3 ms·

Can someone explain the economic rationale to force passengers to fly more for a cheaper ticket from the airlines perspective? I understand the breach of contra

• jonhohle 8y ago
  Supply & demand plus transportation logistics, cross promotion, etc. Imagine Las Vegas has an agreement with airlines to subsidize airfair in return for a certain volume of inbound humans. The airline optimizes logistics, and finds that from your city to Vegas wouldn’t result in a full flight, but splitting travelers to higher volume hubs allows them to consolidate for a full flight, maximizing thier subisidy compared to their outlay. They don’t care that the passenger is connecting in this case, they are not what is being optized for. However, if the passenger terminates their trip at the hub, the airline may lose the subsidy making the entire trip a loss for that passenger, despite using less resources on that one particular human. I don’t know if those are the types of arrangmenta that exist, but it would be hard for me to imagine a scenario where cities that rely heavily on tourism aren’t spending money to encourage airlines to bring more people. The other part of that is to the customer/passenger, there is a hidden shadow transaction on their flight with a third party. In other forms of logistics, this is common (last mile delivery by USPS, for example), but I don’t think most people like to think that they are thought of as cargo.