How to Beat High Airfares (2011)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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
3X : method to eliminate this additional cost by adding an extra leg to the trip (which is then not taken).
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.
How good is your fine-enforcement rate against individuals?
For a detailed explanation of airline ticket pricing, take a look at this ITA presentation:
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.c...
No. That is not cheating.
The airlines offer something for sale and I buy it. If buying a third ticket makes my entire trip cheaper - it would be illogical for me not to buy it. And whether or not I use it is entirely up to me.
The problem is the airlines are using inefficient and illogical pricing - for a whole host of reasons including incompetency and unwillingness to adapt to a changing marketplace.
> to keep flying some-what affordable to everyone.
Saying this keeps flying affordable for all is a "feel-good" argument - it has no substance.
They can state whatever conditions they want - that doesn't mean anyone has to follow them, they are legal, they are enforceable, or they can do anything about them.
Moreover, what if I have a three-leg trip and after the second flight learn that my sister who happens to live in city #2 is in the hospital with a 50% chance to live? I'm not taking that third flight, I'm going straight to the hospital and will consider myself lucky I ended up in that city.
There are far to many extenuating circumstances that an airline could not possibly be aware to actually have this policy.
Please read the presentation I linked to before asserting that the pricing is "illogical" and a result of "incompetency".
Through the whole creation of this system, and whatever steps it went through to end up being this complex, did nobody ever say "Guys, this is all just too freakin' complex. Why don't we simplify it so that we don't need a bunch of geniuses to figure out a way for a person to buy a ticket on one of our flights?"
I really need to find that source.
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.)
This precludes everyone who has to check bags and everyone who is risk adverse.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-fo...
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.
They do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_bankruptcies_in_the_Uni...
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.
Once upon a time I stumbled upon the ITA slides[0] and the complexity involved with fares and routes pretty much blew my mind.
[0] - https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.itasoftware.c...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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)
Better (and less dodgy) advice would be to follow these websites:
http://www.theflightdeal.com/ (my current favorite)
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.
I've used it many times, usually saving around 50% on flights. I never check bags anyway, so it works out well.
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).
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...
So you can either get a good deal by booking in advance, or by breaking a cheaper, longer journey - but not both.
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
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.)
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.
Thank you Eastern Airlines.
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).