This is part of an article from CNN travel...I think it says it all...
By Christopher Elliott
Tribune Media Services
(Tribune Media Services) -- When it comes to airline ticket rules, the devil isn't in the details. The devil is the details.
You'll find Satan in something called the ticket tariff, which is a massive, rambling and often incomprehensible document that passengers rarely see in its entirety.
Why? Partly because they tell you what you already know -- for example, that you have to pay a fee if you want to change your ticket -- and partly because it just doesn't concern you. For instance, some tariff rules talk about special fares for police officers or firefighters, which a vast majority of passengers wouldn't care about.
But there's another reason why you won't see these rules: Airlines would rather you not know about them. That's because they like to bury all kinds of restrictions in the fine print, hoping their passenger won't read them until it's too late.
"These rules are put there for one reason, and one reason alone," says Rick Seaney, the chief executive of the Web site Farecompare.com. "To maximize revenue."
This is from another article:
It is well within the airlines' capabilities to do the math and disclose the true ticket price up front. It's clearly the right thing to do from the standpoint of their customers, and the airlines should be required to do so.
According to the latest University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index, the airlines' credibility with consumers is at a seven-year low, behind such perennial underperformers as cellular service providers. At the same time, the airlines' fuzzy math has become the butt of cocktail party jokes. Perhaps the solution to the airlines' credibility crisis lies simply in telling the truth.
My guess is that there are a whack more people that agree with me than you! Just type "misleading airline practices" in any search engine and you'll see article after article about the deceptive practices of the airlines...
Airhead - I have a business to run and don't have time to read pages of fine print and I'd hazard a guess that 98% of the flying public doesn't either. All I can tell you is that if I ran my business the way the airlines do I wouldn't be in business long. My guess though is that every one of the major airlines will be at the trough trying to get their mitts on some of that 700 billion the government is handing out because once again they've mismanaged their businesses!
Enjoy you're job...you won't have it long!