alt Hacker News> "United is saying they don't want to add yet another, and potentially even more powerful, intermediary than they already face in terms of Google search, price-comparison metasearch sites and online travel agencies"
What if the airlines instead focused on delivering great service at a competitive price?
"Nah, let's escalate this arms race instead."
Replies
cowlevel • yesterday at 9:51 PM
Those used to exist, nobody flew on them and they went bankrupt. The market has decisively decided. In airlines, price beats all else, even time in most cases.
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"What if the airlines instead focused on delivering great service at a competitive price?"
Germania, IIRC, tried that in the late 90s, offering a flat fare for every seat.
They had to roll it back very quickly because their bookings dropped unsustainably - nobody wanted to pay a fair price for a seat, even if it was cheaper than they might realistically have had to pay under dynamic pricing.
All that potential customers fixated on was that the flat fares were more expensive than the few cheap loss-leader seats advertised on rival airlines.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" etc etc