8 ms·

Pretty much a BS clickbait headline that doesn't comport with the facts in the article: > Across the industry, revenue from what’s known as ancillary sales—fee

Pretty much a BS clickbait headline that doesn't comport with the facts in the article: > Across the industry, revenue from what’s known as ancillary sales—fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to name a few—will reach a record $117.9 billion in 2023 Yes, airlines have done a ton of "unbundling", but lots and lots of people want to select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc. and are willing to pay for it, regardless of website design. I'm not arguing that airline websites don't use dark patterns, just that it's ridiculously insane to attribute all ancillary revenue to that.

crooked-v 3y ago
The dark pattern part comes in with how it's impossible to know if or when any of that stuff is actually included in the ticket price, letting airlines like Spirit list 'ultra-low' prices that end up the same or more as other tickets once you actually include the basics like 'having luggage' or 'tall people getting enough legroom to physically fit into the seat'.
- toymin 3y ago
  They still should be way cheaper if you don’t care about the seats and/or only have hand luggage
  - tyfon 3y ago
    I wish they would enforce the "hand luggage" size a bit on entry to the plane, last time I flew around 2017 it was a complete shit show in regards to the overhead storage compartments.
    - spacemanspiff01 3y ago
      They do, or at least when I last flew they were charging people who had carryon bags that would not go beneath the seat. (I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they did not seem to care that much.)
      - tomschwiha 3y ago
        I guess it depends on how full a flight is. A empty one they don't really care - a full one they care more. But also if its a cheap or "premium" airline.
    - matwood 3y ago
      The budget airlines are pretty strict on this, but the regulars not so much.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  I feel like this is different than a hotel 'resort fee', which you have no way to decline. I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should exist.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    I think it's probably a fair bit more. It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi. Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.
- creer 3y ago
  For my last flights, all the fees WERE disclosed well in advance. These airlines WANTED to sell these options and were marketing them diligently to the point where you had to fight these unbundled options with a stick. There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure. Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific seats if you do want a lot more space. If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were not offered.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Yep, I'm hella tall, I want to know up front I can pay to reserve a seat with more legroom. And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.
- tempsy 3y ago
  ironically airfares are one of the most transparently priced services in the whole country because Obama passed a law that forced them to show the final price with fees and taxes included in the list price when searching pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the same
  - thehappypm 3y ago
    Gasoline?
    - tempsy 3y ago
      "Pretty much" implying there are exceptions, yes, but it's not the norm in the US for list prices to be inclusive of all fees and taxes.
  - vikingerik 3y ago
    The hidden motivation there is that the government's rule benefits the government. It's easier for them to raise their taxes and fees, by hiding their portion in the total price where they won't get blamed. (You can find the breakdown if you look for it, but who ever bothers.)
  - curun1r 3y ago
    They're transparent in the sense that they tell you the cost and it's the same when you checkout 5 minutes later. But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening. I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a lower price by using airline points as an intermediate currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the cost for flights in points.
    - tempsy 3y ago
      not sure what you think should happen. there’s a limited number of seats per flight. if there’s 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be priced the same
- brandall10 3y ago
  In the case of Spirit and Frontier, this is literally what they're known for. I'd be shocked to meet someone shocked by that. The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats for those who want to sit together. If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great to not have to pay for that.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    And the point is that we should not have to live in a adversarial world like this. It’s not that people don’t know about it it’s not that people are surprised by it The point is that we all think it’s bad and that it should change and so we’re pointing it out
    - atomicfiredoll 3y ago
      I agree that everything shouldn't be as adversarial, but as somebody who's motto for less important/short flights has become "Just throw me in the trash," flying Spirit is fine by me. There's a segment with additional time/flexibility that they appeal to. My concern is when companies go too far in misrepresenting things, especially things that are actually mandatory, and I'm careful because I've come to expect that from most. Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some flexibility around staying in a location longer when necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      You want to travel somewhere and pay as little as possible. The airlines want to take you there for as much as possible. It's inherently adversarial. It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use) services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling (in part driven by online search), consumers could now decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose that, they paid more than people who didn't use that service. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 has some more information about the evolution of unbundling. For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption (and probably saves me money in total).
- mkipper 3y ago
  This seems like a huge stretch of "dark pattern". Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about all the things you aren't getting with your ticket.
  - nickjj 3y ago
    I haven't booked a flight in a while but any situation where I don't know the "final" cost of my ticket before I start the checkout process is a dark pattern in my book. I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8 because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me it's an extra $100. That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.) even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells. Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with the price you can use a competitor with better rates. There's no contest in how much better of an experience and outcome that is for customers.
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      Not knowing if you paid to choose your seat or baggage at the time of checkout is a reading comprehension issue. There's a valid complaint that they all game what's included/excluded at the listing price so they sort better in the fare compare websites. But once you go through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear what you are getting.
      - nickjj 3y ago
        It's not about reading comprehension or the lack of it. It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to invest time and provide information during the checkout process only to find out on a much later step that the list price is no longer the price you were given. You're being lied to about the list price which makes it harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking out because you've invested so much time already to get to step 6 / 8. [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy
- czhu12 3y ago
  For what its worth, I often fly from one location to another without luggage (going home to visit parents for instance). its actually my far my most common mode of flight since I visit them 3-4 times a year. I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other people who need luggage.
- skohan 3y ago
  Yeah the problem for the consumer is how opaque it is. They're all competing to get the lowest ticket price on the aggregator price, and then claw back a profit either through obtuse language during the checkout process (i.e. insurance which is not clear at all about what it covers) or through unexpected "extra fees" you end up paying between when you get to the airport and when you arrive at your destination. Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight to the gate to avoid an extra fee) Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably going a bad way.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - chx 3y ago
    Was but no longer. Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were paid to do so. But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes it has a price but again: you get what you pay for. Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs -- not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines together can match the network of Ryanair, it's really something else.
    - skohan 3y ago
      Maybe but they already lost my business for life. You only get so many chances and there are plenty of other airlines.
- arcbyte 3y ago
  I hear you, but I fly spirit all the time with no add-ons at all. No bags, no seat selection, no wifi, no snacks. I really appreciate the low price and select Spirit over my preferred airline Southwest often for this use case. It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.
- Angostura 3y ago
  Or companies like Easyjet that save a couple of inches of the dimensions of (previously fairly standard) carry on luggage, so that when you get to the gate you have to fork out £40 or so to carry it on.
  - switch007 3y ago
    Non standardised cabin bag sizes are a nightmare!
- SeenNotHeard 3y ago
  It's a lot like SEO optimization and the chicanery that goes on there: Airlines know that customers (a) are using ticket comparison sites like Kayak and Google Flights, (b) customers sort by price, from lowest to highest, and (c) as with Internet search results, customers tend to click on links on the first page w/o scrolling. "Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to move toward the top of that list, and then make the money back by offering extras during the checkout. Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field, but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge around it.
  - goatforce5 3y ago
    Google Flights will allow you to select how many carry-ons and checked bags you have (depending on the route). e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
    - SeenNotHeard 3y ago
      Sure, but I've not seen them offer tick boxes for things like the ability to choose which seat you're in, or complimentary snacks and drinks. ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be under a certain weight or pay an additional charge. Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.
- dymk 3y ago
  Maybe it's because I use Google Flights, but all of that information is front and center. I've never had to dig for it.
  - switch007 3y ago
    Google Flights does not show checked baggage or non-standard seat fees AFAIK It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines once you select a specific flight when it offers you a range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy Basic / Economy Plus options). Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
    - dymk 3y ago
      I'm not sure what a non-standard seat fee is (it does show prices for seat tiers, such as economy vs first class), but it does show baggage fees for me.
      - switch007 3y ago
        Eg extra leg room seats is what I mean. Ie what the person you replied to meant, what you understood when you said all that information is front and centre… And what did you mean by baggage? Carry on or checked? I’ve never seen it show checked baggage fees. Maybe just estimates in small grey text somewhere at most
- boring_twenties 3y ago
  I don't think Spirit makes any secret of the fact that carry on bags are not included in the price? And in any case, the flight aggregators I have used lately (namely, Google Flights and Kayak) make it obvious.
- sandmn 3y ago
  It's usually listed it on their website and not too hard to google. I have to do it for every new airline I use because I'm almost always flying with only carry-on and rules for carry-on can drastically differ between airlines. Only time I flew Spirit it cost me $40 to get from Orlando to LA and it's hard to beat that price. Compared to likes of RyanAir their personal item size is actually quite generous and my usual weekender backpack fit pretty well. I'm avoiding Spirit since that flight mostly because their operations are less reliable than other carriers but that have nothing to do with extra charges.
1024core 3y ago
> but lots and lots of people want to select their seats. . .and are willing to pay for it, How did we ever get by before? I've been flying since 1984 and never paid to select seats until about a year or two ago.
- strictnein 3y ago
  You weren't selecting your seat in 1984. You'd show up at the airport, the agent at the counter would print your ticket, and you would realize with deep horror that you were in seat 37-E in the back of a DC10 with its 2-5-2 seating arrangement.
  - expertentipp 3y ago
    At least you're certain no kid will hit the touchscreen of the entertainment system in your headrest. Although the moment the person in front unfolds their backrest it's what the nightmares are made of.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Change it to dc9 and you are describing my first flight. 2-3 seating, engines on the wing, feels like you are outside of the plane. When I did a changeover to 747 it felt like I was in a quiet movie theater.
  - pb7 3y ago
    On top of that, prices were also far higher. Air travel has gotten cheaper and more accessible over time with the option to pay for things you may care about.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    I was choosing seats via EasySabre in 1986. Granted, my employer paid for a Sabre service via compuserve, but I was able to pick my own seat for free. And when I had to book with an agent on the phone, I was able to pick not only aisle or window, but front of cabin, middle, or rear. Also for free. Let's not normalize bullshit fees that are clearly a money grab. Kinda bizarre how many people are dissing this article and supporting airlines. I'm wondering if that's a Gen Z thing since they're used to paying service fees without realizing there are free alternatives.
maerF0x0 3y ago
> fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to name a few .. "unbundling" I can appreciate this kind of unbundling where I can choose what I want or dont want. Unlike the rental market that has started to "unbundle" with mandatory fees. In my case the mandatory additional fees adds another 12% to the "price". ($250 application fee amortized over a year, $60 credit check amortized over a year, $110 technology package, $31 valet trash, $12 amenity fees, $5 online service fee)
- tppiotrowski 3y ago
  I agree. Ticketmaster, AirBnB, and other services with mandatory fees that are known but not shown until checkout should be regulated but it won't happen. Just like the USA is the only country in the world that doesn't include sales tax on sticker prices (because it makes things seem more expensive)
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    I actually believe hearing the sales tax thing is a different issue. I recall hearing some conservative folks say tax separate is intended to keep the "sting" in the tax so people will be incentivized to protest it and reduce it. It could be both reasons, as well.
BeetleB 3y ago
Agreed. I don't run into most of these issues. When searching for flights, ensure Spirit Airlines is excluded. Unless there's a massive price difference, just fly Southwest if you have luggage. In over a decade, it's rare that some other airline is a lot cheaper. Most of them are at price parity or more expensive with luggage. In any case, at this point everyone in the US knows you'll get charged for luggage with most airlines and account for it when searching. Food: Just don't. They give crappy snacks on planes. Just bring a few along with you. Or even buy them at the airport. Insurance: Go to https://www.insuremytrip.com/ https://www.insuremytrip.com/ and get it yourself. Ignore whatever airlines offer you. Seat selection: Don't bother with it too much. Also, nice that Southwest doesn't let you pick seats. Priority boarding: Why...? I'd rather sit in the airport than in a cramped seat in the plane. And I've had bad experiences where they've turned the air conditioning off in the plane during boarding and I start feeling sick. Compared to when I was a kid, flying is much cheaper now (inflation adjusted).
- Izikiel43 3y ago
  > Priority boarding: Why...? Getting carry on room is the only reason this makes sense
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Though that's a pretty good reason. I do have an airline card that is decent otherwise and gives me good enough boarding priority. I don't bring on a large carryon but I almost never check luggage so it's nice to have overhead bin space.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    I guess. I usually have a small enough one that I can squeeze under the seat. Even when I've had larger items that need to go overhead, the majority of the times it's within one row of where I'm sitting. The ones where I have to put it far away are the exception.
    - jsmith45 3y ago
      The problem is is the narrow-body "commuter" aircraft, which often only have enough overhead space for about 3/4 of all seats. Since most people have a carryon that needs overhead space, they often run out, and need to gatecheck your carry on. The issue is that people don't like this, since it means more of a delay at the destination. Also some airlines will through gate-check the bag, printing a full barcoded tag tied to your ticket, like all other checked begs. Other airlines, most notably American's regional carriers will instead "valet check" the bag, which means a little red tag is added that is not tied to you in any way, and at the destination they are supposed to separate out those bags, and hand them back on the jetbridge. This means you will miss any connection that does not exceed the minimum connection time at the airport by a solid 10 minutes. Even worse is what happens if the baggage handler fails to notice the red tag. Then one of 3 things will happen: 1. It will get spit out at baggage claim. (I've had this happen once, albeit on a flight with no possible conections, so the bags skipped the sorting step and went straight to baggage claim.) 2. The bag reaches bag sorting, and because it does not have a proper checked tag with barcode will eventually get spit out for manual processing. An airport employee notices the red "American valet checked" tag, and delivers it to the American baggage office, where you can try to reclaim it with the little stub that you hopefully remembered to remove from the tag. 3. The little red tag got ripped off at some point in the process. If this happens you probably won't get your bag back. If the employee who checks unclaimed bags for identification actually does their job, you might get it back (assuming you have filled out the address card on your luggage), but sadly in practice that almost seems to the the exception instead of the rule.
matwood 3y ago
Yeah, I actually like the unbundling. I'll buy the cheapest ticket and then check every couple days for a good upgrade price. It also lets me do things like upgrade just the long leg of the flight as first class and not bother with paying for the shorter leg upgrades. I'm pretty cheap, but I'm also tall and older. Any flight over 2 hours, I absolutely will pay for comfort.
ghaff 3y ago
I don't mind the unbundling so much. I mostly know about that, especially given I'm mostly on a single carrier. What's more annoying is clicking on a roundtrip fare from $1K or whatever and when I get to the return leg (on the date I had already chosen) and there's no $1K roundtip fare to be seen. I just spent probably 8 hours finding a pair of flights somewhat flexibly around Christmas (yes I know but was having trouble firming up plans) and I'm still not sure what final combination/incantation got me to a fare and schedule that was at least within a large ballpark of tolerable if not exactly reasonable.
notahacker 3y ago
Yeah. Whole article feels a bit "Fastcompany makes $entireprofit from bullshit clickbait headlines". Some people would read the article with an accurate headline! For people that don't want to be at the front of the queue, select their seats, eat airline food or use inflight wifi, the fact that some people pay a bit more to do it and subsidise their ticket costs is a bonus. And even some of the really customer hostile ancillary revenue streams like "Printing your boarding pass will be 50 dollars sir" has nothing to do with website dark patterns
rootusrootus 3y ago
> select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc I mostly don't have a problem with unbundling, except for seat selection. That's just gouging. But it works pretty well because people traveling as a group will suck it up and pay for the privilege of picking seats together.
chickenWing 3y ago
If you actually read the article you'd know that unbundling is not not what it's about. It's about the dark patterns that trick or coerce people into purchasing "extras" that they don't want, or didn't know they had to pay extra for.
jjav 3y ago
> lots of people want to select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc. and are willing to pay for it "willing to pay for it" is a odd way to phrase this. Of course people need to do all those things, but we are now forced to pay extra for these basics. All of which used to simply be part of the ticket price.
- cochne 3y ago
  Another way to look at it is that you are now paying less for the base ticket which used to include those things. This allows consumers more choice in what part of the experience they want to pay for. If someone wants to build a computer and they don't need a graphics card, it's better to give them the option not to get one for less money, or to get one for more money.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    > Another way to look at it is that you are now paying less for the base ticket which used to include those things. If that were true, sure. But I somehow doubt that's true. I don't have any data to verify this (nor do I know how one would get it), but I would expect that the inflation-adjusted cost of a ticket 20 years ago (when you weren't yet getting nickel and dimed for everything) is comparable to what you pay today for just the base price.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Airline prices are much cheaper than they used to be. Imo airfare is the crowning achievement of capitalism and proof that efficient, free markets are unbeatable economic engines. Airlines barely make any money at all off flights now, they’re profit engine is the credit card they push.
      - jjav 3y ago
        > Airline prices are much cheaper than they used to be. The base price listed, but by the time you add all the fees and fees on fees, not so sure they're any cheaper. Last time I flew a few months ago the initial flight price of ~$600 on kayak search became ~$1500 by the time I had the final price 5 minutes of clicking later. I ended up buying the ~$800 flight that became ~$1300 after all the add-on fees. The real problem is that it makes comparison shopping incredibly difficult, since each airlines packages their dozen fees differently. Years ago I could list all the prices from A to B and pick the best time and price from a single screen and that's that, since every price was the final price. It was so easy. Now I have to go through each flight option individually going through the whole reservation sequence to finally get a price. It can take many hours, what used to be a simple search. If you've done this I'm sure you know the add-on fees are different for each flight option! I'm sure most people just give up and buy whichever rather than waste the time, which is exactly what the airlines want. I'm obsessive enough that I'll spend the time, but what a waste. > Imo airfare is the crowning achievement of capitalism Capitalism works optimally when consumers can be fully informed and comparison shop with high efficiency. The airline pricing these days is pretty much the exact opposite of that, being extremely opaque by design to prevent comparison shopping.
mattwad 3y ago
It's not "unbundling" they literally just added new costs for features that were originally free because they can get away with it. So far, I have also found you are now REQUIRED to pay for your seats if you want to sit together. Frontier splits me and my wife even when there's seats available
- mateo411 3y ago
  I fly Southwest too. I like the flexibility that they provide. If you don't feel like flying today, that's fine with them. No change fees. However, sometimes they don't feel like flying either, and you also need to extend them the same courtesy.
- yuliyp 3y ago
  It's interesting you used Frontier as an example. Frontier's whole business model is "unbundle everything the law allows." This means dirt-cheap fares that alone can't cover their costs of running the flights. They need the fees to make the whole thing work.
  - boring_twenties 3y ago
    The last Frontier flight I took had the following cost breakdown: Airfare: $0.01 Taxes and fees: $18.97 Total: $18.98
- listenallyall 3y ago
  4 fare types, Early Bird, A-List? Not displaying prices with aggregators? Surprisingly-expensive fares quite often? I appreciate Southwest's philosophy but it isn't immune from trying to squeeze more revenue out of each trip - they just do it differently.
- gus_massa 3y ago
  I understand people been angry for a fee for choosing the seats. But a fee for lugage is very natural. Handling lugage has a clear cost. It looks natural to unbound it.
smsm42 3y ago
I think also one has to distinguish junk fees (which are frequently unavoidable, but hidden after the last minute from the consumer) from things like buying food. I mean, some airlines on some flights include free food. But food has little to do with flying itself, and if you don't want to pay, you can easily get it on the ground from another place and/or wait for 2-3 hours without a meal. It's not an "extra fee", it's buying a different product - which yes, can be sold by the airline too, but I don't see anything bad in that. Conflating providing some optional services with the nefarious practice of junk fees is not helping the consumers at all.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
  - smsm42 3y ago
    True, but I don't think food is ever not free on such long flights - nobody wants to face a hundred of hungry people in a closed quarters :) Usually shorter flights - and alcohol on longer ones - are where the money are made, I think.
wubrr 3y ago
Selecting seats used to be free for available seats. Now they artificially reserve empty seats such that you need to pay for them. No extra value or improvement is introduced for customers here, quite the opposite.

crooked-v 3y ago

The dark pattern part comes in with how it's impossible to know if or when any of that stuff is actually included in the ticket price, letting airlines like Spirit list 'ultra-low' prices that end up the same or more as other tickets once you actually include the basics like 'having luggage' or 'tall people getting enough legroom to physically fit into the seat'.

toymin 3y ago
They still should be way cheaper if you don’t care about the seats and/or only have hand luggage
- tyfon 3y ago
  I wish they would enforce the "hand luggage" size a bit on entry to the plane, last time I flew around 2017 it was a complete shit show in regards to the overhead storage compartments.
  - spacemanspiff01 3y ago
    They do, or at least when I last flew they were charging people who had carryon bags that would not go beneath the seat. (I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they did not seem to care that much.)
    - tomschwiha 3y ago
      I guess it depends on how full a flight is. A empty one they don't really care - a full one they care more. But also if its a cheap or "premium" airline.
  - matwood 3y ago
    The budget airlines are pretty strict on this, but the regulars not so much.
fasthands9 3y ago
I feel like this is different than a hotel 'resort fee', which you have no way to decline. I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should exist.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  I think it's probably a fair bit more. It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi. Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.
creer 3y ago
For my last flights, all the fees WERE disclosed well in advance. These airlines WANTED to sell these options and were marketing them diligently to the point where you had to fight these unbundled options with a stick. There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure. Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific seats if you do want a lot more space. If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were not offered.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Yep, I'm hella tall, I want to know up front I can pay to reserve a seat with more legroom. And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.
tempsy 3y ago
ironically airfares are one of the most transparently priced services in the whole country because Obama passed a law that forced them to show the final price with fees and taxes included in the list price when searching pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the same
- thehappypm 3y ago
  Gasoline?
  - tempsy 3y ago
    "Pretty much" implying there are exceptions, yes, but it's not the norm in the US for list prices to be inclusive of all fees and taxes.
- vikingerik 3y ago
  The hidden motivation there is that the government's rule benefits the government. It's easier for them to raise their taxes and fees, by hiding their portion in the total price where they won't get blamed. (You can find the breakdown if you look for it, but who ever bothers.)
- curun1r 3y ago
  They're transparent in the sense that they tell you the cost and it's the same when you checkout 5 minutes later. But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening. I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a lower price by using airline points as an intermediate currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the cost for flights in points.
  - tempsy 3y ago
    not sure what you think should happen. there’s a limited number of seats per flight. if there’s 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be priced the same
brandall10 3y ago
In the case of Spirit and Frontier, this is literally what they're known for. I'd be shocked to meet someone shocked by that. The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats for those who want to sit together. If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great to not have to pay for that.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  And the point is that we should not have to live in a adversarial world like this. It’s not that people don’t know about it it’s not that people are surprised by it The point is that we all think it’s bad and that it should change and so we’re pointing it out
  - atomicfiredoll 3y ago
    I agree that everything shouldn't be as adversarial, but as somebody who's motto for less important/short flights has become "Just throw me in the trash," flying Spirit is fine by me. There's a segment with additional time/flexibility that they appeal to. My concern is when companies go too far in misrepresenting things, especially things that are actually mandatory, and I'm careful because I've come to expect that from most. Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some flexibility around staying in a location longer when necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    You want to travel somewhere and pay as little as possible. The airlines want to take you there for as much as possible. It's inherently adversarial. It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use) services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling (in part driven by online search), consumers could now decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose that, they paid more than people who didn't use that service. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 has some more information about the evolution of unbundling. For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption (and probably saves me money in total).
mkipper 3y ago
This seems like a huge stretch of "dark pattern". Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about all the things you aren't getting with your ticket.
- nickjj 3y ago
  I haven't booked a flight in a while but any situation where I don't know the "final" cost of my ticket before I start the checkout process is a dark pattern in my book. I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8 because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me it's an extra $100. That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.) even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells. Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with the price you can use a competitor with better rates. There's no contest in how much better of an experience and outcome that is for customers.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Not knowing if you paid to choose your seat or baggage at the time of checkout is a reading comprehension issue. There's a valid complaint that they all game what's included/excluded at the listing price so they sort better in the fare compare websites. But once you go through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear what you are getting.
    - nickjj 3y ago
      It's not about reading comprehension or the lack of it. It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to invest time and provide information during the checkout process only to find out on a much later step that the list price is no longer the price you were given. You're being lied to about the list price which makes it harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking out because you've invested so much time already to get to step 6 / 8. [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy
czhu12 3y ago
For what its worth, I often fly from one location to another without luggage (going home to visit parents for instance). its actually my far my most common mode of flight since I visit them 3-4 times a year. I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other people who need luggage.
skohan 3y ago
Yeah the problem for the consumer is how opaque it is. They're all competing to get the lowest ticket price on the aggregator price, and then claw back a profit either through obtuse language during the checkout process (i.e. insurance which is not clear at all about what it covers) or through unexpected "extra fees" you end up paying between when you get to the airport and when you arrive at your destination. Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight to the gate to avoid an extra fee) Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably going a bad way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chx 3y ago
  Was but no longer. Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were paid to do so. But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes it has a price but again: you get what you pay for. Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs -- not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines together can match the network of Ryanair, it's really something else.
  - skohan 3y ago
    Maybe but they already lost my business for life. You only get so many chances and there are plenty of other airlines.
arcbyte 3y ago
I hear you, but I fly spirit all the time with no add-ons at all. No bags, no seat selection, no wifi, no snacks. I really appreciate the low price and select Spirit over my preferred airline Southwest often for this use case. It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.
Angostura 3y ago
Or companies like Easyjet that save a couple of inches of the dimensions of (previously fairly standard) carry on luggage, so that when you get to the gate you have to fork out £40 or so to carry it on.
- switch007 3y ago
  Non standardised cabin bag sizes are a nightmare!
SeenNotHeard 3y ago
It's a lot like SEO optimization and the chicanery that goes on there: Airlines know that customers (a) are using ticket comparison sites like Kayak and Google Flights, (b) customers sort by price, from lowest to highest, and (c) as with Internet search results, customers tend to click on links on the first page w/o scrolling. "Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to move toward the top of that list, and then make the money back by offering extras during the checkout. Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field, but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge around it.
- goatforce5 3y ago
  Google Flights will allow you to select how many carry-ons and checked bags you have (depending on the route). e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
  - SeenNotHeard 3y ago
    Sure, but I've not seen them offer tick boxes for things like the ability to choose which seat you're in, or complimentary snacks and drinks. ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be under a certain weight or pay an additional charge. Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.
dymk 3y ago
Maybe it's because I use Google Flights, but all of that information is front and center. I've never had to dig for it.
- switch007 3y ago
  Google Flights does not show checked baggage or non-standard seat fees AFAIK It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines once you select a specific flight when it offers you a range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy Basic / Economy Plus options). Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
  - dymk 3y ago
    I'm not sure what a non-standard seat fee is (it does show prices for seat tiers, such as economy vs first class), but it does show baggage fees for me.
    - switch007 3y ago
      Eg extra leg room seats is what I mean. Ie what the person you replied to meant, what you understood when you said all that information is front and centre… And what did you mean by baggage? Carry on or checked? I’ve never seen it show checked baggage fees. Maybe just estimates in small grey text somewhere at most
boring_twenties 3y ago
I don't think Spirit makes any secret of the fact that carry on bags are not included in the price? And in any case, the flight aggregators I have used lately (namely, Google Flights and Kayak) make it obvious.
sandmn 3y ago
It's usually listed it on their website and not too hard to google. I have to do it for every new airline I use because I'm almost always flying with only carry-on and rules for carry-on can drastically differ between airlines. Only time I flew Spirit it cost me $40 to get from Orlando to LA and it's hard to beat that price. Compared to likes of RyanAir their personal item size is actually quite generous and my usual weekender backpack fit pretty well. I'm avoiding Spirit since that flight mostly because their operations are less reliable than other carriers but that have nothing to do with extra charges.

1024core 3y ago

> but lots and lots of people want to select their seats. . .and are willing to pay for it, How did we ever get by before? I've been flying since 1984 and never paid to select seats until about a year or two ago.

strictnein 3y ago
You weren't selecting your seat in 1984. You'd show up at the airport, the agent at the counter would print your ticket, and you would realize with deep horror that you were in seat 37-E in the back of a DC10 with its 2-5-2 seating arrangement.
- expertentipp 3y ago
  At least you're certain no kid will hit the touchscreen of the entertainment system in your headrest. Although the moment the person in front unfolds their backrest it's what the nightmares are made of.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Change it to dc9 and you are describing my first flight. 2-3 seating, engines on the wing, feels like you are outside of the plane. When I did a changeover to 747 it felt like I was in a quiet movie theater.
- pb7 3y ago
  On top of that, prices were also far higher. Air travel has gotten cheaper and more accessible over time with the option to pay for things you may care about.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  I was choosing seats via EasySabre in 1986. Granted, my employer paid for a Sabre service via compuserve, but I was able to pick my own seat for free. And when I had to book with an agent on the phone, I was able to pick not only aisle or window, but front of cabin, middle, or rear. Also for free. Let's not normalize bullshit fees that are clearly a money grab. Kinda bizarre how many people are dissing this article and supporting airlines. I'm wondering if that's a Gen Z thing since they're used to paying service fees without realizing there are free alternatives.

maerF0x0 3y ago

> fees for selecting seats, checking bags, and buying food, to name a few .. "unbundling" I can appreciate this kind of unbundling where I can choose what I want or dont want. Unlike the rental market that has started to "unbundle" with mandatory fees. In my case the mandatory additional fees adds another 12% to the "price". ($250 application fee amortized over a year, $60 credit check amortized over a year, $110 technology package, $31 valet trash, $12 amenity fees, $5 online service fee)

tppiotrowski 3y ago
I agree. Ticketmaster, AirBnB, and other services with mandatory fees that are known but not shown until checkout should be regulated but it won't happen. Just like the USA is the only country in the world that doesn't include sales tax on sticker prices (because it makes things seem more expensive)
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  I actually believe hearing the sales tax thing is a different issue. I recall hearing some conservative folks say tax separate is intended to keep the "sting" in the tax so people will be incentivized to protest it and reduce it. It could be both reasons, as well.

BeetleB 3y ago

Agreed. I don't run into most of these issues. When searching for flights, ensure Spirit Airlines is excluded. Unless there's a massive price difference, just fly Southwest if you have luggage. In over a decade, it's rare that some other airline is a lot cheaper. Most of them are at price parity or more expensive with luggage. In any case, at this point everyone in the US knows you'll get charged for luggage with most airlines and account for it when searching. Food: Just don't. They give crappy snacks on planes. Just bring a few along with you. Or even buy them at the airport. Insurance: Go to https://www.insuremytrip.com/ https://www.insuremytrip.com/ and get it yourself. Ignore whatever airlines offer you. Seat selection: Don't bother with it too much. Also, nice that Southwest doesn't let you pick seats. Priority boarding: Why...? I'd rather sit in the airport than in a cramped seat in the plane. And I've had bad experiences where they've turned the air conditioning off in the plane during boarding and I start feeling sick. Compared to when I was a kid, flying is much cheaper now (inflation adjusted).

Izikiel43 3y ago
> Priority boarding: Why...? Getting carry on room is the only reason this makes sense
- ghaff 3y ago
  Though that's a pretty good reason. I do have an airline card that is decent otherwise and gives me good enough boarding priority. I don't bring on a large carryon but I almost never check luggage so it's nice to have overhead bin space.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  I guess. I usually have a small enough one that I can squeeze under the seat. Even when I've had larger items that need to go overhead, the majority of the times it's within one row of where I'm sitting. The ones where I have to put it far away are the exception.
  - jsmith45 3y ago
    The problem is is the narrow-body "commuter" aircraft, which often only have enough overhead space for about 3/4 of all seats. Since most people have a carryon that needs overhead space, they often run out, and need to gatecheck your carry on. The issue is that people don't like this, since it means more of a delay at the destination. Also some airlines will through gate-check the bag, printing a full barcoded tag tied to your ticket, like all other checked begs. Other airlines, most notably American's regional carriers will instead "valet check" the bag, which means a little red tag is added that is not tied to you in any way, and at the destination they are supposed to separate out those bags, and hand them back on the jetbridge. This means you will miss any connection that does not exceed the minimum connection time at the airport by a solid 10 minutes. Even worse is what happens if the baggage handler fails to notice the red tag. Then one of 3 things will happen: 1. It will get spit out at baggage claim. (I've had this happen once, albeit on a flight with no possible conections, so the bags skipped the sorting step and went straight to baggage claim.) 2. The bag reaches bag sorting, and because it does not have a proper checked tag with barcode will eventually get spit out for manual processing. An airport employee notices the red "American valet checked" tag, and delivers it to the American baggage office, where you can try to reclaim it with the little stub that you hopefully remembered to remove from the tag. 3. The little red tag got ripped off at some point in the process. If this happens you probably won't get your bag back. If the employee who checks unclaimed bags for identification actually does their job, you might get it back (assuming you have filled out the address card on your luggage), but sadly in practice that almost seems to the the exception instead of the rule.

matwood 3y ago

Yeah, I actually like the unbundling. I'll buy the cheapest ticket and then check every couple days for a good upgrade price. It also lets me do things like upgrade just the long leg of the flight as first class and not bother with paying for the shorter leg upgrades. I'm pretty cheap, but I'm also tall and older. Any flight over 2 hours, I absolutely will pay for comfort.

ghaff 3y ago

I don't mind the unbundling so much. I mostly know about that, especially given I'm mostly on a single carrier. What's more annoying is clicking on a roundtrip fare from $1K or whatever and when I get to the return leg (on the date I had already chosen) and there's no $1K roundtip fare to be seen. I just spent probably 8 hours finding a pair of flights somewhat flexibly around Christmas (yes I know but was having trouble firming up plans) and I'm still not sure what final combination/incantation got me to a fare and schedule that was at least within a large ballpark of tolerable if not exactly reasonable.

notahacker 3y ago

Yeah. Whole article feels a bit "Fastcompany makes $entireprofit from bullshit clickbait headlines". Some people would read the article with an accurate headline! For people that don't want to be at the front of the queue, select their seats, eat airline food or use inflight wifi, the fact that some people pay a bit more to do it and subsidise their ticket costs is a bonus. And even some of the really customer hostile ancillary revenue streams like "Printing your boarding pass will be 50 dollars sir" has nothing to do with website dark patterns

rootusrootus 3y ago

> select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc I mostly don't have a problem with unbundling, except for seat selection. That's just gouging. But it works pretty well because people traveling as a group will suck it up and pay for the privilege of picking seats together.

chickenWing 3y ago

If you actually read the article you'd know that unbundling is not not what it's about. It's about the dark patterns that trick or coerce people into purchasing "extras" that they don't want, or didn't know they had to pay extra for.

jjav 3y ago

> lots of people want to select their seats, check their bags, buy food, etc. and are willing to pay for it "willing to pay for it" is a odd way to phrase this. Of course people need to do all those things, but we are now forced to pay extra for these basics. All of which used to simply be part of the ticket price.

cochne 3y ago
Another way to look at it is that you are now paying less for the base ticket which used to include those things. This allows consumers more choice in what part of the experience they want to pay for. If someone wants to build a computer and they don't need a graphics card, it's better to give them the option not to get one for less money, or to get one for more money.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  > Another way to look at it is that you are now paying less for the base ticket which used to include those things. If that were true, sure. But I somehow doubt that's true. I don't have any data to verify this (nor do I know how one would get it), but I would expect that the inflation-adjusted cost of a ticket 20 years ago (when you weren't yet getting nickel and dimed for everything) is comparable to what you pay today for just the base price.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Airline prices are much cheaper than they used to be. Imo airfare is the crowning achievement of capitalism and proof that efficient, free markets are unbeatable economic engines. Airlines barely make any money at all off flights now, they’re profit engine is the credit card they push.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > Airline prices are much cheaper than they used to be. The base price listed, but by the time you add all the fees and fees on fees, not so sure they're any cheaper. Last time I flew a few months ago the initial flight price of ~$600 on kayak search became ~$1500 by the time I had the final price 5 minutes of clicking later. I ended up buying the ~$800 flight that became ~$1300 after all the add-on fees. The real problem is that it makes comparison shopping incredibly difficult, since each airlines packages their dozen fees differently. Years ago I could list all the prices from A to B and pick the best time and price from a single screen and that's that, since every price was the final price. It was so easy. Now I have to go through each flight option individually going through the whole reservation sequence to finally get a price. It can take many hours, what used to be a simple search. If you've done this I'm sure you know the add-on fees are different for each flight option! I'm sure most people just give up and buy whichever rather than waste the time, which is exactly what the airlines want. I'm obsessive enough that I'll spend the time, but what a waste. > Imo airfare is the crowning achievement of capitalism Capitalism works optimally when consumers can be fully informed and comparison shop with high efficiency. The airline pricing these days is pretty much the exact opposite of that, being extremely opaque by design to prevent comparison shopping.

mattwad 3y ago

It's not "unbundling" they literally just added new costs for features that were originally free because they can get away with it. So far, I have also found you are now REQUIRED to pay for your seats if you want to sit together. Frontier splits me and my wife even when there's seats available

mateo411 3y ago
I fly Southwest too. I like the flexibility that they provide. If you don't feel like flying today, that's fine with them. No change fees. However, sometimes they don't feel like flying either, and you also need to extend them the same courtesy.
yuliyp 3y ago
It's interesting you used Frontier as an example. Frontier's whole business model is "unbundle everything the law allows." This means dirt-cheap fares that alone can't cover their costs of running the flights. They need the fees to make the whole thing work.
- boring_twenties 3y ago
  The last Frontier flight I took had the following cost breakdown: Airfare: $0.01 Taxes and fees: $18.97 Total: $18.98
listenallyall 3y ago
4 fare types, Early Bird, A-List? Not displaying prices with aggregators? Surprisingly-expensive fares quite often? I appreciate Southwest's philosophy but it isn't immune from trying to squeeze more revenue out of each trip - they just do it differently.
gus_massa 3y ago
I understand people been angry for a fee for choosing the seats. But a fee for lugage is very natural. Handling lugage has a clear cost. It looks natural to unbound it.

smsm42 3y ago

I think also one has to distinguish junk fees (which are frequently unavoidable, but hidden after the last minute from the consumer) from things like buying food. I mean, some airlines on some flights include free food. But food has little to do with flying itself, and if you don't want to pay, you can easily get it on the ground from another place and/or wait for 2-3 hours without a meal. It's not an "extra fee", it's buying a different product - which yes, can be sold by the airline too, but I don't see anything bad in that. Conflating providing some optional services with the nefarious practice of junk fees is not helping the consumers at all.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
- smsm42 3y ago
  True, but I don't think food is ever not free on such long flights - nobody wants to face a hundred of hungry people in a closed quarters :) Usually shorter flights - and alcohol on longer ones - are where the money are made, I think.

wubrr 3y ago

Selecting seats used to be free for available seats. Now they artificially reserve empty seats such that you need to pay for them. No extra value or improvement is introduced for customers here, quite the opposite.