Give Us Your Personal Data Or Pay Full Fare

ebh writes "Noted in an AP story about how fees make it difficult to compare air travel costs, is how the airline industry is moving toward tailoring offer packages (and presumably, fares) for individuals based on their personal information. Worse, 'The airline association said consumers who choose not to supply personal information would still be able to see fares and purchase tickets, though consumer advocates said those fares would probably be at the "rack rate" — the travel industry's term for full price, before any discounts.'"

Comments

Or, to look at it the other way...

[Shag]

Airlines are (and have been, and will continue to be) giving preferential treatment to their better customers. How this is even news, I don't know - frequent flyer programs have been around for what, thirty years now? And you don't have to fly to see all the advertising about how getting the airline's affinity credit card saves you from paying for that first checked bag every time you fly with them, and so on, and so forth. Flying 25,000 miles a year with them gets you that too, plus bonus miles, plus free upgrades when available, and the perks only go up from there.

Earlier this millennium, I spent a few years as a top-tier frequent flyer on an airline that has since merged into one of the remaining behemoths. I was in my 30's at the time, and had some "work" that involved a lot of international flights. (Thanks for paying your taxes, if you live in any of the twenty-odd countries whose governments were funding it.) It was even worthwhile for me to buy a membership in their lounges. Their back-end system had a formula for determining "high-value customers," and based partly on how many years I was expected to be their customer before retiring, it decided they were going to make some bucks off me, even though I always flew on the cheapest available fares.

The airline that borged them didn't have this generous of a nature, but said "wow, look at this great data-mining system!" and adopted it, not fully understanding what they were getting. A year or so after the merger, I used some miles for a free, non-upgradable ticket to meet up with my fiancée in Paris for a weekend. I got to the hub airport for the trans-Atlantic flight to Paris, the gate agent paged me, looked me up and down (yeah, t-shirt and sandals), asked if I was in fact me, looked more than a little distressed, then dragged me off to the side away from the counter and said in hushed tones, "We're not allowed to do this - but the computer says to upgrade you!"

As far as I know, this airline's computer still thinks I am a god among men, and unless they deliberately go in and tweak the algorithms, it may think that forever. I'm... okay with this. :)

Re:so...

[Joce640k]

If it wasn't being used for something, it wouldn't be the price to get less expensive groceries.

I thought it was mostly used to put the things you buy at opposite ends of the store so you have to walk past all the other stuff every time you go there.