Originally Posted by
LondonElite
Sure there is. How do you know that the traveler would not have booked A to B at the higher fare?
I don't.
But that's the point. Neither does the airline. How do we know the passenger didn't have a fixed budget and A-B was outside of that, so they never would have flown at all ?
"How much we might have made" doesn't pay the bills.
Let's not get stuck on the semantics of 'loss'.
It's not a matter of semantics at all, it's a matter of correctness. The airline made X. They might have made Y, maybe. Or they might have made 0. But they haven't lost Y-X, or Y.
If they really think they're losing money, they'll be claiming it as a loss in their accounts. Do you think they are ?
It's like record companies claiming music piracy costs them money. It's not semantics, it's flat-out wrong (not to mention dishonest).