Note received from a friend who travels a few times a year to Lagos and generally starts/ends his journey in Nice. Although he knows it's a lousy airline, he's decided that Iberia best suits him as it's a logical route and fast, avoiding going north to LON and then south again.
For my next trip to Nigeria I looked at my usual route NCE-MAD-LOS on 20 Oct and LOS-MAD-NCE on 3 Nov.
Price for return trip Business Class on the Iberia website € 3536.
I needed to check the days on which MAD-LOS operates, and looked on Skyscanner as the easiest way to scan the dates. I was astonished to see that all flights from Madrid to Lagos were a maximum € 1700 regardless of which airline was used (Iberia direct but KLM, BA, etc via connection). These same flights were all around € 3500 if the journey started and finished in London or Nice instead of Madrid.
So I decided to split my trip on Iberia into two separate bookings. MAD-LOS-MAD in Business which I was able to get for € 1285.
And NCE-MAD-NCE in Economy (it’s not worth paying for Business as the seat is exactly the same). I got this ticket for € 137.
So I’ve paid only € 1422 for the journey which would otherwise have cost € 3500 and the only inconvenience is having to collect my bag and check in again while connecting at Madrid. I can cope with that for a saving of € 2000+ !
And in the course of my research, I also encountered the fact that a one-way economy ticket from Nice to Madrid costs twice as much as a return.
This airline fare business defies logic ! Have I missed something ?
My reply to him :
In essence it’s down to yield management and promoting traffic over routes which would otherwise not be filled profitably. What’s odd in this case is that it’s normally over indirect routes, e..g a NCE LON CPT LON NCE on BA would cost less than flying LON CPT LON on the same BA flights. Last time I checked this the LON-CPT-LON was £1200, but NCE LON CPT LON NCE was €900.
I am surprised that it’s worked in your favour this time, I can only assume that IB have very little Spain originating traffic going to LOS, or it’s an ‘error’ fare.
I checked your figures and they are exactly as on the GDS. The ‘I’ class that you got on the MAD LOS MAD segments now shows full on those dates, although their website might show different availability as they could keep back seats for sale through internal channels which they don’t release to agents/other airlines. They are supposed to have ‘full content’ on Amadeus and show the same availability, but the fact is that they don’t. All the airlines do the same as they can identify the point of enquiry and show what they call ‘dynamic’ availability. That’s a euphemism for ‘discriminatory’.
You might not have to check/recheck in MAD. The system does allow through check where it is the same carrier even on 2 separate tickets, but the check-in agents will sometimes refuse to do it (or think they can’t) and there is a logical reason for that. If you purchase two separate tickets to undercut a published fare, you are on two different and unrelated contracts and should your inbound flight be delayed and you can’t make the connection, you have no recourse to the airline at all. That’s not to say they won’t assist you and rebook you, but they are under no obligation to do so. This is one of the ways that Low Cost Carriers keep costs down, by cutting out connections and the consequent costs to them, although that is changing.
For a saving of €2000+ it’s worth the risk.
This airline fare business defies logic ! YES
Have I missed something ? No, but you are thinking logically! Don’t
I used to work in revenue management and although I understand it, I find it very hard to justify the logic! The airline's interest and that of the passenger are of course conflictive.
