The three Persian Gulf airlines

Quote: Fleastiff

If the flight is from NYC to London I don't see how saying I live in Denmark is some sort of fraud. I often told waitresses that I'm French or a Kiwi.

Your waitress doesn't have an army of lawyers working for her. The airlines do.

If you say you live in Denmark but you don't live in Denmark, that's lying. That's fraud.

It it unethical? Is it immoral? Of course not, because it shouldn't matter where the hell you live. In fact, it's none of their business where you live. From a moral standpoint, all that should matter is whether you have enough money to cover the $44 ticket.

But from a legal standpoint... it gives United's lawyers the opportunity to screw you. There's a lot of money at stake, considering that trans-Atlantic First Class seats typically go for over $8,000. And somewhere buried in the fine print Terms & Conditions legal disclaimer it probably says "If the customer lies to us, we'll forfeit their goddamn airline ticket." (I'm paraphrasing.) Will United's legal department screw you if it saves the airline $8,000 in lost revenue? I'm guessing yes.

But I might be wrong. So if there are any lawyers reading this, I'd be interested to hear their perspective.

UPDATE: United has announced that they won't honor the tickets. (No surprise there.) They're blaming it on a "third party software provider." Of course.

Apparently they sold "several thousand" tickets. Wow.

>>>Your waitress doesn't have an army of lawyers working for her. The airlines do.
True dat.

>>>>If you say you live in Denmark but you don't live in Denmark, that's lying. That's fraud.
False dat. Fraud requires a material misstatement of fact.

Quote: Fleastiff

False dat. Fraud requires a material misstatement of fact.

In any case it isn't necessary for United to worry about charging it's customers with fraud. There is plenty of legal precedent that covers large errors. Since this was clearly a very incorrect conversion factor of currencies involving the Danish krone, they don't have to honor any of the purchases (whether the customer lives in Denmark or not).

Quote: Pacomartin

In any case it isn't necessary for United to worry about charging it's customers with fraud. There is plenty of legal precedent that covers large errors.

Airfare prices are so completely irrational, even the honest consumer sometimes has no way of knowing which bargains are intentional and which are errors.

Consider American Airlines flight #265 on Jan 19, 2016 nonstop from Los Angeles to Lihue, Hawaii: $376 one-way.

Same day, same flight #265, but with an itinerary starting in San Diego: $650.

Same day, same flight #265, but with an itinerary starting in Salt Lake City, Utah: $235.

Flying from Utah adds 600 miles of fuel consumption, and yet the total price difference is negative $140. Insane. Where can I find this in an Economics 101 textbook? Indeed, the airlines are magically exempt from the laws of capitalism.

Quote: reno

Flying from Utah adds 600 miles of fuel consumption, and yet the total price difference is negative $140. Insane. Where can I find this in an Economics 101 textbook? Indeed, the airlines are magically exempt from the laws of capitalism.

You are looking at it wrong.
Airline pricing has absolutely nothing to with their cost.
It has everything to do with competition, load factors and supply vs demand.

The reality is its all about capitalism.
Little competition, high prices
Lots of competition, low prices.

LAX to Hawaii, lots of competition. good price. Lots of airlines fly this route.
SAN to LAX to Hawaii, Little competition, high price. Or maybe just a few seats left on the flight you are looking at and that's why the price is high.
SLC to LAX to Hawaii. AA flight out of a Delta hub. Must set low price or Delta gets the business. Delta may have a non stop. AA connection. Everybody prefers nonstop. To get people to not buy a nonstop and instead a connection, have to sell ticket at a low price. On the flip side, you operate a nonstop and competition has connections, may set a high price on that non stop because will still sell tickets because a lot of travelers will pay a higher fare to avoid a connection.

So the above example, you can see cost has nothing to do with price. AA costs high because it takes 2 flights, more fuel, yet the fare is low.
DL costs low due to nonstop, yet the fare is high.

Also another factor that controls price is how full the plane is.
As a plane gets filled up, its gets more and more expensive to get on that plane.
A typical airline will have about 20 different prices on 1 single flight.
Low fares are capacity controlled fares.
They sell a few seats at a low price, that price sells out, they go up to the next price, sell some seats that price sells out, go up to a higher price and it goes on till just a few expensive seats left or sold out. Its maximizing profits on a single plane. If the plane is almost sold out, then its supply vs demand which means a high price. On 1 single flight, you may have a price range from 200 dollars to 1k. People that paid 200, probably bought a ticket months in advance. The guy going to the airport and buying a ticket an hour before the flight may have to pay 1k.

Price is determined by competition and load factors and supply vs demand.

Quote: reno

UPDATE: United has announced that they won't honor the tickets. (No surprise there.) They're blaming it on a "third party software provider."

Serious question: how is an honest consumer supposed to know which cheap prices are mistakes and which cheap prices are just incredible bargains?

Last week American Airlines was selling one-way tickets from Philadelphia to Las Vegas for $20.47 (+ $15.63 taxes). The fare wasn't being advertised, fliers found it by randomly stumbling upon it. So if it's not advertised, surely it must have been a mistake. But then things got weirder: later that day United was selling tickets from Philly to either Vegas or San Francisco for $22 (+ $18.10 taxes).

I guess the ethical thing for an honest consumer to do is to alert the airline of their mistake before buying the ticket?

Quote: reno

Quote: reno

UPDATE: United has announced that they won't honor the tickets. (No surprise there.) They're blaming it on a "third party software provider."

Serious question: how is an honest consumer supposed to know which cheap prices are mistakes and which cheap prices are just incredible bargains?

Last week American Airlines was selling one-way tickets from Philadelphia to Las Vegas for $20.47 (+ $15.63 taxes). The fare wasn't being advertised, fliers found it by randomly stumbling upon it. So if it's not advertised, surely it must have been a mistake. But then things got weirder: later that day United was selling tickets from Philly to either Vegas or San Francisco for $22 (+ $18.10 taxes).

I guess the ethical thing for an honest consumer to do is to alert the airline of their mistake before buying the ticket?

If the price of the ticket is just taxes, its an obvious mistake.
Other then that, its really hard to determine if its a mistake or very aggressive pricing.
Every once in a while I will see a really great price that is just not taxes.
In these cases, I always strongly advise my client to buy the ticket. I wont call an airline, it wastes too much time.

On the flip side an agent at the old corporate travel company I worked for found a Southwest Airlines mistake just selling a ticket for taxes.
It was the night shift and all the agents and their families bought tickets.
Management came in the next morning, heard the story and voided every single ticket.
They talked to all the agents. If a corporate Travel Agency sells tickets priced as an obvious mistake, that agency can be held responsible by the airline.

My rules, if its priced above taxes, its fair game. Just priced as taxes, its a mistake.
Its interesting that the post above links blamed Orbitz.
My understanding is Orbitz is owned by the major airlines but I could be wrong.
My understanding is Orbitz uses Sabre which is what I book on and American Airlines has a close relationship with Sabre because they owned it at one time.

Quote: Pacomartin

Emirates, Qatar Airlines, and Etihad -- shocked the Western-dominated airline industry at the Dubai Airshow last year when they collectively announced they would be purchasing 355 new wide-body aircraft worth an astounding $160 billion. The record-smashing order included a mix of both Airbus and Boeing (BA) products and would ensure that they could eventually crush their U.S. and European counterparts in terms of efficiency, comfort, and luxury.

United has 160 wide body aircraft with up to 55 on order, but mostly to replace the older jets.

The strategy seem to be to offer more economy seats than any US airline (up to 470 seats) which will pay for basic costs like fuel. The second prong of their strategy is to offer business class seats at comparable or even cheaper rates than their competition, but with far more luxury and space. The third prong seems to be to compete directly with the charter jets with "The Residence"

The Residence will have a private butler, and cost $40K for two people (one way).

As commercial aviation began developing in the USA, the natural place to have a major hub was near the center of population of the country (not the geographic center). That meant that St Louis, Chicago, CIN, CLE and PIT were natural places for hubs.

Today the so call mega hubs in the USA that carry over 19% of the nations traffic are in four basic regions of the country.
Hartsfield - Jackson Atlanta International
Los Angeles International
Chicago O'Hare International
Dallas/Fort Worth International

But St Louis and Cleveland and Pittsburgh have drifted in importance as longer ranges and the importance of long haul international travel increases.

On a world level, London and Paris are really at the geographic center of the world's land masses. Even today the longest flight on British Airways is 6,904 statute miles, a range comfortably achievable by versions of the 747 in the 1970's.

Many people are making the claim that the Middle East is the closest civilized place to the world population center (which is in Afghanistan). In the next few decades the population center will move closer to the ME as Africa grows.

Dubai airport is now ranked between LA and Chicago, and Istanbul has now surpassed Amsterdam to make it Europe's 3rd largest airport (behind LHR, Paris, and Frankfurt). Of course the trio in China (Beijing, Shangahai and Hong Kong) are also dominant.

While the success of Dubai is difficult to argue with, the second even larger airport under construction, the Doha airport, the Abu Dhabi airport, the Saudi airports, and the new planned airport in Istanbul are difficult to imagine.

Do you think that the ME is now the natural center of the world?

Yahoo Finance article on how Mega 3 Mid East Carriers use their clout to get tiny Serbia Airlines Airebus into USA landing thru cooperative training, finance and joint ownership links.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/airbus-jet-just-arrived-york-233900906.html#