Originally Posted by
allenaustralia
I struggle to understand the USA at times. It portrays to the world that it is the centre of capitalism and individual choice.
However I find it amazing that anyone defends the airlines on skip lagging. If you like control like authoritarian countries then defend the airlines - perhaps jail people for missing flights since apparently controlling people is very important in the USA. Afterall you check ID to take a domestic flight in the USA, whilst in a truly free country like Australia you just catch with the plane with no ID check and your relatives can come to the gate to say goodbye.
Freedom means given individuals choice, not having a system of protecting big business and ID checks, removing shoes and being questioned why you want to take a domestic flight.
Customers do not have to take a flights, they book a service - WHICH they may take the flight or simply not rock up (there is no more complexity than this). The simplest analogy - a person books a degustation menu (at a restaurant) and skips a course, there is no penalty for that.
USA the land of the fee - because it seems that big business can do things that would be abhorrent in Australia and many other places. But yet people defend the fee - strange beyond belief.
Well yours is the first post that mentioned JAIL 🤣
Sorry you lost me at that point for everything you said
Literally nobody is saying somebody's going to jail because of this. Except you. Airline pricing is the way it is.
connections are priced to match nonstop flights (
people: we have to stop using the ambiguous terminology "DIRECT", since that's not necessarily a nonstop flight, it's a flight that may stop multiple times along the route to your destination, you just don't change aircraft)
the "SKU" we buy as someone else mentioned, is to fly from point A to point B, and airlines will match prices. Not all airlines can make it a NONSTOP.
United may get you there nonstop, and AA's matching price with United might make a stop
But the SKU or product or service is from whichever airline to get you to the destination you purchased. Not upgrade yourself to a nonstop for a city that might be an intermediate stop.
If you pay for flying to that intermediate stop since that's what you really wanted, it'll cost you more on AA as that nonstop service is worth the convenience, and it's often priced more. Whatever price it is, you can bet United or Delta will be price matching AA. Skiplagging is a way to get around the unusual nature of the airline business, but it violates what you agree to when buying a ticket.
People can think "that's unfair" or "that's not enforceable" but that's just the way pricing is.