No, they don't want you to figure out their pricing model. They want to ask you a lot of questions, make you go through a lot of steps, and then present you with a price, making you go through the process again to compare prices. This hinders price shopping, and this is why online price comparison services are so popular.

Why would they intentionally make it difficult to compare prices when travel agents and price comparison sites make it easy? I am pretty sure AA thinks that their website is the easiest way to book AA flights. If you disagree, you can get the same fares elsewhere trivially.

The "search by price and schedule" feature makes it easy to see what options you have on AA if you choose to go that route. Without even clicking anything, you can see the effects of leaving on a different day, choosing a different fare class, or taking a connecting flight versus flying nonstop. This makes it pretty easy to compare. (It is arguable that there are too many options. But this is becuase air travel is expensive by default, and people want cheap. So there are a lot of "discounted" fares around. If you don't want hassle, pick "search by schedule" for the search type, and "economy without restrictions" for the fare type. You will have your ticket in seconds, won't have to pay for checked bags, will have the option of paying $50 to upgrade to first class, and can cancel or change the ticket at any time with no fee. The only downside is that the ticket will cost 10x as much.)

>Why would they intentionally make it difficult to compare prices when travel agents and price comparison sites make it easy?

Most people don't know about these sites. AA makes money for every person who is clueless. And there are many.

So do the banks, credit card companies, non-store-brand food companies, etc., etc. Let's face it; if you're too lazy to hold on to your money, it is going to go away. Not getting in on that action means you are going to be put out of business.

(This is why I'm not a business person. I know what it takes to run a successful business, and I don't want to do it.)

I'd be willing to be Ryanair and Easyjet have the same strategy. They want you to call their premium-rate numbers.

Any savvy traveler knows, the "budget" in budget airlines refers only to their operations, not the final price you pay once all the fees, transfers etc are tacked on.

They hate people calling them. It's a terrible experience. They want you to do everything on their website, and go out of their way to make it difficult to contact them directly. Ryanair is notorious for charging for absolutely everything (Checkin fee? Seriously? Like you can opt out of that.)

If you do online checkin and don't check any bags...

There is still an "online checkin fee", which is lower than the "real life" checkin fee, but it's still there. I maintain you can't opt out of checking in when you fly.

Nope, they don't want you to call their premium rate numbers. I've booked many EasyJet flights and never had to phone them. With EasyJet you can even swap your flight for an earlier / later one (for an extra fee of course) online. It's completely self service on the web.

Even with premium rate phone numbers, call centres are still expensive.

I don't think so: Most premium-rate callcentres still lose money. It's not that easy to make a profit on 50 cts/min, of which half goes to the telco's.

I'm certain for Ryanair and EasyJet, everything they do is calculated to extract maximum value from the customer. Call centers included.

come on, my fiancee booked a flight for EUR 17 round trip recently, including their credit card handling fee (which can be avoided by using visa electron). if that's not budget then i don't know what is. i have booked GBP 20 round trip flights with ryanair or easyjet numerous times, you just have to know how to play their special offers game and be somewhat flexible on dates. often, getting to the airport or parking costs me more than the actual flight. if treating incompetent customers badly enables these prices then so be it.

AA does the same thing. I spent last weekend in London and will spend next weekend in Frankfurt for that reason. And I will get around 35,000 frequent flyer miles out of the deal; enough for a free domestic round trip.

If this means that someone has to pay $35 because they can't follow the directions on the website, I am not going to shed many tears for them.

If you call Reservations it's $35. If you call "Web Services", it's free. I think the site says something to this effect.