How Airfare is priced, at least in one case.
I just had a client book a trip for 8 couples and one of the couples had a slightly lower cost.
Of course, he asked why, and I had to say that the fare classes weren’t available for the rest of the group. What does that mean?
I will explain.
Airline pricing is exceedingly complicated and airlines also vary up their pricing structures with various strategies to get ahead. Since his flights were with JetBlue, which tends to price by individual leg, I thought it would be a good example for this post. Jetblue also operates a single cabin (no business, first or premium economy) which makes this also a little easier.
Here, we see flights as I see them. I’ve asked for flights on JetBlue (B6) from Salt Lake City (SLC) Via New York City (JFK) to Nassau, Bahamas (NAS)
All of those letters on the aircraft are “fare classes” So when a travel pro says “fare class” in respect to flight availability, they aren’t talking about a better seat, they are talking about the components that determine price. Now, sometimes, an airline would need to have the same fare class all the way from the origination to the destination, in this case, from SLC to Nassau, or it could be, like Jet Blue, where each leg can be priced separately and combined with the others.
Here we have the flights back. That is Nassau to JFK via Orlando.
And here we have how these price for two.
And how do we get the fares.? Well, you have to look at what we call “fare ladders” and here are two, SLC to JFK on the 1st of february and JFK to Nassau on the send
In the case of Jet Blue, they assemble tickets based on the cost of each flight. On the NYC to Nassau flight alone, Jetblue has over 250 fares or ‘prices’ possible for that flight alone on the 2nd of February, yes, the specific date matters too. (keep reading below) Each of those codes is called a “fare basis code”. That is the code the fare is based off of.
The below is what we call a “Fare Calculation” and if you look at these enough, they read like sentences. This one reads.
From Salt Lake City on Jetblue to New York, the fare is 160.93 with code OI4QBEY5. From New York on Jet Blue to Nassau the fare is 75.00 with code PL4AUEY5. Returning via Orlando the fare is $100 with fare basis UI4AUEY5. From Orlando to Salt Lake City the fare is 261.40 with fare basis RH7AUEY5. The total fare is $597.33 and with the accompanying taxes (each two letter code is a different tax) for a total fare of $771.77 per person.
So, here is one example of how plane tickets are priced. I’ve been considering doing a post like this for some time, but I wanted to wait until I got asked the question again “why is this price the way it is?” I have to thank the client that asked me this time. So often I have to waive my hand and be a little mysterious. It’s not that I don’t know or I think that you can’t understand, it’s just that it’s so complicated, I’d literally have to teach a class to have people understand it industry wide. Even just one example, with one airline, on one route, took a whole blog post.
Keep flying. This is high on the list of reasons why if you are serious traveller, you also have a serious travel professional working for you. To answer my client’s question on why one couple has a slightly different price is simple, slightly different fares were available. He also should know that these flights are BOOKING and moving a lot. I could’ve tried to have cancelled the first six to get the lower price and I did look at it, but by the time I did. One of the flights had booked out and the price would’ve gone up for the remaining six, even if I would’ve broken them into twos.
I originally titled this post “air fares demystified’, but somehow even after explaining it, that doesn’t seem appropriate.
To my client that asked, I hope it helps.
