[mananaysiempre]

Not what I was talking about.

Some airlines in my memory went from only having refundable tickets to having both types, and for some reason the price of the nonrefundable ones after the change ends up being about the same as the price of the (refundable) ones before that.

Also, well, I don’t know what Delta does—for some airlines, the advertising term “flexible” means some sort of option to change your flight as well as one to refund the ticket, being a tier above “refundable”—but if the buyer requesting a refund is the only possible cost, we should have roughly $444 = $638 / [1 - P(refund)], whereby P(refund) = 30%, and that feels ridiculously high. Not implausibly high (I’m used to a difference of 2x or more), but high enough that I’m dubious.

[sokoloff]

> for some reason the price of the nonrefundable ones after the change ends up being about the same as the price of the (refundable) ones before that.

Was this over a long enough period where inflation reduced the value of the nominal currency and where jet fuel prices and costs of financing their fleet could have risen significantly?