Tag Archives for airfare.
A 239-mile Arctic hop in coach costs nearly $4,000 roundtrip—which can be more than a lie-flat seat from New York to London. Here’s why.
American Airlines, United and Delta all now charge more on some routes when a traveling is flying on their own than when they’re booking for two or more passengers – at least on some routes. But there may be a simple way around it.
The goal of any pricing strategy is to grow net revenue. That could mean charging a customer more. But it’s too easy to avoid higher AI fares. The real win is that AI can help airlines offer more low fares to more people without cannibalizing high fare revenue.
Twenty percent of Delta Air Lines airfares will be priced by AI by the end of the year, working to figure out how much each individual customer is willing to pay them.
When the ‘solo traveler surcharge’ news was first broken by Thrifty Traveler, Delta and United pulled these fares from the market. American – which by all accounts was first to implement this idea – pulled only some of their fares. However, they’ve largely returned.
Airlines were embarrassed over a pricing strategy to charge passengers traveling alone more than passengers traveling together. When called out on it, they quickly ended the practice.
According to data from Cirium, the price of U.S. domestic airfares are up 9% versus 2019, while inflation is up 19%. That means tickets are cheaper in real terms.
U.S. airlines are lobbying against Chinese airlines’ restoration of pre-COVID flights to the U.S., hindered by Russian airspace restrictions and a complex web of political and economic factors, leading to strategic route squatting and financial losses amidst a slow restoration of flights between the two countries.
For years United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has argued that there’s an historical relationship between airfares and GDP. Fares have been lower than they have been in the past, and so they’re likely to snap back. In fact, five years ago, he was essentially arguing that airfares should double based on this natural relationship.
Fares aren’t usually cheaper when you book roundtrip the way they used to be. And, outside of basic economy fares, there usually aren’t change fees anymore – so buying one way tickets won’t ‘double the change fees’ if you have to cancel a trip the way that they used to. So much of the time you can take advantage of the flexibility that separate tickets offered.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
