Airplane and airline stuff

[Sean Hayden]

If it benefited consumers in general it would be abandoned for a better system.

What’s there to argue about?

[macdoc]

Cuz profit is not a word Svarty likes ...he wants everything at cost and won't work the algorithms to save money.
Most of my ( very few in the last couple years ) flights are free due to partner maintaining her high rewards status with Qantas. For instance my steerage level economy flights might be direct while she takes an additional stop in business class to score the cheaper fares. Takes work to benefit. TANSTAAFL

[Svartalf]

at cost, maybe not, everybody has to live, but profit is to be reasonable and honest, not obscenely large.

[pErvinalia]

Communist!

[Svartalf]

maybe I am, so what?

[pErvinalia]

We need to re-educate you.

[macdoc]

at cost, maybe not, everybody has to live, but profit is to be reasonable and honest, not obscenely large.

and you'll be the arbiter as to "reasonable".?
Govs role is both oversight and tax - trans-national corporations are very difficult to rein in and to tax but the great majority of corporations small and large are law abiding and reasonable.
There are bad actors just as there are criminals and con-men.

I see the biggest lack is Auditors General with teeth to enforce their finding.
The ultimate penalty for malfeasance is jail or even insolvency .....I don't like corporate directors getting a free pass and that's where gov enforcement lacks the teeth to be a threat.

Nordic nations likely the best mix of socialism and free market with good gov oversight - shows in their lack of corruption.
US is horrid tho not the worst
https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024
and
https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

[Brian Peacock]

at cost, maybe not, everybody has to live, but profit is to be reasonable and honest, not obscenely large.

and you'll be the arbiter as to "reasonable".?

Nah. That's your job, isn't it?

[pErvinalia]

The invisible hand of the market is the best arbiter.

[Svartalf]

except smith misunderstood everything, and there is no such thing as an invisible hand, even if there are market forces, many of which just don't go for an acceptable, reasonable, balanced price... if only because the market is subject to being manipulated, usually by those who already benefit too much from it.

[pErvinalia]

Communist!

[macdoc]

Svarty thinks the the hidden villains can "manipulate" the airplane or hotel bed market....

[Joe]

Here in the States, we call that business as usual.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SETTLES AIRLINES PRICE FIXING SUIT, MAY SAVE CONSUMERS HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

Six of the nation's largest airlines agreed today to changes in a price information system that was used to increase the cost of airplane tickets by perhaps more than a billion dollars between 1988 and 1992. Earlier, two other airlines settled the case filed by the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Today's settlement involves American Airlines, Delta, Northwest, Continental, Trans World Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and a computerized fare information system owned by the airlines, the Airline Tariff Publishing Company, known as ATP.

Two other participants, United Air Lines and USAir, entered into a consent decree in December 1992, after the Justice Department filed a suit against the eight major carriers for using the information system to conduct a detailed electronic dialogue to raise prices and eliminate discounts.

The Antitrust Division has identified over 50 separate price fixing agreements covering hundreds of routes. By supplying or withdrawing changes in fares, the airlines told each other what fares they wanted to charge in which markets, what competitors' fares were acceptable to them, and what deals they were willing to make, according to the Justice Department.

The Justice Department said ATP allowed the airlines to float "trial balloon" price increases, make and receive counterproposals, and reach consensus on the amount and timing of price increases or the removal of discounts.

Of course, we've made a lot of progress since that case.

Airline Price-Gouging Could Become the New Normal

Led by Delta, many airlines are now working with AI firms to expand the industry’s use of big data for price setting. Using new surveillance techniques, these firms exploit consumer privacy to set “personalized” prices to jack up fares.

After Delta Air Lines faced public backlash for expanding its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to set fares for passengers, the airline sent a letter to federal lawmakers on Friday denying that it uses “personalized pricing” to price-gouge consumers.

But many airlines, led by Delta, the nation’s largest, are working with AI consulting companies that boast of their “hyperpersonalized” price setting. This new airfare apparatus is part of the airline industry’s long-standing experiments with big data–driven pricing strategies that have laid the groundwork for economy-wide surveillance pricing that exploits consumers’ privacy to deliver “personalized” prices.

Now, through shared algorithms, airlines’ AI ventures could also lead to illegal collusion that threatens to jack up ticket prices for everyone, according to experts who spoke to the Lever.

Personalized pricing leverages surveillance techniques and data collection to target individual prices for each customer based on their personal information. AI tools can be used to sift through massive troves of data on customers or competitors and analyze trends to generate profit-maximizing price recommendations.

On an earnings call last month, Delta president Glen Hauenstein told investors regarding its AI pricing: “We like what we see . . . and we’re continuing to roll it out,” announcing that the airline planned to set 20 percent of domestic fares with AI tools by the end of the year.

[Sean Hayden]

Svarty thinks the the hidden villains can "manipulate" the airplane or hotel bed market....

You can't blame him, can you? A cursory glance shows that what he thought were competing hotels for example, may just be competing marketing departments of the same real estate investors. That might be good enough to bypass our antitrust laws, but not his intuition that this doesn't quite live up to the competition he's been promised.

[macdoc]

He has to compete to reap the benefit of dynamic pricing...not sit on his butt and want it handed to him.....it takes work.

may just be competing marketing departments of the same real estate investors

that's a crock....looking for conspiracy and collusion under every rock....
No question some aspects of society are not a level playing field....structural things like the bank act allowing the same capital to be lent out 10 to 50 times.
Yet they still fuck up and go under.
That's why Auditors General need teeth