[HN Gopher] Airlines will make $118B in extra fees
___________________________________________________________________
Airlines will make $118B in extra fees
Author : thunderbong
Score : 324 points
Date : 2023-11-20 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| justrealist wrote:
| It's bad but it's also dishonest to frame it as net-plus revenue.
| It would be mostly baked into a ticket price if it wasn't an
| extra fee. To some extent it leads to a less competitive market,
| and is genuine revenue, but I think it's basically impossible
| that it's $118B worth. People are not dumb, they mostly know when
| they have to pay for an extra bag.
|
| > Airlines will make record $118B _as_ extra fees with website
| dark patterns
|
| would be more correct.
| yardie wrote:
| Passengers aren't paying for an extra bag these days. They are
| paying for every bag, carry-on or checked. They care creating
| new classes even lower than economy. And this is causing
| problems with booking systems like Concur. I fly a few times a
| year for work and I'm obviously not sophisticated enough for
| these edge cases.
|
| I've gone back to calling our travel agency because the online
| system can't distinguish between Economy, Economy Basic, and
| Economy Plus(tm).
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I used Concur for years flying domestically in the US. Your
| organization can create rules and filters that are
| transparent to you that shouldn't be a problem.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Pretty much a BS clickbait headline that doesn't comport with the
| facts in the article:
|
| > Across the industry, revenue from what's known as ancillary
| sales--fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food,
| to name a few--will reach a record $117.9 billion in 2023
|
| Yes, airlines have done a ton of "unbundling", but lots and lots
| of people want to select their seats, check their bags, buy food,
| etc. and are willing to pay for it, regardless of website design.
| I'm not arguing that airline websites don't use dark patterns,
| just that it's ridiculously insane to attribute all ancillary
| revenue to that.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The dark pattern part comes in with how it's impossible to know
| if or when any of that stuff is actually included in the ticket
| price, letting airlines like Spirit list 'ultra-low' prices
| that end up the same or more as other tickets once you actually
| include the basics like 'having luggage' or 'tall people
| getting enough legroom to physically fit into the seat'.
| toymin wrote:
| They still should be way cheaper if you don't care about the
| seats and/or only have hand luggage
| tyfon wrote:
| I wish they would enforce the "hand luggage" size a bit on
| entry to the plane, last time I flew around 2017 it was a
| complete shit show in regards to the overhead storage
| compartments.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| They do, or at least when I last flew they were charging
| people who had carryon bags that would not go beneath the
| seat.
|
| (I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they
| did not seem to care that much.)
| tomschwiha wrote:
| I guess it depends on how full a flight is. A empty one
| they don't really care - a full one they care more. But
| also if its a cheap or "premium" airline.
| matwood wrote:
| The budget airlines are pretty strict on this, but the
| regulars not so much.
| fasthands9 wrote:
| I feel like this is different than a hotel 'resort fee',
| which you have no way to decline.
|
| I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I
| only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any
| route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that
| an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who
| doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should
| exist.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I think it's probably a fair bit more.
|
| It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short
| business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The
| cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of
| walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi.
|
| Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.
| creer wrote:
| For my last flights, all the fees WERE disclosed well in
| advance. These airlines WANTED to sell these options and were
| marketing them diligently to the point where you had to fight
| these unbundled options with a stick.
|
| There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result
| - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure.
| Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have
| to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific
| seats if you do want a lot more space.
|
| If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were
| not offered.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Yep, I'm hella tall, I want to know up front I can pay to
| reserve a seat with more legroom.
|
| And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best
| value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class
| seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.
| tempsy wrote:
| ironically airfares are one of the most transparently priced
| services in the whole country because Obama passed a law that
| forced them to show the final price with fees and taxes
| included in the list price when searching
|
| pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the
| same
| thehappypm wrote:
| Gasoline?
| tempsy wrote:
| "Pretty much" implying there are exceptions, yes, but
| it's not the norm in the US for list prices to be
| inclusive of all fees and taxes.
| vikingerik wrote:
| The hidden motivation there is that the government's rule
| benefits the government. It's easier for them to raise
| their taxes and fees, by hiding their portion in the total
| price where they won't get blamed. (You can find the
| breakdown if you look for it, but who ever bothers.)
| curun1r wrote:
| They're transparent in the sense that they tell you the
| cost and it's the same when you checkout 5 minutes later.
|
| But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares
| change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting
| the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date
| of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to
| find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening.
| I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of
| airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by
| significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a
| lower price by using airline points as an intermediate
| currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the
| cost for flights in points.
| tempsy wrote:
| not sure what you think should happen. there's a limited
| number of seats per flight. if there's 10 available seats
| left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be
| priced the same
| curun1r wrote:
| Some the variables should be illegal, though. A seat
| should cost the same whether I'm buying it from my
| computer in California or Lima, Peru. And the kind of
| travel hacking that allows someone to purchase 100k
| points to buy a seat using points for less than it would
| cost to purchase the same seat with cash should also be
| regulated away.
|
| A 2-dimensional search is much easier to navigate than a
| 4-dimensional search. Aggregators have searches based on
| flexible dates. And they could combine them with
| Camelizer-style watching of fares to alert people when
| they get cheaper as well as providing historical
| averages. But as soon as you start throwing in more
| variables, it stops being possible to make sense of it
| all.
|
| But also:
|
| > if there's 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly
| booked why should the last ones be priced the same
|
| You could say the same about any product. What if a
| grocery store applied the same policy when it came to
| milk? What if Apple charged more for iPhones when a store
| was running low? What if a gas station charged more based
| on the level of their storage tanks? You don't think
| there'd be outrage if we started to see these airline
| pricing practices seep into the larger market?
| scatters wrote:
| Is there outrage when a clothes store puts the items they
| haven't been able to shift onto the sales rack? Is there
| outrage when a grocery store puts discount stickers on
| the food that's approaching its sell by date? Dynamic
| pricing is a fact of life in very many sectors.
| brandall10 wrote:
| In the case of Spirit and Frontier, this is literally what
| they're known for. I'd be shocked to meet someone shocked by
| that.
|
| The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because
| it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is
| expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats
| for those who want to sit together.
|
| If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who
| often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great
| to not have to pay for that.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| And the point is that we should not have to live in a
| adversarial world like this.
|
| It's not that people don't know about it
|
| it's not that people are surprised by it
|
| The point is that we all think it's bad and that it should
| change and so we're pointing it out
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| I agree that everything shouldn't be as adversarial, but
| as somebody who's motto for less important/short flights
| has become "Just throw me in the trash," flying Spirit is
| fine by me. There's a segment with additional
| time/flexibility that they appeal to. My concern is when
| companies go too far in misrepresenting things,
| especially things that are actually mandatory, and I'm
| careful because I've come to expect that from most.
|
| Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of
| cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that
| against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some
| flexibility around staying in a location longer when
| necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
| sokoloff wrote:
| You want to travel somewhere and pay as little as
| possible. The airlines want to take you there for as much
| as possible. It's _inherently adversarial_.
|
| It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that
| included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use)
| services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the
| same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose
| seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the
| same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling
| (in part driven by online search), consumers could now
| decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the
| airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose
| that, they paid more than people who didn't use that
| service.
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-0038
| 8-5 has some more information about the evolution of
| unbundling.
|
| For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it
| fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption
| (and probably saves me money in total).
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > The point is that we all think it's bad and that it
| should change and so we're pointing it out
|
| No, you think it's bad. I may despise Spirit and Frontier
| and refuse to fly them, but I also think it's a great
| thing they exist.
|
| I despise them because the lack of comfort/nickle-and-
| diming is not worth my time, and I can easily afford to
| pay more for a better experience. But if I were back
| being 20 years old and broke, and my body could deal much
| better with being uncomfortable for a couple hours, I'd
| love the option to be able to fly on the cheap.
| OoOOo wrote:
| Like the other comment said. There's also a time element.
| Who wants to take four flights, get stuck in an airport,
| and possible lost luggage when Spirit has a direct
| flight.
| pb7 wrote:
| Precisely. You won't catch me dead on a Spirit/Frontier
| flight because I can afford more comfortable/reliable
| options for the length of flight, but I am not the target
| demographic. Having cheap options is good in any
| industry. I fly budget airlines in Europe quite a bit
| because the $ saved per ounce of discomfort ratio is far
| higher and am thankful they exist. One's inability to
| read the conditions of their fare is not a valid reason
| to eliminate the option for everyone else.
| esoterica wrote:
| Since when is it "adversarial" to charge people who
| consume more of the product (more legroom, extra bags)
| more money than people who consume less? That's how all
| businesses work. Is it adversarial for a restaurant to
| charge extra if you order a second entree?
| mkipper wrote:
| This seems like a huge stretch of "dark pattern".
|
| Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling
| seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the
| checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a
| ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google
| Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call
| it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed
| before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about
| all the things you _aren 't_ getting with your ticket.
| nickjj wrote:
| I haven't booked a flight in a while but any situation
| where I don't know the "final" cost of my ticket before I
| start the checkout process is a dark pattern in my book.
|
| I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the
| checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8
| because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me
| it's an extra $100.
|
| That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a
| flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.)
| even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells.
|
| Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before
| entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with
| the price you can use a competitor with better rates.
| There's no contest in how much better of an experience and
| outcome that is for customers.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Not knowing if you paid to choose your seat or baggage at
| the time of checkout is a reading comprehension issue.
|
| There's a valid complaint that they all game what's
| included/excluded at the listing price so they sort
| better in the fare compare websites. But once you go
| through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear
| what you are getting.
| nickjj wrote:
| It's not about reading comprehension or the lack of it.
|
| It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to
| invest time and provide information during the checkout
| process only to find out on a much later step that the
| list price is no longer the price you were given.
|
| You're being lied to about the list price which makes it
| harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are
| preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost
| fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking
| out because you've invested so much time already to get
| to step 6 / 8.
|
| [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Right, I think airlines are a bad example of "dark pattern"
| and "junk fees" because ultimately the customers are the
| problem.
|
| Every airline that has tried the premium model in recent
| decades has failed.
|
| People have decided they've reserved the right to rock
| bottom fares and simultaneous complaints about quality of
| service. Or people have decided flying sucks no matter what
| airline they choose so they simply sort by price.
|
| Either way, dollars vote and this is the outcome.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| I just tried to find a roundtrip flight from SF to LA on
| Google Flights. Spent some time comparing prices,
| different airports, etc. Ended up picking one option,
| click, click, click - I am on the airline's website. More
| clicks and I am able to select the seats: went through
| all available seating - there is nothing available at the
| price that was originally surfaced to me. I can either
| upgrade to Delta Comfort+ for +$60 or to First Class.
|
| Sure, I can go back to Google Flights and repeat the
| process. But I wasted 10 minutes already, and if I had a
| legitimate need to fly to LA I would have most likely
| just upgraded to Comfort+ to save time.
|
| Are you going to blame me - the customer - for this?
| pb7 wrote:
| Can you give me the exact dates and flight times so I can
| validate this?
| hanzmanner wrote:
| Here is the specific Google Flight I selected:
| https://www.google.com/travel/flights/s/yYPhNC6aXX4VP5cj8
|
| Here are the screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo
| pb7 wrote:
| I see, thanks.
|
| On an entirely different note, this feels like an
| exclusively Delta fuck up (and they know, given that they
| built a whole pop up for it). I fly United and American
| extremely frequently and never seen this. I have even
| booked Alaska basic economy that doesn't give you a seat
| and been given a free seat selection. Delta has been
| rapidly going downhill in recent years -- those that nerd
| out on air travel know exactly what I'm talking about.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| I expect these patters from all low-cost airlines, so fly
| Alaska whenever possible.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I used to fly between Portland and SF often and Alaska
| was the only airline that never screwed me.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| That's an issue, and going from kayak to delta for same
| flight leads to same issue.
|
| I wonder if this is some bug/edge case for really close
| in flights? The example flight booking takes off 2 hours
| from now?
|
| Last time I ever tried to book a flight so close the
| online sales funnel was closed due to post-9/11 security
| restrictions. I think 2 hours is about as close as is
| even legal right?
|
| Can you replicate for a flight tomorrow / next week /
| next month?
| hanzmanner wrote:
| Urgency is one of the key motivators for using dark
| patterns. Wouldn't be surprised if Delta defaults to "1
| seat available at this price" for all busy flights within
| X take off time regardless of the availability.
| alwa wrote:
| In my experience this replicates routinely for Delta Main
| Cabin fares for non-elites on leisure/non-corporate
| travel once only "Preferred Seats" are left in the
| economy cabin.
|
| What I think the other carriers do well is detect when
| there aren't non-charged seats available for advance
| selection, and remind you that you can continue without
| paying for a specific seat and still be guaranteed a seat
| on day of departure.
|
| Delta hand out "free preferred seating" as a perk to all
| sorts of categories of traveler though. I wonder if that
| complicates the prospect of offering that kind of
| warning.
| notahacker wrote:
| If it's Google Flights' pricing cache being out of date
| then that's not an airline dark pattern (Its also
| possible there is a website dark pattern designed to make
| an option to pay less by not choosing your seat really
| non-obvious: I've never booked with Delta)
|
| The airline would say it's your fault for getting a quote
| from an aggregator rather than direct from them though
| steveBK123 wrote:
| A low to negative economic Google product that is poorly
| supported, hard to imagine, right?
| hanzmanner wrote:
| It's not. Delta shows me that there is 1 seat available
| at this price.
|
| Here are the screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo
| alwa wrote:
| To be fair, you can still purchase the ticket at the
| advertised price without selecting a specific "preferred"
| seat. They'll give you a seat assignment at checkin or at
| the gate (usually one of those "preferred" ones).
|
| That said, the fact that this situation is unsurprising
| to me is itself probably evidence of the communication
| problem. Google could do a clearer job of qualifying the
| "free seat selection" they falsely promise for that fare,
| and Delta could do a much better job of saying "there are
| only paid seats left, but if you don't want to buy one,
| you'll still get one at the airport." I feel like JetBlue
| used to do a good job with that.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think in his case it's actually a legit website
| bug/issue. If you try to click through without choosing a
| seat it doesn't actually work on this particular sales
| funnel and pops up an error. My suspicion its something
| to do with it being a very close in flight (2 hours to
| takeoff). So you have selected a fare with seat selection
| included, but there are no seats actually left .. maybe
| some cache isn't updating at minute level frequency.
| pxx wrote:
| You don't have to select a seat. Your screenshots
| (specifically the last one) indicate the product you want
| to buy is available at the price you want.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| What product do you think I am buying? A promise that
| they might find a seat for me if I show up at the
| airport?
|
| It puzzles me how many people at HN are so eager to
| defend dark patterns.
|
| If you look at the screenshots with more attention:
|
| 1. Google tells me that the free seat selection is
| included
|
| 2. Delta tells me that if I agree to this price, I will
| be able to reserve the last available seat on the flight
| (for this price)
|
| 3. Once I confirm the price, Delta tells me that I can't
| select the seat, it's not available. I can still buy the
| ticket, but the offer has changed. Sure, since clearly I
| _need_ to get on this flight (booking it last minute) - I
| would rather pay a bit more to make sure I do have a
| seat.
|
| This is what dark patterns are all about. How is that so
| hard to understand?
| pxx wrote:
| Because this isn't a dark pattern??? The alternative is
| you not being able to buy this product, which is much
| worse!
|
| This fare comes with preselection over a limited set of
| seats. There are no more seats available for preselection
| in that set. If seats were available you would have been
| allowed to select them; otherwise, you will be assigned
| one at the gate.
|
| It is very unlikely that you will be involuntarily denied
| boarding, and you can be denied boarding in the event of
| an oversale even if you have an assigned seat.
|
| Note: your fare never indicates that you are buying a
| particular seat. Please read your contract of carriage
| closely. Maybe this part (not the offering of the ticket
| you're complaining about!) is a "dark pattern" (nobody
| reads the contract of carriage) but it's just literally
| how airline tickets have always worked.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| Wow, ok. You think there is nothing wrong with the
| airline telling me that 1 seat is available on one screen
| and then telling me that there are no seats available
| unless I pay more on the next screen? (If I go back to
| the previous screen it still tells me that 1 seat is
| available.)
|
| The alternative to this is that when I compare prices of
| different flights I see the correct full offer for the
| price I want to pay. This flight is not the only
| available flight. I would have chosen a different flight
| on Google Flights if I had known that there are no seats
| available at this price. But now I am 10 minutes into the
| process and just want to be done.
|
| What is a dark pattern by your definition? A literal
| picture of a pattern colored dark gray?
| woobar wrote:
| > airline telling me that 1 seat is available on one
| screen and then telling me that there are no seats
| available unless I pay more on the next screen?
|
| This is a misunderstanding. Airline does not tell that
| you need to pay more. You can click on Continue button
| and complete the purchase. Even the popup you have shared
| tells you exactly this.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| Yes, you are right. When you reserve a "table" at a
| restaurant you are _actually_ not promised chairs. If you
| want to reserve chairs - that's +$20. Don't want to
| reserve chairs? Just show up at the restaurant and there
| _might be_ chairs available.
| woobar wrote:
| This is a great example. When you reserve a table at the
| restaurant they might offer you several seating options
| when they are not busy. But if they are full they will
| get you seated and not ask you for extra money. But you
| may end up next to the toilet.
|
| Try reserving a _specific_ table at the restaurant. An
| hour before the dinner.
| woobar wrote:
| There is no ambiguity there. You will get an economy seat
| or better. If non-premium seats available you will have
| an option to select one for free. If not, they will
| assign a premium economy or a comfort+ seat at the time
| of check-in. If the flight is overbooked having a
| preselected seat does not guarantee you won't be bumped.
|
| This is something I've observed with different airlines.
| Google's line "Free seat selection" doesn't guarantee
| availability of seats to choose from, just that you won't
| be charged for selecting one if available for your fare.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| Delta tells me that there is a seat available at this
| price before I agree to it. After I agree to it it tells
| me that there is no seat available at this price unless I
| pay more.
|
| The agreed upon "seat" in this context includes the
| selection. This is what this specific dark pattern is
| about. They are misrepresenting the value of their
| offering. I want to be able to reserve a seat on my
| flight. Not to reserve a promise that they will assign a
| seat... if available, obviously. If not I can just book
| the next flight and wait for a couple of hours at the
| ariport. Perfect.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Maybe Google Flights is the issue here? I always use
| Kayak.
|
| It shows you with little logos below the price if it
| includes seat selection, carry on and checked baggage.
|
| For a frequent NYC-MIA flight I take I ran a test.
|
| When I clicked through the first random AA price, and
| then the first random Delta price option I saw, it took
| me directly to each airline checkout at the exact price
| listed.
| 1000100_1000101 wrote:
| The dark pattern here is that you don't actually have to
| choose a seat. You can click they disabled-button-colored
| continue button, click through the warning about not
| choosing a seat, and avoid paying for the seat choice
| cost (on each leg there and back).
|
| As a solo traveller, you may not care. As a family you
| really don't want to be seated away from your kids. If
| you don't pick seats, will you get seated together? Who
| knows. Depends on if enough other people who want to pay
| to pick seats leave enough seats together for you... on a
| popular flight, that's doubtful.
|
| So it's not just people choosing to pay for a luxury,
| it's a tax on people who don't know they can skip the
| step, and on families who may know, but can't roll the
| dice.
| bubblethink wrote:
| >People have decided they've reserved the right to rock
| bottom fares and simultaneous complaints about quality of
| service.
|
| That's not really the case. Airline prices are quite
| detached from the quality of service. They are more a
| function of what the airline can get away with in the
| moment (i.e., surge pricing based on demand). If airline
| prices were always $100 for low cost, and $200 for frills
| included, that would be a fine trade. But you will pay
| anywhere from 100-1000 based on demand irrespective of
| frills or no frills.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| You might be looking for a different word here. A dark
| pattern is not fraud or outright lying. These are already
| illegal. Seeing the total price at the end of the
| purchasing process is the legal requirement for a sale.
|
| A classic example of a dark pattern is AirBnB. They (used
| to) show listing prices without all additional fees like
| cleaning, service fees, etc. So users would end up wasting
| a lot of time on finding the right offering to only later
| (yes, _before checkout_ ) realize that the total price is
| actually much higher. Users know how much they end up
| paying, it's not fraud. But this is still a dark pattern.
| mkipper wrote:
| Well, I'd argue that you're looking for a different term,
| but obviously there's no concrete definition here.
|
| I don't think a dark pattern requires any fraud or lying.
| I think the most obvious example is having users opt in
| to something (e.g. sharing private data) by default and
| only offering the option to opt out by navigating some
| convoluted series of menus. You aren't explicitly lying
| to users and telling them they can't opt out, but you're
| going out of your way to make sure the option isn't
| advertised or easily accessible.
|
| In my opinion, there's a gap between that and what
| airlines and AirBnB do. I guess there's an element of
| deception with both, but airlines and AirBnB are just
| waving a nice number in front of your face to drive
| engagement. That doesn't personally meet my threshold,
| but I understand how it might meet yours.
| notahacker wrote:
| For all that Booking.com has lots of _annoying_ patterns
| like telling you how many people looked at a listing and
| that there 's only two rooms (currently) available for
| those dates, I do like the fact the price I first see in
| the ranking is what I pay. Not least because the AirBNB
| fees usually seems to be how much more it costs to book
| with them if they have a listing for the same place.
| czhu12 wrote:
| For what its worth, I often fly from one location to another
| without luggage (going home to visit parents for instance).
| its actually my far my most common mode of flight since I
| visit them 3-4 times a year.
|
| I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other
| people who need luggage.
| skohan wrote:
| Yeah the problem for the consumer is how opaque it is.
| They're all competing to get the lowest ticket price on the
| aggregator price, and then claw back a profit either through
| obtuse language during the checkout process (i.e. insurance
| which is not clear at all about what it covers) or through
| unexpected "extra fees" you end up paying between when you
| get to the airport and when you arrive at your destination.
|
| Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped
| flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay
| some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully
| enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a
| tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight
| to the gate to avoid an extra fee)
|
| Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed
| decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've
| been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably
| going a bad way.
| chx wrote:
| Was but no longer.
|
| Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old
| posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were
| paid to do so.
|
| But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I
| find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely
| clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no
| opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and
| the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant
| will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which
| would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You
| want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only
| sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on
| board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes
| it has a price but again: you get what you pay for.
|
| Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely
| (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs --
| not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But
| then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines
| _together_ can match the network of Ryanair, it 's really
| something else.
| skohan wrote:
| Maybe but they already lost my business for life. You
| only get so many chances and there are plenty of other
| airlines.
| petre wrote:
| Happened with my boss, a tall guy. He has stopped flying
| "low cost" airlines and putting up with their BS dark
| patterns because Lufthansa and other traditional airlines
| have lower prices once you add lugage and leg room anyway.
|
| Ryan Air are borderline decent if you only carry a cabin
| bag and get the "prority" package. You should see Wizz Air.
| They're worse than booking.com and Sixt combined, no flying
| over Ukraine and getting downed by trigger happy
| separatists.
|
| Luckily neither one of those companies had any crashes so
| far, just one Belorussian jorurnalist kidnapped, an engine
| failure and bird strikes. No crazy copilot killing himself
| along with all the passengers in the airplane or getting
| downed by trigger happy separatists while flying over
| Ukraine.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| To be fair I highly doubt any airline confronted by
| Belarusian fighter jets would've responded differently. A
| jetliner is not outrunning or outgunning that.
| arcbyte wrote:
| I hear you, but I fly spirit all the time with no add-ons at
| all. No bags, no seat selection, no wifi, no snacks. I really
| appreciate the low price and select Spirit over my preferred
| airline Southwest often for this use case.
|
| It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed
| those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.
| Angostura wrote:
| Or companies like Easyjet that save a couple of inches of the
| dimensions of (previously fairly standard) carry on luggage,
| so that when you get to the gate you have to fork out PS40 or
| so to carry it on.
| SeenNotHeard wrote:
| It's a lot like SEO optimization and the chicanery that goes
| on there: Airlines know that customers (a) are using ticket
| comparison sites like Kayak and Google Flights, (b) customers
| sort by price, from lowest to highest, and (c) as with
| Internet search results, customers tend to click on links on
| the first page w/o scrolling.
|
| "Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to
| move toward the top of that list, and then make the money
| back by offering extras during the checkout.
|
| Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give
| customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a
| ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to
| the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field,
| but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge
| around it.
| goatforce5 wrote:
| Google Flights will allow you to select how many carry-ons
| and checked bags you have (depending on the route).
|
| e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest
| carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag
| (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a
| mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
| SeenNotHeard wrote:
| Sure, but I've not seen them offer tick boxes for things
| like the ability to choose which seat you're in, or
| complimentary snacks and drinks.
|
| ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its
| flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be
| under a certain weight or pay an additional charge.
|
| Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags
| you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.
| dymk wrote:
| Maybe it's because I use Google Flights, but all of that
| information is front and center. I've never had to dig for
| it.
| switch007 wrote:
| Google Flights does not show checked baggage or non-
| standard seat fees AFAIK
|
| It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines
| once you select a specific flight when it offers you a
| range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy
| Basic / Economy Plus options).
|
| Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
| 1024core wrote:
| > but lots and lots of people want to select their seats. .
| .and are willing to pay for it,
|
| How did we ever get by before? I've been flying since 1984 and
| never paid to select seats until about a year or two ago.
| strictnein wrote:
| You weren't selecting your seat in 1984. You'd show up at the
| airport, the agent at the counter would print your ticket,
| and you would realize with deep horror that you were in seat
| 37-E in the back of a DC10 with its 2-5-2 seating
| arrangement.
| expertentipp wrote:
| At least you're certain no kid will hit the touchscreen of
| the entertainment system in your headrest. Although the
| moment the person in front unfolds their backrest it's what
| the nightmares are made of.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Change it to dc9 and you are describing my first flight.
| 2-3 seating, engines on the wing, feels like you are
| outside of the plane. When I did a changeover to 747 it
| felt like I was in a quiet movie theater.
| pb7 wrote:
| On top of that, prices were also far higher. Air travel has
| gotten cheaper and more accessible over time with the
| _option_ to pay for things you may care about.
| demondemidi wrote:
| I was choosing seats via EasySabre in 1986. Granted, my
| employer paid for a Sabre service via compuserve, but I was
| able to pick my own seat for free.
|
| And when I had to book with an agent on the phone, I was
| able to pick not only aisle or window, but front of cabin,
| middle, or rear. Also for free.
|
| Let's not normalize bullshit fees that are clearly a money
| grab. Kinda bizarre how many people are dissing this
| article and supporting airlines. I'm wondering if that's a
| Gen Z thing since they're used to paying service fees
| without realizing there are free alternatives.
| OJFord wrote:
| Well seat selection _is_ just working out you can charge for
| something that some care about (will pay for) and others don
| 't (won't, largely unharmed).
|
| But luggage for example: having it was to some extent
| subsidised by people who didn't/you paid for it whether you
| wanted it or not, in the bundled price.
|
| It's more a problem of advertising & comparison IMO, I don't
| mind (quite like) these things being separated out otherwise.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Everyone was getting seats allocated at checkin, which was at
| a checkin desk at the airport. If you were lucky, you'd get
| asked if you wanted a window or an aisle.
|
| Then you could check-in by telephone. Then you could check-in
| online. Then airlines started exposing the ability to select
| seats prior to check-in. Finally, someone realized this could
| be a revenue stream and started charging for it.
|
| At this point, British Airways will make you pay to reserve a
| specific seat before check-in even if you're flying in
| intercontinental business class unless you have an expensive
| flexible fare or are a frequent flyer.
| snovymgodym wrote:
| The global middle class has grown and the volume of airline
| traffic passengers has exploded since the mid 1980s.
|
| Looks like the annual number of airline passengers roughly
| doubled between 2006 and 2019:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-
| industry-...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Then you didn't buy a basic economy seat or buy from a second
| tier airline like Spirit or Frontier.
| afavour wrote:
| Never traveled with family?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| When I travel with family, the only way to _get_ seats
| together was to not select seats. Online I 'm presented
| with a map of just middle seats left, but if I wait until
| the gate for my seat there's magically adjacent seats so
| some of them.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to
| name a few .. "unbundling"
|
| I can appreciate this kind of unbundling where I can choose
| what I want or dont want. Unlike the rental market that has
| started to "unbundle" with mandatory fees. In my case the
| mandatory additional fees adds another 12% to the "price".
|
| ($250 application fee amortized over a year, $60 credit check
| amortized over a year, $110 technology package, $31 valet
| trash, $12 amenity fees, $5 online service fee)
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| I agree. Ticketmaster, AirBnB, and other services with
| mandatory fees that are known but not shown until checkout
| should be regulated but it won't happen.
|
| Just like the USA is the only country in the world that
| doesn't include sales tax on sticker prices (because it makes
| things seem more expensive)
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I actually believe hearing the sales tax thing is a
| different issue. I recall hearing some conservative folks
| say tax separate is intended to keep the "sting" in the tax
| so people will be incentivized to protest it and reduce it.
|
| It could be both reasons, as well.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Agreed. I don't run into most of these issues.
|
| When searching for flights, ensure Spirit Airlines is excluded.
|
| Unless there's a massive price difference, just fly Southwest
| if you have luggage. In over a decade, it's rare that some
| other airline is a lot cheaper. Most of them are at price
| parity or more expensive with luggage. In any case, at this
| point everyone in the US knows you'll get charged for luggage
| with most airlines and account for it when searching.
|
| Food: Just don't. They give crappy snacks on planes. Just bring
| a few along with you. Or even buy them at the airport.
|
| Insurance: Go to https://www.insuremytrip.com/ and get it
| yourself. Ignore whatever airlines offer you.
|
| Seat selection: Don't bother with it too much. Also, nice that
| Southwest doesn't let you pick seats.
|
| Priority boarding: Why...? I'd rather sit in the airport than
| in a cramped seat in the plane. And I've had bad experiences
| where they've turned the air conditioning off in the plane
| during boarding and I start feeling sick.
|
| Compared to when I was a kid, flying is _much_ cheaper now
| (inflation adjusted).
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > Priority boarding: Why...?
|
| Getting carry on room is the only reason this makes sense
| ghaff wrote:
| Though that's a pretty good reason. I do have an airline
| card that is decent otherwise and gives me good enough
| boarding priority. I don't bring on a large carryon but I
| almost never check luggage so it's nice to have overhead
| bin space.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I guess. I usually have a small enough one that I can
| squeeze under the seat. Even when I've had larger items
| that need to go overhead, the majority of the times it's
| within one row of where I'm sitting. The ones where I have
| to put it far away are the exception.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The problem is is the narrow-body "commuter" aircraft,
| which often only have enough overhead space for about 3/4
| of all seats. Since most people have a carryon that needs
| overhead space, they often run out, and need to gatecheck
| your carry on.
|
| The issue is that people don't like this, since it means
| more of a delay at the destination.
|
| Also some airlines will through gate-check the bag,
| printing a full barcoded tag tied to your ticket, like
| all other checked begs. Other airlines, most notably
| American's regional carriers will instead "valet check"
| the bag, which means a little red tag is added that is
| not tied to you in any way, and at the destination they
| are supposed to separate out those bags, and hand them
| back on the jetbridge.
|
| This means you _will_ miss any connection that does not
| exceed the minimum connection time at the airport by a
| solid 10 minutes. Even worse is what happens if the
| baggage handler fails to notice the red tag. Then one of
| 3 things will happen:
|
| 1. It will get spit out at baggage claim. (I've had this
| happen once, albeit on a flight with no possible
| conections, so the bags skipped the sorting step and went
| straight to baggage claim.)
|
| 2. The bag reaches bag sorting, and because it does not
| have a proper checked tag with barcode will eventually
| get spit out for manual processing. An airport employee
| notices the red "American valet checked" tag, and
| delivers it to the American baggage office, where you can
| try to reclaim it with the little stub that you hopefully
| remembered to remove from the tag.
|
| 3. The little red tag got ripped off at some point in the
| process. If this happens you probably won't get your bag
| back. If the employee who checks unclaimed bags for
| identification actually does their job, you _might_ get
| it back (assuming you have filled out the address card on
| your luggage), but sadly in practice that almost seems to
| the the exception instead of the rule.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not a bad set of guidelines, but I think a bit more nuance is
| worthwhile.
|
| If you only care about price, Southwest isn't a bad choice.
| But the cost may be in significantly increased travel time.
| E.g. if you live in the PNW, start with Alaska first, then
| try Southwest, because Alaska will probably have better
| direct flight options.
|
| And seat selection... don't bother with it is fine if you're
| traveling alone. But if you're going on a family trip, this
| kind of detail is actually important.
|
| Otherwise generally agree. Definitely bring your own food.
|
| Also, if you do fly Alaska, always take your luggage as a
| carry-on if is plausible. Don't pay up front, because at the
| gate they'll offer to check it at no charge when the flight
| is pretty full.
| swsieber wrote:
| > And seat selection... don't bother with it is fine if
| you're traveling alone. But if you're going on a family
| trip, this kind of detail is actually important.
|
| IIRC, Southwest boards families early enough that they can
| get seats together, so it's another seat win for them.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > Definitely bring your own food.
|
| And make sure it's smelly, messy, and impossible to dispose
| of, because if history is any guide you'll get to sit
| really near me.
| gruez wrote:
| >Insurance: Go to https://www.insuremytrip.com/ and get it
| yourself. Ignore whatever airlines offer you.
|
| or get it free through your credit card. Many premium cards
| offer it as a free benefit.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Good to know. Apparently my one, which is a travel related
| CC with annual fee, doesn't provide this benefit.
|
| If yours does, I would still read the fine print and
| compare with ones on insuremytrip. I picked a random CC and
| read its benefits, and did not see one involving serious
| illness - only death, accidents, and things like flight
| delays.
|
| _Edit_ : Checked again: Apparently mine does provide
| travel insurance. But as expected, not for serious illness
| (e.g. stroke that requires medical evacuation - happened to
| someone I know during travel). Also, it only covers issues
| related to the mode of travel. So if you're in the Bahamas
| for 2 weeks, and you get into accident a week in, that is
| excluded. With insuremytrip plans, the whole duration of
| stay is covered.
| pxx wrote:
| You have to not care about price _at all_ these days to fly
| Southwest. It 's gotten to the point where even if you have a
| companion pass, and the tickets are essentially buy-one-get-
| one free, it's still not worth flying them
| BeetleB wrote:
| Must be something specific to your airport/city? Still one
| of the cheaper ones for me.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, I actually like the unbundling. I'll buy the cheapest
| ticket and then check every couple days for a good upgrade
| price. It also lets me do things like upgrade just the long leg
| of the flight as first class and not bother with paying for the
| shorter leg upgrades.
|
| I'm pretty cheap, but I'm also tall and older. Any flight over
| 2 hours, I absolutely will pay for comfort.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't mind the unbundling so much. I mostly know about that,
| especially given I'm mostly on a single carrier. What's more
| annoying is clicking on a roundtrip fare from $1K or whatever
| and when I get to the return leg (on the date I had already
| chosen) and there's no $1K roundtip fare to be seen.
|
| I just spent probably 8 hours finding a pair of flights
| somewhat flexibly around Christmas (yes I know but was having
| trouble firming up plans) and I'm still not sure what final
| combination/incantation got me to a fare and schedule that was
| at least within a large ballpark of tolerable if not exactly
| reasonable.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah. Whole article feels a bit "Fastcompany makes
| $entireprofit from bullshit clickbait headlines". Some people
| would read the article with an accurate headline!
|
| For people that don't want to be at the front of the queue,
| select their seats, eat airline food or use inflight wifi, the
| fact that some people pay a bit more to do it and subsidise
| their ticket costs is a bonus. And even some of the really
| customer hostile ancillary revenue streams like "Printing your
| boarding pass will be 50 dollars sir" has nothing to do with
| website dark patterns
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc
|
| I mostly don't have a problem with unbundling, except for seat
| selection. That's just gouging. But it works pretty well
| because people traveling as a group will suck it up and pay for
| the privilege of picking seats together.
| chickenWing wrote:
| If you actually read the article you'd know that unbundling is
| not not what it's about. It's about the dark patterns that
| trick or coerce people into purchasing "extras" that they don't
| want, or didn't know they had to pay extra for.
| jjav wrote:
| > lots of people want to select their seats, check their bags,
| buy food, etc. and are willing to pay for it
|
| "willing to pay for it" is a odd way to phrase this. Of course
| people need to do all those things, but we are now forced to
| pay extra for these basics. All of which used to simply be part
| of the ticket price.
| cochne wrote:
| Another way to look at it is that you are now paying less for
| the base ticket which used to include those things. This
| allows consumers more choice in what part of the experience
| they want to pay for.
|
| If someone wants to build a computer and they don't need a
| graphics card, it's better to give them the option not to get
| one for less money, or to get one for more money.
| briffle wrote:
| I'm okay with paying extra for it, but none of the searching
| tools seem to include the price plus a checked bag plus a
| carry on, plus choosing my seat.
|
| You have to investigate each airlines policies to find out.
| dools wrote:
| But hold on: in Australia for example there are two airlines
| run by the same company, Jetstar and Qantas.
|
| Jetstar is the budget airline where you pay for all these
| "basics" if you want them.
|
| Qantas is the "premium" brand where all these "basics" are
| standard.
|
| When people fly Jetstar they have the option of paying
| sometimes 1/4 of the price by forgoing these options.
|
| When I fly out of my regional airport the Jetstar flights are
| way more packed than the Qantas flights, and they're always
| bigger planes too.
|
| So the choice to forgo "basics" and save money is obviously a
| very popular one.
|
| Seems like a good idea to me.
| mattwad wrote:
| It's not "unbundling" they literally just added new costs for
| features that were originally free because they can get away
| with it. So far, I have also found you are now REQUIRED to pay
| for your seats if you want to sit together. Frontier splits me
| and my wife even when there's seats available
| mateo411 wrote:
| I fly Southwest too. I like the flexibility that they
| provide.
|
| If you don't feel like flying today, that's fine with them.
| No change fees. However, sometimes they don't feel like
| flying either, and you also need to extend them the same
| courtesy.
| yuliyp wrote:
| It's interesting you used Frontier as an example. Frontier's
| whole business model is "unbundle everything the law allows."
| This means dirt-cheap fares that alone can't cover their
| costs of running the flights. They need the fees to make the
| whole thing work.
| listenallyall wrote:
| 4 fare types, Early Bird, A-List? Not displaying prices with
| aggregators? Surprisingly-expensive fares quite often?
|
| I appreciate Southwest's philosophy but it isn't immune from
| trying to squeeze more revenue out of each trip - they just
| do it differently.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I understand people been angry for a fee for choosing the
| seats.
|
| But a fee for lugage is very natural. Handling lugage has a
| clear cost. It looks natural to unbound it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I think also one has to distinguish junk fees (which are
| frequently unavoidable, but hidden after the last minute from
| the consumer) from things like buying food. I mean, some
| airlines on some flights include free food. But food has little
| to do with flying itself, and if you don't want to pay, you can
| easily get it on the ground from another place and/or wait for
| 2-3 hours without a meal. It's not an "extra fee", it's buying
| a different product - which yes, can be sold by the airline
| too, but I don't see anything bad in that. Conflating providing
| some optional services with the nefarious practice of junk fees
| is not helping the consumers at all.
| wubrr wrote:
| Selecting seats used to be free for available seats. Now they
| artificially reserve empty seats such that you need to pay for
| them.
|
| No extra value or improvement is introduced for customers here,
| quite the opposite.
| thedaly wrote:
| I think we need legislation that mandates transparency in fees
| across most if not all products.
|
| Not including taxes and fees in the listed price is detrimental
| to consumers.
| acomjean wrote:
| They are trying. Not surprisingly there is pushback from
| airlines (and other businesses..)
|
| https://wapo.st/47cBuSJ
| tempsy wrote:
| Obama passed a law that forced airlines to show the final price
| (fees + taxes) in the list price, so it's been like that for
| many years now.
|
| Before that it was much more like hotels where you're not shown
| the final price until the last step.
| judge2020 wrote:
| How do they estimate taxes? Based on IP until you change your
| address?
| tempsy wrote:
| Taxes are fully determined by departing and arriving
| airports. They don't need your IP.
| godelski wrote:
| Great. Now is the consumer allowed to compare prices in a
| meaningful way? Let's say I visit the site, close my browser,
| clear my cache and cookies, and then navigate to the site
| again. Should the price change?
| tempsy wrote:
| Not sure what you're implying. Why would the price change
| in that situation.
| thedaly wrote:
| Sites used to book travel, ie airfare, hotels, etc, are
| notorious for changing price based on your perceived
| interest. I've noticed this myself when I look at a hotel
| listing multiple times, the price tends to creep up.
| tempsy wrote:
| Hotels maybe, but airfare is not going to change because
| you're in incognito or clear a browser. I rarely see any
| price differences between an Expedia and booking direct.
| If an airline was messing with prices based on something
| with your computer you would be see frequent large
| differences in prices between direct bookings and third
| party bookings, which I've never seen before.
| godelski wrote:
| > Why would the price change in that situation.
|
| That's a great question! The reason many of us are upset.
| Because it shouldn't, but it does. Not always, but it
| does. Now this is black box probing so may be another
| factor, but the prices do swing quickly.
| pxx wrote:
| Stop spreading these lies. This cannot be done on any
| major airline (one large enough to be on a GDS). Airline
| pricing may be complicated but the way fares are
| constructed is public.
|
| You may be witnessing:
|
| * An ota changing their markups (which immediately asks
| the question "why are you paying the markup")
|
| * Differing currency conversions and fares if you're
| changing the country you're issuing from (but this will
| reset itself once you actually try to pay)
|
| * Fare class availability (somebody might have just
| bought the last ticket at that price)
|
| If what you are claiming is true, there'd be far more
| evidence for it, and ITA Matrix (and hell, OTAs) wouldn't
| exist as a product. Given how well this is documented, it
| almost seems like you're disingenuously trying to sell
| VPN products (especially with your name-drop of a
| specific product)
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not aware of these things being well documented but
| I'd appreciate a link.
|
| And I'm just trying to say what I've observed. I'm
| explicitly saying that this is black box probing. I'm not
| sure these are the causal variables making the changes
| but they seem to correlate. I've said there are other
| effects than VPN too, like clearing cache and changing
| browsers. It is definitely a weird feeling to open a page
| in multiple browsers and see different prices. You're
| right, I do not know what's going on but I'm not lying
| nor am I alone in seeing these things.
| esoterica wrote:
| All the major airlines I've used show the prices including
| mandatory fees and taxes up front. The only things not included
| are optional add ons like extra bags.
| tekla wrote:
| Why does this article single out airlines? A majority of web devs
| in FAANG are complicit
| gniv wrote:
| Is there an aggregator that shows these fees when comparing
| prices? Something like the price is $X + $40-80 for the seat +
| $100 for checked bag.
| LordKeren wrote:
| Google Flights lets you select the number of bags and updates
| the displayed flight according
|
| (Anecdote from recent domestic US travels, your mileage may
| vary, etc etc)
| creer wrote:
| And Google Flights shows extra notices that this or that is
| not allowed or included - for each specific flight.
| switch007 wrote:
| [delayed]
| tandr wrote:
| Pretty much all big flights searching sites
| (flights.google.com, Bing, etc) allow to specify that you have
| luggage, and the search results changes (sometimes quite
| drastically) depending on that checkmark.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd note that some airlines don't show up on the aggregators
| (like Southwest).
| switch007 wrote:
| [delayed]
| izacus wrote:
| The problem is that airlines have a financial interest in
| hiding that info from aggregators.
| darknavi wrote:
| You want some dark patterns? Try to suss over fare classes and
| trying to optimize your mileage earnings.
|
| Hard to justify legislation for it because it's all "extras" but
| man do they make it hard to "play the game".
| xattt wrote:
| Since this thread will end up with anecdotes, here's mine with
| Flair Airlines in Canada.
|
| I wanted to take the time to figure out how much value I would
| get out of each add on. It looked like it would be cheaper to get
| an add-on in a particular way.
|
| The fuckers set a timeout to the site that's so low that it was
| just enough time to click through to buy but not enough time to
| figure out the value. This could be a difference of about
| 100-200CAD.
|
| The airline also had us sitting on the tarmac long enough for my
| kid to finish a graphical novel. I am guessing they didn't want
| to cough up penalty fees to the destination airport for arriving
| out of a given landing time slot.
|
| The experience was like going over to a stingy relatives' house
| where they keep the thermostat at 40deg in the winter and reuse
| Saran Wrap between different dishes in the fridge.
| giarc wrote:
| I recently flew Flair and it was a regular experience. I did
| find that the booking process did seem to have some "black
| patterns", mainly that things would be checked off when I had
| indicated I didn't want them previously. For example, we were
| just flying with a single checked bag for a family of 5. The
| first option is to add a checked bag for EVERY passenger and no
| option for just one. Then at other times during the booking
| process, bags would be added and price would change. It was
| only later in the process that I was able to add a single bag.
|
| It was worth the few thousand in difference, however our
| flights all left on time and we had no delays, so I might be
| singing a different tune if we had sat and waiting long. One
| thing I wish I knew is that they charge for everything,
| including water and coffee.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Flair is a discount airline (not WestJet discount, more like
| Spirit Airlines or Frontier or some "ultra low cost carrier", I
| doubt their passenger revenue is more then peanuts a flight, if
| they even make anything at all), it's basically like going to
| the discount grocery store in a poor neighborhood and wondering
| why your $20 brand of parmesan cheese is not available?
|
| It's not like they hide the fact they are a discount airline
| and you need to accept there will be inconveniences for such
| discounted prices.
| xattt wrote:
| > it's basically like going to the discount grocery store in
| a poor neighborhood and wondering why your $20 brand of
| parmesan cheese is not available?
|
| The poor neighbourhood grocery store doesn't act like I'm a
| mark. They respect their customer base and provide what they
| can.
| expertentipp wrote:
| Speaking about Europe. Wizzair virtually disabled search and
| reservations over the web with their paranoid "anti-robot"
| algorithms, and at some point they had this mysterious "service
| fee" appearing randomly but discriminating web browser. At
| Ryanair the reservation workflow is basically one massive dark
| pattern and upselling designed to make you fell bad. Then there
| is fucking booking.com, this site opens randomly and
| unpredictably at various moments while clicking through the
| search and reservation workflows.
| shortcake27 wrote:
| I disagree about Ryanair. Yeah, they try and upsell you like
| crazy, but there aren't any tricks. They warn you to buy bags
| in advance because they will charge more at a later date -
| that's not a trick, that's how they subsidise the ticket price
| for people who plan ahead. And it's not as if they advertise
| the price at PS12 then it triples at checkout. Maybe there's a
| CC processing fee and that's it? Also if you come back to the
| site later, the price is the same unless those seats have been
| sold which they very clearly communicate at the very first step
| (x seats left at this price).
| francisofascii wrote:
| I find airline and concert ticket purchasing to be so exhausting,
| that I simply opt out more than I desire to. You have to wonder
| if airlines and other companies (like StubHub) ever calculate how
| much business they miss from these tactics. We are talking about
| discretionary purchases, after all.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a comedian that I'd really enjoy seeing in person. He's
| only selling tickets via TicketMaster. As a result, I'll wait
| for his next Netflix or Amazon tour special.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I'm with you on that, but people get emotionally invested in
| travel for holidays, weddings, custody, funerals and vacations.
|
| Never in my life have I been in a position of getting to the
| end of booking a flight and saying "meh, I don't really need to
| go there anyway."
| tayo42 wrote:
| Just bought airline tickets the other day and it was such a
| frustrating experience to go through. United has 4 levels of
| economy, it was so tedious to compare luggage fees between them.
| If I want to sit next to my partner it would be an extra 200 off
| the lowest price both of us needed to upgrade... Then to bring a
| carry on.
|
| I was using Google flights to compare and they all advertise the
| really low price, for lowest tier economy. Then yeah clicking
| through each one to figure out what the final price, getting hit
| with insurance upgrades, are you sure you don't want economy+ or
| w/e upgrades on each page.
|
| The fee names seemed insane. There was a 10 dollar 9/11 fee? Wtf
| is that?
|
| The prices are changing like everyday? Extra unessary pressure to
| buy. Why can't we just have consistent pricing, instead of taking
| advantage of people trying to fly when it's convientent.
|
| The whole experience used to be be simpler I think. Just compare
| and buy and show up.
| vkou wrote:
| > There was a 10 dollar 9/11 fee? Wtf is that?
|
| 1. It's included in the price you see on Google Flights.
|
| 2. Every airline pays it.
|
| 3. It's the cost of the TSA reach-*** that you do when going
| through security.
|
| 4. If you don't like it, talk to the airport, or your
| congresscritter. The airline has no control over it.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| As for sitting next to a partner, if you don't absolutely need
| to guarantee it, then you can wait til you get to the airport
| and ask at the gate if they can move you to be beside each
| other.
|
| If the plane is totally full you'll be out of luck, but if
| there's space then the gate agents will happily reassign you.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Similar approach here: we have a lot better things to do with
| 400 after tax dollars than spend them to collapse to zero the
| chance that we'll sit separately in an airliner for a few
| hours. If that happens, we'll enjoy $400 worth of dinners out
| way more than sitting together anyway...
|
| I find we usually get assigned seats next to each other
| anyway unless the plane is completely checked in full for
| aisles and windows even without asking.
| tayo42 wrote:
| we don't need to guarantee it, but its nice to be able to
| share drinks and an on flight bag.
|
| I do that now sometimes, but even lately some airlines charge
| more for the aisle and window seat.
| atrevbot wrote:
| On the flip side of this my partner and I recently decided to
| pay the additional fee to Spirit to ensure that us, our 6
| year old, and our 18 month old (traveling on lap) could sit
| together. We paid extra to sit toward the front of the plane
| to minimize time on the plane after landing. As we were
| boarding we were told that we had been moved because the row
| we were in was the exit row and we could not sit there with a
| child (though they let us select that row no problem when
| they wanted more money). They reassigned us to the very last
| row on the plane with no window for our 6 year old and no
| refund on our seat selection fee. I will probably just take
| my chances asking at the gate next time.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Yeah but people reserve all the window and aisle seats
| because sitting in the middle seat is miserable so all the
| empty seats will be middle seats well before the plane is
| full.
| godelski wrote:
| Just a anecdotal data point: a few months ago I took a trip
| overseas and had to do it on a pretty short time schedule (<a
| week). As a grad student this is obviously tough to budget. So I
| load up my Mullvad Browser and jump around VPN points. Everything
| was breaking. They very much did not like that browser and the
| VPN was the cherry on top. But because of this effort I saved
| about $500 (NYC seemed to be the best location fwiw and I'm on
| the west coast and flew to Asia).
|
| This felt rather insane and anti-competitive. Each time I changed
| any variable (including restarting the browser) the price changed
| and those warnings about number of tickets left would
| dramatically vary. There is no doubt that that these companies
| were lying to me. How am I supposed to price compare and we have
| a competitive market when it's stochastic with high variance? I
| know airlines claim to work on auctions and economists love
| auctions, but this wasn't even an auction. This was they knew I
| was in a bind and just added a dice roll to the price. That's
| only something a monopoly can do. I don't think this is about
| being able to select seats, check bags, or buy food.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > There is no doubt that that these companies were lying to me.
|
| They're not lying to you, the 'number of seats left' refers to
| the number of seats available at that price - in the lowest
| available fare bucket. Not on the plane itself.
|
| What you ran into are called point of sale restrictions. Lower
| fares are made available to people buying in different markets.
|
| They don't really work on auctions, they charge everyone what
| they think they'll pay.
| 93po wrote:
| If something is that confusing and misleading then it's still
| dishonesty
| photonbeam wrote:
| If the recipient is deceived, its a lie, regardless of weasel
| words
| arcticbull wrote:
| Who's been deceived? You were offered a price, and you can
| pay it or not pay it. If you pay it you get your ticket. I
| don't really understand what the deception is.
|
| Is it any more of a deception than someone who comes into a
| store with a coupon getting 10% off, while you, without a
| coupon pays full price? Or any more of a deception than
| Target charging higher prices at outlets in SF and NY than
| they do in Texas? Or not telling you how many more of an
| item is around back?
| photonbeam wrote:
| The person who was pressured by the false statements of
| ticket scarcity
| arcticbull wrote:
| They're not saying there's only that many seats left on
| the plane - you can get a sense of that by pulling up the
| seat map. They're saying there's only that many seats
| left at that price point. It's incumbent on the buyer to
| know that I think. That information is not hidden.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Which is a useless statement with dynamic pricing. It's
| ONLY there to put pressure on the visitor.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It provides information to the searcher. If I'm looking,
| I generally search for 1 seat, even if I eventually plan
| to book for a few people. It's useful for me to know how
| many people I can book at that price point.
| snthd wrote:
| >They're saying there's only that many seats left at that
| price point.
|
| ...which is a lie. If the tickets stop selling the price
| will drop. If there's a signal indicating a future spike
| in demand they will jack up the price irrespective of
| sales.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It might, or it might not go down in response to a lack
| of sales. Some airlines continue to segment their
| customers by elastic vs. inelastic demand. As departure
| date approaches their customer mix changes, and it might
| make sense to raise prices instead of lower them even if
| it leads to unsold inventory. After all there's a
| secondary market for unsold inventory - frequent flyer
| mile redemptions.
|
| Its not as cut and dried as you're making it out to be.
|
| It is accurate at the time presented. You can buy N seats
| for $X each, before the next seat is more expensive.
| That's all you can really ask.
| godelski wrote:
| Let's say that you and I each buy an airline ticket.
| We're sitting in the same coffee shop and buying it at
| the same time from the same airline provider. We're both
| buying the cheapest ticket available. Let's make even
| another assumption! Suppose we can buy the same ticket!
| Would you find it deceitful if we were shown different
| prices?
| hammock wrote:
| Stop lying
| Miraste wrote:
| Right, why on Earth would anyone call making up new
| definitions of "seats left" and "lowest fare," changing the
| price based on purposely hidden variables and not admitting
| it, and tricking users into believing extra fees are
| necessary "lying?" I'm sure it's all clearly posted
| somewhere. It reminds me of a passage from a famous book of
| marketing advice:
|
| "But the plans were on display..."
|
| "On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to
| find them."
|
| "That's the display department."
|
| "With a flashlight."
|
| "Ah, well, the lights had probably gone."
|
| "So had the stairs."
|
| "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
|
| "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the
| bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory
| with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard."
| hammock wrote:
| They always say "seats left _at this price_ ," and the
| "lowest fare" is in the context of the current search
| results, which are individual, not in the context of all
| searches by everyone everywhere, which seems an
| unreasonable standard.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| That doesn't capture the range of their dark patterns. I
| am literally testing this now. I am on Delta website
| going through the booking process (redirected form Google
| Flights). The price at Google Flights was $578. Delta
| website is showing that 1 seat is available (at this
| price). When it prompts to select the seat there are no
| seats available at this price. I am offered to upgrade to
| Comfort+ for $60. I am already 10 min into the process.
| And just to preempt your possible argument: when I go to
| the previous page it still shows that 1 seat is available
| at this price.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Google Flights runs on a cache, so it can be out of date.
| This is mentioned in their fine print somewhere.
|
| Delta's own website should be accurate though. I think
| this is actually legally required. If you can take some
| screenshots and contact customer support I guarantee you
| someone will get yelled at, and you may get some sort of
| compensation.
|
| I know this because I was once the person who would get
| yelled at (not for Delta). If you could include the time
| and your local timezone, as well as the market (your
| country or VPN country) that would help out the person
| who's going to get yelled at.
|
| Just to clarify, I say "yelled at" as a bit of an
| exaggeration. But these customer reports were always a
| big deal where I worked. It usually boiled down to a
| stale cache issue. But because the airline controls the
| cache and ticket inventory[0], cache invalidation should
| be perfect, sans a few ms latency.
|
| [0] Kind of... Not really. It's a mess how the systems
| really work. But they do get messages for each ticket
| purchase.
| hanzmanner wrote:
| I have shared the screenshots in this thread.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/X923fSo
|
| I don't trust Delta enough to have any desire to reach
| out to them.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Do the people who design these dark patterns get paid more
| than honest people?
|
| What are the LinkedIn keywords used to identify these
| roles?
|
| Is it along the lines of "growth hacking?"
|
| There has to be a name for this job and I am just too dumb
| and naive to know it at the moment.
|
| Help, please.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm just going to quote hanzmanner (in the sibling's
| children's comment)
|
| > For a tech forum it is surprising how many commenters
| in this thread don't understand what are "dark patterns"
|
| I think people just don't get it. Maybe because people
| just aren't thinking about how things couple and the
| interactions. Maybe because no one wants to be the bad
| guy so don't think too hard about it? There could be a
| lot of reasons. Could even be that people are more
| worried about job security so just deal with it.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Fair enough. So how would someone brag about
| accomplishing this in their work history?
|
| I ask this as a simple man who is looking for a job, and
| who is contemplating words that go on resumes.
|
| Simplest: "increased division's revenue in a complex and
| novel way?"
|
| Or, even simpler "implemented dynamic pricing?"
| godelski wrote:
| > So how would someone brag about accomplishing this in
| their work history?
|
| - Performed user studies that led to x% growth in product
| revenue
|
| I don't think there would be anything that would
| specifically flag a resume entry as the employee being
| the one to implement dark patterns, but I'm just guessing
| here. Because things like dynamic pricing or user studies
| aren't inherently wrong. Dark patterns are wrong because
| they're manipulations. The clearest example being raising
| prices and then discounting them back to the same price.
| Amazon does this as well as Walmart.
| acomjean wrote:
| I interviewed at a travel company. One thing someone said
| they didn't like about working there was that they're
| customers are really the airline and hotel chains that
| pay them, and anything that closes the deal at a higher
| price is what they'd do. UX "improvements" tested with
| A/B testing for sales optimization.
| listenallyall wrote:
| A/B testing, sales funnel, conversion rates
| mjcl wrote:
| "Revenue Management"
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| A bit more generally, they also ran into dynamic pricing or
| as it existed in every transaction before the 1870s, namely
| haggling.
|
| It was only after the rather recent invention of the price
| tag that consumers themselves were commodified which always
| involves a level of abstraction and smoothing over of
| differences, in this case, by price.
|
| Make no mistake, the reason it feels deceptive is that
| "Bargaining is always adversarial."[1] When one's economic
| milieu is the egalitarianism of being equal before price, of
| course bargaining feels deceptive, slimy, and wrong.
|
| 1. Bill Sanders, Frank Mobus, Creative Conflict: A Practical
| Guide for Business Negotiators, Harvard Business Press,2021
| tomrod wrote:
| An unnecessarily kind way to coat the dark pattern that
| fuzzes the BATNA.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If I was able to _haggle_ I might not have such a problem
| with it. But this cannot possibly be called haggling, as
| there is no ability to communicate with somebody and make a
| counter-offer.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You're haggling with a system and on its terms.
|
| One of those ways of communicating is setting your
| location via VPN. This is just what it feels like to
| haggle with a non-human system. Would that we weren't
| required to set aside our own humanity to do this, but
| this is haggling for a more inhuman age.
| jowea wrote:
| You can't really haggle with a computer system can you? And
| even if we'd accept that as haggling the company has way
| more power in the transaction. This just seems allowing the
| company to capture ever more of the consumer surplus.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The computer gives you, the consumer, a lot of power. You
| can very easily comparison shop - not simply view the
| cost of flights from every other provider on the same
| day, but also a day or two earlier/later, and if you are
| flexible, a week or month later. You can mix airlines, or
| plan open jaws. You can see the price of a rental car for
| all or part of the trip. Before travel was sold online,
| you went to a travel agent and had far fewer options.
| coherentpony wrote:
| > They're not lying to you
|
| That's correct. But it's correct in the sense of "technically
| correct". It's a language-lawyer type of correct that nobody
| actually expects when communicating in plain English.
|
| Yes, they're not lying to me. They're simply being
| intentionally and willfully misleading.
|
| When I was 8 and my parents asked, "Have you brushed your
| teeth?" to which I responded, "Yes." What they're really
| asking is, "Did you brush _all_ of your teeth?" and not, "Did
| you brush at least two of your teeth?" I answered that latter
| question. And I thought I was the smartest person in the
| world when I did.
| shaan7 wrote:
| Did you eventually make a career in law? :D
| coherentpony wrote:
| No, I'm a software engineer.
| Swizec wrote:
| Software engineer is like a lawyer for JSON
| bee_rider wrote:
| Considering the possible alternative names for
| programmers:
|
| Software Lawyer: we've got a code that ought to be well
| defined and straightforward to interpret, but a bunch of
| legacy rules have made it impossible to predict what
| anything really means without studying the system in
| great depth
|
| Software Doctor: We're trying usually trying to fix an
| absurd system ridden mysterious bugs while keeping it
| running. How it got into the state it is basically
| impossible to understand, it looks like they've just used
| parts for purposes totally unrelated to their intended
| use (the spine is totally in the wrong orientation).
|
| Software Engineer: There is a rigid schedule posted on a
| board somewhere, but we've gone totally off the rails and
| have no chance of hitting any of those timelines.
| bch wrote:
| Parents> "Have you brushed your teeth?"
|
| 8yo> "Yes" (last week)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| It's misrepresentation
| godelski wrote:
| Yes, thank you. I think sometimes we forget how fuzzy
| language is.
|
| If you're response is "well actually..." you need to think
| if you're providing meaningful feedback that would make the
| original claim meaningfully different (i.e. you're adding
| nuance that would shift perspective). Otherwise it comes
| off as if you didn't hear anything the original person said
| because you're missing the meat. Technical corrections are
| fine, but they should come with some indication of hearing
| the thesis. Let's try
|
| > Well technically they aren't lying to you. It's the
| number of seats left at that price and that price can vary.
| So it is misleading but not technically a lie.
|
| But to counter that claim, simply clearing my cache and
| restarting the browser would result in both the price and
| number of seats left changing. Not monotonically. Sometimes
| it'd be a lower price with more seats. I saw all four
| permutations! Now I'm not someone with all the airline
| data, but when this happens over the course of a few
| minutes I'm pretty suspicious of the results. The
| likelihood of that happening without manipulation seems
| rather low.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| why are you defending the shitty airline tactics?
| hanzmanner wrote:
| I might be wrong, but my recollection is that the practice of
| changing the price based on user location has been challenged
| in court some time ago. It's appalling that companies do that.
| I will definitely follow your advice for flight booking though.
| 93po wrote:
| I've heard a long time ago that they'd also charge Apple
| hardware users more
| ne0flex wrote:
| There was a 2012 WSJ article about that [0]. I have both a
| Windows Surface and a MacBook. When looking for flights, I
| used both to check for prices in hopes to find better
| prices, but didn't really notice any discrepancy. I figured
| maybe they may be showing the same price due to both
| devices having the same IP address or something to that
| effect.
|
| [0]https://archive.is/C0Hkb
| boyka wrote:
| Were you getting these different prices on the actual airline
| websites or on the aggregators such as Booking, kayak etc.?
| godelski wrote:
| United's website. Though I saw the same thing happening on
| AA. Google Flights had some fluctuation too but it wasn't
| always reliable to have the same price once visiting the
| actual website from the link.
| sails wrote:
| I agree with your experience, it does feel a bit insane, but
| just to point out this is the result of too much competition
| selling a commodity product rather than a monopoly.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Disagree. Consolidation is driving this behavior - smaller
| companies in a competitive market would not be able to offend
| customers to this degree. Certain routes are dominated by one
| "alliance" (cartel) that basically boils down to American,
| United or Delta. You have a few smaller brands like Alaska,
| Southwest (which has underinvested in their infrastructure),
| Jet Blue and Spirit (who are currently trying to merge), but
| it's not enough.
|
| You need to break up the cartel model so that (e.g.) Delta
| has real competition for routes to Atlanta. If I look at
| nonstop flights from LAX to Atlanta for a random day (Apr 1,
| 2024) your options are: 1 American flight, 1 Alaska flight, 3
| Spirit flights (way more expensive) or a Delta flight just
| about any time you want to travel. That's not "too much
| competition selling a commodity product" - it's what I would
| expect from cartel pricing. There is a thin veneer of
| competition, but Delta owns that route - 90%+ of traffic is
| going to fly Delta.
| Beijinger wrote:
| It is hard to save with a VPN. Honestly, I manged only once to
| get a cheaper ticket with a VPN. Managed to buy an
| international aeroflot flight with a russian VPN IP that saved
| me 500 USD. But this was a one time incident.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| What website or company was this exactly?
| godelski wrote:
| United. I saw AA do the same thing too though.
|
| AA has also treated me like shit too many times. I got caught
| in that pileup delay post CVPR 2022 which resulted in several
| delays and they would not give me a voucher or hotel. I spent
| 36 hrs in an airport for them to just say "glad to hear you
| found a flight. Looks like we resolved your problem."
| datadata wrote:
| Another good way in which these companies are lying is with
| overbooking, or legally selling more tickets than seats on the
| plane and hoping that the statistical rate of people now
| showing up will cover the deficit.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Is this different in Canada? The fees exist but I've always
| immediately seen the final number that includes all of them. Then
| there's some upsells but they're not really fees because I just
| decline them.
| tiku wrote:
| Just had the horrible experience once again. Why is this still
| allowed?
|
| I later found out that shipping my stuff was cheaper that
| checking in a bag..
| afavour wrote:
| Is that domestic? I keep hearing this but every time I look for
| international flights it's never true.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I feel like we should parse these complaints as "I flew the
| cheapest airline that unbundles everything, and paying to re-
| bundle the stuff I wanted made the price higher".
| shortcake27 wrote:
| Yeah, this is it. People who are used to having their
| ticket price subsidised by other people who don't have
| luggage are angry that those other people are no longer
| subsidising their ticket.
|
| All this, despite the fact that the same ticket with
| luggage today, adjusted for inflation, is significantly
| cheaper than it was 20, 40, 60 years ago etc.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I don't see it mentioned, but I am convinced there's shenanigans
| with seat assignment as well.
|
| I have to reserve my work flights through the work travel app, so
| of course the airlines know I am on business travel and who I
| work for. When I select an economy fare, I've noticed when I am
| finally assigned a seat at the airport, it's usually at the
| goddamned back of the plane. Most other seat assignments are paid
| upgrades, even within the same class of tickets. Yes, you can
| upgrade from economy to economy.
|
| Another thing I have noticed is that after takeoff, they now care
| where you sit. Probably related to the possibility of upgrading
| within economy. You can't just move over to another open seat
| within your ticket class - but they used to not care about this
| at all.
| matwood wrote:
| > Another thing I have noticed is that after takeoff, they now
| care where you sit.
|
| If the plane is empty enough that you can move seats, it's
| often a weight thing on why they don't want people moving
| around. Otherwise, I've never had an issue moving or swapping
| seats with people. Then again, almost every flight is full
| nowadays.
| tmnvix wrote:
| I've seen someone asked to return to their original seat. The
| reason given was something along the lines of "identification
| in the event of an accident".
| RajT88 wrote:
| Yeah, I have heard that one as well. But it is total crap;
| they went from 100% not caring to 100% caring about moving
| seats within same class.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If you have the booking reference, you can often use it to log
| in on the airline website and select a seat (maybe for a fee)
| well in advance of the flight.
|
| Some options may say "contact your travel agent".
|
| (At least with several European airlines I'm familiar with.
| YMMV.)
| RajT88 wrote:
| For a fee! Exactly my point.
|
| Giving people crap seats to incentivize them to upgrade.
| Especially if they are on work travel. That is my theory.
|
| Thanks downvoters!
| yalogin wrote:
| Yep they know the moment they figured out extra fees they changed
| the whole reservation flow to minimize defaults and turned a lot
| of previously unthinkable items into paid add-ons. Every airline
| across every segment of travel now does this and as expected it's
| resulting in a windfall. Problem is they won't be happy with this
| in a quarter or two and their investors demand more, what will
| they do?
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Wouldn't "upsell" be more accurate than "fee"?
| jmugan wrote:
| Yeah, I paid extra recently to buy higher-tier tickets that
| allowed me to choose my seats, so my family could sit together. I
| go to actually choose the seats and then it wants to charge me an
| additional fee per seat, per leg. There were no seats that didn't
| have a fee. Ugh.
| shantara wrote:
| My mother is in her sixties, and she's very tech savvy for her
| age. She usually has no problem with doing all the things online
| - from online shopping to paying her bills to social media. The
| only thing that stumps her and make her panic about potentially
| making a very costly mistake are the airline websites.
|
| She always asks me to buy tickets for her, while feeling very
| insecure about it. Of course I'm happy to help, but it's hard to
| convince her that it's not her fault, and the predatory companies
| are purposefully building these websites like that to trick
| people into overspending.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Look, I'm not saying her fears are unwarranted, but you have to
| help me understand where the dark patterns are in airline
| pricing. They show 1-2 seats remaining, but those are usually
| accurate... not like Booking.com or other shady booking sites.
|
| When booking from first-party airline websites, I rarely have
| issues with unexpected prices popping up. Each "add-on" is
| clearly delineated.
|
| The rise of even lower pricing tiers like Basic Economy on
| United also have their benefits (and severe restrictions)
| spelled out throughout the booking process.
| godelski wrote:
| Prices vary based on data they collect about you. Such as
| browser cookies, hardware info, browser, etc. You can often
| find different prices simply by clearing your cache or
| cookies. Or trying from a different browser. I left a comment
| in main about an anecdotal experience. One thing I'll add is
| that I also tried having 3 browsers open: Firefox, Mullvad,
| and Safari. I saw different prices on each.
| esoterica wrote:
| This literally does not happen with first party airline
| sites (idk about sketchy third party scam sites). Where did
| this conspiracy theory come from? Which airline did you see
| doing this?
| shantara wrote:
| The main point of contention seems to be that there are a lot
| of packages being selected by default, and to deselect
| everything you have to scroll way down an already long page
| or to click tiny buttons blending with the other elements,
| while the design of a site as a whole tries to railroad into
| clicking the large Next -> Next -> Pay buttons. Plus, the
| design of various packages differs a lot, so for deselecting,
| say, paid seat selection, extra in-flight meals and a premium
| lounge the user has to read the info in a completely
| different layout, understand it, and find a well-hidden place
| to click on.
|
| The final price could be representative of what you've
| chosen, but the whole process creates massive anxiety over
| forgetting to deselect something somewhere and paying for a
| completely useless to you option.
| qaq wrote:
| Well Delta net Income for 2022 was 3.4B
| Dowwie wrote:
| Drip pricing needs to be made illegal in the U.S.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Earlier discussion:
|
| _From airlines to ticket sellers, companies fight U.S. to keep
| junk fees_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38334126
| anovikov wrote:
| Admirable read for a person like me who buys their tickets
| through a brick-and-mortar travel agent who books them through an
| old-fashioned GDS available to travel agents.
| RHSman2 wrote:
| Easyjet went through a period of putting the return date the
| month after. Caught me twice! One completely missed till I tried
| to return and the 2nd I saw before flying so could change. Proper
| dark.
| antiterra wrote:
| I've noticed really confusing upgrade prompts pop up when buying
| tickets from major airlines, including an upgrade that made the
| price higher than First Class on the same flight. It included a
| seat upgrade _if available_ , meaning you could end up very
| little for the money you spent. If you were to simply click the
| Main Extra seat you wanted in the seating chart, you'd pay way
| less. The upgrade did have some refund terms that were not
| included in a normal ticket, but it deliberately appeared in a
| way to obfuscate the option to simply upgrade a seat (or to first
| class.)
| user3939382 wrote:
| Due to the changes in recent decades, including the security, no
| leg room, horrible treatment and customer service, I loathe air
| travel now and avoid it at all costs. I wonder how many are in
| the same boat. Sadly I'm guessing the industry doesn't care since
| their primary revenue is from captive business travelers.
| Crunchified wrote:
| Dark website patterns are the internet's embodiment of the sleazy
| salesperson.
|
| You want the product, the sales guy wants to upsell you and
| increase his profit margin (corresponding to sales commission).
| Nobody likes to be sold at like this, but many companies are
| perfectly happy being represented by such sleazebag salesmanship.
| aronhegedus wrote:
| It all started to go downhill once airlines stopped having a free
| 10kg suitcase and a backpack that you could take onboard
|
| On a return flight between Luton and Budapest, sometimes budget
| airline will ask for PS40 EACH WAY for that small 10kg bag, which
| I find absurd
|
| I understand supply demand etc, just noticing that what you get
| seems to be smaller and smaller each year
| switch007 wrote:
| I hear you. People are debating checked baggage fees but that's
| old news.
|
| The carry-on fee is the latest outrageous charge.
|
| It's a "premium" option now because airlines realised people
| value that their luggage is less likely to be lost and less
| time waiting at the airport. I bet in a way they absolutely
| loved the baggage handler meltdown - it's left a scar in
| people's minds.
|
| Plus a price for checked baggage was set, and luggage is
| luggage, so the price is now equalised/approaching equalisation
|
| Ryanair/Wizzair/Easyjet will charge your for that space for
| your backpack under your seat soon too, mark my words
| tptacek wrote:
| Isn't this a headline that says airlines make literally half
| their gross revenue from "extra fees"? Total US airline profits
| are in the low double digit billions, right? That would imply
| airlines are operating at an enormous operating loss, as, what, a
| gift to the traveling public?
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| I think there was a freakanomics saying basically this. The
| price of air travel has dropped and become way more accessible
| over the last 50 years.
|
| I think travel is so discretionary they have to keep prices as
| low as possible or people decide not to fly. Low margins and
| tough competition.
| switch007 wrote:
| Tangential prediction: Ryanair will lead the charge in making you
| pay for a bag under the seat. There will be no free "personal
| item" option.
|
| Whenever they lower the bar, they look for ways to lower it even
| further.
|
| (The bags-under-seat needs clamping down on. It's gone too far.
| I've seen people with bags so big they had to rest their feet on
| top of it. It's an obvious safety issue but obviously for profit
| reasons the staff are told to turn a blind eye. The cabin crew
| would have to be literally blind to truthfully claim they didn't
| notice it)
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| This is like saying that McDonald's makes a lot of extra fees on
| fries and drinks because those aren't (always) included with a
| hamburger.
|
| A more honest take is that now we can pay for what we want,
| instead of just paying for everything and then only using some of
| them.
| uptown wrote:
| Airlines like shifting the cost to baggage fees because they
| avoid paying the ticket taxes on that line of revenue:
|
| https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Revenu...
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