Originally Posted by
FlyerJ
That’s true for seasoned travellers and business travellers — but I don’t think that’s the case for most leisure travellers. And that’s a challenge for WestJet, because their customer base still skews towards vacationers and infrequent travellers. Those folks, I think, will often click on the cheapest fare without any clue of what they’re getting into.
IMO, most of those folks just don’t understand that a ticket from point A to point B (all on the same flight and in the same cabin and with the same level of on-board service) can have three wildly different prices. All for the same seat. A lot, therefore, buy the cheapest — simply not getting that there’s a difference.
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That leads to gross misunderstanding like the OP on this thread, or like the OP on the other “WestJet is evil because they made me pay to sit with my grandchild” (aka “Westjet more interested in almighty $ than keeping family together”) thread, or like all of the recent bad press stories about ill and terminally ill people buying Basic fares and then WS being too “evil” to allow them to make changes after buying an unchangeable fare.
Exactly. The family going on vacation can probably tolerate a flight being delayed a few hours but not days. People need to get back to work or kids to school. Those Basic fare (and everything to do with Swoop as an aside) is simply evil. It is the airline industry (WestJet + AC + Delta and others) selling their customers a product that does not meet their needs and if they understood what they were buying the consumer would likely walk away from it.
Some may say that is the fault of the Consumer, however I would say the airline is equally responsible. At a minimum the airline should say to this passenger or other, ok we will let you trade this in for what you thought you were buying.
I would argue the target market for Basic and Swoop are people who buy the product in error and then can be forced to pay change or other service fees.