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

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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