TABLE OF CONTENTS Anyone who has bought an airline ticket will know it is possible to pay any one of a large number of different prices to fly a given route. Fares vary with time of travel, whether peak or off-peak; with class of travel, whether first, business or economy; with the length of stay at the destination, whether it exceeds a certain number of days or weeks, or whether it includes a Saturday night; with where and when the ticket is purchased and paid for; and with a whole host of other factors such as the size of the travelling group and the ages of any children involved. The multiplicity of fare categories is often so great that for scheduled service by a particular airline on a particular route across the North Atlantic, for instance there can be as many as 50 to 60 separate fares published in airline tariff manuals. The variation between fares can be such that it is possible for two passengers sitting next to each other on the same flight, and enjoying exactly the same quality of inflight service, to find that one is paying very much more than the other, in some extreme cases even more than double.
There is also extensive variation across routes. There are often marked differences in fare levels from route to route, even when the distance flown is roughly the same. Fare levels taper with distance, so that the fare per kilometre is often much lower on a long...
