On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 12:03:49PM -0700, Tom C wrote: > > I have to disagree with that analysis, in part. Of course people want > things at the cheapest price point, but they also realize that prices > do go up. What people don't want to do is pay an EXTRA fee for > something that for the last 60 years appeared to be FREE. The smart > thing for the airlines to have done is to increase ticket prices by > $10/$20 for every single passenger, a hidden luggage fee. Prices go up > from time-to-time anyway.
Unfortunately that aproach doesn't work of routes with more than one choice of airline. Easy consumer access to sites such as Travelocity or Expedia lets potential customers see the price for each carrier. As soon as one airline finds a way to lower the "base price" for a route by any means (usually by dropping some basic amenity), the other airlines all seem to respond with lower prices in a very short time - something they would not need to do if customers were prepared to pay extra for the amenity in question. But the single biggest factor that seems to determine how well an airline does in selling seats is the price it charges for each seat - price trumps everything else. This all gets complicated by the variable pricing strategy used to sell airline tickets - the airline's goal is to fill all the seats at the highest price for each seat, so the price will go up as the plane gets fuller, and down if there are too many empty seats left. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
