"What if the airlines instead focused on delivering great service at a competitive price?"
replyGermania, IIRC, tried that in the late 90s, offering a flat fare for every seat.
They had to roll it back very quickly because their bookings dropped unsustainably - nobody wanted to pay a fair price for a seat, even if it was cheaper than they might realistically have had to pay under dynamic pricing.
All that potential customers fixated on was that the flat fares were more expensive than the few cheap loss-leader seats advertised on rival airlines.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" etc etc
Those used to exist, nobody flew on them and they went bankrupt. The market has decisively decided. In airlines, price beats all else, even time in most cases.
replyI don't think this is unilaterally true. Alaska Air is has remained consistently pretty good in my experience, even through the Hawaiian Merger.
replyAlaska nickles and dimes just like the rest, charges for the privilege of picking your seat, etc. They're not worse than the rest, but I don't see them as any better, certainly. I almost exclusively fly Alaska since my closest airport is one of their major hubs.
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