Colin

Does AA play nicely with OTA-issued ticket changes & flights credits? i.e. book some AA J-cabin fare via AMEXTravel for $365 (or could be Y-cabin in AA is your selected airline) and then use AA.com or AA telephone agents to change & apply the credit to your desired LGA-ORD $365 fare?

Another workaround could be just a dummy, refundable any airline J-cabin booking for $365 via AMEXTravel pay with points, cancel & refund after 30 days to get statement credit, which offsets the real $365 AA.com you put on same credit card. Bonus here is you get the 5x. I recall in the past Alaska was super easy for me to self-cancel & get a refund. AMEX didn't clawback jack.

oopsz

Yes, if both bookings are done on AA. I had her book me refundable flights on AA and UA and I'd cancel the flight not taken.

LovePrunes

This isn't what some of the posters on here booking their clients AWAY from AA will want to hear, but this interesting blog post is about how United is now copying AA by pulling their cheapest fares from being booked by 3rd parties and the continued migration to NDC. I Wonder where the tipping point is.
I low key love this. Adapt or get left behind!

https://crankyflier.com/2023/07/27/u...party-channels

bocastephen

At this time it’s only Basic Economy fares and their rationale was due to the ability to solicit ancillary revenue from these fares and it was easier for them to manage the ticket lifecycle in their own system.

I can’t think of a single company, except maybe Walmart that would buy Basic Economy fares, so it’s actually good riddance to get these off the GDS. I had an Amex Platinum agent sell me a UA basic economy ticket without proper disclosure and it was a hassle getting it canceled.

AA on the other hand, has NDC fares sprinkled across cabins and fare classes in a manner I can only describe as a legitimate attempt to undermine the trust and relationship between customers and travel agents by making agent fares appear more expensive vs what the agent can quote.

dw

No doubt this is a test by UA to see how it goes… I have no doubt they have their sights on expanding this beyond basic economy.

UA is working on a much larger distribution project beyond just selling ancillary revenue- there’s a thread over on the UA forum on this. It’s a bit complicated but basically they want the ability to dynamically adjust fares in a way that goes above and beyond what’s currently possible using the traditional fare class/bucket structure.

bocastephen

I haven't read the discussion recently, but I know their goal is to create truly dynamic fares that can adjust instantly based on a host of variables, including demand, time of day, and even digging into big data to customize the fares offered to individual customers - which would likely result in a lawsuit and be struck down as a form of illegal discrimination, and I'm not even sure this is allowed under common carriage and interstate transportation laws. Kirby is a product of Baldanza's AA time, so he will stop at absolutely nothing to create the least customer friendly experience designed to extort the highest possible margin out of people while delivering the lowest possible service cost.

1kprem

In terms of dynamic pricing it all seems to fit into IATA’s vision of the “personalized offer”. I hate that term “offer” as it seems more likely I’ll be denied a better price than the next. Maybe my zip code will be a determining factor(?). Tariffs and inventory will be created or adjusted on the spot subject to algorithms based on how the airline sizes up a traveler. And I think that could be subject to lawsuits if it seems discriminatory.


Here is a quote from Yanik Hoyle (IATA) on the vision for NDC. Taken from airlines.iata.org.

“In a digital world, airline customers' expectations for personalized offers, real-time information, and seamless transactions are growing,” says Hoyles. “Retailing can move airline distribution to the future through de-commoditization, selling new products in new ways, and being closer to the customers. It will enable richer customer engagement and dynamic offer creation.”

Dave Noble

Discrimination in itself, generally, isn't illegal - it is discrimination based on certain criteria ( e.g. gender or race ) which is illegal

bocastephen

This will be up to the DOT, FTC and CFPB along with various states to decide if this type of dynamic pricing where the price for an air ticket will be different for different people based on a cloud of fuzzy data the airlines are pulling together and likely refusing to disclose or share with government stakeholders. I am most certain that this fuzzy data will include gender, race, age, economic status, income, credit scores, travel frequency, banking data, employment type and probably thousands of other data points that will allow an AI system to dynamically calculate the highest margin fare a person will be willing to pay - and by doing so, this could reduce competition among airlines and lead to higher prices for most travelers.

On its face it must be declared illegal and shut down before it even gets to a live test.

Dave Noble

You are making an assumption - then using his assumption as fact and so declaring that it must be made illegal

I doubt very much that the airlines would use metrics that woud be illegal to discriminate on and so the assertion seems flawed to me

I know that here I can quote for a piece of work and can decide what I want to quote based on what I think the company will pay

LovePrunes

When one starts with the premise or viewpoint that "NDC bad, status quo good, must protect old way at all costs", then it's natural to jump all the way to the extreme "this must be declared illegal and shut down before it even gets to a live test"
...that jump gets a big old eye roll and a laugh out loud from me

1kprem

As with any change, the success of NDC will be on how well it is received in the marketplace: the buyers, the third party sellers and by consumers.

As a lesson to me, I may be out $40 on a lounge pass that I was offered along with the airfare purchased in March for a flight last week. This was on the airline’s website. The day of our flight we found the lounge had been temporarily closed for five weeks. Did the airline proactively refund my EMD? Nope. I wrote customer service but no luck, yet. I feel I may as well kiss that money goodbye.

Will I ever buy another lounge pass when offered? Nope.

LovePrunes

for what its worth, most of the time the lounges have a sign on them saying "no day passes being accepted." However the day pass works at all the lounges at all the airports you travel through for the entire travel day: origin, connection, and destination, so while one location may not be closed, you may be in luck with the others. If that closed lounge was the only airport on your journey with a club and was closed for 5 weeks, that certainly seems something reasonable to argue to get your money back for.

npretnar

This is called perfect price discrimination in economics, and yes, it is generally illegal under the Robinson-Patman Act. See https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/...man-violations

Generally speaking, "A seller charging competing buyers different prices for the same "commodity" or discriminating in the provision of "allowances" — compensation for advertising and other services — may be violating the Robinson-Patman Act." In the case of airfares, the value of the "commodity" would be defined as the value of a seat in a particular cabin, with particular refund/baggage/other restrictions, on a particular routing for a particular airline at a particular moment in time. I'm a trained PhD economist (but not an attorney), though I have a little bit of tangential knowledge of anti-trust regulations, and I believe that if an airline attempted to perfectly price discriminate by charging customer A more than customer B, when each are booking the same ticket around the same moment in time, as a result of exploiting knowledge regarding customer A's vs. customer B's spending habits, they would be violating the Robinson-Patman Act. Indeed, it would seem that ANY use of personal knowledge about particular consumers in making pricing decisions would violate this act.

However, an airline could dynamically adjust prices based purely on changes to inventory by the second (Spirit already does this to some extent), and as long as they were not exploiting an individual consumer's data to further adjust prices relative to prices shown to other consumers, they may be within the bounds of the law.

Acidity

Emphasis added.

I'm sure you know this, but for anyone else reading this: this is why fares without a Saturday night stay over are more expensive (business travelers are less price sensitive but less likely to stay on Saturday), and why fully refundable fares tend to be so massively more expensive (again, more likely to be business travelers).