Seems like it might be the exception proving the rule. People say “every” restaurant these days needs to use something like Toast to provide online ordering and needs to play nice with DoorDash for delivery and needs to host ghost kitchens to increase income, etc. Of course there’s that one old-school place with the established reputation that does simple dine-in only and is thriving. But the new upstart can’t just not play the game - that privilege is reserved for those who have already won.
I wish the NYT would have asked a follow-up to this question:
> Q: Could airlines close this loophole, if they wanted to?
> A: Yes, it’s their own prices that allow this.
> If they want to shut down skiplagging, they could do it tomorrow. One way to do it would be reducing airfare to hub cities. The reason the price is so high because they control this market and want to maximize their profits. It’s the reason hidden cities even exist.
I mean, yeah, that's true. To eliminate the allure of hidden city ticketing, the airlines could reduce the prices on some of their most profitable routes. But my understanding is that airlines don't tend to have huge profit margins overall. If government mandated that the price for segment A->B is always cheaper than A->B->C, would the airlines be able to service as many marginally profitable routes? How much of the comprehensive air network that we take for granted would disappear if such a rule went into effect?
I'm not generally a fan of the airlines. I think their pricing practices have become those of pathological assholes. But I guess I would actually prefer the status quo over a future with simple, straightforward air fares that only serve a fraction of today's airports.
That's how it would work - they airlines would have to cut service. By filling up seats with lower fares, it allows the whole route to be profitable. This helps more flights to occur serving more places.
An airline incurs a giant cost at the moment it decides to fly a route, everything after that is almost pure income, with little or no associated cost. Consider Cuba Airlines, which I invented right now because Cuba is between Belgium and Belize. The routes Belgium-Cuba, Belgium-Belize and Cuba-Belize have three different sets of competing airlines, so Cuba Airlines can sell those three tickets, but faces different competition doing so. Maybe it can charge more for Belgium-Cuba than for Belgium-Belize, maybe less.
If the route Cuba-Belize isn't generally full enough for the kinds of planes Cuba Airlines has on hand and the competitive situation allows charging more for Belgium-Cuba than Belgium-Belize, what can Cuba Airlines do to fill the planes up?
If you say that the prices for Belgium-Cuba has to be lower than Belgium-Belize, maybe that's okay, and maybe it means that Cuba Airlines can't charge enough to pay for the two flights. It depends on how the competitive situations are for the three routes.
I’m not the commenter that you’re replying to but I always get a different “feel” when using a native application like Excel than a web app. I can type as fast as I can think, switching cells, typing values, invoking keyboard shortcuts, etc, and every keystroke is interpreted as I intended. It’s incredible what’s been achieved in modern web apps like Google Sheets, but I still feel like I need to slow down at times to watch what the app is up to - making sure the cell was selected in the UI before entering text or watching to be sure the browser didn’t intercept a shortcut, etc.
If any Excel alternative wants to make a dent in market share, they need an option for users to mimic all the main Excel shortcuts. Google Sheets is close so it's useable; however, trying to use something like Apple Numbers is like switching from querty to dvorak.
I don’t know if we fully understand the human psychology there. It seems to me that when there are more options available, not only does our perceived value of each option drop, but our perceived value of the whole drops as well.
Any idea what percentage of their sales are actually hidden city itineraries? Every time I’ve searched with them I’ve seen few or no hidden city results, but I guess it’s neat to be aware of the option if it does exist.
Agreed. I like the idea of being hostile to the airlines so I’ve used Skiplagged to search for flights before but I’ve never found a hidden city itinerary that I actually wanted to take.
I’m guessing it probably makes sense with certain airports with high fees near concentrations of wealth? E.g. maybe London->NYC costs more than London(->NYC)->Albany because NYC airports have high fees and airlines presume wealthier clientele bound for NYC?
I don’t even think it’s a “wealthier clientele” thing.
Some routes are literally subsidized - for example, the Essential Air Service program pays airlines to run flights to places that would otherwise be unprofitable to fly to, and due to the grants the airlines can offer the complete route for (relatively) cheap. So, for example, it might be expensive to fly New York to Chicago, but subsidized (and cheaper) to fly New York to Podunk via Chicago. But if lots of travelers catch wind of this, and pretend to go to Podunk only to get off at Chicago, then the air carrier doesn’t get their subsidy.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but at least in my experience the flights where skiplagging has been viable have always been between 2 major airports, with a flight to a third major airport as the skipped leg. Looking at some examples on skiplagged.com right now, I see flights where BWI->LAX is cheaper if you book BWI->LAX->SFO but skip the LAX->SFO leg. Same with BWI->CLT by booking BWI->CLT->NAS. But those LA to SF or Charlotte to Nassau legs aren't subsidized flights to East Podunk.
Essential Air Service flights might sometimes play a role here but from what I've seen I think the thing that creates opportunities for skiplagging is just typical airline revenue management doing it's inscrutable magic setting prices between 2 cities without any concern for the prices of the individual legs.
I think due to the "nobody would run it without subsidy" nature of the Essential Air Service subsidies, the airlines themselves often pawn it off to a regional carrier wearing their skin under license (American Eagle, Delta Express, sort of thing). The traffic usually is only enough to justify a puddle-jumper that's not their core fleet or operational competency anyway.
Don't airlines have to pay for and/or actively use slots at some major airports? So New York to Chicago is a "mandatory" flight for the airline, but Chicago to Podunk is scheduled based on demand.
The missing point in your argument though is that the people doing this didn't want to go to the destination. So if this wasn't an option, getting off before the subsidized destination, they wouldn't be flying anyway and the airline still wouldn't be getting the subsidy.
I'm still not seeing any real answer how this practice can exist in a true free market and how it doesn't indicate collusion in the airline industry.
In the A->B->C example, probably the subsidy they get for B->C is so much higher than its real cost that they can use such "profit" to finance part of the first leg. If you skip the final leg, you risk spoiling their scheme to extract more-than-needed money from the government.
Even if the subsidy for B->C is not higher than the real cost at all... if they set their A->B->C ticket prices such that (revenues == expenses), and a skipped leg results in any hit to revenue (i.e. losing a subsidy of amount x) along with a reduction in expenses (i.e. less weight means less fuel of amount y), then they are going to take a loss any time x>y.
Sorry, how is this different from what I said? The condition x>y, with x the subsidy and y the expense, is exactly what I intended with "subsidy they get [is] higher than its real cost".
Oh, I interpreted your "its real cost" as everything that goes into the service (i.e. everything the airline does to hold up their end of the deal, which goes well beyond fuel) whereas in my version I'm defining y far more narrowly: the fuel needed to haul the weight of the person.
The subsidy could easily exceed the fuel, which means losing the subsidy despite saving on fuel is something the airline legitimately wants to avoid. They won't be in a worse position than if the seat went unsold, but it'll be worse than if they had a flying passenger.
Would it have turned out differently if they sold the vehicles as-is and included a "truck conversion kit" with the parts they used to turn them into light trucks? My thinking is based on the Subaru BRAT and its two bucket seats attached in the pickup bed.
I'm assuming it's cheaper/easier to sell light trucks than passenger vehicles in the US. (I'm aware of the difference in emission regulations)
I’d imagine somewhere there’s an engineer-artist putting such a print in a brightly lit locked box, which is programmed not to open until the interior light has shined long enough to eradicate the image on the print. (No idea if we have circuitry and LEDs that last long enough to make such a thing feasible).
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