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At the end of July, I was preparing to fly with my then fiancé from Los Angeles to Charlotte for my wedding. It was a special flight on the way to the biggest day of our lives. It was my birthday too. Unfortunately, I did one of the biggest sins of America’s airline in America: I bought the main economic tickets for us.
Neither my fiancé nor I thought much what it meant. First, we would probably not sit next to each other on the American Airlines. Bummer, but whatever, we didn’t want to pay an additional $ 100 per privilege. But then our flight is still postponed and further away. We tried to fly in standby mode in the previous departure, but a couple more at the last moment jumped to the list, and the gate agent said that we probably had booked it for driving. We ended up delaying nine hours, but at least we had to sit together after most other passengers saved. I was angry at the delay, but later I didn’t think I was angry why I was handed over on the standby list or why I needed such a brutal delay that I could sit next to my partner.
In the past, it was that the class decorator was in the first class of airplane cabins compared to everyone else. Over the past decade, new ones have emerged: those who reserve regular economic tickets against people in this new basic economy class. United Airlines’ main economy flyers don’t even get wearing, just backpacks or handbags. Each major airline is the last and, most importantly, does not delve into its seats. I never thought about it before – I choose the main economy on almost every trip I ordered. At the age of 31, who pays for his aircraft tickets for about 12 years, I never knew the world in which he was sitting next to your traveling companion is a typical free flight.
Not that I complain too a lot. The US airline industry is worth the price. These companies make a great deal of hundreds of my dollars and give up on me after a few hours of travel locations that would take weeks and thousands of dollars. I have a good experience in many of my flights as well as you. JD Power, a market research firm, reports that last year only 10 percent of passengers had airline problems, mostly delays. The general happiness of passengers has risen slightly from 2024.
The problem is that we played ourselves. By changing how we buy flights, we encouraged the airlines to race alone and offer as little comfort as possible in the ticket classes they sell the widest. In fact, we encouraged these companies to make their supply much worse, accepting every deterioration with a smile. Google Flights – Setting a flying reduced ticket prices inflation. It also made flying less pleasant. Just as I unhappy with my destiny days before the wedding, the flying society could already spend their chance to break the cycle. Where you finally got stuck on the plane is the brightest sign of what we all lost.
2002 Delta has stopped paying commission to travel agents for old school agents, starting a wave that its competitors traveled. The reduction of the commission would be smaller, ideally. The work of an agent who would pick up your phone and order your trip to Big Apple has changed elsewhere. Some people did (and still say, I am told) start the flight order process on the airline site. But most do not. They go to online mediators who take a tax such as Expedia, or to a simple search engine like Google flights. The integrity of the former travel agent cannot be denied, but the agent was probably less concerned than Google’s flights showing you the lowest possible price to get where you drove.
This is a short story about how the sale of airline tickets has become a fishing expedition and the main economy – cozy. Airlines realized they offer the lowest price The least possible ticket class was the key. “Over the years, they learned, just working with human nature, ‘I will offer a different price where I will take things away and charge them later, when people actually choose my brand,” said Michael Taylor, CEO of JD Power, advising airline industry. “But they have to choose my brand first before I start earning any money at all.”
This eruption practice is to push things out of classic flying, hoping to leave more of passengers who want to keep these privileges while bringing a conscious price-a good business for airlines. If it was possible to stop them in this direction, it was probably around 2008. That year, the American presented the first standard basket fee, $ 15, along with the limit of 50 pounds that remains the norm. Few of us stopped checking the bags after or even when the cost increased to $ 35 or $ 40 per bag. Then the choice of places was easy for airlines.
“The financial incentive to do what they are doing now is so great,” Taylor said. “Bag and seater option fee and all other divided charges are actually what airlines can show investors by saying,” Look at how much money we make. “” “”
How much? The airline industry creates several a billion Based on 2024 Senate Report, for a year for safety choice fees.
Initially reddened, this is the usual history of the company’s greed. Easy gathering! But the question of what should we all want toAs a flying society, it is strangely complicated. I know it will sound strange if you have recently an unpleasant flying experience, but we live objectively at a great time to be clumsy people buying airline tickets. Non -business class tickets are now only about $ 20 more expensive than they were 2000According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (This reference should come back when the government opens again.) Inflations, we all produce as bandits.
In fact, not all of us. My wife and I don’t mind sitting on planes because we both are thirty to make The concern to sit with their traveling party does not use the damn miracle of the main economy. When I see a young father asking for something to change places to sit in a row with my wife and child just before the carpet, my initial reaction is usually annoyance: Why didn’t this guy just buy the right ticket? Maybe I should be more pleasant. The first Homo Sapiens is expected to sit with their family’s units on commercial flights, and by moving from the main economy to the price with the choice of places, the family can easily cost $ 300. After all, I’ll try to play the system in the same way.
Of the three main domestic carriers, United has to date the worst main cost of the economy. Unlike American and Delta, United, United will not even allow the main flyers to bring a portable bag. However, few seem to protest. If they did, it would probably turn out to be in the survey data, not: United Economy and Basic Economy customers satisfy Delta and American, as in first grade. Over the years, fewer passengers will even remember the world where the standard price has chosen your place. This is probably just a matter of time before other big players push out wearing, as has already done by United.
Still, we should be more upset. Sounds dreamy to pay only 22 extra dollars for something at the turn of the century, but less dreamy when the product is worse. “Airlines say it saves money in doing so because it keeps lower prices, but if you have to pay more to get the same thing you get used to, it really doesn’t save you,” said Julian Kheel, founder and CEO of Points PATH, a service, a service to help people maximize their airline. Those miles, by the way, are another deform, which can make the main economy less pleasant to those who do not have them.
At least Some People seem to be fed up with. This summer, Google has been quietly choosing the opportunity to eliminate the basic economic prices from the search engine on Google flights. (As it is silent enough that Kheel told me about it when we were talking and that I had to open the incognito window and clean my cache to get the choice.) Although technology giants are not protected from products that no one has asked, released, I suspect the main economy burned enough passengers. Have you also ordered a “cheap” United flight just to realize that you will be more than $ 100 in a hole if you would like to bring one piece of suitcase with you?
If the world’s Google and Expedias have made this removal default search option, it can change how the airline structures their ticket supply. But they won’t do it because the public doesn’t want it. Almost all of us want the cheapest ticket, or at least its illusions, before paying for accessories.
“At the end of the day, most people reserve their airline tickets according to two main factors,” Kheel said. “The first, more than anything, is the price, and that is the price they see first in the search. And the second is comfort.” It means our marinade as consumers that I was stewing this two -face sales method for a few weeks and still I’m not sure if I should stop it.
There was no aggressive pushing consumer or the intervention of technology gods, a party that could do the most to change this flood, is the airline. Theoretically, it is a ripe environment for disruption. The industry is used on a tax -based model for hooking and then milking customers. It should be easy enough for someone to make marketing by promising a simpler price and flight experience, more similar to what existed in the old days.
But in reality, the airline industry goes in the opposite direction. Even SouthwestFor the past 50 years, Anti-Fee Zealot, recently gave up his two bags of two bags and started paying, like everyone else. Soon it will withdraw from the “first cases” for the first boarding and offer the seat selection as a paid “perk”. The company also acted with the same day’s standby mode to get a lower -tier raft, what I learned when I walked to Phoenix Airport for six hours before a recent flight, convinced that I was able to jump better. No.
The airline can be the toughest business that is created from scratch due to enormous costs and related regulatory obstacles. And no airline that already exists is obviously not interested in the ziggae while the market is Zags. As Taylor told me, “You are doing a lot of pressure from the people of your inner finance saying,” Hey, we could actually make more money if we do what everyone is doing now. “Is it more loyalty and a happier flyer? (Summons for the risk insurance fund guys now fleeing southwest.)
You can come up with your push -ups – don’t buy the basic economic tickets or don’t buy them, then blowing up the miles upgrades to get what you would have ever received at the price of your ticket. Still, this idea is sucking. “You will usually not get the highest value of your points or miles, using them to update your ticket,” Kheel said.
There will be no mass consumer movement against companies selling the lowest possible ticket price, and airlines are not encouraged to sell prices otherwise. The only use of your use forever is to behave the way you fly in the main economy as I almost did until my wedding day: one.