5 ms·

Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C? I don't know. Is it obviously unethical for them to do so? It's a sen

by hugh3 16y ago

Is it ethical for airlines to charge you more for A->B than a flight going from A->B->C? I don't know. Is it obviously unethical for them to do so? It's a sensible observation that a subset of X should be priced lower than X, but is it a moral one? Or, if the airline can make more money by charging more for A->B than A->C via B then, heck, it's their airplane, let 'em do what they want!

rhizome 16y ago
Why are ethics and morality being discussed in the context of business? They have their pricing strategy, I have mine. It's my travel money, let me do what I want.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for. In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing person checked luggage or not. So, they either have to do a count, get everyone in their correct seat, or delay the plane until the person gets back on. It's a cute hack, but an annoying one for everyone caught up in it.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I agree that's one concern, but it's not entirely clear to me what the division of responsibility for those waiting-around passengers is. You might blame the passengers causing the problem, but as a passenger I also expect the airline to anticipate and work around any frequent sources of disruption. If it's something that happens often enough to actually be a problem, then it's an operational problem and they should find some way to mitigate it. For example, they could include it as a factor when evaluating pricing strategies (the likely operations-disrupting effect of certain pricing strategies), or perhaps they could handle check-in and luggage-tracking differently, or they could police their fare rules more stringently to more strongly discourage it. But they should do something, if indeed it is a problem (I'm not sure it actually is). Creating an obvious arbitrage opportunity and then structuring your operations in a way that isn't robust to some proportion of people exploiting it wouldn't be a very responsible way to run a business.
    - ghshephard 16y ago
      In the 15 years I've been flying actively, i've only once been on a plane where I was told to return to my seat so they could do a count. I'm presuming that was a situation where someone hopped off mid travel. So, this is really a rare scenario. I think most people who do this are savvy, which means they realize they are about to screw an entire planeload of people - so it's a fairly rare endeavor. The fact that the NYT was consulting with Trial Lawyers as to the legality of this, is some indication of how sketchy this behavior is. BTW - all of this thread applies to layovers where the plane lands, and some people deplane, while others stay in their seats. None of this applies to the situation where you have to get onto another plane, or, as I've had happen to me a couple times, they require you to exit the plane and then get back on. Particularly if you didn't check luggage. I'm fine with people playing that game - usually only causes a minute or two delay, if that.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        Oh, yeah, I didn't even realize the other one happens. I've never had a connection where I didn't have to get off the plane, and usually I have to change planes. I think maybe once out of hundreds of flights have I got lucky enough that the connecting plane was actually the same plane I came in on. So I assumed the hidden-city ticketing was just people skipping the 2nd connecting flight, not literally exiting the plane at a layover.
  - rhizome 16y ago
    Then it's a failure of the pricing strategy, developed by the airline itself, if it encourages people to make a rational choice that delays or affects other passengers.
    - yters 16y ago
      So whenever I can get away with crime it's someone else's fault? So you're the reason the lawyers don't let us do fun stuff in the US anymore!
      - rhizome 16y ago
        What's the crime here?
        yters 16y ago
        That's an extension of your reasoning. Nothing is forcing people to minimize costs at the expense of others. There are many things I could do that are not technically illegal, but cause great problems for others. Is the responsibility of corporations to make it costly for me to be immoral? That seems to be what you're saying.
        rhizome 16y ago
        It's a perverse incentive, provided by the airline. I don't understand your point otherwise.

by hugh3 16y ago

rhizome 16y ago

Why are ethics and morality being discussed in the context of business? They have their pricing strategy, I have mine. It's my travel money, let me do what I want.

ghshephard 16y ago
Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for. In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing person checked luggage or not. So, they either have to do a count, get everyone in their correct seat, or delay the plane until the person gets back on. It's a cute hack, but an annoying one for everyone caught up in it.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I agree that's one concern, but it's not entirely clear to me what the division of responsibility for those waiting-around passengers is. You might blame the passengers causing the problem, but as a passenger I also expect the airline to anticipate and work around any frequent sources of disruption. If it's something that happens often enough to actually be a problem, then it's an operational problem and they should find some way to mitigate it. For example, they could include it as a factor when evaluating pricing strategies (the likely operations-disrupting effect of certain pricing strategies), or perhaps they could handle check-in and luggage-tracking differently, or they could police their fare rules more stringently to more strongly discourage it. But they should do something, if indeed it is a problem (I'm not sure it actually is). Creating an obvious arbitrage opportunity and then structuring your operations in a way that isn't robust to some proportion of people exploiting it wouldn't be a very responsible way to run a business.
  - ghshephard 16y ago
    In the 15 years I've been flying actively, i've only once been on a plane where I was told to return to my seat so they could do a count. I'm presuming that was a situation where someone hopped off mid travel. So, this is really a rare scenario. I think most people who do this are savvy, which means they realize they are about to screw an entire planeload of people - so it's a fairly rare endeavor. The fact that the NYT was consulting with Trial Lawyers as to the legality of this, is some indication of how sketchy this behavior is. BTW - all of this thread applies to layovers where the plane lands, and some people deplane, while others stay in their seats. None of this applies to the situation where you have to get onto another plane, or, as I've had happen to me a couple times, they require you to exit the plane and then get back on. Particularly if you didn't check luggage. I'm fine with people playing that game - usually only causes a minute or two delay, if that.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      Oh, yeah, I didn't even realize the other one happens. I've never had a connection where I didn't have to get off the plane, and usually I have to change planes. I think maybe once out of hundreds of flights have I got lucky enough that the connecting plane was actually the same plane I came in on. So I assumed the hidden-city ticketing was just people skipping the 2nd connecting flight, not literally exiting the plane at a layover.
- rhizome 16y ago
  Then it's a failure of the pricing strategy, developed by the airline itself, if it encourages people to make a rational choice that delays or affects other passengers.
  - yters 16y ago
    So whenever I can get away with crime it's someone else's fault? So you're the reason the lawyers don't let us do fun stuff in the US anymore!
    - rhizome 16y ago
      What's the crime here?
      - yters 16y ago
        That's an extension of your reasoning. Nothing is forcing people to minimize costs at the expense of others. There are many things I could do that are not technically illegal, but cause great problems for others. Is the responsibility of corporations to make it costly for me to be immoral? That seems to be what you're saying.
        rhizome 16y ago
        It's a perverse incentive, provided by the airline. I don't understand your point otherwise.