[altairprime]

Legacy US airlines don’t always price their seats logically based on fuel, tax, time, and wear costs.

The price for a given multi-leg trip is sometimes discounted by Some Amount from the actual price you would pay buying each leg individually.

This is exploitable by purchasing a discounted fare with (H) hops at price P(H) in order to fly (H-X) hops, where X > 0 and P(H-X) > P(H). I offer no speculation as to their motivations in selling a ticket where P(H-X) > P(H) but I certainly don’t think kind thoughts towards them for the outcomes it creates in airline pricing.

Their complaint against consumers is, in summary, “we could have charged a higher price P(H-X) for the seat that was left empty if the customer had not exploited this P(H) loophole in our pricing, and we deserve to be paid that difference.” This is not strictly relevant to the lawsuit, which is against an agency rather than a consumer, but helps explain their motivations for prosecuting an agency site for exploiting it.

Their complaint against the third party website is both different and more nuanced, but ultimately stems from a site making it trivial for consumers to find and exploit this loophole without domain-specific knowledge known primarily to travel agents and hobbyists. Thus their extreme focus on trademark; if they had succeeded in that claim, they would potentially be able to weaponize the judgment against any site that doesn’t pay them a bribe for showing their logo in association with interpretations of flight pricing data, which would let them harvest millions of dollars of new passive revenue streams; as well as having the option to terminate the existence of any site they dislike that shows their logo or brand. Their trademark claim was denied in full.

The airlines are within their legal rights to cancel tickets and refuse business from customers who exploit this loophole, so long as they do so indiscriminately with respect to the protected characteristics of the individuals refused.

There are no regulations requiring simple coherent pricing where leg+leg+leg = multi-leg fares, either, which is why ITA Software’s Matrix and its ability to resolve traveling salesman pricing problems across the fare code hellscape was worth a billion of dollars to Google.

[kortilla]

That doesn’t answer the question though. If someone didn’t deplane and fulfilled the itinerary, it would cost the airline even more in fuel.

Their argument is complete nonsense that they could have sold the seat for more because it’s just as valid if you actually took the flight.

It’s like them taking action against you because you booked in advance and they decided they could have charged you more. WTF?

[altairprime]

If you’d booked (H) then you would have paid more; they’re upset that you cost them the unrealized profit of P(H-X) - P(H), and also upset at the lost opportunity of selling a double-booked ticket to another passenger into your empty seat for an additional P(whatever), without having to refund you for your unused flight leg. Two profit opportunities lost for one service rendered is, to a corporation, roughly equivalent to kicking someone while they’re down, and they tend to react spitefully when these are exploited at scale.

Their claim of dishonesty is simply a guise for their desire to charge you the difference P(H-X) - P(H) when you deboard early, which under current law they are prohibited from doing. Your individual fuel costs are a negligible fraction of that amount, and while your absence is indeed pure profit for them in terms of the raw expense of providing services to you, they’re greedily maximizing all possible profits scenarios in order to claim injury and damages here.

To emphasize, I think this is bullshit whining about a predatory pricing practice being exploited in favor of consumers. I also predict that lawsuits will earn the travel industries a lot more strict pricing regulations if they continue to sue over this practice, so that consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit. (In review, it could also end up costing them the right to overbook if their legacy practices earn an appropriate degree of scrutiny.)

[anticensor]

> consumers can expect the prices of individual legs to add up to the price of a multi-leg trip — whether on plane, train, or bus — and which would fully neutralize both their complaints and the exploit.

Doesn't have to be strictly equal to sum of individual legs, even a triangle inequality relationship (multi-leg combined ticket should cost no more than the sum of individual legs) would be okay.

[altairprime]

Technically, yes, that would close the specific single loophole exploitation; but that still enables airlines to do price undercutting in a single src/dst pairing without having to offer the benefits of that discount to the folks living at one of the stops between src and dst:

P(A-B-C) = 10

P(A-B) = 15

P(B-C) = 15

It’s neither fair nor logical for people traveling from B to pay more to reach C than those traveling from A, when the flight is already stopping at B regardless. So if pricing regulation comes into effect, I don’t expect they would permit that either.

[kortilla]

That’s a BS argument though because I might not have purchased the single leg fare from them in the first place.

[altairprime]

There are many reasons their argument is BS, yes. Explanation successful :)