Felix

Shouldn't they be all competing and have similar prices, give and take a few dollars for "services"? Delta Air Bombay-London (via New York) return ticket costs $4316.00 (+ taxes) (Source: Delta website) whereas my local travel agent gives Bombay-New York (return) for Emirates, Thai Air, Etihad, Singapore Airlines at $900 + taxes (return). Air India can be sometimes acquired for even $800 + taxes (return). Also, Bombay-London-Bombay can be only $500 (+ taxes) returns for airlines such as Finn Air, Virgin Atlantic, Jet Airways, Air France, Thai Air, Singapore Airlines but the same, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa, Swiss Air and SAS is $1200 and above (+ taxes).-Can someone explain the mathematics here?And usually I find websites much more expensive than travel agents except for an airline called Tiger Airways whose website gives very economical fare between India-Asia Pacific

clint_slicker

There are several reason for these ticket prices.Each flight has several tickets sold at different bands, with each band a different cost. Once all the lower band is sold then the higher ticket price is sold. This is to encourage people to buy earlier and the airline will be able to budget better. Some airline get subsidies to fly into airports and different tax rates are applied. Also planes that fly at different times have different popularity's, most people prefer to early - mid morning rather than 1am. Since these are sold out flights prices can increase for them.The reason why it is illegal for airlines to agree on fixed price is that airlines should compete to lower the price if they have more competition, Although this doesn't seem to happen. BA and a few different airlines had got together and agreed a pricing scheme. They were prosecuted for price fixing when Virgin, who were partners but had negotiated out of prosecution by supplying all the information, told on them.