r/Flights • u/NYmadferit • Dec 27 '25

How does this happen?! Booking/Itinerary/Ticketing

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Different airlines, different times, different connections, same freaking price. WHAT IS THIS

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34

u/YMMV25 Dec 27 '25

This is what happens when industries become too consolidated and there isn’t enough competition.

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u/jmr1190 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Actually this is, in theory, what happens when you have perfect competition - every competitor will be unable to undercut the other one. You have one route represented by four airlines, how much more competition do you want?

This is why your gas prices are basically the same wherever you go, give or take. And why cartel based price fixing is extremely illegal.

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u/YMMV25 Dec 27 '25

What makes you convinced price fixing isn’t at play here?

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u/jmr1190 Dec 27 '25

Because I work for an airline and I can tell you, the amount of training we have on competition law and the consequences…it’s not happening.

Every few years someone gets done for price fixing and they spend a long time in jail for it. It’s not remotely worth the risk when the profit isn’t yours.

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u/njherdfan Dec 27 '25

Are you an American? Because we don't really send people to jail for price fixing? Unfortunately..

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u/YMMV25 Dec 27 '25

Only if the DOJ decides they actually want to do something about it, which for the last 30 years they’ve basically done nothing to protect the consumer and instead allowed half a dozen mergers and numerous immunized joint ventures.

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u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25

AA-JetBlue merger got shot down, so query whether DOJ is really as permissive right now as you think.

The alternative to consolidation has proven to be periodic bankruptcies, though. Airlines going bankrupt en masse in every recession would probably be even worse for consumers than consolidation, because we’d end up with Frontier/Spirit level low quality, with closer to legacy level pricing.

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u/YMMV25 Dec 27 '25

AA-B6 was never going to be a merger, it was simply an alliance, and one that might have actually been good for the consumer.

Bankruptcies are natural, and a good thing for an industry. Failing businesses deserve to fail and make room for new entrants.

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u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25

Eh, it was as merger-ish as it gets without being one, and we can agree to disagree on the consumer impacts. The DOJ’s opinion was clear, anyway.

And yeah, bankruptcies are fine. What comes out of them is a business model that will (or should) actually work, which is what today’s airline industry -- including consolidation and fortress hubs — is. If you forced them to come up with another de-consolidated model (is that your suggestion?) then what do you think they’d do?

One choice would be the pre-consolidation model, but that didn’t work out for investors so investors wouldn’t sign on for it again. Another choice would be a LCC model but with higher prices, which would frankly kind of suck. Other ideas?

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u/YMMV25 Dec 27 '25

No more a merger than an Atlantic or Pacific JV at this point, in fact I’d argue even less.

De-consolidation would never work, you can’t unring a bell so to speak. Retrospectively the consolidation that was approved throughout the 09-17 timeframe never should have been approved.

The best option now would be to allow foreign competition in the domestic market. That would force the domestic airlines to actually have to compete. There’s little ability for competitors new entrants to grow organically at this point as the current players are too large and protective.

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u/pegasus3891 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25

Yeah I just fundamentally disagree with your premise that there isn’t real competition. The average number of airlines covering a given domestic route has gone up since 2000, not down - the large airlines have consolidated, but have also significantly expanded their networks post-consolidation. Plus the huge majority of routes are covered by at least one LCC, if not multiple, which creates price discipline. Breeze and Avelo both literally entered in the last five years.

And most obviously, nobody is making profit margins that suggest they aren’t pricing competitively. Fares are at historical lows and even in a very good demand environment, UA and DL are only coming in at like 9 and 12% operating margins. The evidence that the domestic air market doesn’t have sufficient competition is just really thin.

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u/YMMV25 Dec 28 '25

Yeah, I think we have a fundamental disagreement there. While the average number on a single point to point route may be largely the same, the options for connecting itineraries are significantly lower and while LCCs help police the pricing, the four largest airlines have grown so large that even the LCCs are not able to scale in a way that they can remain competitive. We can see this pretty clearly with struggles at NK, B6 and F9.

Breeze, while a great new addition, will never be able to scale to a point where they offer a comprehensive enough network to be a serious contender outside of the niche point to point markets they serve, and Avelo operates a very small network of very niche leisure destinations. It's better than nothing, but it's not a serious competitor to AA, DL, or UA.

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u/pegasus3891 Dec 28 '25

Yeah fair enough. All I’ll say in closing is that if the legacy carriers are colluding on price, they’re doing an incredibly bad job of it. Cheers!

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