A few weeks ago I posted on Twitter about the shittiness of the Saturday-night stay rule that airlines use to fleece business travellers. If you're not familiar with the rule, many airlines require passengers to spend a Saturday night in their destination city to get a half-decent fare. Wikipedia explains it further:
The rule is based on the airlines' assumption that business travellers are more likely than leisure travellers to spend Saturday night at home. For example, a business traveler may depart on a Sunday or Monday and then return home that Friday or Saturday.Business travellers' demand for travel is less elastic and airlines attempt to increase their profits by price discriminating business travellers and leisure travellers. Business travels are also more loyal to a particular airline, and therefore are more likely to accept higher price.
Today, I came across a perfect example:
London to New York, roundtrip.
Leave on Wednesday, fly back at 10:25pm on Saturday night = £1521.45
Leave on Wednesday, fly back at 7:20am on Sunday morning = £480.45
Less than 9 hours difference in departure time but a cost increase of over £1000.
Dick move, right? The rule assumes that all businesses are big businesses and have huge travel budgets. What about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that DON'T have big travel budgets. Or the leisure traveler who gets caught up in a rule that is purposely designed to screw the consumer?
Oh and here's the hilarious "WTF?" cherry on this horse poo cake. The base fare on the Sunday flight is only £124. The rest is taxes and fees. And yes, the taxes and fees are exactly the same on the Saturday flight. So the airline jacked up the base fare by 850%. So there you have it, a £1000 "convenience" fee for business travellers to make it home in time to spend the weekend with their families.
