The following airfare insanity story was told to me by a nameless United Airlines airport employee in Denver. But this is not to single out United, because this mindset seems to be endemic in the industry. And it’s not a short-term problem.
Recently I was waiting as a standby on a morning flight to San Francisco. Like most flights I have been on recently, this one was full. A pleasant gentleman next to me and I were in the same situation, and we were chatting idly about it. Turns out he was hoping to make an impulse one-day visit to see his grandson, although he fully expected not to make the flight.
We talked a bit about the business, and discussed the fact that neither of us could remember being on a plane with empty seats. My question, if your planes are so full, why are you selling tickets where you are losing money?
He responsed, “Funny you should say that.”
Apparently he was a manager at the airport, and United had recently sent out an executive from Chicago to talk about cost-cutting and the airline’s efforts to return to profitability.
So he asked the exec, “Why don’t we just raise our fares $50; especially in business markets like Denver-Chicago?”
The executive’s response. “We can’t do that. In that market American would take all our customers.”
The Denver guy’s response. “Well, actually, I don’t think so. You see, our planes are always full and often over-sold. And American is in the same boat. They seldom have extra seats when we’ve got a cancellation or an over-sold flight, and sometimes they call us looking for seats we don’t have.”
The executive said that no, United did feel it would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
My guy said he persisted. He argued that the premiers would be unlikely to switch because they were all so concerned about their economy plus seats and status. In fact, he said in his experience some of them had declined a seat on American even in the rare case that United had a canceled flight and American did have an opening, because they didn’t want a “crappy seat assignment” and/or to lose their frequent flier miles.
The United manager added that he closed the argument again by saying basically “So explain to me how, if their flights are full, they could possibly take more than a few of our customers, when they don’t have seats to sell. And if American fills up their flights, doesn’t that mean passengers who are left would have to take our more expensive fares?”
At this point the executive from Chicago said he would love to continue the discussion but he was out of time. And adjourned the meeting.
And we wonder why these airlines continually lose money?
photo by as737700 on flickr/creative commons
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
