Airlines will make $118B in extra fees
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
> Across the industry, revenue from what’s known as ancillary sales—fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to name a few—will reach a record $117.9 billion in 2023
Yes, airlines have done a ton of "unbundling", but lots and lots of people want to select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc. and are willing to pay for it, regardless of website design. I'm not arguing that airline websites don't use dark patterns, just that it's ridiculously insane to attribute all ancillary revenue to that.
Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight to the gate to avoid an extra fee)
Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably going a bad way.
Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were paid to do so.
But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes it has a price but again: you get what you pay for.
Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs -- not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines together can match the network of Ryanair, it's really something else.
I respectfully disagree: I find myself booking Ryanair more and more because, as I mentioned above, they are the ones who fly on the route I want to fly. Real world examples: I now live in Malta, I want to visit my parents at Budapest. Only FR flies MLA-BUD direct. I want to continue on to my brother in the UK who in Suffolk so out of the many London airports, Stansted is closest. Guess who flies BUD-STN? And they have STN-MLA too. That's three routes I fly often and there's really no competition. It's good they cleaned up their act before I moved back to Europe, really.
Ryan Air are borderline decent if you only carry a cabin bag and get the "prority" package. You should see Wizz Air. They're worse than booking.com and Sixt combined, no flying over Ukraine and getting downed by trigger happy separatists.
Luckily neither one of those companies had any crashes so far, just one Belorussian jorurnalist kidnapped, an engine failure and bird strikes. No crazy copilot killing himself along with all the passengers in the airplane or getting downed by trigger happy separatists while flying over Ukraine.
Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about all the things you aren't getting with your ticket.
I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8 because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me it's an extra $100.
That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.) even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells.
Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with the price you can use a competitor with better rates. There's no contest in how much better of an experience and outcome that is for customers.
There's a valid complaint that they all game what's included/excluded at the listing price so they sort better in the fare compare websites. But once you go through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear what you are getting.
It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to invest time and provide information during the checkout process only to find out on a much later step that the list price is no longer the price you were given.
You're being lied to about the list price which makes it harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking out because you've invested so much time already to get to step 6 / 8.
Every airline that has tried the premium model in recent decades has failed.
People have decided they've reserved the right to rock bottom fares and simultaneous complaints about quality of service. Or people have decided flying sucks no matter what airline they choose so they simply sort by price.
Either way, dollars vote and this is the outcome.
Sure, I can go back to Google Flights and repeat the process. But I wasted 10 minutes already, and if I had a legitimate need to fly to LA I would have most likely just upgraded to Comfort+ to save time.
Are you going to blame me - the customer - for this?
As a solo traveller, you may not care. As a family you really don't want to be seated away from your kids. If you don't pick seats, will you get seated together? Who knows. Depends on if enough other people who want to pay to pick seats leave enough seats together for you... on a popular flight, that's doubtful.
So it's not just people choosing to pay for a luxury, it's a tax on people who don't know they can skip the step, and on families who may know, but can't roll the dice.
The airline would say it's your fault for getting a quote from an aggregator rather than direct from them though
Here are the screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo
That said, the fact that this situation is unsurprising to me is itself probably evidence of the communication problem. Google could do a clearer job of qualifying the “free seat selection” they falsely promise for that fare, and Delta could do a much better job of saying “there are only paid seats left, but if you don’t want to buy one, you’ll still get one at the airport.” I feel like JetBlue used to do a good job with that.
It shows you with little logos below the price if it includes seat selection, carry on and checked baggage.
For a frequent NYC-MIA flight I take I ran a test.
When I clicked through the first random AA price, and then the first random Delta price option I saw, it took me directly to each airline checkout at the exact price listed.
Here are the screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo
On an entirely different note, this feels like an exclusively Delta fuck up (and they know, given that they built a whole pop up for it). I fly United and American extremely frequently and never seen this. I have even booked Alaska basic economy that doesn't give you a seat and been given a free seat selection. Delta has been rapidly going downhill in recent years -- those that nerd out on air travel know exactly what I'm talking about.
I wonder if this is some bug/edge case for really close in flights? The example flight booking takes off 2 hours from now?
Last time I ever tried to book a flight so close the online sales funnel was closed due to post-9/11 security restrictions. I think 2 hours is about as close as is even legal right?
Can you replicate for a flight tomorrow / next week / next month?
What I think the other carriers do well is detect when there aren’t non-charged seats available for advance selection, and remind you that you can continue without paying for a specific seat and still be guaranteed a seat on day of departure.
Delta hand out “free preferred seating” as a perk to all sorts of categories of traveler though. I wonder if that complicates the prospect of offering that kind of warning.
That's not really the case. Airline prices are quite detached from the quality of service. They are more a function of what the airline can get away with in the moment (i.e., surge pricing based on demand). If airline prices were always $100 for low cost, and $200 for frills included, that would be a fine trade. But you will pay anywhere from 100-1000 based on demand irrespective of frills or no frills.
Delta and AA are still the largest airlines in the US and unless you buy the basic economy tickets, the experience is a lot better and you aren’t nickel and dimed.
The Delta CEO said that only 5% of customers buy the lowest tier ticket.
A classic example of a dark pattern is AirBnB. They (used to) show listing prices without all additional fees like cleaning, service fees, etc. So users would end up wasting a lot of time on finding the right offering to only later (yes, before checkout) realize that the total price is actually much higher. Users know how much they end up paying, it's not fraud. But this is still a dark pattern.
I don't think a dark pattern requires any fraud or lying. I think the most obvious example is having users opt in to something (e.g. sharing private data) by default and only offering the option to opt out by navigating some convoluted series of menus. You aren't explicitly lying to users and telling them they can't opt out, but you're going out of your way to make sure the option isn't advertised or easily accessible.
In my opinion, there's a gap between that and what airlines and AirBnB do. I guess there's an element of deception with both, but airlines and AirBnB are just waving a nice number in front of your face to drive engagement. That doesn't personally meet my threshold, but I understand how it might meet yours.
Assuming they're not making up the data, why is this bad? If a hotel is very popular and almost sold-out, isn't that something useful to know when you're making reservations? Sure, it does feel a little high-pressure, but if it's truthful (normal "high pressure sales" tactics aren't, they create a false sense of urgency when in fact there's no shortage at all), it can be useful if you're trying to book a room at a popular place or during a peak time.
I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should exist.
It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi.
Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.
There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure. Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific seats if you do want a lot more space.
If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were not offered.
And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.
The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats for those who want to sit together.
If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great to not have to pay for that.
It’s not that people don’t know about it
it’s not that people are surprised by it
The point is that we all think it’s bad and that it should change and so we’re pointing it out
It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use) services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling (in part driven by online search), consumers could now decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose that, they paid more than people who didn't use that service.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 has some more information about the evolution of unbundling.
For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption (and probably saves me money in total).
No, you think it's bad. I may despise Spirit and Frontier and refuse to fly them, but I also think it's a great thing they exist.
I despise them because the lack of comfort/nickle-and-diming is not worth my time, and I can easily afford to pay more for a better experience. But if I were back being 20 years old and broke, and my body could deal much better with being uncomfortable for a couple hours, I'd love the option to be able to fly on the cheap.
Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some flexibility around staying in a location longer when necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
"Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to move toward the top of that list, and then make the money back by offering extras during the checkout.
Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field, but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge around it.
e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be under a certain weight or pay an additional charge.
Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.
pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the same
But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening. I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a lower price by using airline points as an intermediate currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the cost for flights in points.
A 2-dimensional search is much easier to navigate than a 4-dimensional search. Aggregators have searches based on flexible dates. And they could combine them with Camelizer-style watching of fares to alert people when they get cheaper as well as providing historical averages. But as soon as you start throwing in more variables, it stops being possible to make sense of it all.
But also:
> if there’s 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be priced the same
You could say the same about any product. What if a grocery store applied the same policy when it came to milk? What if Apple charged more for iPhones when a store was running low? What if a gas station charged more based on the level of their storage tanks? You don't think there'd be outrage if we started to see these airline pricing practices seep into the larger market?
It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.
I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other people who need luggage.
(I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they did not seem to care that much.)
Only time I flew Spirit it cost me $40 to get from Orlando to LA and it's hard to beat that price. Compared to likes of RyanAir their personal item size is actually quite generous and my usual weekender backpack fit pretty well. I'm avoiding Spirit since that flight mostly because their operations are less reliable than other carriers but that have nothing to do with extra charges.
It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines once you select a specific flight when it offers you a range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy Basic / Economy Plus options).
Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
And what did you mean by baggage? Carry on or checked? I’ve never seen it show checked baggage fees. Maybe just estimates in small grey text somewhere at most
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When searching for flights, ensure Spirit Airlines is excluded.
Unless there's a massive price difference, just fly Southwest if you have luggage. In over a decade, it's rare that some other airline is a lot cheaper. Most of them are at price parity or more expensive with luggage. In any case, at this point everyone in the US knows you'll get charged for luggage with most airlines and account for it when searching.
Food: Just don't. They give crappy snacks on planes. Just bring a few along with you. Or even buy them at the airport.
Insurance: Go to https://www.insuremytrip.com/ and get it yourself. Ignore whatever airlines offer you.
Seat selection: Don't bother with it too much. Also, nice that Southwest doesn't let you pick seats.
Priority boarding: Why...? I'd rather sit in the airport than in a cramped seat in the plane. And I've had bad experiences where they've turned the air conditioning off in the plane during boarding and I start feeling sick.
Compared to when I was a kid, flying is much cheaper now (inflation adjusted).
Getting carry on room is the only reason this makes sense
The issue is that people don't like this, since it means more of a delay at the destination.
Also some airlines will through gate-check the bag, printing a full barcoded tag tied to your ticket, like all other checked begs. Other airlines, most notably American's regional carriers will instead "valet check" the bag, which means a little red tag is added that is not tied to you in any way, and at the destination they are supposed to separate out those bags, and hand them back on the jetbridge.
This means you will miss any connection that does not exceed the minimum connection time at the airport by a solid 10 minutes. Even worse is what happens if the baggage handler fails to notice the red tag. Then one of 3 things will happen:
1. It will get spit out at baggage claim. (I've had this happen once, albeit on a flight with no possible conections, so the bags skipped the sorting step and went straight to baggage claim.)
2. The bag reaches bag sorting, and because it does not have a proper checked tag with barcode will eventually get spit out for manual processing. An airport employee notices the red "American valet checked" tag, and delivers it to the American baggage office, where you can try to reclaim it with the little stub that you hopefully remembered to remove from the tag.
3. The little red tag got ripped off at some point in the process. If this happens you probably won't get your bag back. If the employee who checks unclaimed bags for identification actually does their job, you might get it back (assuming you have filled out the address card on your luggage), but sadly in practice that almost seems to the the exception instead of the rule.
If you only care about price, Southwest isn't a bad choice. But the cost may be in significantly increased travel time. E.g. if you live in the PNW, start with Alaska first, then try Southwest, because Alaska will probably have better direct flight options.
And seat selection... don't bother with it is fine if you're traveling alone. But if you're going on a family trip, this kind of detail is actually important.
Otherwise generally agree. Definitely bring your own food.
Also, if you do fly Alaska, always take your luggage as a carry-on if is plausible. Don't pay up front, because at the gate they'll offer to check it at no charge when the flight is pretty full.
IIRC, Southwest boards families early enough that they can get seats together, so it's another seat win for them.
And make sure it's smelly, messy, and impossible to dispose of, because if history is any guide you'll get to sit really near me.
I don't exclude them initially, but unless the price difference is massive enough to account for the expected huge luggage fee and then some, I ignore them (or if they have so many flights that they're cluttering the results, then proceed to exclude them from that search).
> Priority boarding: Why...? I'd rather sit in the airport than in a cramped seat in the plane.
Amen. If at all possible, I'd rather be the last person on the plane, especially if I was guaranteed to not have to check a carry-on (or just don't have one).
or get it free through your credit card. Many premium cards offer it as a free benefit.
If yours does, I would still read the fine print and compare with ones on insuremytrip. I picked a random CC and read its benefits, and did not see one involving serious illness - only death, accidents, and things like flight delays.
Edit: Checked again: Apparently mine does provide travel insurance. But as expected, not for serious illness (e.g. stroke that requires medical evacuation - happened to someone I know during travel). Also, it only covers issues related to the mode of travel. So if you're in the Bahamas for 2 weeks, and you get into accident a week in, that is excluded. With insuremytrip plans, the whole duration of stay is covered.
See: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/features-ben...
Too lazy to look up whether Amex provides for problems during the trip (beyond evacuation), as opposed to merely during travel.
I can appreciate this kind of unbundling where I can choose what I want or dont want. Unlike the rental market that has started to "unbundle" with mandatory fees. In my case the mandatory additional fees adds another 12% to the "price".
($250 application fee amortized over a year, $60 credit check amortized over a year, $110 technology package, $31 valet trash, $12 amenity fees, $5 online service fee)
Just like the USA is the only country in the world that doesn't include sales tax on sticker prices (because it makes things seem more expensive)
It could be both reasons, as well.
If you don't feel like flying today, that's fine with them. No change fees. However, sometimes they don't feel like flying either, and you also need to extend them the same courtesy.
Airfare: $0.01
Taxes and fees: $18.97
Total: $18.98
In this case, I searched for a flight to Atlanta - Frontier was $49, Delta was $250. After going through the checkout process, I paid exactly $49 for my Frontier flight. I need to add a checked bag, which it looks like they charge $50 for, but $99 is still << $250.
When I lived out of state, I'd go up to visit family for the weekend with just a laptop and 2 changes of clothing. The dirt cheap budget flight options were amazing.
I appreciate Southwest's philosophy but it isn't immune from trying to squeeze more revenue out of each trip - they just do it differently.
But a fee for lugage is very natural. Handling lugage has a clear cost. It looks natural to unbound it.
"willing to pay for it" is a odd way to phrase this. Of course people need to do all those things, but we are now forced to pay extra for these basics. All of which used to simply be part of the ticket price.
Jetstar is the budget airline where you pay for all these “basics” if you want them.
Qantas is the “premium” brand where all these “basics” are standard.
When people fly Jetstar they have the option of paying sometimes 1/4 of the price by forgoing these options.
When I fly out of my regional airport the Jetstar flights are way more packed than the Qantas flights, and they’re always bigger planes too.
So the choice to forgo “basics” and save money is obviously a very popular one.
Seems like a good idea to me.
All of those things used to be part of the ticket price but now the ticket is cheaper because it doesn't include them.
If someone wants to build a computer and they don't need a graphics card, it's better to give them the option not to get one for less money, or to get one for more money.
If that were true, sure. But I somehow doubt that's true. I don't have any data to verify this (nor do I know how one would get it), but I would expect that the inflation-adjusted cost of a ticket 20 years ago (when you weren't yet getting nickel and dimed for everything) is comparable to what you pay today for just the base price.
The base price listed, but by the time you add all the fees and fees on fees, not so sure they're any cheaper. Last time I flew a few months ago the initial flight price of ~$600 on kayak search became ~$1500 by the time I had the final price 5 minutes of clicking later. I ended up buying the ~$800 flight that became ~$1300 after all the add-on fees.
The real problem is that it makes comparison shopping incredibly difficult, since each airlines packages their dozen fees differently. Years ago I could list all the prices from A to B and pick the best time and price from a single screen and that's that, since every price was the final price. It was so easy.
Now I have to go through each flight option individually going through the whole reservation sequence to finally get a price. It can take many hours, what used to be a simple search. If you've done this I'm sure you know the add-on fees are different for each flight option! I'm sure most people just give up and buy whichever rather than waste the time, which is exactly what the airlines want. I'm obsessive enough that I'll spend the time, but what a waste.
> Imo airfare is the crowning achievement of capitalism
Capitalism works optimally when consumers can be fully informed and comparison shop with high efficiency. The airline pricing these days is pretty much the exact opposite of that, being extremely opaque by design to prevent comparison shopping.
I guess the unbundling of basics is the way the airlines flaunt this law.
I just looked up flights from SFO to EWR on kayak. Cheapest one was $426.
But when I click through to the united site, the fine print says that even for a carryon bag there is a +$25 charge. So even if you don't check any bags (which of course is another extra fee), there is a $25 fee for the carryon. So the real price is $426+$25 at a bare minimum.
But let's be honest, that is a basic economy seat with no knee room for an adult and no checked bag. So unless you are a child traveling for two days, you need to pay extra for both legroom and the checked bag. The bag is another +$70. I don't care to spend the time to go through the whole process to get the final price but clearly it's way more than $426.
If you're comparison shopping, now repeat this hassle for every single flight on the search result. You will (and I do) spend many wasted hours on this infuriating nonsense.
You have to investigate each airlines policies to find out.
For people that don't want to be at the front of the queue, select their seats, eat airline food or use inflight wifi, the fact that some people pay a bit more to do it and subsidise their ticket costs is a bonus. And even some of the really customer hostile ancillary revenue streams like "Printing your boarding pass will be 50 dollars sir" has nothing to do with website dark patterns
How did we ever get by before? I've been flying since 1984 and never paid to select seats until about a year or two ago.
And when I had to book with an agent on the phone, I was able to pick not only aisle or window, but front of cabin, middle, or rear. Also for free.
Let's not normalize bullshit fees that are clearly a money grab. Kinda bizarre how many people are dissing this article and supporting airlines. I'm wondering if that's a Gen Z thing since they're used to paying service fees without realizing there are free alternatives.
Looks like the annual number of airline passengers roughly doubled between 2006 and 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
Then you could check-in by telephone. Then you could check-in online. Then airlines started exposing the ability to select seats prior to check-in. Finally, someone realized this could be a revenue stream and started charging for it.
At this point, British Airways will make you pay to reserve a specific seat before check-in even if you're flying in intercontinental business class unless you have an expensive flexible fare or are a frequent flyer.
But luggage for example: having it was to some extent subsidised by people who didn't/you paid for it whether you wanted it or not, in the bundled price.
It's more a problem of advertising & comparison IMO, I don't mind (quite like) these things being separated out otherwise.
No extra value or improvement is introduced for customers here, quite the opposite.
I mostly don't have a problem with unbundling, except for seat selection. That's just gouging. But it works pretty well because people traveling as a group will suck it up and pay for the privilege of picking seats together.
I'm pretty cheap, but I'm also tall and older. Any flight over 2 hours, I absolutely will pay for comfort.
I just spent probably 8 hours finding a pair of flights somewhat flexibly around Christmas (yes I know but was having trouble firming up plans) and I'm still not sure what final combination/incantation got me to a fare and schedule that was at least within a large ballpark of tolerable if not exactly reasonable.
This felt rather insane and anti-competitive. Each time I changed any variable (including restarting the browser) the price changed and those warnings about number of tickets left would dramatically vary. There is no doubt that that these companies were lying to me. How am I supposed to price compare and we have a competitive market when it's stochastic with high variance? I know airlines claim to work on auctions and economists love auctions, but this wasn't even an auction. This was they knew I was in a bind and just added a dice roll to the price. That's only something a monopoly can do. I don't think this is about being able to select seats, check bags, or buy food.
They're not lying to you, the 'number of seats left' refers to the number of seats available at that price - in the lowest available fare bucket. Not on the plane itself.
What you ran into are called point of sale restrictions. Lower fares are made available to people buying in different markets.
They don't really work on auctions, they charge everyone what they think they'll pay.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
What are the LinkedIn keywords used to identify these roles?
Is it along the lines of “growth hacking?”
There has to be a name for this job and I am just too dumb and naive to know it at the moment.
Help, please.
> For a tech forum it is surprising how many commenters in this thread don’t understand what are “dark patterns”
I think people just don't get it. Maybe because people just aren't thinking about how things couple and the interactions. Maybe because no one wants to be the bad guy so don't think too hard about it? There could be a lot of reasons. Could even be that people are more worried about job security so just deal with it.
I ask this as a simple man who is looking for a job, and who is contemplating words that go on resumes.
Simplest: “increased division’s revenue in a complex and novel way?”
Or, even simpler “implemented dynamic pricing?“
- Performed user studies that led to x% growth in product revenue
I don't think there would be anything that would specifically flag a resume entry as the employee being the one to implement dark patterns, but I'm just guessing here. Because things like dynamic pricing or user studies aren't inherently wrong. Dark patterns are wrong because they're manipulations. The clearest example being raising prices and then discounting them back to the same price. Amazon does this as well as Walmart.
Delta's own website should be accurate though. I think this is actually legally required. If you can take some screenshots and contact customer support I guarantee you someone will get yelled at, and you may get some sort of compensation.
I know this because I was once the person who would get yelled at (not for Delta). If you could include the time and your local timezone, as well as the market (your country or VPN country) that would help out the person who's going to get yelled at.
Just to clarify, I say "yelled at" as a bit of an exaggeration. But these customer reports were always a big deal where I worked. It usually boiled down to a stale cache issue. But because the airline controls the cache and ticket inventory[0], cache invalidation should be perfect, sans a few ms latency.
[0] Kind of... Not really. It's a mess how the systems really work. But they do get messages for each ticket purchase.
I don't trust Delta enough to have any desire to reach out to them.
And that’s not a problem, if you don’t care where specifically you sit. Once check-in opens you’ll be assigned a seat. Including from the inventory that normally requires you pay extra. Without an additional fee.
If you do care where you sit you can elect to pay extra in advance.
A “seat” in the search results is booking passage on the plane. You are looking at optional, complementary advance assignments. Those are taken at the moment.
I hope that clears it up!
I wouldn’t call this a dark pattern - some airlines like Southwest don’t even let you select seats at all! Some airlines require you pay a fee for any and all seats, mostly low-cost carriers. This is just an example of unbundling. If you value a specific seat assignment you can pay for it. If you don’t, no problem, your flight is cheaper.
Both Google and Delta have this in writing: I am paying for a seat I can select. If that's not included in the sale - no problem, don't list it.
I am not against seats being sold unassigned. I am not against charging an additional fee for being able to select a specific seat. And this argument is not about that.
The dark pattern is listing "free seat selection" and "1 seat available" before I choose this flight and agree to continue the booking process, while then changing the value of the product by asking me to pay an additional fee for the seat selection. The seats in the main cabin are available (see screenshots). They are just not available for me to select for free. If Delta knows that there are no selectable seats at this price left on the flight, why do they include that in the listing?
I am really not sure where this disconnect is coming from. I am not arguing against all additional fees, not arguing against seating being assigned at check-in. Just make it clear before I commit to the process, so I don't waste time. This is the definition of a dark pattern.
No they don't, and no you're not lol. You're paying for transportation from the origin to the destination. Not on a specific flight number, not on a specific number of connections, not on a specific mode of travel even. Seat selection in advance is an optional service that may or may not cost money. You're getting a seat. Not a specific seat, not until you go through the selection. Your fare entitles you to free selection subject to inventory.
In fact the contract of carriage actually requires them to get you from the origin to the destination by whatever means is reasonable and appropriate. The CoC actually allows them to substitute your flight for a train or bus if reasonable and appropriate. The way it's written a horse and buggy may work too. United has codeshared along the northeast corridor with Amtrak historically. Even busses. For instance from Ottawa to Montreal Air France had one with a flight number that connected to an onward Paris flight.
That's something I could see someone being upset about, but the definition of 'seat' (once you know, you know forever) feels like a weird hill to die on. The interchangeable use of 'seat' and 'ticket' is an English colloquialism.
Note that Delta considers Comfort Plus a separate cabin not Main Cabin. If there's no Main Cabin seats at check-in they'll upgrade you.
> That's not what the clear explicit agreement between the two parties is in this case.
The explicit agreement is actually to the Contract of Carriage. For instance. [1]
> Delta will exercise reasonable efforts to transport you and your baggage from your origin to your destination with reasonable dispatch, but published schedules, flight times, aircraft types, seat assignments, and similar details reflected in the ticket or Delta’s published schedules are not guaranteed and form no part of this contract. Delta may substitute alternate Carriers or aircraft, change its schedules, delay or cancel flights, change seat assignments, and alter or omit stopping places shown on the ticket as required by its operations in Delta’s sole discretion.
Seat selection forms no part of the Contract of Carriage.
Credit where due to Delta, they even have it in Plain English! Not just legalese.
[1] https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/contract-of-carriage-dgr
How could anyone confuse the words "free seat selection" and "1 left at this price" with anything other than "you are buying whatever, we really don't care and can charge for anything we want regardless of what's written in any listings". Silly me.
Saying that, I think I am starting to get it. My mistake was not looking into the origin and the legal definition of the word "seat" before attempting to book a flight.
But just to make sure I resolve this issue once and for all, could you please help me with a few more legal definitions?
What do these words actually mean: "reservation", "flight", "buy", "payment", "free", "selection", "person", "destination", and "confirmation"? Thanks again!
That's correct. But it's correct in the sense of "technically correct". It's a language-lawyer type of correct that nobody actually expects when communicating in plain English.
Yes, they're not lying to me. They're simply being intentionally and willfully misleading.
When I was 8 and my parents asked, "Have you brushed your teeth?" to which I responded, "Yes." What they're really asking is, "Did you brush _all_ of your teeth?" and not, "Did you brush at least two of your teeth?" I answered that latter question. And I thought I was the smartest person in the world when I did.
If you're response is "well actually..." you need to think if you're providing meaningful feedback that would make the original claim meaningfully different (i.e. you're adding nuance that would shift perspective). Otherwise it comes off as if you didn't hear anything the original person said because you're missing the meat. Technical corrections are fine, but they should come with some indication of hearing the thesis. Let's try
> Well technically they aren't lying to you. It's the number of seats left at that price and that price can vary. So it is misleading but not technically a lie.
But to counter that claim, simply clearing my cache and restarting the browser would result in both the price and number of seats left changing. Not monotonically. Sometimes it'd be a lower price with more seats. I saw all four permutations! Now I'm not someone with all the airline data, but when this happens over the course of a few minutes I'm pretty suspicious of the results. The likelihood of that happening without manipulation seems rather low.
I'm willing to bet a reasonable sum of money that the folks that designed the dark pattern didn't forget how fuzzy language is. In my opinion, the entire spirit of the design of the dark pattern is in fact the complete opposite: to exploit the fact that language is fuzzy in an extremely targeted fashion with the express purpose of extracting as much revenue as is pragmatically possible from the customer.
8yo> “Yes” (last week)
Software Lawyer: we’ve got a code that ought to be well defined and straightforward to interpret, but a bunch of legacy rules have made it impossible to predict what anything really means without studying the system in great depth
Software Doctor: We’re trying usually trying to fix an absurd system ridden mysterious bugs while keeping it running. How it got into the state it is basically impossible to understand, it looks like they’ve just used parts for purposes totally unrelated to their intended use (the spine is totally in the wrong orientation).
Software Engineer: There is a rigid schedule posted on a board somewhere, but we’ve gone totally off the rails and have no chance of hitting any of those timelines.
Is it any more of a deception than someone who comes into a store with a coupon getting 10% off, while you, without a coupon pays full price? Or any more of a deception than Target charging higher prices at outlets in SF and NY than they do in Texas? Or not telling you how many more of an item is around back?
...which is a lie. If the tickets stop selling the price will drop. If there's a signal indicating a future spike in demand they will jack up the price irrespective of sales.
Its not as cut and dried as you're making it out to be.
It is accurate at the time presented. You can buy N seats for $X each, before the next seat is more expensive. That's all you can really ask.
It was only after the rather recent invention of the price tag that consumers themselves were commodified which always involves a level of abstraction and smoothing over of differences, in this case, by price.
Make no mistake, the reason it feels deceptive is that "Bargaining is always adversarial."[1] When one's economic milieu is the egalitarianism of being equal before price, of course bargaining feels deceptive, slimy, and wrong.
1. Bill Sanders, Frank Mobus, Creative Conflict: A Practical Guide for Business Negotiators, Harvard Business Press,2021
One of those ways of communicating is setting your location via VPN. This is just what it feels like to haggle with a non-human system. Would that we weren't required to set aside our own humanity to do this, but this is haggling for a more inhuman age.
You need to break up the cartel model so that (e.g.) Delta has real competition for routes to Atlanta. If I look at nonstop flights from LAX to Atlanta for a random day (Apr 1, 2024) your options are: 1 American flight, 1 Alaska flight, 3 Spirit flights (way more expensive) or a Delta flight just about any time you want to travel. That's not "too much competition selling a commodity product" - it's what I would expect from cartel pricing. There is a thin veneer of competition, but Delta owns that route - 90%+ of traffic is going to fly Delta.
I will say I was amazed by how few options I had to get from JFK to Denver and the price was insane relative to a transatlantic flight, so perhaps the market is structured differently.
AA has also treated me like shit too many times. I got caught in that pileup delay post CVPR 2022 which resulted in several delays and they would not give me a voucher or hotel. I spent 36 hrs in an airport for them to just say "glad to hear you found a flight. Looks like we resolved your problem."
To make it clear I personally have nothing against both approaches - by being on both sides of transaction at times.
She always asks me to buy tickets for her, while feeling very insecure about it. Of course I'm happy to help, but it's hard to convince her that it's not her fault, and the predatory companies are purposefully building these websites like that to trick people into overspending.
When booking from first-party airline websites, I rarely have issues with unexpected prices popping up. Each "add-on" is clearly delineated.
The rise of even lower pricing tiers like Basic Economy on United also have their benefits (and severe restrictions) spelled out throughout the booking process.
The final price could be representative of what you've chosen, but the whole process creates massive anxiety over forgetting to deselect something somewhere and paying for a completely useless to you option.
I wanted to take the time to figure out how much value I would get out of each add on. It looked like it would be cheaper to get an add-on in a particular way.
The fuckers set a timeout to the site that’s so low that it was just enough time to click through to buy but not enough time to figure out the value. This could be a difference of about 100-200CAD.
The airline also had us sitting on the tarmac long enough for my kid to finish a graphical novel. I am guessing they didn’t want to cough up penalty fees to the destination airport for arriving out of a given landing time slot.
The experience was like going over to a stingy relatives’ house where they keep the thermostat at 40° in the winter and reuse Saran Wrap between different dishes in the fridge.
It was worth the few thousand in difference, however our flights all left on time and we had no delays, so I might be singing a different tune if we had sat and waiting long. One thing I wish I knew is that they charge for everything, including water and coffee.
It's not like they hide the fact they are a discount airline and you need to accept there will be inconveniences for such discounted prices.
The poor neighbourhood grocery store doesn’t act like I’m a mark. They respect their customer base and provide what they can.
Not including taxes and fees in the listed price is detrimental to consumers.
Before that it was much more like hotels where you're not shown the final price until the last step.
That's a great question! The reason many of us are upset. Because it shouldn't, but it does. Not always, but it does. Now this is black box probing so may be another factor, but the prices do swing quickly.
You may be witnessing:
* An ota changing their markups (which immediately asks the question "why are you paying the markup")
* Differing currency conversions and fares if you're changing the country you're issuing from (but this will reset itself once you actually try to pay)
* Fare class availability (somebody might have just bought the last ticket at that price)
If what you are claiming is true, there'd be far more evidence for it, and ITA Matrix (and hell, OTAs) wouldn't exist as a product. Given how well this is documented, it almost seems like you're disingenuously trying to sell VPN products (especially with your name-drop of a specific product)
And I'm just trying to say what I've observed. I'm explicitly saying that this is black box probing. I'm not sure these are the causal variables making the changes but they seem to correlate. I've said there are other effects than VPN too, like clearing cache and changing browsers. It is definitely a weird feeling to open a page in multiple browsers and see different prices. You're right, I do not know what's going on but I'm not lying nor am I alone in seeing these things.
My understanding is that on most airlines, for a given route and fare class, you should expect a consistent price. Fare class is determined by stock available and a few extra inputs like trip length.
It was a nice video and I learned some things but I'm not sure how its contents are relevant to the conversation. Doesn't prove or disprove anything. Well... it does demonstrate some ways airlines are anti-competitive but that's not what's being talked about here
I was using Google flights to compare and they all advertise the really low price, for lowest tier economy. Then yeah clicking through each one to figure out what the final price, getting hit with insurance upgrades, are you sure you don't want economy+ or w/e upgrades on each page.
The fee names seemed insane. There was a 10 dollar 9/11 fee? Wtf is that?
The prices are changing like everyday? Extra unessary pressure to buy. Why can't we just have consistent pricing, instead of taking advantage of people trying to fly when it's convientent.
The whole experience used to be be simpler I think. Just compare and buy and show up.
If the plane is totally full you'll be out of luck, but if there's space then the gate agents will happily reassign you.
I find we usually get assigned seats next to each other anyway unless the plane is completely checked in full for aisles and windows even without asking.
I do that now sometimes, but even lately some airlines charge more for the aisle and window seat.
1. It's included in the price you see on Google Flights.
2. Every airline pays it.
3. It's the cost of the TSA reach-*** that you do when going through security.
4. If you don't like it, talk to the airport, or your congresscritter. The airline has no control over it.
Never in my life have I been in a position of getting to the end of booking a flight and saying "meh, I don't really need to go there anyway."
I think travel is so discretionary they have to keep prices as low as possible or people decide not to fly. Low margins and tough competition.
> Airlines will make record $118B as extra fees with website dark patterns
would be more correct.
I've gone back to calling our travel agency because the online system can't distinguish between Economy, Economy Basic, and Economy Plus(tm).
https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Revenu...
To me these fees are kind of... tricky.
Singapore airlines support operates exactly by this rule, likely other airlines as well.
I set up a flight for my Dad, on American Airlines. And requested the golf cart to get him from gate to gate.
Not 30 minutes later, I got a call, "An emergency notice about your flight."
They were trying to sell Dad some "life alert" type thing, claiming it was really important to have one while flying. For the low low cost of like $350 and a $20 a month subscription.
Worse, once they realized I wasn't an old old man and they kept saying, "Please put your father on the line..." I told them they could call him at (my number) ### ### ####, and they called right away and were like, "You should do this for your son, think about how stressful it would be for him if you had and accident."
So freakin' shady.
If you have elderly relatives, consider helping them book tickets -- and flying with them. And for giggles, put your own phone number down and see all the spam ads. American Airlines clearly sold my Dad's contact info... along with his "request for a golf cart" to this scammer sales company.
I think the bigger racket is loyalty programs, which are anti-competitive and give people a personal kickback for spending company money. It's not much different than a bribe.
You want the product, the sales guy wants to upsell you and increase his profit margin (corresponding to sales commission). Nobody likes to be sold at like this, but many companies are perfectly happy being represented by such sleazebag salesmanship.
Hard to justify legislation for it because it's all "extras" but man do they make it hard to "play the game".
Whenever they lower the bar, they look for ways to lower it even further.
(The bags-under-seat needs clamping down on. It's gone too far. I've seen people with bags so big they had to rest their feet on top of it. It's an obvious safety issue but obviously for profit reasons the staff are told to turn a blind eye. The cabin crew would have to be literally blind to truthfully claim they didn't notice it)
(Anecdote from recent domestic US travels, your mileage may vary, etc etc)
I later found out that shipping my stuff was cheaper that checking in a bag..
All this, despite the fact that the same ticket with luggage today, adjusted for inflation, is significantly cheaper than it was 20, 40, 60 years ago etc.
It wasn't a great experience. They charge arm and a leg to upgrade.
My best airlines has been Alaska Airlines. If you have the card, 1st bag free, complimentary drinks, seat selection, reasonable prices.
On a return flight between Luton and Budapest, sometimes budget airline will ask for £40 EACH WAY for that small 10kg bag, which I find absurd
I understand supply demand etc, just noticing that what you get seems to be smaller and smaller each year
The carry-on fee is the latest outrageous charge.
It's a "premium" option now because airlines realised people value that their luggage is less likely to be lost and less time waiting at the airport. I bet in a way they absolutely loved the baggage handler meltdown - it's left a scar in people's minds.
Plus a price for checked baggage was set, and luggage is luggage, so the price is now equalised/approaching equalisation
Ryanair/Wizzair/Easyjet will charge your for that space for your backpack under your seat soon too, mark my words
A more honest take is that now we can pay for what we want, instead of just paying for everything and then only using some of them.
From airlines to ticket sellers, companies fight U.S. to keep junk fees
I have to reserve my work flights through the work travel app, so of course the airlines know I am on business travel and who I work for. When I select an economy fare, I've noticed when I am finally assigned a seat at the airport, it's usually at the goddamned back of the plane. Most other seat assignments are paid upgrades, even within the same class of tickets. Yes, you can upgrade from economy to economy.
Another thing I have noticed is that after takeoff, they now care where you sit. Probably related to the possibility of upgrading within economy. You can't just move over to another open seat within your ticket class - but they used to not care about this at all.
If the plane is empty enough that you can move seats, it's often a weight thing on why they don't want people moving around. Otherwise, I've never had an issue moving or swapping seats with people. Then again, almost every flight is full nowadays.
Some options may say "contact your travel agent".
(At least with several European airlines I'm familiar with. YMMV.)
Giving people crap seats to incentivize them to upgrade. Especially if they are on work travel. That is my theory.
Thanks downvoters!