Originally Posted by
phol
But HK is a fair way behind the US and Europe in this respect. Opaqueness and shopping around is accepted, even encouraged, in most transactions. Flights are no different. I certainly haven't seen CX getting any better at this in my years here.
Thanks for your sharing your experience and perspective. I am slowly learning the Asian preference for (artificially fabricated) "bargains".
My (western-biased) perspective was that with Asia having the highest share of LCCs at 58% (vs. 40% in Europe and a share in the 30s in North America) I was expecting more direct transparency in base pricing, not less. With LCCs it's all about lowering costs, hence selling from their website. With them you know that you will always get the best prices directly on their site, and had assumed this has rubbed off the incumbents even more so than it already has in North America or Europe. But it looks like it hasn't, and maybe that helps explain why the share of LCCs is so much higher in Asia.
Having said that, this itinerary is ex-Italy and priced on the Italian version of the CX website (in Italian language), not from or in HK. In Europe pretty much all airlines price transparently on their websites, many with money back guarantees. So CX looks way out of place in that context.
Back to my original question: any reliable way to get CX's real prices online?