Airline bloody prices

Wow, talk about bad timing. I look at a flight yesterday – hmm $99 (plus $40 taxes). I look at it today – $139. Gaa!! I just wasted $40. Then to my surprise, when I checked out, it was only $139 – total.

Turns out that Virgin Blue reverted back to the old style “all inclusive” pricing at midnight last night.

I was going to write a post here with a link to Virgin’s reason for switching to seperated pricing (it was because Qantas did – they didn’t want it at all), but before I got the chance it looks like their lobbying of the government paid off and the ACC is going to enforce “all inclusive” pricing.

This is all great, except I wound up very confused as the change just had to happen while I was booking my tickets. grr.

Here’s Virgin’s original announcement

Now out of date with this announcement:
Virgin Blue Airlines has announced it will move to all-inclusive air fare pricing from Tuesday May 10 following months of lobbying various organisations including the ACCC, the Australian Consumers Commission and the Federal Government for an across board regulation on advertising practices.

The low fare carrier has been a strong advocate of all-inclusive pricing as an airline industry standard, but was forced earlier this year to follow the advertising practises of other Australian carriers in order to remain competitive

Well done Virgin! There is no sane reason in splitting the prices, makes no difference to the hip pocket.

Will.