Warning: general rant about the cost of flights.
I am genuinely entirely fucking sick of the awful experience of booking air travel. The thought of doing it fills me with dread now.
Here is a recent example: a return flight booked with my partner from the UK to the US. His company later wants to send him to a conference in a place nearby a couple of days prior, and of course will happily pay for travel there, and on to our actual destination. “That’s okay”, I think; “I can cancel the outgoing leg of his flight, even if I don’t get a refund”.
Not. Possible. The price British Airways wants to charge me for cancelling one leg of a return flight for one passenger is more than the entire cost for two return tickets. Of course, he can’t just skip that flight, since the inbound will be cancelled.
Literally nobody gains from this. It reinforces the point that consumer cost is now entirely decoupled from the cost of service. On top of this, the process of buying tickets is utterly baffling. Multiple aggregators linking to multiple external agents who in turn are selling tickets cheaper than the airline directly. Codeshares charged at multiples of the cost for being on the exact same flight. And the obvious hidden city stuff.
Surely I’m not the only one who just wants to exchange money for a flight, based roughly on the actual cost? Even accepting that I might pay more for better cabins, or hold baggage, or advance seat selection? Is the current mess genuinely more profitable? Is there any way to fix it besides some kind of regulation of fares? Is there a disruptor?