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No matter what some claim, 99.999% of people will buy the cheapest ticket possible. This is definitely not the case, otherwise airlines like Delta, United, and
by blantonl 6y ago
No matter what some claim, 99.999% of people will buy the cheapest ticket possible.
This is definitely not the case, otherwise airlines like Delta, United, and American wouldn't be in business.
Business travel is the money making industry for airlines, with leisure travel being lagniappe revenue. Business travelers book tickets based on convenience of schedule over everything else. Loyalty programs direct that purchase to a specific airline. That is a proven fact and factually dismisses your claim that "99.999% purchase" based on cost.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoClearly business travel is its own thing, and not related to the rest of us unwashed masses
- blantonl 6y agoIt is. The sales executive flying off to his 75th sales call of the year on a fully refundable ticket paid for by his employer is worth literally multiples of you, your wife, and your 3 kids flying off to disney world.
- robocat 6y agoand here’s the thought experiment: if there were no cattle class, how would the airline provide the profitable business class flights? I simply don’t believe one can simplify down the profits as crudely as you have put it.
- chrisbolt 6y agoIt’s the other way around, the business class seats subsidize the cheap economy seats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc
- chrisseaton 6y agoIsn't the vast vast majority of flying done for business? People will go on vacation once or maybe twice a year, but fly on business a dozen or more times.
- PaulHoule 6y agoI am skeptical when a business says "we really make money on A, but B is just a hobby". Often you will hear "we really make money on B and A is just a hobby" a few years later or maybe a few hours later to a different audience. If a company is serving you as a hobby then it is not listening to you through price signals, you are going to get bad service, and the company will be out of touch for the market and heading for bankruptcy in the long term unless it is counting on a bail-out.
- blantonl 6y agoLook, let me just put it this way. Have you ever paid more than $1000 for a single domestic airline ticket for leisure travel? Because as a former IBM SE, I've done it HUNDREDS of times for business travel. Literally hundreds of times. Last second tickets, fully refundable tickets, you name it. The ticket pricing market is designed to extract maximum revenue from business travelers (convenience) and keep them coming back (loyalty programs). Don't be obtuse and argumentative. This is the way it is and it is a fact. Stop trying to find answers that don't exist.
- PaulHoule 6y agoThat argument might make some sense if the airline business was consistently profitable. But it isn't https://www.routledge.com/Why-Cant-We-Make-Money-in-Aviation/Pilarski/p/book/9780754649113 https://www.routledge.com/Why-Cant-We-Make-Money-in-Aviation... In the last decade airlines merged a lot and have gotten some monopoly profits in the US but that looks like it is all over. More fundamentally airlines look like a broken business that makes excuses after the fact and is allowed to get away with by enablers.
- morsch 6y agoHow much of total revenue and/or passenger miles does business travel make up? I mean, I believe it's more than 0.001%, but how much.