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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

#391

Post by arcticbull »

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?

Fuel surcharges are generally accounted for as part of the fare on revenue tickets, they're a way of extracting additional revenue on award tickets. However, all the major US rewards programs don't charge fuel surcharges anymore. Air Canada gave up on it too. The only one of note is Alaska and American redemptions on British Airways.

On domestic tickets there's no YQ, YR or embedded Q surcharges anyways.

Domestic airfare in the US is down 36% adjusted for inflation since 1995. [1]

Even base tier status concentrated flying with any one carriers get you a waived checked bag, and so does pretty much any airline credit card. So basically you shouldn't pay more than $95 a year in checked baggage fees.

US airlines generally have sub-5% net margins which is why they find themselves in creditor protection every decade or so when the market turns. There's a long-running adage about investing in airlines.

[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itine...

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#392

Post by sgerenser »

kristjansson wrote: post #350
skirmish wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

USMobile gets you Verizon’s network at the same priority as Verizon customers. $390/year for “unlimited” data (but really 100GB/mo at high speed).

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#393

Post by gruez »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #354
listenallyall wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

>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.

Not really. The "negotiation" is still there. Time limited discounts weed out consumers who need something immediately. Coupons weed out people who aren't willing to put the legwork to find them. Loyalty programs and app-based offers (eg. McDonalds) take all of this to the next level by sending targeted coupons based on whatever demographic/behavioral information they can glean from you.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#394

Post by arcticbull »

amrocha wrote: post #375
ghaff wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which doesn't contradict what I wrote. I daresay a lot of families who travel once a year at Christmas pay bag fees for their big bags. Lots of people who travel on a regular basis don't. And a lot of it seems to be on discount airlines. (Which I admittedly never fly.)

It actually literally contradicts what you said. People flying any amount (at christmas with their family) are paying bag fees.

US airlines recorded $5.1 billion in checked baggage fees according to your article. US airlines recorded a revenue of $275.3B in 2024. This accounts for 1.8% of revenue. A further billion was change fees.

Net profit was $6.7B meaning literally all of their net revenue (a total of 2.25% of gross revenue) was accounted for from these ancillary fees.

But their inflation-adjusted cost went down 36% since 1995.

There were a total of about 1 billion emplanements by US carriers in 2024, ish, so we're talking about a total of about $6 per passenger per year. They really are insignificant.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#395

Post by JoshTriplett »

kimos wrote: post #365
JoshTriplett wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Right. This isn't about interchange fees. But you're right I wasn't clear. It's the points/rewards/miles systems that are.

You talked about "the poorest who have cheap credit cards subsidize the richest who have the best cards". The point of the thread I cited is that in general credit cards make money from both poor and rich people alike, and make more money from rich people, and neither one is subsidizing the other in any framing of it. It doesn't matter whether you're talking points, miles, or any other form of rewards; there's no degree to which credit card reward programs have anyone subsidizing anyone else.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#396

Post by amrocha »

fn-mote wrote: post #383
amrocha wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make extra money from fools thinking they can beat the system, not from the people that avoid it. If points systems caused losses then nobody would have them. They’re money makers, and that money is coming from someone’s pocket.

> If points systems caused losses then nobody would have them. They’re money makers, and that money is coming from someone’s pocket. It sounds like you believe the losses are coming from the people who _have_ the points? That doesn't seem likely to me. It would be a better analysis to say "it's complicated" - * Business travelers earn personally-owned points on their company spending. In this case, the company might…

We could argue about the monetary value of points, but I don’t think we would get anywhere.

Instead I’d rather focus on human nature and induced behaviour.

When mcdonald's offers 2 burgers for the price of one, they make money because people who wouldn’t normally eat at mcdonald’s show up.

When airlines offer points, they make money because people who normally wouldn’t book flights end up booking them. Even if the points are a good deal, you end up spending more money than you normally would because you’re enticed by the points.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#397

Post by JumpCrisscross »

fireflash38 wrote: post #390
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

Mm, it feels unfair. I was trying to reason through why I think it's an ethical problem and that's what I've come up with. You're not treating people equally - whether it's in person bartering where you make assumptions about them based on snap judgements or via airlines seen here. There's an even bigger fairness issue when there's such a huge data knowledge gap between the parties, both knowing that there is this hi…

> It's price discrimination. You know the thing people fucking hate when trying to buy a car

Transparent pricing worked as a positive differentiator for cars. (Saturn. Tesla.)

I believe airlines have tried their hand at it. But it doesn’t budge the needle. If there is a single enduring truth to at least American airline demand, it’s that most consumers will pick the cheapest ticket. Almost nothing else matters, when it comes time to pay for it, to almost all of the flying public.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#398

Post by sgerenser »

decimalenough wrote: post #153
ghaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they mostly don't. They're often using the same bedding. Most toiletries are squirt containers these days. I don't think toilet paper is that expensive. And another towel or two to wash is probably not a big deal. And to the degree the hotel has a restaurant or bar they probably come out ahead. Your hotel may take a different approach but it's near universal (perhaps outside of resorts) that hotels charge the s…

Citation needed. In my experience it's entirely the opposite: it's nearly universal that hotels charge more for two guests than one. You can easily verify this on Booking.com, where the search results show price per room and how it varies based on how many people are in that room and whether they're adults or children.

Is this a non-U.S. thing perhaps? I’ve never in my life seen a U.S. hotel charge more for double occupancy, outside of special packages that include e.g. meals for each guest.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#399

Post by amrocha »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #387
amrocha wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not false. Patrick disagrees with it. The atlantic doesn’t. The general consensus is with the Atlantic, but it’s not a clear cut subject.

You are interpreting "demonstrates to be false by citing sources and providing evidence" with "disagrees with". The thread I linked to is an instance of the former, not the latter. See the citations and graphs from that thread, showing the data that credit card companies make much more money from wealthy people than they do from poor people, and neither one is subsidizing the other. If you're going to claim "the gene…

I don’t know why you’d trust the guy that works for a credit card processor telling you that credit cards are fair, actually.

And Twitter doesn’t show threads unless you’re logged in btw, so you just linked Patrick’s opinion.

Re: Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups

#400

Post by JumpCrisscross »

arprocter wrote: post #330
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

I vaguely remember London subsidising tourist flights. That would require knowing when the tourist arrived and left.
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