<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by VicOsaki:
The business side is charged more because it demands more. Business demands flexibility. They demand a system that caters to their every whim. When the ordained miss judges the length of a meeting, he expects to get on a whatever flight he chooses. A system like this is expensive. It requires a considerable amount of inherent overcapacity. </font>
Vic - I think your point is correct, but it doesn't follow that the airlines should either overprice that system, or underprice the mom/pop combo. Every succesful business model I have seen has always made money (even a little bit) on each segment or component of the business. The ones that fail in the long run are the ones that depend on a single stream (say business fares) and sell the other parts (say mom/pop) at cost plus $1 or some other similar but unprofitable figure.
As an average business flyer, I don't expect to call today for a flight to the west coast and pay $300 r/t for a middle of the week fare, but asking me to pay 4 to 5 times that leads me to make other decisions such as staying over a Saturday night (I'd love to see proof that this actually makes a difference for the airlines), buying back to back tickets, driving to a different airport with cheaper fares on a discount carrier, not flying, etc. Somewhere between those two numbers is a figure that should cover the airlines costs and would allow me to purchase the ticket in a straightforward manner, knowing that next time I bought the same ticket, it would be about the same cost.