Originally Posted by Stranger
The reason is obvious.
Airlines play with fares and destinations to maximize what they manage to extract from you. People play the same game, trying to minimize their costs. They do cut their travel into separate tickets in cases of destinations for which the airlines believe they can extract inordinately high fares. The new policy is just a way to penalize people who do the latter. Based upon the belief that making people more mizerable will lead them to change their behavior, i.e. pay more. Of course, what is not included in the model is the (negative) value of the bad feelings.
Bad feelings? No business on earth exists to absorb costs customers choose to foist upon them. Customers find ways to save: No problem. The resultant reduction in revenue must somewhere be reflected in expenses/costs. For example, when airlines are "plated" on another airlines ticket-stock, there is a cost to the former, a gain to the latter. Cost stratification is understandable. The only part I don't understand is limiting AC-AC connectivity in the same fashion.