Bait and switch

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/bait-and-switch.html

by terpua • 18 years ago

33 46 18 years ago

sethgodin.typepad.com

I was checking flights recently and found that a one-way trip to London would cost $950. For both flights of a round-trip it would cost $750. Both plus taxes of course.

It is cheaper for me to book a round trip and just not take the return flight then to fly one way. Huh?

cconstantine• 18 years ago

Airline pricing is all kinds of wacky.

A friend of mine was trying to get round trip tickets from city A to city B recently. He found that it was significantly cheaper to purchase flights from city Z to B with a layover in A. All the flights between A and B were the same, but for some reason adding an extra destination of Z made it cheaper.

Airlines are in huge trouble from factors outside their control. They failed at being in control of their own destiny, and allowed other people/companies to control them.

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

It's an attempt at price discrimination by the airlines.

If you are moving to London for the long term, you'll pay $950 without thinking about it. If you are going on vacation, you might be price sensitive. It worked much better before the internet.

fallentimes2• 18 years ago

To add to what other commenters have already stated: the largest proportional purchasers of one way tickets are business travelers. Not coincidentally, business travelers are also the least price sensitive.

maw2• 18 years ago

Sometimes, but be careful.

If you skip the first flight intending to only take the return flight, some (all? just Mexicana?) airlines won't honor your ticket, and they won't return your money either. That's stealing.

ilamont• 18 years ago

One of the worst thing about airline fees is that online searches on travel sites don't always reflect required fees, such as international fuel surcharges. This makes price rankings suspect, is unfair to airlines which are up-front about these costs or build them into the ticket price, and adds a burden to ordinary people, who have to hunt through the conditions to make sure the price is as advertised.

ckinnan2• 18 years ago

The government is a big part of the problem. The airlines can't do much to control the ground experience in government airports. That's where the security hassles, bag delays, long lines, and uncomfortable waits occur. The airlines could better differentiate themselves if they had more control over the total travel experience.

Also, did you know that the US blocks foreign ownership of airlines? That capital and competition would help too.

ajross4• 18 years ago

Except that the example given was Air Canada, which the last time I checked was indeed a foreign-owned airline. This is a global problem right now, and it's based on fundamental economics. Airlines are selling a commodity product in a competitive market at a time where operation costs are rising steeply. You can't "compete" your way out of that. Things won't stabilize until flight pricing comes to equilibrium again.

derefr• 18 years ago

It seems to me that, for one reason or another, airlines that fly to the US have to adopt the US' draconian pre-flight policies in order to be allowed to make the trips.

ckinnan2• 18 years ago

Foreign airlines can fly to the US but they can't compete on domestic routes.

OneSeventeen• 18 years ago

I had a pretty horrible experience with an airline recently (I won't regale y'all) and it has had me thinking about ways to fix air travel in the US. I had a few ideas on how an outside company might help, but I don't think they're actually tenable. Will it take the collapse of several major airlines for someone on the "inside" to fix stuff? The article posted here a while ago about Alaskan was pretty heartening.

utnick• 18 years ago

Is there any research being done into electric/hybrid airplanes?

In 20 years oil costs could make flying very unpractical.

evgen3• 18 years ago

"Hybrid" is a non-starter for an airplane. It spends 99% of its time running in the "sweet spot" of the turbine performance envelope, there are no starts and stops for which regenerative braking or a switch from the turbine to some sort of electrical propulsion would help. Electrical power is problematic because batteries and other forms of electrical energy storage still suck. There are solar-electric planes being developed for long-term station-keeping tasks, but they are slow and have almost no payload capacity.

Turbine jets are basically the best thing we know of for performing this specific task. We might be able to improve the fuel they are burning, but nothing is going to replace them for the next couple of decades at least.

ajross4• 18 years ago

The first paragraph is spot on, but the second is just wrong. Turbojets fly much faster than needed, for the convenience of the passengers. Drag goes as the square of speed, so per-distance fuel economy scales as the inverse of the trip time. One certainly can do much better than a turbojet simply by swapping the fan for a larger geared propeller and flying at half the speed.

marvin2• 18 years ago

We don't really need to make airplanes that use other energy sources than petroleum, if it could be manufactured or acquired at decent cost. If it should happen that we can't, we're hosed - moving through the air at 800kph is a dream unless you've got something approaching the energy density of oil. Hydrogen could be made workable, I believe - energy density per volume is something in the region of 30% of gasoline when compressed. With radical airframe changes, we might be able to uphold the status quo.

We have a long way to go considering the efficiency of the airframes themselves. Fuel consumption could be reduced drastically if we could go a bit slower, or there would be some radical design change (think sailplanes). Most widebody airframes today look like flying buffalos, with the resulting air resistance.

Almost all air transport of people happens on the border of the transsonic regime, where air resistance is a lot higher than it could be. Reduce speed with 30%, and you'll reduce the total energy consumption by a considerable amount. One can only guess how customers would take this.

Market forces today don't look like they are convective to such change, but one can always hope that some startup is able to eat a big piece of the pie. Personally, I am very enthusiastic about companies like http://www.dayjet.com/, who specialize in slightly-expensive but pretty-painless transport.

Sadly, aviation is one of the most ass-backwards industries in the world, burdened by the largest amount of politics, subsidies, bureaucracy and regulation I've ever seen. There are definitely huge business opportunities here, but there are mountains and mountains of shit to wade through before we reach them. I believe that better personal air transport would be the way to go - better and cheaper GA airplanes. The competition and politics here are still in the world class, but not quite as cutthroat as among the airlines. And the capital requirements are survivable, and the existing airplanes are even more ass-backwards.

It says something about an area of business when the military has been driving the bleeding edge for fifty years.

ricree• 18 years ago

The best way to get the fees under control would be for the major online ticket finders to start delisting airlines that were not upfront about their fees. It's a risky choice on their part, but as it stands the travel sites have the most to lose. Any way you look at it, a lot of people are still going to fly regardless of the hidden fees, so there is little incentive there for the airlines to back down. Travel sites, on the other hand, depend on providing consumers with convenience and value. If consumers can no longer trust the ticket prices that they find there, then they simply won't bother with them anymore.

In short, consumer behavior isn't going to change, and airlines have no reason to change. Travel sites have the most to lose from these fees and the greatest ability to cause a change. If this trend is going to reverse, it has to come from them.

edw519• 18 years ago

OP overlooks one critical counterexample: Southwest Airlines.

They are excellent. They pretty much blow everyone else away. I won't fly anyone else anymore.

Why?

- I can buy one way tickets and get full credit back anytime

- They are very often on time

- Customer service is excellent, they are upbeat and positive

- The website is excellent

- Their prices are very competitive

- I can choose my own seat away from the children and talkers

My advice to any other airline: Figure out what Southwest is doing and do that too. Stop complaining and looking for government bailouts. If one airline can be successful (60+ consecutive profitable quarters, growth, and raving fans), more than one can do it.

blogimus• 18 years ago

Up to now, it has not hurt them in their fuel hedging:

http://www.247wallst.com/2007/04/southwest_airli.html

bprater• 18 years ago

Yep, enjoy it while it lasts. A good chunk of their profits comes from that hedging, so when they have to redo their agreements, the belt will probably tighten.

pchristensen2• 18 years ago

Even though the prices are great, #1 and to a lesser extent #3 are why I will ONLY fly SouthWest.

rms• 18 years ago

I worked for US Airways in engineering, and enormous man hours were wasted using the proprietary mainframes that ran everything. Southwest doesn't have the legacy systems that the legacy airlines have, and the legacy airlines can't afford to upgrade their systems that work.

cjh2• 18 years ago

What I don't understand about the airlines is the completely arbitrary weight limit/fee structure.

Why is it that if I have two bags, one weighing 60 lbs. and one weighing 40 lbs. do I get charged an excess weight fee; yet if both those bags weighed 50 lbs. I would incur no penalty.

One ticket agent explained the issue was related to fuel consumption, but charging me for my bag does not make the bag weigh less (and let's not mention my above point that the total weight of the bags -- if distributed evenly -- would cost me nothing extra).

Another has explained it as being an issue with weight distribution, but I'm sure if they put one heavy bag on the left (or front) for two light bags on the right (or back) that the overall weight would distribute fairly even (not exact, but this is a jet airliner not a game of Jenga).

Truly its sad that the airlines have to resort to such penny-pinching measures.

lutorm2• 18 years ago

The thing that drives me mad is that if my bag is over 50lbs, I have to pay. Yet someone who weighs 200lbs (60 more than I do) can fly for the same price. You should be charged for total weight of the stuff you put on the airplane!

maw2• 18 years ago

The thing that drives me mad is that if I want legroom, I have to pay. Yet someone who's short (feet shorter than I am) can get legroom for the same price. You should be charged for the total amount of legroom you get!

soundsop• 18 years ago

My understanding is that heavier luggage requires special handling (and is thus more expensive) due to concern for safety of the people who handle them.

cjh2• 18 years ago

Well again its an arbitrary distinction, Is that 51 lb. bag that much more dangerous than the 50 lb. bag. A baggage handler could easily throw their back out improperly lifting a 49 lb. bag, but at least I won't get charged for it.

mattmaroon2• 18 years ago

It's funny that he mentions the TSA. It's true that the negative experience with them makes you think less of the airlines, even though logically you know it isn't their fault, in the same way that you blame Windows when an app bugs out.

But it doesn't make you think any less of any particular airline relative to their competition, because they all suffer from the same thing. Unless there's some legal way for an airline to circumvent the security lines (and I have to think there isn't or we'd already have that) there's no competitive disadvantage there.

Bait and switch

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