Our Friends at the Thrifty Traveler found a quirky pricing structure built into the reservation system at Delta, American Airlines and United. The fare for one passenger is significantly higher than the price per person if you add a second traveler to the same itinerary. This is not a glitch or an error. These airlines have intentional set up the fares this way.
If you want to book the lowest priced tickets, you need to travel with someone. For those of us who do not have friends or a loved one, this unfair. But as they say, life is unfair.
Here is an example. A one-way Delta flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Miami (MIA) in early September might show a price of $199 for a single passenger. But, if you adjust your search to include two passengers, the per-person fare astonishingly drops to just $118. That’s a difference of $81 per ticket.
This begs the question on why are airlines pricing their seats this way. It is all about the airlines trying to maximize their profits. They recognize that each passenger has a different price point for their flights. Families and couples traveling for pleasure may be more price sensitive than a person traveling for business. Typically, the business person would be looking for 1 seat and the family would be looking for 2 or more seat. As a way to segment the customers, airlines try to structure the fares to identify who is more price sensitive than the others. As a result, individual seats will be seen as business travel and less price sensitive. They therefore see the higher price.
In the past, airlines would use Saturday night stay as a way to identify business vs pleasure travels. But competition from low-cost airlines have forced the other airlines to do away with this requirement.
The lesson to be learned is if you are traveling with anyone, you need to check pricing for multiple people when researching because it may be cheaper. Airlines have a bunch of ways to increase the price that they will charge you. My suggestion is to check multiple options when booking