There are lots of ways that the travel industry punishes you for traveling solo, including higher cruise fares and higher group tour prices. But those upcharges are usually based on the idea that unaccompanied vacationers take up the same amount of sleeping space that a travel vendor can otherwise sell to two people.
But last week, consumer reporters found “real and undeniable” evidence that the airline industry has quietly been charging solo travelers more—just because they can.
How U.S. airlines charge solo travelers more
When Thrifty Traveler searched for airfares for two people versus a single ticket for the same flight, the travel site found the per-person ticket price was lower for the duo than for the passenger going alone.
Although Kyle Potter, the executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, claimed his work had uncovered “dozens” of instances of the unfair pricing in many flights, the primary example Potter gave was for a one-way flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Miami (MIA) in early September. Thrifty Traveler found that Delta Air Lines was charging a single passenger $199, but a couple was charged $118 each.
The discrepancy showed up whether the user was logged in or not, no matter whether the payment method was money or miles, and it spanned seating categories.
At first, the website stated that it had only found the higher fares with Delta, and speculated that the discrepancy might have been related to the new fare class system that the airline recently rolled out.
But soon, researchers said they discovered the same thing is quietly happening with American Airlines and United Airlines, too. (And the airlines swear they don’t collude on pricing!)
For one flight from Chicago to Asheville, North Carolina, United tried to charge a solo passenger $224, while a couple was charged $109 each.
The airlines get away with this by showing a cheaper type of fare class to passengers traveling in a group of two or more. In Delta’s case, anyone flying with more than one person in their party is privy to a lower category of ticket with fare rules that stipulate the cheaper flight’s purchaser “must be accompanied on all sectors in same compartment by at least 1 adult.” People who travel singly are not shown that discounted fare class.
According to Thrifty Traveler, the sneaky rip-off doesn’t happen on every fight. That site’s research found the upcharge appears almost exclusively on one-way tickets.
The widespread assumption among industry observers is that the airlines are exploiting the spending habits of a certain type of traveler. The airline blog View from the Wing surmised that airlines assume when people fly by themselves, they’re more likely to be doing so for business. And because people who travel professionally tend to be reimbursed by their employers, they’re willing to pay higher airfares.
Not that the people who manage the airlines are admitting any of that.
So how much money have solo travelers in the United States lost to inflated airfares?
Over time, how has imbalanced pricing affected American seniors and students, who are more likely to need to fly alone?
To get around the surcharge, is it possible to buy two tickets and then simply cancel one of them?
We don’t have answers yet.
How U.S. airlines responded to exposure
The Big Three airlines have refused to comment on the practice, so it’s hard to know how widespread the issue is, when it started, and whether it will continue.
When reached for a response, Delta, American, and United have ignored the request or refused to comment.
CNN reported that when it followed up with Delta about this practice, the reporter’s contact at the airline said the fare structures were not new, but the employee would not provide an official on-the-record statement.
Hours after this story blew up in the press, Thrifty Traveler found that Delta and United had stripped some, but not all, of the offending airfares from their publicly available fares.
The removal could be just temporary as a tactic to dodge bad press.
And the airlines certainly deserve bad press for this. They deserve an even more stern reaction, if only the agents of government oversight were more in the consumer’s corner.
In a country like the United States, where cars dominate long-distance travel and passenger train service remains mostly undeveloped, airports and scheduled flights function as a core method for getting around.
Air travel is infrastructure—a concept that has been backed by presidents and policymakers for decades. When air traffic controllers went on strike in 1981, President Ronald Reagan defined the action as a “peril to national safety.”
To see the airlines attempt to charge one class of people more than another is more than annoying or distressing.
It’s a betrayal by the major carriers to hold up their end of the American social contract to fairly serve as our essential transportation infrastructure.
And it’s a reminder that the people who run these corporations are capable of doing anything as long as they believe they won’t get caught.
