Costs of different flights on same route.

[UniFoxOs]

A friend arrived last night at BHX from MEL, and it set me wondering. When we visited them a couple of years ago there were two daily services by EHK. On both you have to stop to change planes at Dubai. On one service the hop from DXB to MEL was one sector. The other had an intermediate stop between them. The second was cheaper, by about £40. Is this purely marketing? Or is there some reason why it might be cheaper to have an intermediate stop? Surely it would be dearer with extra landing fees etc.?

Puzzled of Tamworth.

[pwalhx]

Maybe it is because people prefer a non stop flight so to induce them to accept the intermediary stoop they offer a slightly lower price.

I have experienced the same when flying MAN-DXB-HKG one of the HKG flights transits through BKK (or did),

[PAXboy]

In my view - Marketing. It used to be the case that an indirect was cheaper and the direct more expensive and the saving in time and convenience was obvious. I have noticed of late that the indirects are now often more expensive.

If the carrier has sectors that are looking empty and they wish to retain the route, it may suit them to discount that sector in order to get the numbers up. With computers being able to analyse every route, every day and alter prices every minute - I think that we will see many more such anomalies.

[Avman]

Same thing applies to flying through hubs. KLM J class return fare DUS-AMS-ATL is cheaper than AMS-ATL. Fine by me because although I live in NL, DUS is only half the distance and less stressful by road than AMS.

[crewmeal]

Flying BMI, why is it around £130 cheaper to fly AMM - LHR - MAN round trip than it is from AMM - LHR?

So far no one has come up with an answer, not even BMI themselves. BA don't do that on similar routes

[radeng]

Going to Seoul, business class on BA, via Hong Kong or Tokyo, was around £4000. On Finnair, via Helsinki, about £2000. As you get points and miles on BA for the Finnair flight, there's not much choice!