How to Beat High Airfares (2011)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08subversion-t.html?_r=1

by Plasmoid • 12 years ago

65 69 12 years ago

nytimes.com

_dark_matter_• 12 years ago

This needs a (2011) tag.

outericky2• 12 years ago

and a (Nate Silver) tag

cake• 12 years ago

That's why the tips felt so irrelevant.

Last time I checked booking two tickets made no difference, kayak and all are all well known and I hope that everyone checks at least if there's not a cheaper alternative with these. Usually I can't find anything that I didn't know about, maybe it's because the number of airlines is diminushing every year.

I must also add that I hate those people coming with huge bags, filling the overhead bins as advised in the article. There's no room in the cabin, the old lady won't be able to lift it on her own or you'll get the bag in the face because she's not carefull. In my opinion only backpacks and laptops bags should be allowed, the way it used to be (not so old man rant).

outericky2• 12 years ago

According to this story [1], in 2012 airlines made just $0.37 per passenger trip. So, while I think the inefficient pricing is in need of repair, to say that prices are too high, is unfortunately not true. I hate paying for transcontinental flights as much as the next guy, but what other way can you cover 3000 miles that cheaply and quickly?

[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo...

jib2• 12 years ago

Is that because of pricing or because of company structure/setup though? Ryanair is currently predicting 510M profit on 81M trips in Europe for 2014.

Not saying they are a model company in any way (the main thing I disagree with is some of their employee treatment), but they are certainly proving that it is possible to operate a profitable airline with low prices and high quality.

jacob0193• 12 years ago

only $6.30 profit per trip and that's the best example of a profitable airline, crazy

enraged_camel• 12 years ago

Calling RyanAir "high quality" must be some kind of joke.

discardorama• 12 years ago

in 2012 airlines made just $0.37 per passenger trip.

But how much of the costs are due to inefficiencies? Every time I fly, I am amazed at how long the agents have to keep typing away on their keyboards just for simple tasks.

serve_yay2• 12 years ago

The prices are more than we would like to pay so of course someone is screwing us. It can't just be that moving us around costs a bunch of money.

nathancahill• 12 years ago

Here's a site that lets you search for these flights: https://skiplagged.com/

I've used it many times, usually saving around 50% on flights. I never check bags anyway, so it works out well.

Someone12343• 12 years ago

You can use a similar technique to get ultra-cheap First/Business class tickets to places like Europe.

You book a flight to some poorer European country, like Poland for one example, it will have a stop-over in either Paris or London, you then disembark there.

The tickets will be partly based on the cost of living in the destination (Poland) so be significantly cheaper than a ticket to London or Paris direct in those classes (i.e. same exact aircraft, same route, same class, but cheaper).

jacob0193• 12 years ago

I don't see how this could work for the return flight. If I book Indianapolis to LA to get a cheaper ticket to Denver, I would still need a flight back from Denver, so even if I save 20% on the first flight, I'm only saving 10% on the round trip. Am I missing something?

jcdavis• 12 years ago

Nope. If the city of origin is another airline hub you could theoretically do another hidden-city trip back, though. (eg Denver->Indianapolis->XXX)

mikegreen• 12 years ago

You have to book two one-way tickets. One IND-LAX thru DIA, and another one DIA-LAX. If you booked a round-trip IND-LAX, both thru Denver, and you skipped the DIA-LAX on the outbound, the rest of your ticket will be cancelled.

It can be substantial even doing it one-way, a popular route I flew into ORD was $454 each way on its own, but going thru ORD onto somewhere like MKE was $89-105 consistently. So even with the full-fare ticket back, it would reduce the price from nearly $900 r/t to $600ish. YMMV.

nostrademons3• 12 years ago

Alternatively you could do a second hidden-city trip, eg.DIA->ANX via LAX, and just not not use the second leg of the return trip.

joshvm2• 12 years ago

There was a great Stack post on this a while ago. Basically it always boils down to booking early, really, that's how you get those cheap flights. The "book a few weeks before" option is bunk.

For most of us Europeans, jumping off at a stopover isn't an option, although it is possible to do this on trains sometimes (and actually it's very legal, you're entitled to break your journey at a valid calling point).

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2952/flight-ticke...

pidg• 12 years ago

In the UK, you can break your rail journey on the flexible ticket types, but not on Advance fares.

So you can either get a good deal by booking in advance, or by breaking a cheaper, longer journey - but not both.

joshvm2• 12 years ago

Not to mention that you should always split tickets if possible, particularly if you change service providers. That and avoid London and First Great Western; their ticket prices are obscene.

useful2• 12 years ago

Part of my job is to prevent this. We are very good at cancelling your ticket based on airline rules if we know you wont get on a plane based on your other flights. Airlines ban/fine travel agents (and sometimes passengers) that abuse their rules.

tnuc• 12 years ago

You're not doing a very good job.

Almost all my flights these days use a 3X to reduce the YQ.

The economist does a fairly good job at explaining it. http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/11/fuel-dumping

jbkkd• 12 years ago

Could you tell us some more about how you do it?

swimfar• 12 years ago

YQ : fuel surcharge (which is apparently not related to fuel costs)

3X : method to eliminate this additional cost by adding an extra leg to the trip (which is then not taken).

useful2• 12 years ago

we do a good job, the airlines don't want to pay for the arms race they create by making their rules around pricing so difficult that no single person in their business understands it (personal opinion). I believe airlines that do use our services do much better than the ones that don't (like +0.5-1% more margin). Think about how much money that is to someone like united with 38 billion in revenue.

The only reason I have a job is because the reservation system is old and has all sorts of scope creep to do things that aren't really airline related but were implemented to make a sale.

tl;dr I agree with the guy at the end of the story.

jrockway• 12 years ago

Since the people doing this don't care about frequent flyer status (which is moving towards being spend-based rather than miles-flown-based, anyway), there is nothing stopping them from using two airlines to get the best price.

How good is your fine-enforcement rate against individuals?

joshontheweb• 12 years ago

Why do the airlines care? They got their money. Or is it just that they missed the opportunity to gouge you?

larrydag2• 12 years ago

maximizing profit per passenger I suppose. There seems to be so much competition that even improving 10% on profit can mean a lot to airlines. One reason why we are seeing baggage fees now.

TeMPOraL5• 12 years ago

Because flying a jet is much more expensive that an average traveller thinks. From what I read somewhere (can't find the source right now, but the math sounds right), the total value of collected fares for a plane full of typical passengers is not enough to even tank a jet and pay the pilots and the crew. Airlines operate at a loss. Flight fares are an extremely sophisticated kind of segmented pricing (done by machines, not humans), and people cheating like this screw with the airline's ability to keep flying some-what affordable to everyone.

For a detailed explanation of airline ticket pricing, take a look at this ITA presentation:

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.c...

fennecfoxen6• 12 years ago

The airlines care because they are attempting to engage in price discrimination -- charging different prices for the same product to different people, roughly in line with these peoples' ability and willingness to pay.

It does feel dirty, but it's worth tempering that emotional evaluation with the knowledge that, in those places where two or more airlines are competing for customers, they are very competitive indeed, and tend to operate on razor-thin margins (sometimes even negative margins! Airline profitability has been a recurring problem for those who have attempted to invest in them as businesses.) A system which is more predictable and feels less exploitative may in fact end up substantially more expensive and less convenient for all fliers (especially those now buying the cheapest tickets) and less profitable for the airlines as well.

(In Econ 101 terms, this is to say that fare regulations would have the potential of making the market less efficient and creating a deadweight loss to society.)

bruceb• 12 years ago

Honestly how often is this actually done though? Both people getting off and also airlines then taking action against the flyer?

This precludes everyone who has to check bags and everyone who is risk adverse.

fennecfoxen6• 12 years ago

Say. Is this one of the reason planes without enough overhead bin space have been offering to check bags "to your final destination" (which would otherwise cost $10-25) instead of just tagging them as cabin-checked baggage to be picked up at the gate like I seem to recall them doing before?

phantom784• 12 years ago

A risk of this is that the airline is only required to get you to the actual destination your purchased. If your flight is cancelled, they could re-book you with a routing that doesn't fly through your intended destination.

TeMPOraL5• 12 years ago

They should start doing that, or something similar. Say you book a flight from city A to city B, but you really intend to drop off at the place C which is the middle-stop. Airlines could every now and then switch the route to go through a different city D without announcing it in advance. Getting stuck in a different city at random would quickly drive the point home to cheaters.

larrydag2• 12 years ago

Easier said than done. Logistics of flight scheduling is very difficult. You need to schedule aircraft routes, flight crew routes, and attendant crew routes. Also have to include refueling stops and maintenance stops. Sabre Solutions made a name for themselves doing this for American. Your solution can be done but there are serious cost consequences.

Someone12343• 12 years ago

That's unlikely simply because it would upset a lot of people, non-cheaters, as it both alters their itinerary but also alters the total travel time (e.g. 8 hrs instead of 6 hrs).

Plus that isn't really how aircraft travel works, it isn't a single aircraft which travels from A to B to C, it is a connection which only exists because aircraft A and B land at the same airport within 30-60 minutes of one another.

Now everyone understands if there is an aircraft issue/emergency and the airline needs to re-route you. But if they started making a random habit of it just for "fun" (to catch less than 0.1% of their customers) people would get upset very quickly.

LordKano• 12 years ago

The flaw with this plan is that one would find out at the gate that the layover city had been changed.

At worst, one would have to change their plans at the last minute and pay more money for a ticket to their true destination.

Now, are you going to suggest that airlines be permitted to post fictitious destinations on the marquees at the gates?

Doctor_Fegg• 12 years ago

That actually happened on the British railways in the early 1990s.

There was an evening express train out of London Paddington whose first scheduled stop was Tiverton Parkway, a middle-of-nowhere station roughly 160 miles from London.

Regular commuters knew that the train also made an unadvertised stop at Reading, a popular commuter town 35 miles west of London, to collect passengers heading for the West Country. In theory it was a "pick up only" stop, but with 14 manually-operated doors all opening onto the platform, this was never policed.

Until the one night when the conductor announced on the tannoy just before Reading:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the InterCity service to Penzance. Our first stop will be Tiverton Parkway in approximately two hours' time."

And the train sped through Reading without stopping. (For Reading-Tiverton travellers, British Rail had quietly laid on an extra service that night, starting at Reading.)

The London-Reading commuters were not best pleased... not least because the conductor then walked through the train selling (expensive) tickets to Tiverton for anyone whose ticket was only valid to Reading.

The taxi drivers and hoteliers of Tiverton, on the other hand, were delighted.

saosebastiao• 12 years ago

The risk is only as big as the risk of the flight being cancelled altogether. The reason they go through a specific hub is due to the network effects: The person going from LA to Des Moines sits next to a person going to New York and a person going to Miami, and after the transfer sits next to a person coming from Boston and a person coming from Seattle. Rerouting willy-nilly to punish cheaters would impose a far greater cost on themselves.

derf_• 12 years ago

They will certainly do this if you miss a connection (because, say, the plane you were supposed to get on never showed up and the one that did eventually arrive hours later was 50 seats smaller than it was supposed to be and had a malfunctioning main cabin door that had to be repaired before it could take off again... to use a completely hypothetical example).

Their system will literally not let them rebook you to somewhere other than your original final destination. I was flying to AMS, but the soonest they could rebook me on a flight there was 24 hours later (late enough to miss the event I was supposed to be attending). They had a perfectly good flight to DUS, which was actually closer to my final destination (by train) than even AMS was, and couldn't put me on that.

They finally booked me on a flight to AMS through DUS (with an 18 hour layover), but told me if I got off in DUS, my return ticket would be canceled, thanks to all the people who try to cheat fares this way. On the way, I managed to get one of the agents frustrated enough with her own computer system that she took out a physical pad of paper, stamped it with some kind of official stamp (she had to tick over a counter on the stamp with a special tool), and told me to go show it to the lady around the corner. The lady around the corner worked for a completely different airline, who happily took the piece of paper and gave me a free ticket to DUS.

So, yeah, thanks guys, for ruining the system for honest people.

josu• 12 years ago

Your third flight is a complete different journey. Imagine this:

1x: London - LA 12/09/2014(You leave September 12 for your vacation)

2x: LA - London 22/09/2014 (You come back on September 22, from your vacation)

3x: Pacific Island A - Pacific Island B [Random_day](This flight is just to screw with the system so it drops the YQ (Fuel surcharge) charge)

rosser• 12 years ago

You're talking about a "3x" tactic, while the article (and your comment's parent) are talking about the "hidden city" technique.

Dawenster• 12 years ago

I heard about this a while back so my friend and I made this search engine: http://www.flyshortcut.com/. Only works in North America, and like most people say - be mindful of the risks!

frequentflyeru• 12 years ago

If you really want to beat high airfare, stop buying tickets and figure out how to accrue frequent flyer miles at the lowest rate. BoardingArea.com is a good resource. Few years back, people figured out US Mint was selling gold $1 coins at cost + free shipping, so people (myself included) bought them on their mileage earning credit card and just re-deposited the coins into the bank. Some people earned $1M+ miles for free. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB126014168569179245

r00fus• 12 years ago

Do these kind of arbitration opportunities still exist except as mistakes? I assume that channel would have been made unprofitable after discovery...

fennecfoxen6• 12 years ago

It's arbitrage, not arbitration. I believe the mint began by denying orders from people suspected of being crazy-exploitative, and ultimately terminated the program altogether. (You can still order the coins, but you'll have to pay for shipping.)

dkfmn• 12 years ago

Almost every credit card changed their terms so that cash equivalent purchases no longer accrued perks.

fennecfoxen6• 12 years ago

... by exploiting the government (and in turn its taxpayers) by using their services in a manner flagrantly inconsistent with the program's aims of getting the $1 coins in broader circulation.

I'd rather find ways to do something useful and make money, instead of just leeching off society like that, myself. Maybe this is why I'll never be super-rich though :b

misterbwong• 12 years ago

The article is touting hidden city ticketing. While this is still a valid strategy, one needs to be careful when employing it as the airlines hate this behavior. It's not against the law but (I think) it is against their contract of carriage.

Better (and less dodgy) advice would be to follow these websites:

http://www.theflightdeal.com/ (my current favorite)

http://faredealalert.com/

http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/

Set up an IFTTT alert on the RSS feed for your home airport and/or desired destination and jump on it when you get the notification.

serve_yay2• 12 years ago

The biggest problem is as they point out - you can't check your bag, and if you board too late they will force you to check it. Then you're screwed. So you get that unique modern form of anxiety - trying to board the plane before everyone else so you don't have to gate check. You better have a bookbag and nothing else.

geofffox• 12 years ago

I know it's supposedly new thinking, but I used this trick often in 1970-71. Flying to West Palm Beach from LaGuardia was more expensive than just getting off a flight that stopped at PBI while continuing to Miami.

Thank you Eastern Airlines.

kazinator• 12 years ago

How the airlines could confront this is by not reliably stopping in the intermediate cities. That is to say, multi-leg flights should sometimes not stop in those some of the intermediate destinations, so that passengers who want to get off there using a cheaper ticket face a gamble: the risk of ending up in the wrong city, wasting time and money to get where they really want. Yes, the plane has to pick up people from those place, but the logistics of that could be worked in with the uncertainty so those people are taken care of. Some other plane grabs them in that case or whatever. Perhaps another airline's plane with some kind of sharing plan.

Say two airlines N and M have flights from A to D. One airline stops over at B, and the other at C. They could enter into a flight sharing agreement so that they pick up each other's passengers at B and C. Then it is not known whether any given N or M flight will stop at B or whether at C. The only sure destination is D.

(Not saying I agree with this, but it's better than other tactics, like bullying customers who are only behaving rationally. "May or may not stop in Dallas": problem solved.)

How to Beat High Airfares (2011)

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