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Comment by obstinate | Hacker News Reader

Part of me agrees. And I also think flying is really cheap, not expensive like people are saying here.

On the other hand, I do want to point out a couple of things. It's crazy to charge for printing a boarding pass. That does not cost money (to a first approximation). Also, substantially all the airlines that charge to check bags will gate check for free. It's just more hassle. So what's really happening is that your seat IS being subsidized -- by the people who check bags at at checkin rather than at the gate.

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This is all classic price discrimination

Yes, but hardly anybody understands price discrimination. Generally, people think that by requiring services and their prices to be bundled, their overall price will be lower. Which is not true of course.

I think mostly people are offended by the waste of having a very complex sales contract - understanding and negotiating terms is a lot of effort for all parties, and may well add up to a higher cost than what's saved through pricing efficiency.

Yes, it might do so. Depends on how expensive the services are and how easy the process is. But what annoys me is the attitude of "I prefer that Service X and Service Y be bundled together, therefore it should be mandatory that they are." Sure, there are arguments for bundling, and for unbundling. I don't see that just because some people prefer one or the other that it should be required.

Well, if we are to be able to sensibly compare prices between airlines without spending our whole lives reading fine print then we really need a "standard bundle" and a law that the advertised price be the price of the standard bundle. And at that point it's natural for people to want the standard bundle to match their own preferred bundle, because that will be the bundle whose price is most tightly optimized.

In the economists' world it shouldn't make any difference - a ticket for $200 plus a $20 option for a checked bag is economically equivalent to a ticket for $220 and a $20 rebate for flying without a bag, and if unbundling is really done for the passengers' sake then it will be equally worthwhile under the latter conditions. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if they had to still advertise the price as $220 then the airlines would suddenly decide it wasn't worth unbundling the checked bag after all.

I just don't think that "seeing what is included in a airline ticket" is all that complicated, or that it is simpler somehow than deciding on, administrating, and enforcing a "standard bundle" on all these different airlines. And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences. I mean, people distinguish between different services and goods all the time depending on how much they value them - I don't think they suddenly lose this ability when comparing flights.

> I just don't think that "seeing what is included in a airline ticket" is all that complicated

The airlines are incentivised to make it complicated, and just dealing with n different website layouts is challenging enough. Compare to e.g. food labelling, where we require mass in specific units and nutritional information in a specific format, or cars, which are obliged to include mpg and safety information from particular standardised tests in their advertising.

> And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences.

It doesn't have to - the point is just to have a point of comparison to be able to compare equivalent offerings from Airline A and Airline B, even if you end up getting a very different bundle from the standard one.

Well, maybe you could have a price-compare thing, and that seems vaguely reasonable, but what everybody seems to be talking about and demanding is that there be a required bundling of certain services. A mere labelling is quite different.

    > understanding and 
    > negotiating terms

This sounds like a good job for a flight search engine.

That just shifts the cost around, since there's no reason for airlines to cooperate with such a search engine.

    > since there's no reason for
    > airlines to cooperate with
    > such a search engine

...?

What cooperation is needed? These fares are sold under different fare codes, and the meanings of the fare codes are easily available.

Ryan air is happy to charge you for any oversized luggage at the gate. No free luggage for anyone.

They will still check bags most of the time - if the flight is full and everyone has brought a bag with them there won't be enough locker space.

Sure, but they'll only put it in the hold for free if it's a single bag small enough for them to class it as "hand luggage", and it's to improve their boardig efficiency, not to do you a favour.

Try flying with a family of 5, your definition of "cheap" may change a bit.

Just checked for a family: four kids one parent: around $4000 from us to Germany... One way

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