Really cheap airline tickets

Loss leader - Wikipedia

The way I see it, airlines make their moolah hauling cargo and biz travelers, whereas we touristas do not fly regularly enough to warrant special programmes, fees and perks. Therefore, the "oops" prices that are eventually honoured (spelled incorrectly in honour of the folks who drive on the wrong side of the road....) and their fire-sale-price counterparts are probably more about generating clicks and putting butts in seats that would otherwise be empty than anything else.

BA's refusal to honor 2,000 tickets may be manifestation of another plot twist:
"There's no such thing as bad publicity."

We've seen airlines here in the US drag passengers off of planes kicking and screaming, kill pooches, flout schedules, and treat passengers like fragile and unwelcome cargo - AFTER over-charging them for everything from water to bags to peanuts....and AFTER going through a TSA process that may be best described as "inconvenient."
These carriers.....are all publically owned and federally regulated so one supposes that they would be brutally punished in the crucible of Wall Street and by a business hostile legislature-----right???

Wrong.
Profits are up and stocks continue to climb faster than baggage fees.....so....who knows?

 

When a real error is involved, 'allowing them to stand' is really just a marketing choice, not a legal requirement. The later comes into play when seller deceit is involved, such as ticket scalpers who sell online at one price, then cancel before delivery when they discover an unexpected demand that supports much higher prices.

Demand pricing.

I grew up in a rural community with some ingrained concept of 'fair price', loosely connected to actual cost of production. So it was a bit of a shock to get out into the larger world where that mostly didn't exist, pricing was a more capitalistic 'whatever the customers will pay' system, disconnected from actual cost of service. Add in a system where most customers are disconnected from the actual purchase and pricing, and we get American health care system, the costliest on the planet.

 

They weren't legally obliged to provide the flights (which is odd, as companies are usually legally obliged to provide things at advertised cost in most other industries, but airlines are weird), but failing to do so was a huge PR mistake. They should have just worn the cost and got some of the passengers to do promo videos.

On one recent trip to Beijing, I had to get a taxi to the airport [EDIT: for clarity, Sydney Airport] and back (normally I can get a lift). The taxi cost A$70 each way, so it was A$140 (US$104) for the 44km round trip. The flight (Sydney-Guangzhou-Beijing and back, 18,763km round trip) cost A$280 (US$208).

 

My expensive taxis were in Australia. From Beijing airport, I could get a taxi to Tianjin for that price.

The Beijing Airport Subway is great, depending on where you're going - if you have to change to the normal subway and change lines a couple of times, it can involve far too many stairs when you're carrying a big bag. For travel between the airport and Dongzhimen or anywhere on Line 2, it's brilliant.

Sydney has a brutally expensive (A$17 / US$13ish) slow, dirty, irregular train from the airport for the 10km to the city centre.

A taxi from Beijing airport to the city centre costs around RMB 85 (US$13), so if there's more than one of you, or you have heavy bags, or if (as I often do) you arrive after midnight, it's not a bad option.

 

Yes indeed. The queue is never what they claim it is anyway - the worst airport taxi queue I've experienced recently was about ten minutes. There are longer taxi queues at railway stations, but never enough to justify the fourfold increase in price (if you're lucky) that you'll get if you accept a ride from one of those people who approaches you.

 

They do. But in most Chinese cities, taxis are cheap, and drivers are friendly and helpful and know where they're going. (The exception would be maroon taxis with a X on the licence plate in Shanghai - any other Shanghai taxi is fine, but not those ones, which are privately operated and are driven by recent arrivals who don't know their way around the city.)

 

I'd definitely consider HK separate - it's so much richer than the rest of China that it really should be viewed as a different thing in all economic matters.

 

Anyway, back to the original topic.....

We're paying for a friend to fly from Auckland to Sydney in a couple of weeks to visit her parents (she is not terribly well off). Her return flight from Auckland to Sydney and back (3 hours each way) costs more that flight from Sydney to Beijing and back (14 hours of actual flying time each way). So it's not just US short-haul flights that are disproportionately expensive.

A couple of years ago, we managed US$550 for Sydney-London return. This year, it was a marginally-dearer US$750, but that was because we chose a good airline with interesting stopovers. Long-haul travel really is extraordinarily cheap.

 

Preface: I travel quite frequently for leisure and follow lots of various travel/transportation blogs/articles, a.k.a. AVGeek

These tickets were "error fares". Sometimes it is a manual human error typing in prices. An airline can cancel an error fare at any time, even as you're checking into the flight at the airport with bags packed. ALWAYS have a Plan-B with an error fare.

Almost all the airlines use the same types of pricing systems. A direct flight costs more than a connection in lots of cases even if it costs the airline more. The example I use most often is COS->DEN->YYZ vs. DEN->YYZ. COS to YYZ with a stopover in Denver is $405 one way. The flight from Denver to Toronto, the exact same flight in the connection is $1204. It's ridiculous price gouging for no reason. Same reason why redeeming points on these airlines is based on regions and the same "how many points can we screw people out of". The same business class redemption from Denver to Narita direct can cost 35k points if you book certain ways or 145k points a different way. Same exact ticket, same exact flight, same non-allowances and non-award winning, etc.

This is one of the many reasons why I like to fly WN, Southwest. They basically charge by the mile. For dollars, direct is cheaper than connecting. For point redemptions it is a direct 76-78 points per dollar. That simple. Doesn't matter which fare, which route, which time of day or day, it is a direct unwavering correlation.

I don't understand the moaning and complaining about flying today. It can be simple and effortless if you know what you're doing. Our average time from parking to being at the gate is about 15 minutes which includes a 3-4 minute train ride inside the secure side. This is at the 18th business airport in the world, with just over 61 million passengers per year.

 

Considering the higher cost of local flights vs international, the cost of fuel is a major factor. As in a car, cruising in a plane doesn't burn much fuel. It is the take off that really sucks down the diesel, and that fuel use is the same regardless of the flight length. A short flight has a shorter distance over which to recoupe that cost.

 

Huh? It never takes more fuel for a short trip than for a long trip.

It is true that the initial take-off and climb-out is most costly for fuel, but ...

... this part is not true. Compared to cars, aircraft have a much higher fraction of their total weight in fuel, and long distance trips require a much heavier fuel load. And that extra weight costs a higher fuel burn rate for both take-off / climbing and for initial cruising. For any given commercial aircraft model, the best overall fuel-per-mile figures are for mid-length trips, not for those heavier long range trips.

 

Which leaves the reason for cheaper international flight tickets being that they want to fill as many seats as possible.

 

Some international tickets are subsidized by governments to stimulate tourism.

The thing I want the most from the air travel industry is a search engine that lets me set my seating preferences. I really don't mind paying more for a good seat, I just want to banish all the inadequate-pitch seat inventory from my search results. Better still if it lets me declare whether I'm checking bags or not, planning to eat a meal, planning to use the wifi etc and computes the net total charge and compresses the process into a single transaction.

It's a pain in the butt to look up the schedule, then figure out which aircraft type, then get the seat chart, then make sure the airline doesn't have multiple versions of that plane with different layouts etc etc.

It's a bigger pain in the butt to wind up in a lousy seat.

 

If you show up at the airport without an assigned seat, you are not likely to get the good ones. Everyone has their own wish lists, but when I am flying a pre-assigned airline, I also check the flight routes, the aircraft, the interior version, and pick my seats. I have many times changed my flight plans to route through another airport or add a connection so that the "main" leg of the flight would be on what I want where I want. Since the A380 doesn't land at my home airport I fly to one that accepts it usually on a separate WN flight domestically.

I'd wager most people, the non-frequent travelers, just buy the cheapest ticket they can find. Then act shocked and outraged when they have to pay for a bag, pay for a seat, pay for a pop on the plane, etc. And then are shocked again when that flight is delayed or cancelled because they are actually flying on a crummy regional plane, or have to swap planes and people lost their seats, etc. Doesn't seem to matter that all the information exists for all to see, people don't bother. They want to yell at the counter staff.