Flight deal experts spot a surprise upcharge: Flying solo

Washington Post

2 days ago

Deciphering airfares often feels like a puzzle, and travel experts have revealed a new layer: airlines appear to be charging individual passengers more than groups for seats on identical flights.
This week, Thrifty Traveler executive editor Kyle Potter was searching for airfare for a trip with his wife when he noticed something unusual. His Delta Air Lines airfare for one person was $206, but the price for two was $154 each. He assumed it was a glitch, or a mistake on his part. He checked his dates and the fare type. The same results appeared.
'It became clear after double checking and rerunning the search several times that Delta was charging me more because I was searching for just one passenger rather than two,' Potter said.
Potter's team at Thrifty Traveler, a travel deal and news site, looked at hundreds of fares this week and concluded that Delta, United Airlines and American Airlines were listing higher ticket prices on some routes for solo passengers than for a pair or group fares. They published their findings Thursday.
In one example, they found that a one-person fare from Chicago-O'Hare to Peoria, Ill., on United was $269, while the price dropped to $181 per person when booked for two or more passengers.
That doesn't mean all travelers will notice a discrepancy. The findings aren't universal; as the report said: 'you won't see it on each and every route.' In a random sampling of about a dozen domestic and international flights on Friday, The Washington Post found the same fare for one, two or four passengers. In a few instances, prices were slightly lower for a larger group of travelers.
'This fits in with the frustration that I think a lot of everyday Americans have, which is just how low can airlines go to nickel and dime us?' Potter said.
On Friday afternoon, Thrifty Traveler said Delta removed the higher fares for single travelers, citing 'a person with knowledge of that action.'
A spokesperson for Delta declined to comment to The Post on airfare pricing and the reported shift. United and American did not respond to requests for comment. Potter said he also was also unable to get the airlines to go on the record regarding the discovery.
Airlines use dynamic pricing algorithms that adjust airfare according to real-time and historic booking data. Demand, distance, your itinerary and cabin class can influence changes. And different seat types come with different prices, as seats are divided into various reservation booking designators (RBDs), or 'fare buckets.'
'Airline prices can vary by number of travelers, but the differences aren't consistent or clearly tied to group size,' a spokesperson for the travel booking company Kayak said in an email. 'KAYAK data shows no clear trend regardless of number of travelers — it's important to note that the examples in the [Thrifty Traveler] article involve one-way fares on a few uncommon routes, not round-trip tickets.'
It's unclear how long airlines have charged varying rates by passenger number, or when the tactics are applied. The Post confirmed this pricing structure is not new for Delta. But it's new to some airfare experts beyond Potter.
Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, said historically airlines have charged more for multiple tickets. While he hasn't personally seen a price change for solo versus multiple passengers, 'my understanding is that this new pricing is not new,' he said in an email.
Kelly said American Airlines rolled out these types of fares months ago, and Delta and United have recently started to copy the approach.
The Thrifty Traveler team also conducted searches on JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Southwest Airlines, but did not find similar examples. However, they couldn't rule out other airlines haven't used the pricing tactic as the company doesn't have a systematic way to scan all available airfares.
'We have searched hundreds of fares, but there are millions of fare combinations,' Potter said. 'It's very possible that [other airlines] are also doing this; we just haven't caught it yet.'
Scott Keyes, founder of the flight deal company Going, said the pricing strategy is 'new and different.'
'The fact that it's on the three biggest full-service carriers is certainly eye-catching,' he said.
Keyes thinks this is a strategy for airlines targeting business travelers, who make up the majority of the solo traveler market and are less price sensitive than leisure customers. Keyes noted that other industries use similar pricing strategies, offering discounts for buying in bulk or offering discounts for couples and families.
'Solo vacationers are innocent bystanders in this whole saga,' Keyes said.
'I think it's clear that calling it surge pricing for solo travelers feeds into a sort of well-established negativity bias that we have,' he added.
Potter disagrees. With bulk pricing, customers are often aware of discounts, Potter said, whereas airlines appear to be hiding the price disparity.
'I just need to stress that this is not a discount for group travel; it is a price increase for solo travel,' he said.
Since his discovery, Potter said he's changing the way he searches for flights. He booked a work trip on Thursday, and even though he's traveling solo, he compared the fares for multiple passengers 'to check if I was getting hosed,' he said. 'I wasn't in that particular case, but it's on my mind now, that's for sure.'