Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups
481 comments
·May 29, 2025p1necone
arp242
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 for business, not consumers for holidays. The price difference here is huge – almost half – which is far beyond a bulk discount, we're talking about 1 person vs 2 people.
That's also why none of this is advertised: it's not a discount, but a "we think you can pay more, so we'll charge you more" type of thing.
Is that a good/bad/ethical/predatory thing? I don't know. Leaves kind of a bad taste for me though.
FabHK
Just in terms of simple economics:
Without price discrimination, there is one price, and then there are two triangles "left" of the price: What consumers would have paid, but don't need to, that's the consumer surplus (between price and demand), and what producers would have sold for, but got more for, that's the producer surplus (between price and supply).
With price discrimination, what happens is that the producers "grab" some of that consumer surplus for themselves (as "price" is not a horizontal line anymore, but gets closer to the demand line).
So this is bad for consumers, good for producers. However, the producers can use the surplus to subsidize products for poorer consumers, so that a higher quantity of goods is sold.
Having said that, the airline market is very weird (oligopoly character, very perishable goods, ...)
Uehreka
I don’t trust that any modern company would actually “use the surplus to subsidize products for poorer consumers”, that sounds like the kind of College Economics fact that isn’t actually true in the real world.
anticensor
Everyone knows airline transport is a service, not a good.
nradov
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.
ghaff
My anecdotal experience is that this sort of discount doesn't really exist any longer. At least it isn't obvious to me when I book for the most part. Saturday night stay discounts for flights used to be very pronounced.
arcticbull
> 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.
Minimum stay durations, like advance purchase restrictions, are a common part of fare construction.
> That's also why none of this is advertised: it's not a discount, but a "we think you can pay more, so we'll charge you more" type of thing.
A surcharge for X vs a discount for ~X is the same thing, it's just how it's presented.
Technically all of this is advertised, it's published in GDS. People just don't really want to read the fare rules because it's boring and a ton of reading.
jdeibele
I didn't know what a GDS was. Apparently it's a Global Distribution System and there's 4 major ones, including Sabre which I've heard of and 3 that I haven't.
I don't know how a normal person would have access to any of them. They're described as being offered via subscription to businesses.
https://www.bookingninjas.com/blog/gds-system-top-reasons-wh...
mr_toad
> "we think you can pay more, so we'll charge you more" type of thing. Is that a good/bad/ethical/predatory thing?
Econ101 says it’s a bad thing because of the deadweight loss occurring versus a single market price.
It also arrogates a lot of consumer surplus to the producer (the airline), which many would argue is bad from an ethical and inequality point of view.
jmward01
The only real question here is why hasn't competition driven this 'discount' away? In a perfect market it shouldn't be possible for this to exist, right? I am not a fan of airlines because, among other reasons, it often appears that demand and competition aren't driving price.
arcticbull
> I am not a fan of airlines because, among other reasons, it often appears that demand and competition aren't driving price.
First off airlines are an extremely low margin business.
AA's net margin is 1.26%, Delta's net margin is 5.91%, United's net margin is 6.43%, Alaska's net margin is 2.86%. These aren't exactly blockbuster SaaS numbers.
Demand and competition absolutely drive price reductions - competitive routes have much lower revenue per available seat mile - and adjusted for inflation air travel is wildly cheaper than it used to be. Since 1995 the cumulative inflation-adjusted price of domestic air travel is down almost 37%. [1] Thanks to competition you can fly from SFO to NYC for $99, non-stop, next month. On the other hand SFO to GUM is $1662 ($1100 on a half round trip basis), because there's no competition.
Airlines with both a domestic and international route network tend to lose money on their domestic routes and make up for it on their flagship international routes, but even still, they make most of their money on frequent flier programs and credit card relationships.
St Louis Fed has a good write-up on the economics of air travel. [2]
[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/annual-us-domestic-average-itine...
[2] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2...
hluska
It doesn’t seem to be that widespread - mostly being confined to short one way trips. There is no evidence of it happening on international or return flights.
It feels more like a test of a strategy to fill middle seats.
parsimo2010
> Is that a good/bad/ethical/predatory thing?
It is a natural result of our economic system. Economists call it "extracting consumer surplus," and there are several mechanisms companies employ to get the population to pay them the maximum amount of money. Airlines indeed use the information they have about you and the flight you're booking to guess the maximum amount you'll pay- and that's the price they show you.
Obviously we, as consumers, feel taken advantage of because we wish we could pay less (and keep the surplus to ourselves). But this is going to happen in any capitalist system.
bdcravens
Some companies more or less do the same thing with their "enterprise" software.
BurningFrog
As I understand it, prices are generated by algorithms on the spot, and may change any number of times during a day.
You can't advertise prices that constantly change.
andrei_says_
The shadiness and manipulation, and extraction at every step, while monetizing or cutting every possible part of the experience and aggressively underpaying every employee.
This list of practices may sound like “shitting” on the companies but is just that - a list of their normalized practices.
yosito
Airline ticket prices have been highly individualized for at least a decade. I live a nomadic lifestyle and I'm often traveling with friends from various countries. We can sit next to each other in the same café and search for the same plane tickets on the same website at the same time, and get entirely different price offers. This is one of the reasons that I never buy plane tickets without using incognito mode or some sort of private browsing, but even doing that affects the price that you're offered.
ListeningPie
I've also heard that depending on what country you're buying from the price changes, but using VPN I've never been able to replicate the results. Pricing based on individuals sounds illegal.
mr_toad
> Pricing based on individuals sounds illegal.
It happens in every car dealership. And in enterprise sales. And in some countries in nearly every market and store.
listenallyall
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.
fiddlerwoaroof
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.
gruez
>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.
jermaustin1
> not many people will buy an extra plane ticket to save 30% off both.
That was kind of the premise of a movie I watched last night where a couples retreat offered a group discount for 4 couples or something.
So I could see it being "Bring your friends for 30% off!" being a cool summer promotion to beach destinations or something.
delfinom
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.
postalrat
Are these discounts compared to prices before the change or did they raise the price for individual travelers?
SonOfLilit
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.
MentatOnMelange
There is absolutely an ethical problem with charging people different prices for the same exact product/service
krick
There hardly is such thing as "discounts" in airline pricing. I mean, formally, there is, there's a lot of them, but, well, it's complicated…
In all honesty all this thread is people complaining about something they don't have a clue about. Airline pricing is insanely complicated, and this is for a reason. Airlines are not a luxury business, they barely manage to survive. If not all this dynamic pricing, special contracts with agencies, etc, they'd have to charge so much for a seat that you wouldn't pay and all this travel industry you are accustomed to simply wouldn't exist. The whole business is built on making somebody who crucially needs to fly pay as much, as he can, and then to make price attractive enough for the rest of us so that you can sell the rest of the tickets, so that flight can make any profit. And in the end, margins are super thin in this business.
Also, your question implies that you imagine that there is some simple enough "true price for a seat", which is so far from the truth, you have no idea. If you actually look at the price breakdown for a given ticket, there are literally dozens of components in it. It's not unusual that so called "fare" of a ticket (which is, like, "just price") may be literally $1, and the rest of $300 is various taxes, surcharges and payoffs I won't even try to start to explain here.
I mean, really, people here truly have no idea what they are complaining about. Airline pricing is not a thing you should hate.
alborzb
>> In all honesty all this thread is people complaining about something they don't have a clue about.
Considering that I saw the same uproar on 4 major travel blogs: Thrifty Traveller (who originally reported this), One Mile at a time, Enilria and View from the Wing.
I'd hardly call it people complaining about something they don't have a clue about.
This pricing practice of charging more for solo travellers is new, deceptive and even travel bloggers who are thought leaders are upset by this.
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stmw
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.
yadaeno
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.
zeroonetwothree
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.
AnthonyMouse
In general markets are pretty good at arbitrage. If you can get a $50 discount for a product by doing X, someone is going to set up a service whereby they do X for you, resell the product for a $45 discount and put $5 in their own pocket. At which point nobody would pay full price to the original seller and the convenience fee for not doing it yourself is $5 instead of $50.
The problem comes when the original seller doesn't want their price discrimination scheme to be thwarted by efficiency-improving arbitrageurs and takes measures to prevent that, because that's rent-seeking behavior and shouldn't be tolerated.
schiffern
Being the status quo doesn't change that it's an inefficient waste of resources. That's still true.
The airline wastes resources on their end, and so do the consumers. They're both doing what they're incentivized to do, but that's not what's actually efficient for society. The whole point of a good economy is that these two are always pulled into alignment (Efficient Market Hypothesis), but ours has failed in this case.
It was fascinating to chat with the software engineers at ITA Software.[0] Turns out flight routing (which everyone knows "should be" just a simple A*) is actually NP-Hard because of how convoluted the airline pricing systems are. At that company it was obviously a group of super smart people solving super hard problems..... and for what?
This is Kurt Vonnegut Jr's "Dynamic tension": muscles working against muscles, with no work being done. This is what Bullshit Jobs (good title, disappointing book) should have been written about.
To quote Eisenhower, this (lesser) scourge also
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29425650 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software
kimos
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.
JoshTriplett
> 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
ghaff
The richest pay for the best cards and presumably buy enough appropriate goods to make the best cards worthwhile.
ncruces
> 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.
amrocha
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.
cassianoleal
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.
bbarnett
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 granted for use.
margalabargala
> 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 clients.
This is why e.g. American Express has cards with great rewards, high annual card fees to keep the riffraff away, and retailers willing to take a larger % cut in order to have those cardholders shop at their store where they presumably purchase more.
devin
Not saying you're wrong exactly, but https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/anatomy-of-credit-car... does a good job of explaining the mechanics of rewards programs. It is more complicated/interesting than what you describe IMO.
Zak
Evil tracking is half of it, but the nominal "loyalty" benefit is there too. If I have a bunch of points with one company, I'm likely to accept a slightly worse deal from them relative to a competitor where I have none in the hope that I'll acquire enough for an award.
Retric
Non rewards credit cards also track purchases. It’s a revenue stream few companies are just going to leave sitting around.
twoodfin
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.
wapeoifjaweofji
Many basic financial assumptions regarding the free market are premised on the fact that you can figure out the lowest price a vendor is willing to charge for a good and compare that with how much you're willing to pay for it. Obfuscating this is bad for consumers.
alaxhn
> 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.
twoodfin
Again, not seeing the “forcing” in that choice of time and effort.
threeseed
Because lack of transparency in pricing affects competition.
Which is bad for consumers and the broader economy.
NegativeLatency
Especially when your industry is so "critical" that it has repeatedly received bailouts from the government.
WalterBright
Airfares were much more expensive when the government regulated them.
bumby
This is a half-truth. The flying experience was much different back then. As another commenter posted, airlines competed on amenities then, they compete on prices now. Look at the ads from that era; you see full roasted turkey being served and even an in-cabin piano bar! Your statement lacks nuance and is comparing apples and oranges to shoehorn in a “regulation is bad” narrative.
singleshot_
You get what you pay for.
_heimdall
Are you referring to bailouts for airline operators or Boeing?
ghaff
We can debate seat pitch I guess but economy seating hasn't been great for decades and something like United Polaris is better than Pan Am first class ever was even if food is arguably a downgrade.
brian_herman
Both
Spooky23
You can pretty easily get a good airline price by following a few best practices. If you are a person who wants the best deal, you grind for it.
It’s no different than clipping coupons or waiting till closing time to get pastries at a discount.
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fallingknife
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.
ceejayoz
Is that accounting for things like bag fees and “fuel surcharges” that used to be in the ticket price?
arcticbull
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...
zeroonetwothree
Bag fees are fairly small compared to the ticket price and obviously don’t make up for a 50% decrease.
ghaff
People who fly any amount don't pay for checked bags if they check anything at all.
akudha
Also, just because something is legal, doesn’t make it ethical, moral or fair. It is just that, legal
sciencesama
And groceries are planning a similar strategy!!
paulgb
I think this is fair play, they can charge how they want (within reason) and it’s not too different than other bulk discounts.
But someone should totally make a site for finding strangers to book the same flight with :)
mobilemidget
I personally think it's fair if they charge by weight. The post office does it, why not airlines?
Fernicia
Unsurprisingly airlines imposing a fat tax is not an optimal marketing strategy.
msgodel
As someone who's not overweight I don't think I would care. What I really wish they'd charge for is overhead luggage. I wish they'd charge so much that no one bothers with it.
m463
You mean mass.
Otherwise I would buy seats for my personal helium balloons on either side of me.
singleshot_
Are you at all concerned the airlines will remove the air from the cabin if you try this, just to emphasize that you’re not going to get a refund this way?
Anyway I’ll be across the aisle with hydrogen balloons paying less than you either way. Enjoy your flight!
triceratops
> personal helium balloons
Not allowed because they're too big to be carry ons.
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histriosum
And I think that you may mean volume.. :-)
carabiner
What if larger sizes of clothes were priced higher, since they use more material? I wear a small in almost every case so wouldn't affect me, but man it'd be nerve wracking for a lot of Americans.
autumnstwilight
In most cases the cost of fabric itself is a pretty minor part of the garment price- you're paying for someone to design the clothes, assemble them, ship them, and operate a store that sells them, and those costs are pretty much the same for small and large sizes. Adjusting the price based on the amount of fabric used would probably end up being a dollar or so for the things most people wear on a daily basis.
Unusually large or small sizes can end up more expensive (and/or only manufactured in limited quantities) because they're not commonly bought and they take up space on the shop floor and in inventory which could be used for things with higher turnover. (Edit: Also at the extreme ends of sizing simply enlarging or shrinking the pattern won't work well, you have to redraft it so it sits correctly on a petite or plus-sized frame).
owlbite
They already are?
gnatolf
Some shoes (Meindl Boots) actually go up in price for larger sizes (>46 EUR, 13 US I think) due to the additional cost of material.
rabiescow
if you are very tall they charge a lot extra for having tall sizes... what are you talking about??
anal_reactor
Moral argument: it's a sexist strategy. Yet another situation where men pay more and get worse service.
Economic argument: fat people are more likely to make use of on-board food service despite high markup, so you want as many of them as possible.
spauldo
Speaking as a fat person, air travel is horrible and I'll happily drive a couple thousand miles to avoid flying.
On a flight to Greenland I spent six hours smashed up between the window and a stranger (constant, sweaty, skin-on-skin contact) because they put three fat guys right next to each other on a full flight. I'd rather have taken a couple months of vacation and ridden the icebreaker in.
joshstrange
> Yet another situation where men pay more and get worse service.
Is this some kind of satire? In many cases (for a whole slew of things), I feel like men pay less and get better service.
paxys
Any amount of premium is worth not having a random stranger on your itinerary.
smeej
You're going to end up sitting next to a stranger anyway if you're flying alone. Nobody says you have to become friends, but I wouldn't mind having in common with my seatmate that we're both the kind of people who don't take the standard option at face value.
brailsafe
I've always thought there's a difference between who you book with and who's on your itinerary. Very rarely do I say I'm traveling with anyone unless we're staying in the same room. I guess these fares do specifically state that, but I have a very hard time imagining anyone at the gate would care, they're typically doing the bare minimum as they should.
vladimirralev
A company can figure out the premium and just average it out across the pax who book thru them. Further they could risk-manage no-shows or other bad behaviour based on ratings and feedback. It's just wasting everybody's time to go thru intermediaries.
guhidalg
Do they have to show up? What is the carrier policy on travelers that “miss their uber”?
lapetitejort
No they don't, but they paid for a ticket, and any insurance amount is probably more than the discount of flying in a group.
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bbarnett
Hi it's John! Is that you, Steve?
bobro
Why?
paxys
Because they may change their plans. They could be a no-show (which will affect your return flight). They could call and change the flight without your knowledge. They could add extras to the trip and charge it to your card.
People are flaky, and being on the same itinerary with the same PNR as someone else means your trip is in their hands.
xandrius
Imagine realising that everyone on Earth you don't know is a random stranger with that mentality, even surrounding you on a non-private flight.
josephcsible
I can foresee that backfiring when you miss your connection and end up having to stay somewhere unexpected overnight, and then the airline will only pay for one room for both of you.
sircastor
Traveling together does not imply that you're rooming together. It's probably a bit of a fight with the airline to get them to pay for it, but then everything is a bit of a fight with the Airline.
JKCalhoun
Sounds like the pretext for the opening of a great film.
pinkmuffinere
lol I love that concept! Replying here so that I’m reminded of the idea in case I get the time
akudha
That would be a useful and funny site
Arkhadia
[dead]
geverett
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 solo traveler who prizes flexibility, but I understand airlines wanting to prioritize groups and more locked-in fares.
mysterypie
> 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 traveller who spent massively more ticket.
With the airlines I’m familiar with, it seems that pricing anomaly has been corrected. Air miles are much more correlated with the price of the ticket these days. Eg., you don’t even get air miles on the cheapest tickets on one airline I know.
But I still wonder why the airline industry created an air miles formula so disconnected from the value of the passenger in the early days.
bronson
Because of the difference between:
"Congratulations! You flew 100,000 miles with us!"
"Congratulations! You spent $100,000 with us!"
nocoiner
The first mileage program was introduced only a couple years after deregulation, so it probably made a lot more sense at the time as a rough proxy for revenue, and revenue management at the airlines wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as it is today.
zeroonetwothree
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.
listenallyall
In the early days you didn't have the internet where people would share every tiny anomaly, allowing thousands of people to exploit them. Even then, you had a few people realize they could do mileage runs, but it was considered additional revenue and the perks of doing so weren't valued nearly as highly as they are today.
_heimdall
I usually expect to see BOGOs, group discounts, etc advertised. If airlines showed the seat price along with a group discount I don't think people would have a problem with the price difference.
magicalhippo
When I'm in the store and I see 3 for 2 or whatever, I can think, yeah, ok, I'll be using three of 'em soon enough, fine I'll get 3.
But when I travel, it's not like I'm gonna call up my buddy and ask him if he'll join me on a flight so I can get a better ticket price. And if I'm going on vacation with my family, I'm not going to buy individual tickets, like why would I do that?
listenallyall
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 advance. Auctioning off unsold seats. Selling itineraries with multi-day layovers in a 3rd city (basically adding a second destination to a vacation). Lots more with a bit of creativity.
phil21
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.
listenallyall
Yes most airlines have eliminated change fees, and rebooking isn't too difficult for business travelers. But that's not a refund, and people booking 6 to 12 months out tend to be families going on vacation or to a specific event. So if something changes, there isn't always something else to book, or at least not on that specific airline. Further, what you call "moderate" status - the lowest level - has been raised to require an enormous amount of spending on any one of the major airlines. And don't get me started with "you only need to spend 100k on their credit card..."
zeroonetwothree
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).
listenallyall
I dont really buy into the businesses don't care about cost - maybe for top execs - but companies are obsessed with expense reports and accounting for every penny, reducing per diems, limiting hotel cost ceilings, booking through a specific travel agency, etc. And of course most companies are working overtime in every other department to slash costs, why would travel be spared? Being able to buy flights in bulk and save money seems like it would be highly appealing to finance managers.
Of course, there are exceptions. Governments seem to be some of the worst violators, they really do not care about costs and in many cases they egregiously throw money around for 5 star luxury hotels, first class flights, etc.
ghaff
United these days has AFAIK pretty generous cancellation though it's in credit rather than outright refund.
listenallyall
Yes, most domestic US airlines have eliminated change fees. But as you point out, it's not possible to get your money back and it's not easy to make changes if you don't have an alternative trip in mind. Cancellability is valuable (see hotel bookings), and yet, people over-value the option - sometimes out of laziness, or they forgot, or they go with the original plan. I have difficulty believing airlines would lose very much if they offered full refundability up to about 3 or 4 months in advance, but they would probably get more bookings, most of which would likely not get cancelled.
sfifs
I've seen most of these in Asia. There's a lot of experiments going on.
listenallyall
Agreed. I participated in a points-based package that used to be offered by AirAsia. It was about $300 for 30 points. Flights between cities/countries were 1 to 3 points each, I probably got 3x my money's worth and still had about 4 or 5 points left over.
wapeoifjaweofji
If these things aren't advertised or even made visible in any way other than the user happening to discover them, they're not sales tactics, they're just scumbag business tactics to prevent pricing transparency.
dbuxton
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 shared dormitory in a hostel (which you just don't go to).
At least group discounts have a recognizable economic rationale. But in these examples you are getting a strict superset of the same SKU (OK, maybe the change rules might be a little tighter, but not in a way that's perceptible) for less money.
arprocter
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
JumpCrisscross
I vaguely remember London subsidising tourist flights. That would require knowing when the tourist arrived and left.
Matheus28
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?
avidiax
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.
histriosum
> 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.
anonymars
Try London to Washington, DC and watch your eyes pop
You might be able to find an airline where it doesn't happen, but you will definitely find airlines where it does. Just verified with Delta and British airways and Lufthansa
dataflow
If you're not seeing them you're probably looking at domestic or nearby routes. Try transatlantic.
ghaff
US to Europe open jaw can be weird. I've done somewhat crazy return to origin European city (typically Heathrow) to avoid. And then I've had times when it's been perfectly reasonable.
zeroonetwothree
It’s not uncommon with flights to Europe. I believe within the US it doesn’t happen though.
null
akudha
Isn’t it a waste to book accommodation and not use it? If it is a popular place, maybe they’ll give it to walkins or something, but otherwise?
mbrameld
Isn't it a waste to spend more for a flight when you could get the same flight for less if you also booked an accommodation you don't plan to use?
akudha
I meant the accommodation going to waste (unused), which could be used by someone else.
But yes, in terms of money, it sure is waste to pay more for the flight.
mgraczyk
My home is empty nearly 70% of the time. Surely that is more wasteful than not using a dorm bed once per year
decimalenough
Singapore Airlines has been doing (used to do?) do this for ages: "GV2" was a Great Value fare for 2 people, "GV4" for 4.
I also don't find this particularly outrageous. Lots of companies do volume discounts, and traveling as a family gets very expensive very fast.
Finally, the fare bucket system used to price flights usually works the other way to penalize groups. If there's 3 seats left in the cheapest bucket, and you try to book for 4, you don't get 3 cheapest plus 1 more expensive, your entire group gets priced at the more expensive bucket.
omosubi
I don't have any data, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if single/business travelers are way more likely to cancel or change flights, and this is just pricing that into the ticket cost.
ghaff
I'm skeptical. Not sure why as a solo traveler I'd be more likely to cancel than a family vacation. If anything, more can go wrong in the case of the latter.
Business traveler maybe. Not my money and business stuff happens. (Usually they want you to book non-refundable because it comes out ahead in the end.)
Tade0
> If anything, more can go wrong in the case of the latter.
Which is why the people involved take good care to prevent anything from getting in the way of those plans.
If you miss your flight when travelling solo, you disappoint only yourself. With a family the number of disappointed people increases accordingly.
dataflow
Canceled flight is not canceled trip. For refundable trips at least, solo travelers are more likely to cancel and book another flight. Source: done this myself.
joezydeco
I've flown a good number of transatlantic routes with my family, and I've also flown over alone.
From my anecdata, being single greatly increases your chances of being bumped off a full flight. And it's a lot cheaper and easier to compensate/redirect one person than a family of four.
sidewndr46
You aren't really "bumped". They are legally allowed to oversell the plane. You were never getting on the plane in the first place. They just use weasel wording language like the flight being "full" when they communicate it
I did once have an airline offer me something like $1500 USD and 50,000 bonus miles if I was willing to cancel my flight, but that was days in advance.
nfriedly
> You were never getting on the plane in the first place.
I'm not sure that's true. The airlines are gambling that at least one person will miss the flight for whatever reason, and they'll get away with overbooking.
But, of course, when they loose that gamble, it's really a passenger that looses. The house always wins.
free652
> You were never getting on the plane in the first place.
Not always the case, you could be physically removed from the plane because the flight is full:
https://www.flyertalk.com/articles/overbooked-united-flight-...
dandelany
I suspect they also empirically have less price-sensitivity on average, for a variety of reasons
freehorse
Changing/cancelling flights is not usually for free.
sidewndr46
I did it for free once, but I think the airline was just bad at math. I flew most of the legs of my flight. Then the last leg a hurricane showed up and they offered me an opportunity to rebook since it was likely to cancel the flight.
When I rebooked, the airline gave me a credit for the round trip flight in total. I only had to book a one way ticket on the last leg, so I obviously was able to "afford" the flight without additional expenditure on my part.
derac
Yes, it's already baked in. A cancellable ticket is more expensive.
wallunit
"Penalizing solo travelers" is a hell of a spin on quantity discounts. If this isn't click bait what is?
DangitBobby
You can call it penalizing solo travelers, you can call it inventivizing group travelers. If you look at them relative to each other, both are true.
bredren
This just in: Airlines penalize those not traveling for bereavement.
deanCommie
Yup. It's funny how this stuff evolves.
You used to see "surcharge for visa" but visa made that illegal.
So now you see "discount for cash/debit", and everyone is happy!
fallingknife
Visa isn't happy. But fuck them in particular.
ttoinou
Huh if this becomes mainstream there's an opportunity to make a social media website to purchase in groups and make friends for the flights
al_borland
There are already websites, like Going, for getting flight deals. As a solo traveler who doesn’t have to coordinate with anyone and can pack light, I can jump on the deals when they come up and save a lot more than what a regular price group rate probably is. Looking at my upcoming trip, I got it for 50% off the current pricing, for solo or a couple.
Coordination with others also makes booking take longer and tends to fix dates and locations, which makes it hard to grab a deal when they come up.
ttoinou
I "used" Scott Cheap Flights in 2018 for a few years and never found a good deal
al_borland
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. That sounded pretty good, so I checked the dates and found a flight that fit in my schedule, and booked it.
It’s not great for getting a flight around a conference, wedding, or some other event you are planning around. But when you know you want to take a vacation to somewhere and sometime this year, it can cut flight costs in half.
A single flight ends up paying for the cost of the subscription 10x over, and then some.
Also, it could be somewhere near where you want to go. I had tickets to Croatia about 5 years ago, but hand to cancel due to the pandemic. I didn’t know anything about Croatia when I booked, but I figured the worst case scenario was I catch a quick ferry or flight over to Italy once I’m there. Once you’re over there it’s cheap to go one country over. That flight to Croatia was $289, that cheaper than a flight to Nashville for me, which is only about an 8 hour drive.
I did the same thing when I booked a flight to Sweden. I didn’t know if I’d like it there, so from there I booked a connection to Copenhagen for next to nothing. I spent a week in Copenhagen, but then ultimately did go back to Sweden for week, which I ended up loving. I’m glad I didn’t spend the whole trip in Copenhagen.
Another deal I got that stood out was to Tokyo. I think I paid around $550 give or take. A coworker of mine has family there and goes on a regular basis, he was floored by that price. He always pays over $1k, and usually closer to $1,500.
Ultimately it’s just an alert service for flights that are abnormally low. If you have a specific destination in mind, Google Flights is pretty good at showing when the cheapest time to travel is, giving a booking date of today. Of course it fluctuates over time, which is where the alerts come in.
It’s saved me thousands. Though I probably would have only taken about 20% of the trips I have without it.
mc32
Good idea in principle. In practice this could invite unscrupulous actors, or people who flake out at higher rates than close family -not that families can’t flake out, but I’d imagine it’d be a lower incidence.
proee
This must be a new thing, because I've experienced the opposite. I needed to book 7 tickets, and the price was much higher than a single ticket. So I ended up adjusting the quantity and saw the price increase at around 4 tickets. So I ended up splitting the purchase into two transactions. However, after purchasing the first 4 tickets, the following price for single ticket was now slightly increased - so they were really playing some games or perhaps there was limited availability that was adjusting prices real-time.
bluGill
They are trying to charge as much as possible while filling the plane. If you take too many seats they need to up the price for the next person because someone needs to say too expensive and not fly on that plane
anonymars
I had the same with just two tickets. We ended up booking them separately because it was cheaper. It was a modest difference but still.
Marazan
Many airlines operate on the following model. Imagine the plane has a hundred economy seats. The seats will be split into groups of 10, each group has it's own price.
Group 1 seats cost 100 dollars Group 2 seats cost 110 dollars ... Group 10 seats are 350 dollars
Your group order got the last seats in group N and the first seats in group N+1
This is where the myth of "booking late gets you the cheapest seats" comes from. If an early booking passenger cancels their Group 1 seat it becomes available to buy again and it is still a group 1 seat even if every other seat has been sold. So late cancellations can make cheap seats available again.
Molitor5901
Airlines are always doing a negative to consumers. Squeezing passengers, gouging, treating them like they're numbers on a spreadsheet - knowing their options are limited - seems modus operand by the airlines.
We need a passenger bill of rights, not just for the airlines, but also how passengers are treated in airports, by security, and concrete cause of action for consumers when airlines misbehave.
mustyoshi
This is no different than spending 98c per roll to buy 32 rolls of toilet paper vs 1.33$ per roll to only buy 12.
We have a Sam's Club membership because buying in bulk is cheaper.
Edit: checked prices Sam's vs Meijer
tekla
Yep, we gotta make all tickets much more expensive.
eduction
I would guess this is about middle seats. No one wants them but if you’re part of 2+ party you’re much more likely to take one. The alternative is two aisles side by side but those are tricky to get as the plane fills up.
layble
The business traveler who is less price sensitive and almost always books a solo itinerary.
kccqzy
> less price sensitive
As a business traveler I actually want the price to be as high as possible while satisfying the company rules on airfare. The fare is fully reimbursed, so a higher fare means I get more points on my credit card.
Now the company rules on airfare will probably reference something like the least-cost logical fare. So it is in a business traveler's interest for all airlines to raise prices simultaneously.
Business travel is weird.
VBprogrammer
It's a shame this is so far down the page (at least for me, at this moment) because I'm fairly certain you are exactly right.
ttoinou
HN comments vote need more than 40 minutes to stabilize
munificent
It's also literally in the article itself:
"It's just another way for airlines to continue 'segmenting' their customers, charging business travelers paying with a corporate card more while offering a better deal to families on the exact same flight."
asdff
All my solo flights over the last year were wedding related. That is probably a huge cash cow for the airline and hotel industry. The hotel is basically never full even with the hotel block so it is probably a very welcome cash infusion for them at an otherwise sleepy locale.
toast0
I thought everybody booked aisle and window and left the middle unbooked. If you get lucky, you have an extra seat; if not, the middle seat will almost always be willing to swap for one of the other two and you can still sit together.
brightbeige
Nope. If an empty row is available, book the middle seat. No one wants to sit next to the weirdo who chooses the middle seat first.
nharada
I do this but I’ve been told other’s views on it range from “seems fine” to “this makes you a terrible person”
isaacremuant
If you this I won't swap with you because you're clearly an asshole and I'm not going to give you the satisfaction.
You're the kind of person forcing people to be separate just to try and get one over others. The type leaving their bag on the seat as a method of protecting your seat in the bus.
You also probably justify it as some sort of pragmatic thing but you're just selfish and inconsiderate.
null
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 advertisement of a bulk/family discount at any point during the pricing process, you just see a different price. That's the problem here, not the price difference itself.