I've long thought that if airlines simply sold seats based upon what it REALLY cost them to fly, instead of giving $100 flights cross-country and charging somestimes an additional $300/$400 to fly the last 150 mile leg of a trip, they'd be better off.
On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 12:51 PM, John Francis <jo...@panix.com> wrote: > 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. > -- 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.
