Why do we tolerate stupid, greedy practices just because "they all do it"?
 

My daughter is currently in Seville, Spain, as part of a summer abroad. We set up her travel as a round trip from Dallas to Seville, with a stop in Madrid. Unfortunately, we did not know at the time that her group would already be in Madrid on her return date.

Okay, so all she has to do is use the Madrid to Dallas portion of the trip, right? No, if she doesn't show up for the Seville to Madrid leg, her whole itinerary will be canceled. Fortunately, we knew that, so we tried to make the simple change of dropping the first portion.

Unfortunately, rather than accepting the reality that this is still the same trip, but with a portion "given back", the airline -- American, in this case -- uses the fiction that it's a totally new reservation. So even though my daughter already has a seat on the Madrid to Dallas flight, if we want to make the change we have to: (1) pay a $250 fee to make the "change", and (2) pay another $1000 for the current Madrid to Dallas flight.

So, my daughter is instead going to have to go back to Seville so that she can go Seville to Dallas. And we'll have to hope they get her to Madrid in time to make her connecting flight.

Now, I have since heard that this is standard practice by the airline industry. I say it's bad business, and why should we put up with it just because "they all do it"?

I suggest that since we can't realistically boycott the whole industry, perhaps we ought to single out a particular airline -- flying any other airline unless that is the only one going to a given location -- until at least that airline rethinks its strategy. If we can't deal with them all at once, let's deal with them one at a time.

For my part, I will simply not be flying American Airlines anymore. Nor will my wife, and I've suggested to her that she encourage her colleagues (she's in the oilfield services sector) to do likewise. So what if "everybody does this", that was never a good excuse for my daughter ... why should it be for the airline? It's wrong, and it should stop.

It's done for a very simple reason. It is done to stop people buying tickets from ATL to DFW with a stop in SLC because they want to get to SLC and the ticket to DFW is cheaper. If it was allowed, people would be booking all kinds of seats with no intent of ever using them. It's not good business for us (the airlines) to let airplanes fly around empty because a bunch of tickets were bought and never used. I do think that in you situation, you should only have to pay the change fee and not the extra $1000.

Justme, surely if you are flying around with a bunch of seats bought but never used would be cheaper for the airlines? First, if they are a "no show" you can sell them to last minute sales or fill up the seats with standbys, or alternatively you can fly the empty seat, reducing the overall weight (and therefore cost of the flight) and keep the money!!

The truth is the reason you do it, is because of your ridiculous, byzantine charging system, which depends on the monopoly positions of the "fortress hubs". Low costs don't do this, as the economics are not the same. The reason the hub airlines do this is to protect their monopoly positions at the hubs.

That is the bottom line... and sadly only regulation will address this.

SURELY you understand that a full airplane brings in more revenue than an empty one.

First, what happens when there is no one that wants to buy a last minute ticket? Oh, that's right... fly with an empty seat and make more money! Or put a NON-PAYING standby passenger in it... that's a money maker for sure! You do realize that on average, an airplane needs to be about 2/3s full in order to be profitable, right? If it was such a money maker to fly empty airplanes, why the hell would we even bother to sell tickets? We could just operate the airline to fly employees, friends, and family around! That would be awesome!!

The truth is, since this was posted in General Discussion, you feel you're not limited to speaking only of the airline that was mentioned (AA in this case), you feel safe attacking the airlines for something completely unrelated. You seriously want to tell me that airlines policies on not allowing people to take advantage of them and the ticket pricing system has something to do with fortress hubs? You've definitely gone off the deep end by trying to connect those two things.

I believe its called booking a hidden city, kinda of ticketing fraud.
I hope the op's wife doesnt work for BP, we don't like their oil on our beaches.