[robertmcgough]

Originally Posted by rerere

Thanks! The airline industry really needs to get rid of these useless fares.

Well, the fees are not useless to the airlines. They're worth billions in revenues. Notice, though, that this is a practice unique to the airline industry. That is so because of the unique nature of the transactional exchange - it's not a bilateral exchange once a flyer requests to modify the contract (via change or cancellation). At that point, the airline holds all the bargaining power, and they really shouldn't use that power to squeeze more money out of their customers when they give nothing else in exchange. It's an opportunity for them to build loyalty - instead they use it to stick it to customers. Like I said before, that's just bad business in the long run.

By the way, the airlines deserve to be bashed for this. It's utter bull**** - and as bad for them ultimately as it is for all of us. I've flown all my life and on numerous airlines, and all of them are getting worse by the day. And, for the most part, they treat their employees like crap too.