Airlines have a large fixed cost and a small marginal cost for each passenger on a plane. If they charge $250 for each seat and half the seats are empty then they are wasting capacity and have to charge enough for each seat such that half the seats pay for an entire flight. If they can fill the second half of the plane with $50 passengers then they are providing more service (a social good!) and can perhaps reduce the expensive tickets to $200.

Of course everyone wants the $50 tickets, so the market gets all weird trying to both fill flights and charge as much as possible, while being competitive with other airlines that are trying to do the same thing. Because there are competing airlines, the final margins stay low, so the airlines are barely "maximizing" profits so much as they are simply maintaining profitability.

I imagine the argument is that it enables poorer people to fly when they otherwise would not be able to afford it.

> If this is indeed the case -- good riddance to that practice! Why should I be sorry that it goes?

The effort you (and others) are willing to go to get the $50 doesn't seem to match up with the "fine, the practice should go". If it doesn't matter, why expend effort to do it?

Because not everyone has the same ability to pay.

Airlines backed themselves into these absurd corners by using really short sighted business practices.

Disney is doing similar stuff with their app and queuing nonsense.

Suppose you want to get people to a party, and offer $50 early bird tickets, and want eg a gender balance. But they just get scalped and resold for $300. Why should you care, you authoritarians? Scalpers have just as much right as anyone to purchase tickets…

Actually if I ran an airline I’d try to prevent everyone from being able to snipe the best seats with their agents as soon as they came out. Using lotteries, special manual two factor authentication etc.