The FTC is warning retailers not to use private consumer data to raise prices, but the Federal Trade Commission Act expressly excludes “air carriers and foreign air carriers” from the Commission’s Section 5 authority over unfair or deceptive practices.
bro, whut?
AI will identify a funeral traveler or stranded passenger and charge more.
The argument here is that AI will improve price discrimination (and therefore total revenue)
There’s a whole lot of other words in the article claiming that this “actually can lower ticket costs for some consumers!” and “AI will increase productivity!” but it’s all bullshit. Every single person that’s been forced to work with AI already knows it doesn’t do shit right, and their only example of offering a lower fare is to a “leisure traveler that might otherwise stay home.” Oh, OK, so a rich asshole that travels for fun?
FUCK THIS BULLSHIT AND FUCK DELTA
Here’s a “fun” semi-not relevant fact. Movie theaters were excluded from playing OT in the Fair Labor Act in the US.
They were able to lobby congress when it was drafted and said they couldn’t afford it. Most people who work there are part time and it’s fine, but assistant managers and other full-time non-salaried positions get screwed.
Source: I was an assistant manager at Regal Theaters in the mid-late 2000s. I did not get OT. I made something like $6/hr.
I worked at a movie theater for my first ever job. I lied about my age to get it, I was 14. It was a great job, working the concession stand. I got to drink mad slushies, and all the pretzel bites that I could sneak. Got a movie poster, can’t even remember which one, and some discounted tickets. Made some friends, it was awesome.
But yeah my manager and the guy doing all the projector work were just, 100% not happy 😅 I guess now I know why
It’s a fantastic job for a teenager. I had a great experience before joining management.
I mean at the same time, if it’s possible that regular people who actually shop around are shown lower fares and business travelers paid for by the company are shown higher fares, I’m all for that sort of subsidization, as unlikely as it is to be the reality
It never works that way. People who shop around are shown the same fares as usual and the business are shown new higher fares… Then the businesses raise their costs for everything, since their expenses are higher. Eventually, it feels okay to raise the base level fares too.
Heads up, there’s a VERY UNETHICAL service out there that works around some of the VERY GOOD AND BENEFICIAL things the airlines do. You should avoid going to it because it ROBS these poor struggling airlines of VALIDLY EARNED profits.
Including a link so everyone can add it to their blocked sites lists. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU GO TO THIS MONEY SAVING SITE AND PARTICIPATE IN THEIR ANTI-CORPORATIST SCHEMES.
https://skiplagged.com/I thought I read years ago that airlines responded to Skiplagged by penalizing people who didn’t complete every leg of the trip they booked. I’m not sure why they would care.
Rumor has it this is the case, but I haven’t found any tangible “I used this service and was punished for it” stories.
…uh, WHICH IS TERRIBLE, BIG AIRLINES’ RIGHTS ARE BEING INFRINGED. THIS IS A MATTER OF FREEDOM TO AVOID THIS SERVICE.
What they do is cancel your entire trip. So if you don’t have flights with the same airline on the way back…eh
Yep, and if you have a rewards or membership number, they just will ban you. If it happens once not a big deal, couple times even, start doing it regularly though, you will get caught.
I haven’t paid for a plane ticket since 2012. Made a huge hobby of credit card churning. Probably flew 200k miles on them. Otherwise I’d be skiplagging as the next best option.
Ive heard of people making this happen, but I literally don’t know how y’all achieve more than like a single flight or hotel stay per year without already having 200k+ income (i.e. could pay for the trip on your own, just don’t want to pay for it).
I’m pretty sure they’re also making more money for the airlines than if they just bought the plane tickets, but it’s slightly procedurally obfuscated, so people are like “omg free tickets”
The airlines do fine; they sell miles/points to banks who actually have money. Almost all US carriers are worth little or negative but their rewards programs have large valuations.
If you pay your bills in full and don’t pay interest you are beating the system, and it is “OMG free flights”/hotels/cash. You do give away tons of purchase info but you’re giving that away anyway unless you’re using cash.
I thought I read years ago that airlines responded to Skiplagged by penalizing people who didn’t complete every leg of the trip they booked. I’m not sure why they would care.
They care because the real cost of air travel is not equaled everywhere on each mile flown. If the actual costs of flying to many small regional locations was reflected in the cost of the ticket, the ticket would be so absurdly high no one would every flight to that location, and the location would lose critical flight services for the community.
The solution many of those airlines used was to consolidate the majority of the flight into a hub using larger planes which are cheaper to operate per-passenger, and then use much smaller planes from the hub to the remote location charging the passenger the equivalent of a reasonable cost of a ticket for all hops along the way.
What Skiplagging as doing was essentially using the subsidized discount rate provided for the small regional destinations, but consumed by those not going to those places that needed subsidies on their flights going to major hubs. So not only was the airline losing money for each passenger not paying the normal fare to the hub airport, but also showing lower passenger volume to the small regional destinations increasing the cost of flying passengers that wanted to go their even more.
TLDR; Skiplagging screws small cities with low passenger volume risking their ability to maintain flight service at all to their towns.
Sounds like something an airline would say.
I get being naturally suspicious especially if we’re talking about messaging that may match some from large companies, but don’t let language that sounds that way turn off your brain to critical thinking. If you interact in a system (such as buying a ticket as an airline passenger) you can have an affect on the system. Understand your actions to personally enrich yourself may have consequences on other people just trying to fly somewhere. Don’t be blinded by big business hate to justify screwing other passengers using the airlines.
I used it a long time ago (like 2017) and saved me some good money, but I also did not use my skymiles account just in case.
I felt like it got less effective at finding the types of flights like the one I took and stopped trying.
It’s definitely a bit of a pain because you gotta book two one-way flights
They literally will ban you for skip lagging (especially if you use any rewards type system). May save you a few bucks if you don’t use them often and don’t care, but not a great idea.
Thanks for the tip. We’ll see if it bares out.
Do get the sense that these third-party sites are going to become an increased necessity, as data-scrappers and trackers try to peg the price of a flight to the credit card limit of the buyer.
But… idk, I’m not seeing anything on this site that I can’t find by directly querying individual airlines. (Like so many other budget airline calculators) there’s no inclusion of Southwest on the list. And if the odd deal is inevitably just going to be through JetBlue anyway? Why not shop direct?
I think Southwest is moving to a hub and spoke model, but historically they haven’t used it. Skip lagging seems to mostly rely on a “I want to travel to the hub, so buy a cheaper ticket to a different spoke and jump off at hub” methodology.
Which is to say, Southwest may just not be “vulnerable” to this atm.
Fine if you’ve got more time than money, I guess.
The third party sites will just start getting the max rate, which would effectively eliminate them. Airlines (at least in the US) aren’t making money off flights any longer anyways, it’s all off credit cards. Delta is more of a bank than an airline.
The third party sites will just start getting the max rate, which would effectively eliminate them.
I mean, if they haven’t figured out how to game the system, presumably. Even then, if I’m also getting the max rate, it’s a push.
Idk. These systems always love to overpromise on both ends - big profits for investors, big savings for customers. It reads like a fairy tale coming and going.
I use skiplagged all the time, but don’t book through their site. They add fees onto the tickets now. Just book through the airline directly.
I am in Kona, Hawaii. I am waiting for my flight to Los Angeles, connecting to Denver. I sit there and see they are about to board the direct flight to Denver. There are maybe 100 people there, so the plane is half empty. I jump to the airline’s site to see how much it would cost to switch flights. Only carry-on, so it is doable.
They would make me pay the same as the entire trip Denver - Kona and back just to get on the direct flight, that is half empty. Notice that if I went on this flight, they could theoretically sell the seats on the other two flights, so they’d rather lose money than let me get home early.
There is something deeply wrong with current Capitalism.
There is something wrong with capitalism, its a tool for the rich to exploit workers and consolidate wealth and power.
Fixed that for you
Airlines these days make more money off of points/credit card shenanigans than they do off of moving passengers on planes, and it shows.
How do you know that? I’m asking because I know someone high up at an airline and they told me exactly that.
The poor care about making money. The rich care about telling others what they can do and how to live
airlines are more or less banks with a weird way of withdrawing
After the flight has taken off, stand up and shout ‘hey everybody. I paid $NNN for a round trip ticket from X to Y. What did everyone else pay?’. That will start a discussion and piss off the airline and some customers.
That will start a discussion
How can I tell you’ve never actually flown.
Or if we had a functional federal government we could just make this practice completely illegal, and then pass privacy laws while we’re at it.
Lol, can you imagine?
they don’t even care about PR anymore, do they?
they and the other large corporations know nobody will stop them, and anybody who needs to fly has no recourse. ethics? that’s for us, not them.
I’m not sure if that kind of defeatism is useful, but I understand why you’d resort to it. I think a better way to articulate this is, “the means of recourse we agree to use is no longer effective.” I also really don’t know if small businesses can be regularly trusted to be considerate of ethics. Under a capitalist system, this behaviour is not only allowed but encouraged since it is fundamentally an unethical way to organize.
Luigi is in the news recently, and it’s worth noting that United Healthcare rolled back some aggressive claim denial policies when the safety of its executives was threatened. There are many extralegal options available in terms of sabotage or, as other users in this thread has mentioned, staging demonstrations on planes that are priced on this model to disrupt plane travel, or starting protest campaigns at corporate buildings, homes of executives, etc. If you prefer something that remains within liberal institutions, state-level movements to define AI as price fixing would likely have an easier time to gain popular traction since AI is widely hated at this point.
This isn’t to say you can’t complain without volunteering to shoot Delta’s CEO, but just that responding to this with, “the govt isn’t doing anything which means nothing can be done,” exemplifies the sort of learned helplessness that characterizes American neoliberal politics at a street level.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I was referring to the current situation with our government when I said no one will stop them. I assure you I am working to elect their replacements. Even then, if they get total control of Congress, there will still be two years before they can get control of the executive.
Once they have that, it will be several years before they clean out the operators behind all of This crap.
We are fighting the flock surveillance. I am not exhibiting defeatism. I am exhibiting resignation. It is a fact that with the powers that are currently in control, nobody is going to do anything. In fact, they are Increasingly helping it to get worse.
Yes, my comment was pointing out that the exact mentality you just expressed again is a form of learned helplessness. You do not need to defer to the US federal govt to challenge corporations; especially so if, as you said, it has dropped the veil that it was going to do anything in the first place. Don’t get disappointed when Dems don’t do anything themselves – as they have shown many times – since they are, afterall, a neoliberal party that has also participated in or facilitated the erosion of US business regulation and antitrust enforcement. You’re going to be exercising your power more effectively by dedicating your time and hope not to their political victories, but getting as involved as you can in local movements that typically have much more immediate and effective results.
you mean like elecing progressives, being vocal in my town? well, duh. does not change the fact that the current federal government is actually suportive of the surveillance and is more likely to harass protesters than listen to them.
No, dude, you can’t say “duh” when you have misunderstood multiple times now. I am saying to you that you cannot rely on “electing progressives,” and being vocal in your town, even if those are tools you also cannot discard. Liberals like this tend to have difficulty understanding politics outside of the institutions that they have been raised to believe are synonymous with politics.
Brian Thompson’s shooting was a political act in the same way that voting, rent strike, and mutual aid foodplans are. Yes, the liberal state is going to punish you for not abiding by the sensibilities that it finds favourable, which is also a good indication that if you are not punished by it, you are doing something to its benefit. I know you are likely to be harassed, injured, or even killed by law enforcement if you challenge this system, and you should learn to accept that risk if you really want this to change. Reliance on liberals to fix their own system has failed, and there is no longer time to wait both because the conditions are worsening globally and their responses to those worsening conditions will be authoritarian, as you seem to recognize.
I see. From what you wrote, it sounds like you’re saying I need to be a revolutionary and go out and fuck with people. I’m not ready to do that on my own.
Further, I don’t have a strong social network of support. Anything I would do would be a lone wolf operation. And I don’t have the training or experience for it. Lone Wolf operations fail and do not change the world.
Plus I have a child who’s not old enough to live in the world on his own. I am not going to take away the support he needs by throwing my life away.
Dealing with a surveillance state like the United States of America requires a whole lot more finesse and sophistication than you seem to think is necessary.
“If you prefer something that remains within liberal institutions, state-level movements to define AI as price fixing would likely have an easier time to gain popular traction since AI is widely hated at this point. This isn’t to say you can’t complain without volunteering to shoot Delta’s CEO, but just that responding to this with, “the govt isn’t doing anything which means nothing can be done,” exemplifies the sort of learned helplessness that characterizes American neoliberal politics at a street level.” from my first comment ^
No, I said the exact opposite of that the first time. You are choosing to not excercise the power at your disposal, stop acting like you’re powerless. Nobody is telling you to do a “lone wolf” operation, they’re telling you that this work requires actual, y’know, work. That means, yes, taking time out of your responsibilities to get involved, to contribute what you can, and at the very least, not promoting defeatist and fatalist arguments that only work to appeal to apathetic and privileged liberals. No, that is not without understanding of the pervasiveness of US surveillance, and you really aren’t in a position to act like you understand this more than I do after being unable to comprehend the clearest language I could apply multiple times.
You want to do nothing because it is more comfortable? That is of course allowed and encouraged by the state, and you’d be like every other lib on this site once they realize the gravity of this situation, but then you can’t act entitled to tell others that this is inevitable.
Not when on the other side is “jump through these hoops and give us this data for a $40 discount!!!”
They’re leveraging information asymmetry. It’s as one-sided as it can get.
If you do something that doesn’t involve making your service better and the price goes up 50% because of it, that ought to be considered fraud.
the Federal Trade Commission Act expressly excludes “air carriers and foreign air carriers” from the Commission’s Section 5 authority over unfair or deceptive practices.
And while several states are passing laws on the matter, those are expressly preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act.
Regulations don’t apply to them for… reasons
Tell me aobut it. I took a trip last year to Arizona - paid for by a relative that bought me a first class seat. Now it’s been almost 30 years since I’ve travelled first class and I was shocked… It was coach, with a dinner. The seats were what USED to be the coach seats. Just as crowded, just as uncomfortable and the food was on-par with an equity-run hoaspital. Fuck. That. Shit. Next time I go out west, am taking extra days for travel and getting a sleeper room on Amtrak. The trains have seats like the airlines used to… big, wide, recline and comfy.
Bad headline. They aren’t cutting costs. They’re jacking up prices.
CEO: oh fuck oh fuck claude, quick make a lot of money for my airline, nothing is off the table, GO!
Claude: well we’d want to investigate a two-pronged approach where we cut costs where possible and at the a same time, raise prices in this market.
CEO: that sounds wonderful, please draft a press release and post it to our social media account.
Mother fucker. I felt evil doing this in roller coaster tycoon, and they weren’t even real people. Wtf…
“I want to go on something more thrilling than Delta 1628 with service to LA!”
But will just adding AI alone be enough? I propose we also add “blockchain”, “the cloud” and “e-commerce” to ticket pricing in order to truly synergize profit dynamics.
That’s thinking outside the box for low hanging fruit of the ecosystem. I want you to free some bandwidth and take the lead on this - really move the needle. Envision co-sourcing when needed and focus on the core competency required. We can circle back on a strategic fit, rightsizing strategy to avoid negative growth. Start building consensus for a results-driven best practices matrix structure.
you forgot to add:
agentic laser focus
Delta just lost me as a lifelong customer. They used to be my automatic #1 choice because they had good service for a reasonable price.
When was Delta cheap? I live near a fortress hub and it’s $500+ to fly anywhere. Maybe I was one of the 25% pricing test
Reasonable, not cheap. I haven’t flown in a while either.
For me it’s the “good service” side of the coin. Actually it’s specifically “more likely to have a direct flight and not find extra fees to pile on”
I just want a carrier that isn’t delayed 75% of the time. For me that’s United.
Interesting. There are a whole group of people against this type of “economy”. I want “cost accounting” to rule the economic landscape. We might be very surprised to learn what things cost versus what they sell for. It should def not be “Whatever the rube will pay”.
The problem is that the theory of supply and demand requires the assumption that buyers and sellers are rational actors, and if there’s one thing the last 25 years has taught the corpocrats, it’s that humans are not rational, and are easily manipulated.
The other thing they learned is that, if you don’t want to face regulation, you just need to buy the government. They already knew this, but now the process is perfected.
Doordash alone has proven that people will buy anything at any price. Someone with severe depression takes it as a mental health tax, someone with a bunch of money takes it as a convenience fee, and doordash laughs all the way to the bank
I’m cynical as hell. I have never had any “faith” in the consumer to be able to regulate things with their wallet, but even I was shocked by DD’s success.
I remember finding out how shit the whole system was for the “employee” and thinking “that sucks. If it’s a good deal, this will take off and become the new type of low work”. Then, I was so relieved when I saw that everything was 2x the price and always arrived cold, on the floor outside.
I watched in horror as everyone started buying it every chance they could! At every income level!
Watching people use DD has done more harm to my view of people than I could ever have imagined possible. I thought it was already so low, and then, a new floor in a lower hell opened up before me like some kind of toothy, butthole-lotus with tentacles.
This is a result of having so much economic inequality. Having a few people who are so much more rich than everyone else fucks up the price ceilings for everyone.
Delta will use AI to discriminate against people based some secretive conditions.
Not secretive.
nonono judging off color is bad. We can judge of things that imply color like zip code, credit score, education, shopping habits.
I too suspect it will have more to do with the bank statements they access.
I highly doubt white people are going to pay less here.
And also AI will use Delta to discriminate against people based on some secretive conditions
probably eill discriminate based on wealth and perceived urgency because people with more money are willing to pay more and people with more urgency are also willing to pay more
You don’t have laws against selling the same product at different prices in the US? 😕😔
It would not surprise me if we didn’t, but even if we did it doesn’t matter anymore. Rules are for the proles, not the parasite class.
Given the US, I’d bet 20 states say that it’s illegal (but can’t seem to enforce that unless one of them is New York or California), 20 states say that it’s specifically legal (including Texas and Florida), and the remainder either haven’t made up their minds yet or no one cares what they think because they don’t have the population or economic clout to make anyone listen.
The US is pro making things as hospitable for corporations as possible, while making them as inhospitable for citizens as they will tolerate. And it turns out, Americans can tolerate a LOT.
You don’t in Europe either. Flights drastically change depending on time, date, and oh if your cookies have been refreshed or not.
