercutting another for the same product is how competition generates consumer surplus.

Two, it isn’t the same product. When I fly with my family, we check in together. We board together. I collect their docs on my phone and double check they have them on theirs. I turn down upgrades so I can sit with them. If there is a change, it takes one customer service agent maybe 10% longer to adjust everyone in bulk. I’m not incurring 4 or 5x the cost on the airline for 4 to 5x the revenue, this is why bulk discounting exists for everything.

This isn’t an ethical problem. If it’s triggering an ethical system, that’s more damning for the system than for Delta. This is a communication and brand problem.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#344

Post by JumpCrisscross »

margalabargala wrote: post #245
b112 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cli…

> high annual card fees to keep the riffraff away

It’s more a sunk cost/commitment thing. Their approvals department keeps away low and inconsistent spenders.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#345

Post by nradov »

arp242 wrote: post #335
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…

I once tried to book a flight with the same-day return; the price for the return flight was mad expensive. The same return flight was a few hundred euros cheaper if you booked the initial flight a day earlier. My theory is that most same-day travel is for business, and businesses are far less price-sensitive than consumers and will just pay whatever. I suspect this is what's going on here. Most solo travellers are fo…

At times it has also been common for airlines to charge lower prices for round trip tickets that extend over a Saturday. The thinking being that business travelers usually return home on Thursday or Friday and they're less price sensitive so airlines could use that as a way to discriminate. Leisure travelers typically stayed through a weekend and received lower prices.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#346

Post by avidiax »

histriosum wrote: post #324
avidiax wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I was meant to book a one-way ticket, since I was moving offices. But I had to have evidence to show that booking round-trip was cheaper in case anyone questioned why I had purchased round-trip instead of one-way.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#347

Post by [deleted] »

histriosum wrote: post #324
avidiax wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#348

Post by ttoinou »

al_borland wrote: post #333
ttoinou wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You have to invert the order of how most people plan travel. Typically people plan in this order: 1. Where to go 2. When to go 3. Check airfare Flip it on its head: 1. Keep an eye out for cheap flights from your home airport 2. Pick one of those destinations 3. Choose when to go Not exactly inverted, but the flight goes from last to first. I had Ireland in my head for my next trip, but then Italy showed up last week.…

Thanks yeah that was my strategy I'm flexible with travels, I remember setting Paris and Lisbon after to see what flights I could have. Maybe it was focused on USA. Maybe their emails was getting my SPAM folder, IDK what happened but I never found what I was looking for.

I got my own flight tickets by looking on my own though.

550 USD for Tokyo is so cool, wow

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#349

Post by bdcravens »

arp242 wrote: post #335
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…

I once tried to book a flight with the same-day return; the price for the return flight was mad expensive. The same return flight was a few hundred euros cheaper if you booked the initial flight a day earlier. My theory is that most same-day travel is for business, and businesses are far less price-sensitive than consumers and will just pay whatever. I suspect this is what's going on here. Most solo travellers are fo…

Some companies more or less do the same thing with their "enterprise" software.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#350

Post by kristjansson »

skirmish wrote: post #251
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when you switch to an MVNO :)

Then it's one line, $10 / month.

For the privilege of using the hand-me-down data of carrier's network (i.e. getting deprioritized in any situation where the network is congested)
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