Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Increase Ticket Prices

Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by ubernostrum on Monday January 02, 2017 @11:51PM (#13306824)

For domestic travel within the US, first class -- especially booked well in advance -- is often surprisingly cheap, and cheap buy-ups are routinely offered, too (for example, I'm looking at a round-trip for about four months from now for a conference I'll attend, and I'm seeing first class offered for about $250 round-trip).

International business class is expensive, yes, typically on the order of $8,000 to $10,000 for a round-trip ticket. But international is the only place airlines can get away with charging that kind of fare and have people pay it, so that's what they'll continue to do. And when compared to other things people in software-developer income brackets often spend money on, even that isn't particularly gigantic; it's just all in one go instead of spread out over many small purchases the way, say, use of Uber and Lyft would be.

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Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by kuschku on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @04:25AM (#13307964)

    > International business class
    > is expensive, yes, typically
    > on the order of $8,000 to 
    > $10,000

The usual roundtrip flight price for flights Germany-Japan (as determined with hundreds of searches on Skyscanner) seems to be:

Economy: ~400 GBP

Premium Economy: ~1000 GBP

Business: ~1300 GBP

First: ~3700 GBP

So, the "$8000 to $10000" isn’t even in the same ballpark as First class, respectively business class.

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Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by pc86 on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @11:16AM (#13310134)

Prices in this context are meaningless without discussing the airports in question and the number of connecting flights.

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Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by peteretep on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @04:07AM (#13307878)

    > International business class
    > is expensive, yes, typically
    > on the order of $8,000 to 
    > $10,000

Nah. My average cost this year has been ~$3,000.

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Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by rconti on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @11:35AM (#13310317)

I have a friend who works for Apple and they get dirt cheap business class tickets to China. He says usually around $3000. For a human who has to pay human prices (eg, not a corporate deal), the multiple from coach is much greater.

For the purposes of this comment I just Google searched "SFO to Shanghai". The default is Jan 21-Feb 3 (so you're not paying a last-minute-booking penalty).

The prices are insanely cheap somehow, but the multiple holds up.

$527 economy $1999 premium economy $2853 business $5340 first

I would fly premium economy every time if it existed on most airlines and the multiple was 'only' 50%. What normal human can afford 4x the price for a couple more inches of elbow and legroom? It's far greater than the cost of the actual space.

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Re:Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Incre... by peteretep on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @10:52PM (#13315531)

I tend to assume business will be three times the cost of economy; I suspect SFO to Shanghai is a weird route from a price perspective, much like London to NYC; very few landing spots available. I'd also consider Jan 21-Feb 3 to be pretty last minute.

AMS-IAD (two airports with good capacity) for the default Google Flight dates show 45k for economy, 99k for PE, and 120k (all INR) for business, all on reasonable airlines

    > What normal human

One that's a True Scotsman only, I'd guess.

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