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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

Why would airlines even want penny pinching customers to snag the best deals via a third party?

At the very least it would make more sense to let their own frequent flyers snag such deals.

It’s an ongoing tension. Direct bookings are ideal but are only adequate if your brand awareness and loyalty is strong, like AA and Southwest. To whatever extent that’s not the case, you need to be available via partners/agencies and on metasearch sites in order to be found.

Our pitch to airlines when we were trying to establish partnerships with them was that we could find flexible travelers to fill seats that would otherwise be empty, and we had unique ways of doing that (which is why the company was able to pivot to enterprise), but we weren’t strong enough for them to feel the need to partner with us (and they don’t want to help a small player grow into a big player).

Flight revenue optimization is an art and science at least as old as industry deregulation, and funnily enough is now something my old company is providing a lot of help with. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em as they say.

Once an airline schedules a flight, each additional passenger is 0 marginal cost.

Besides the people who have high status with an airline are usually price insensitive business travelers.

The people who aren’t penny pinching customers who do fly often on their own dime are either going to pay for business class or first class seats or are going to get auto upgrades for free once they book. At least that’s how it works on Delta.

They surely aren’t going to sully themselves by sitting in the “cattle class”.

For instance, Delta releases cheap economy seats to their partners like Virgin and KLM. I routinely book short flights between MCO (Orlando - current home) and ATL (former home) all of the time for 5500 points via KLM/AirFrance to fly Delta (cash price $230 one way) and to see my parents in small town south GA (MCO - ATL - ABY) for 8500 points (cash price one way $358).

The tickets that Delta releases to partners are the least desirable times and they take away even tho use three weeks before the flight because they can jack up prices.

As an example, there are at least 15 flights a day between MCO and ATL on Delta. Three of those flights may be available on KLM or Virgin

> price insensitive business travelers.

I've done paid travel for several companyies and they've all still been price sensitive. They usually have some policy where they'll detect some "reasonable" itinerary but then let me choose my own as long as it's within a certain dollar amount of their "reasonable" itinerary.

Who are these "price insensitive" companies?

What's always been especially annoying to me is that I've never had an option to pay out of pocket to upgrade my seat. Company travel portal only lets me book an economy ticket, and if I ask the airline about upgrading, they say to contact the company travel portal, who of course tells me to contact the airline. $eyeroll_emoji

Of course, the companies always have a strict "ALL TRAVEL MUST BE BOOKED THROUGH THE PORTAL" policy, so I couldn't even just pay the ticket out of pocket and get a portion reimbursed.

> I routinely book short flights between MCO (Orlando - current home) and ATL (former home)

That's only ~450 miles. I'd just drive that.

Why would I drive 6.5 hours when I can just get dropped off by the airport, whiz through Clear + TSA Precheck, hang out at the Delta lounge where I get free food and alcoholic drinks, hop on the plane and be there in an hour and a half?

Especially since it is essentially free?

Besides I work remotely and we have been down to one car since mid 2020. If either one of us are going by our self, we wouldn’t want to leave the other without a car.

As far as price insensitivity , what are the chances that the cheap routes are going to be available when and where the business traveler needs to go?

I assure you that the travel policies that your company uses for you aren’t the same ones they use for their executives.

I doubt very seriously that Andy Jassy or Bezos had their expense report rejected for a $3 stick of deodorant they charged to the room like what happened to me when I was at AWS (cloud consulting department - ProServe).

But even Amazon didn’t make you choose the cheapest route and I could always choose thier “most preferred carrier” - Delta - even if it did cost more.

I could also choose non stop vs layover if it costs more.

Ah, see...

For me, flying is a bigger ordeal than that.

It's a 30 minute drive to the airport, to which I want to arrive 2 hours before departure to ensure I have enough time to go through security. It's never been more than 30 minutes at my airport, but I don't want to chance it. There's also the time it takes to check my bag and walk to the gate. I'll typically get to my gate an hour early.

I don't fly nearly enough to get access to lounges.

Then when I get there, there's the waiting for my bag, then waiting for transportation...

From the time I leave my house to the time I arrive at the hotel, that 450 mile flight would take me a total of probably around 4 hours. I'd rather just add on another 2 hours and drive myself, especially since that means I'll have my own car when I get there. But I enjoy driving, so that likely influences my choice as much as your access to TSA Precheck (I should get that) and the Delta Lounge, not to mention it being free.

One reason I could see is to keep perceived price level for the frequent flyers. If they don't see best deals they won't expect those. And the hardcore deal hunters are not loyal to you or your brand.

Giving frequent flyers very good deals make them expect them, thus not be so willing to pay "regular" price.

They could easily position it as a reward for loyalty for FFs who spent more than $X in the last calendar year with them.

The loyalty reward in this case would be treating virtual interlining tickets as if they were an actual interlined ticket.

Virtual interlining is really dangerous model for them and their brand. It basically means that they would be reliant on someone else without any guarantees in case there is delays or problems.

And with different alliances they already have fully functional interlining model. So trying to extend outside this is not beneficial for them.

Well someone at the airline does need to crunch the numbers to figure out at what $X of spend the risk becomes sensible to take on.

Those flyers don’t care. Most frequent flyers are using other people’s money (business travelers) or are not price conscience.

We don’t even compare prices for domestic flights and we fly a lot on our own dime (15x-20x+ a year since mid 2021). We instinctively just book Delta where we have status and lounge access.

They do care when there is no valid routing from point A to point B via official codesharing/interlining/alliance partner airlines on a given day, forcing an overnight layover, or virtual interlining.

Usually this happens when flying long haul business class from smaller airports to another small airport on a different continent.

Same reason they offer deals in the first place, price discrimination and yield management.

But that's exactly the opposite of what is happening - allowing third parties to construct itineraries that compete with the ones that are being sold by the airlines results in a competitor; not an enabler; for yield management purposes.

To fill empty seats ? Still better than nothing

People say this, and yet we see vacancy everywhere all the time.

Eventually there just isn't someone who wants to go at any price, but the airplane still needs to fly.

The last ~10 times I've flown have been completely maxed flights. I can't remember the last time I saw an open seat anywhere.

Yep, post-covid it seems like airlines are favoring fewer flights that are more packed. I don't fly a lot (couple times a year), but when I do, it's very rare to see a flight that is not at least 95% full.

Yeah, for the routes I've flown over the last 5-10 years, significant numbers of empty seats are very much the exception rather than the rule, and it got worse post-covid.

I remember a Lyon -> Bangkok on A380 on April 2nd 2010, we were 50 in the plane (capacity 530). Less than 10% full. With 20 stewards.

Overbooking is still an industry standard approach to profit maximization. The opportunity cost of being overbooked (rebooking/refunding) is way lower than having a few seats empty because of the average cancellations.

tl;dr - airlines are happy to sell you a seat that's taken, betting some % of other people cancel.

Curious what routes you fly, I have been on full flights consistently in the past few years, mostly Boston to Denver

I haven't flown in a number of years, but when I was, it was common knowledge that all airlines intentionally overbooked their flights. If you ended up being one of the unfortunate last 5% (or whatever) to check in, you were effectively turned away and offered a voucher for your trouble.

Is that still done?

As far as I know this is a true American problem, I have never heard about this, or have experienced this in Europe or Asia.

A friend was bumped on a full flight from London to Europe last week because he didn't check in early enough, but I haven't heard of it happening on the continent side.

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