Originally Posted by
toomanybooks
Airlines inching closer to dynamic pricing: Travel Weekly
Airlines are getting closer to offering different prices to different customers.
I could see WN charging more to people who have previously searched or purchased AT/BS or EBCI. Or who buy outbound Monday and return Thurs/Friday, as those would likely be business customers. Or those who have tickets paid by a third party.
It will be interesting to watch this.
The problem this is that (excepting Southwest currently) it's possible to buy tickets on each airline at dozens of sites, each of which work differently. Yet these methods seems like they would have to be implemented on a specific site. So they could presumably be worked around just by going to a different site.
So unless airlines stop giving miles for tickets bought through OTAs (the way most hotel programs have done), I don't see how this would work, except for (as mentioned above) discounts for people with elite status (who are more likely perhaps to use the airline's own site to begin with).
Now, in the case of Southwest, I thought that one of the goals of the new reservation system would be to make their fares be bookable by travel agents. But if they do that, they give up hope of implementing anything like this (other than, again, for "targeted" discounts).
Btw, airlines have been "targeting" discounts to elite members for a while anyway, in that to a miles/points collectors bonus miles/points on a flight are more or less the equivalent of a discount. And airlines (including Southwest) have given bonus miles/points/credit on flights in certain situations for decades.