This simple shift in flight pricing delivers outsized results

Airlines don’t change prices at random, and neither should you. The approach used by of course! please provide the text you would like me to translate. is a small shift in how fares are presented and fenced, and it borrows a simple principle from of course! please provide the text you would like me to translate into united kingdom english.: make the “right” choice easier to say yes to, without shouting about it.

If you sell flights, manage revenue, or even just build fare products, this matters because the gains rarely come from one heroic discount. They come from tightening the ladder: what sits at the bottom, what’s nudged into the middle, and what gets protected at the top.

The pricing mistake that leaks money quietly

Most airlines and travel sellers still treat price as the main lever. They chase demand with fare drops, then try to claw margin back with fees, restrictions, or last‑minute tightening. It works-until customers learn the pattern and wait you out.

The quieter leak is not that you’re “too expensive”. It’s that you’re letting too many customers buy down. When the cheapest fare looks like the sensible default, people take it even when they would have paid more for flexibility, bags, or seat choice.

You end up with fuller planes and thinner yields, and you tell yourself it’s the market.

The simple shift: re-anchor the ladder, not the headline price

The shift is this: stop thinking in terms of “how low can we go?” and start thinking in terms of “which fare should feel normal?”.

That usually means building a clearer middle option-then pricing and packaging so it becomes the default choice for most travellers. The cheapest fare still exists, but it feels deliberately narrow. The higher fare still exists, but it feels genuinely premium rather than a punishment.

When the middle tier is the easiest “yes”, customers self-select into higher yield without feeling forced.

What this looks like in practice

You’ll recognise the pattern in other categories: three-tier pricing where the middle option wins. Flights can do the same, but only if the ladder is coherent.

Common adjustments that deliver outsized results:

• Make the entry fare stricter, not just cheaper. No changes, limited baggage, last boarding group, seat assigned at check-in.
• Bundle one high-value feature into the middle. One checked bag or seat selection or simple changes (even with a fee).
• Keep the step-up small and believable. If the middle is £18 more but saves a £35 bag fee, it sells itself.
• Reserve the top tier for real differentiation. Full flexibility, lounge, fast track, or meaningful loyalty boosts.

The point is not to remove choice. It’s to stop subsidising the wrong choice.

Why it works (and why it’s not a dark art)

People don’t buy flights the way revenue teams model them. They buy under time pressure, comparing imperfect options, trying to avoid regret.

A strict cheapest fare creates a clean psychological effect: “If anything goes wrong, I’m exposed.” Meanwhile a well-priced middle fare becomes relief: “I’m covered, and it’s not that much more.”

This is not trickery. It’s aligning price with risk, and making the trade-off legible at a glance.

The signal you’re aiming for

You want the fare ladder to communicate three clear promises:

1. Basic: “Get there, no extras, no safety net.”
2. Standard: “Normal travel, fewer surprises.”
3. Flex/Premium: “Maximum control and comfort.”

If your current ladder feels like five confusing names and a spreadsheet of exclusions, the customer defaults to the cheapest because it’s the only thing they understand quickly.

Where the “outsized results” actually show up

You won’t always see it as a dramatic increase in average fare overnight. The better outcomes tend to stack up across the system:

• Higher attach rates (bags, seats, priority) because you’ve clarified value rather than hiding it.
• Better mix shift into the middle tier, lifting yield without needing load factor heroics.
• Lower servicing costs if fewer customers buy the cheapest fare and then fight the rules.
• More stable demand capture because you’re not training everyone to wait for a sale.

The most telling metric is not “Did we sell out?” It’s “Who paid what to sit on the same aircraft?”

A quick way to sanity-check your current pricing

Open your booking path and look at it like a rushed customer on a phone.

• Is the cheapest fare visually and verbally presented as “best”, “recommended”, or “most popular”?
• Does the middle option solve a real pain point in one line (bag, seat, changeability)?
• Is the price step between tiers smaller than the pain of buying extras later?
• Do the fare names match what’s included, or are they branding poetry?

If you need tooltips and footnotes to defend the structure, it’s not doing its job.

A compact “before and after” model

Tier	Old pattern	Improved pattern
Entry	Cheap, vaguely restricted	Cheap, clearly narrow
Middle	Unclear value	One obvious pain removed
Top	Expensive, feels punitive	Expensive, feels complete

Common pitfalls (and how teams trip over them)

The biggest mistake is making the cheapest fare look generous, then trying to upsell later with surprise fees. Customers remember the surprise, not the “good deal”.

The second is pricing the middle tier too high, so it reads as a trick. The middle has to feel like a fair trade, not an argument.

Finally, some teams “improve” the ladder by adding more tiers. Five options rarely increase revenue; they often increase confusion.

The cleanest ladder is the one customers can explain back to you in ten seconds.

The shift you can test without a rebuild

You don’t need a full system overhaul to try this. Run an A/B test on a handful of routes and focus on one change at a time:

• tighten entry restrictions or
• add one middle-tier benefit or
• adjust the tier price gap.

Track mix, ancillaries, refunds/chargebacks, and contact-centre volume. If the middle becomes the default, you’ll see it quickly.

The goal is not to make flights more expensive. It’s to make the pricing structure more honest about what people actually need-and to stop leaving revenue on the table when they choose it.