Why don’t airlines generally charge less for “middle” seats than for aisle and window seats?
Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Oct 21st, 2009 by wintercow20
Why don’t airlines generally charge less for “middle” seats than for aisle and window seats?
Good question. On a related note, the Buffalo Sabres started using a new variable pricing scheme last year for seats. Seats for games in high demand cost quite a bit more than seats for games with lackluster opponents. The last I read it was considered a success.
Joel sends me:
Perhaps the uncertainty of the first-come-first-serve seat selection sells more Economy Plus [1], Business and First Class seats? Another thing to think about is that airline seats are priced in such a way that a fixed number of seats are allocated for a flight and are priced in an extremely complex way that almost mimics an auction [2-6]
[1] http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,1314,00.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Reservation_System
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software
[4] http://www.paulgraham.com/carl.html
[5] http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-complexity/ITA-software-travel-complexity.pdf (slide 23 talks briefly about pricing)
[6] http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=57304679&Fmt=6&clientId=17941&RQT=309&VName=PQD (also useful for its references)
This topic is of interest to me because some of the highest paying CS jobs in the world are in the airfare industry!