Delta hiked fares for solo travelers, until Twin Cities travel experts caught the change

One ticket for the price of two.

For a brief window last week, that was the deal Delta Air Lines offered solo fliers who booked tickets along some routes, according to an analysis by travel website Thrifty Traveler.

The price-tracking website logged dozens of instances in which a one-way ticket for a single person was about as expensive as buying two seats on the same flight. In some cases, purchasing two was actually cheaper.

The travel website spotted the trend at Delta last week and soon discovered a similar practice at United Airlines and American Airlines, the nation’s other two biggest carriers.

In the few days since Thrifty Traveler’s report, and an appearance on CNN, Delta and United rolled back prices and altered official fare rules.

Delta, the dominant carrier at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, declined to comment to the Minnesota Star Tribune on the travel website’s findings. United and American did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Kyle Potter, Thrifty Traveler’s executive editor, said he first noticed the issue while shopping for personal flights.

“First off, it was like, ‘I must have screwed something up here,’” Potter said. “After redoing it a handful of times, it was clear that this was real.”

The scope of the practice remains unclear. Potter said his team ran hundreds of searches and found the special pricing only in some cases. Also unknown is how long higher solo flight fares were offered and how many people bought them.

“That said, this is how things go in the airline industry,” Potter said. “They start something, they kind of test it out, or they roll it out on a limited basis, and then they eventually expand it until it’s ubiquitous.”

He said basic economy fares, which today are commonplace, started as a limited test more than a decade ago.

Concrete evidence of a systemic change, rather than a simple fluke, lies in the updated language the airlines put in their fare rules, Potter said. The rules, typically found in the fine print on an airline’s website or at checkout when a ticket is purchased, outline a laundry list of conditions that lock in the terms of a deal on a flight.

The scrutiny over Delta prices comes as the Atlanta-based carrier recently unveiled more ways — and tailored prices — to buy a seat. Customers now have 11 fare combinations available when choosing to fly Delta.

The airline’s increased segmentation includes a cheaper “Basic” option that lacks amenities like seat selection, flight changes and earnings on its SkyMiles loyalty program. An “Extra” ticket, on the other hand, is refundable and offers bonus miles.

Potter and other travel experts pointed to the practice of selling higher-cost solo seats as an apparent attempt by the nation’s big airlines to squeeze more dollars out of business travelers, who are typically less sensitive to higher prices.

Gary Leff, a travel expert and author on the View from the Wing blog, said in an email that airlines want to separate business travelers from the leisure class. Otherwise, some seats on an airplane may go unsold. At the same time, airlines want to sell seats at the maximum price possible.

The easiest way to do that, Leff said, “is to draw a circle around leisure travelers and business travelers.”

“Airlines have done more than just about any industry to price discriminate, charging different amounts to different customers,“ Leff said, adding that an upcharge on solo travelers is ”a new tool in their toolkit.”

Clint Henderson, managing editor at travel website The Points Guy, said the findings come at a time of great debate within the travel world about price transparency. He said the airlines responded to the news by quickly upping the price for paired tickets.

He said airlines needed to adjust coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic to new travel patterns so they could continue earning money on flights. One way to do that, he said, has been increasing options for leisure travelers to book perks like extra legroom.

“I think consumers got really spoiled during the pandemic.” Henderson said. “The leisure traveler is actually fueling profits at airlines like Delta.”

“Airline pricing is famously opaque,” he added. “You never really know what you’re going to get with airline prices, but you have to just be a little smarter than the airlines.”