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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

#351

Post by JoshTriplett »

kimos wrote: post #254
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.

They also have the poorest who have cheap credit cards subsidize the richest who have the best cards and receive most of the rewards. The inequality is baked into the system. Which is adjacent to: Nearly everyone loses, because the house knows the odds and controls the terms and conditions of the rewards.

> They also have the poorest who have cheap credit cards subsidize the richest who have the best cards and receive most of the rewards.

This is false. https://x.com/patio11/status/1902555603534295115

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#352

Post by JoshTriplett »

stackskipton wrote: post #248
_heimdall wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Delta went under, one or more airlines would rapidly go "hey, there's a proven demand that's suddenly unmet", and there would very quickly be replacement flights.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#353

Post by ceejayoz »

ghaff wrote: post #339
ceejayoz wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that accounting for things like bag fees and “fuel surcharges” that used to be in the ticket price?

People who fly any amount don't pay for checked bags if they check anything at all.

People pay billions in bag fees alone every year. https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/us-airlines-highe...

It’s hardly the only fee, either.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#354

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

listenallyall wrote: post #290
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…

All airline pricing is unadvertised and not communicated. They also sell through lots of independent agencies and channels. It would be weird to specifically advertise this. Unlike say, buying a second pair of shoes - not many people will buy an extra plane ticket to save 30% off both.

The thing I find interesting about a lot of things like this is that they feel like a holdover of half the era where negotiating prices was normal: today, for most people in the US, most shopping is just a matter of going somewhere and paying a set price and you don’t argue with the seller to get a better one. B2B transactions still usually involve a negotiation, I think, but it’s basically gone for consumers.

With something like airfares, the business is still doing its half of negotiations: collecting bits of data about the buyer to determine a price; but, crucially, there’s no real way for the buyer to “talk back” and so the process seems arbitrary.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#355

Post by zeroonetwothree »

yadaeno wrote: post #222
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.

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.

To get full value of your money takes time and information in every market. It’s not unique to this space.

If you want to buy anything and just pick the first option then you probably will have worse results than someone that did research. Or someone that used coupons. Or someone that waited for a sale. Or someone that bought used. Etc etc

We obviously shouldn’t make all those behaviors illegal. There is an inherent time/money trade off in life. It’s actually the whole basis for economic activity (ie it’s why employers are able to pay you to do stuff for them) so stopping it would probably be quite bad.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#356

Post by zeroonetwothree »

ceejayoz wrote: post #307
fallingknife wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airline ticket prices are flat since 2000, which is down almost 50% after inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUR0000SETG01 . So I say let them keep doing what they're doing.

Is that accounting for things like bag fees and “fuel surcharges” that used to be in the ticket price?

Bag fees are fairly small compared to the ticket price and obviously don’t make up for a 50% decrease.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#357

Post by zeroonetwothree »

mysterypie wrote: post #143
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…

> 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…

Alaska still uses miles flown. It’s pretty annoying since I’m doing some short hop flights with them that cost a lot and I get basically nothing for it.

I actually prefer the miles per $ model since it seems more fair for everyone. Obviously it’s less exploitable but that’s exactly the sort of thing everyone is complaining about.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#358

Post by AnthonyMouse »

twoodfin wrote: post #341
alaxhn wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The thing you're being forced to do is to choose between paying the higher price without screwing around and screwing around in order to pay the lower price, because the option to pay the lower price without screwing around was taken away.

This can be true even if the lower price is nominally a discount. Before everybody would pay $100. Now you can pay $80 by screwing around but have to pay $150 otherwise, and the screwing around is $40 worth of inconvenience. $40 is less than the $70 difference between $80 and $150, but $80 plus a $40 inconvenience is a higher cost than the original $100 uniform price, and obviously so is $150.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#359

Post by zeroonetwothree »

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…

Alaska offers a subscription plan.

Realistically most frequent travelers go for business and they don’t care about cost that much so subscription packs wouldn’t be valuable. That’s why loyalty programs instead offer non monetary perks or those that accrue to the individual (points).

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#360

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Matheus28 wrote: post #249
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?

It’s not uncommon with flights to Europe. I believe within the US it doesn’t happen though.
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