Originally Posted by mdelaur
And it only goes to show you that if the airlines want to continue to have IMHO an insane, constantly changing, rarely understood pricing structure, than they have to live with what they have created. Maybe they could hook up with the IRS and work on best practices for simplifying rules and processes!
Delicious Irony.....
I think you have very much "hit the nail on the head" with your observation. The airline industry pricing structure is a mess. The next time someone observes how we're "taking advantage" of the airlines with these pricing errors just point out to them how the airlines invite this Pandora's Box upon themselves. You don't really hear about many Southwest pricing errors after all.
I might add that the industry's effort to automate as much of the reservation process as possible has also added to this type of situation. There's obviously no empirical evidence out there to show how much it's changed with the increase in online bookings but my guess is that without the reservation agent in the loop to discover these mistakes it might be happening more.