Originally Posted by pinniped

It took the post to be more of a concern that an airline with the Spirit/Ryanair model could establish a national footprint and a big enough presence in reservation systems that some people would have no choice but to book it.

Say two or three carriers go to an extreme fee model. Spirit grows over the course of a decade, Ryanair America arrives and gets huge, and a carrier like US, being the 4th legacy, decides to break from the pricing model of the big three and shoot for something in the middle. Assume for this argument that these carriers all decide to list fares in a reservation system that your company can access.

Then you go to query, say, CHI-WAS for your business trip.

You corporate system returns the following, all nonstop and in your time range:
- Spirit, $20
- Ryanair, $30
- US Airways, $100
- United, $150

Assume the reality of your travel is that you'd be hit with a mix of fees that effectively made all four of them $150.

I interpreted what timfountain was saying is that if they're all the same at the end of the day, he should be allowed to pick United...but the system would only see the base fare and force him into the Spirit cesspool.

I point out a hope (whether founded or not) that big firms will still strike corporate discounts with big airlines like United that can extend some level of discounting throughout a huge alliance, so maybe the system would still allow the "preferred" carrier to be booked.

I didn't take it as a 1K/DYKWIA thing.