Handling "Basic Economy" flight fares with hidden a-la-carte fees

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

I originally had this issue raised in my prior message, but I'm putting it
in another thread as it's a truly separate issue.  While my other email was
about what to do at the "top" of the budget, this is an issue about the
bottom.

Since I am still the one processing all the flight search data from the many
member project travelers who travel for Conservancy each month, I'm probably
most keenly aware of a problematic trend: many of the flight search tools
are now returning the new "Basic Economy" fares (which are really misnamed,
as they are very different types of fares -- see below) as their lowest
search result.  I've recently processed a few exceptions from folks who hit
this problem.

The problem with Basic Economy under our travel policy is that it's often
not comparing related products.  Great example: most basic economy fares do
*not* include a checked bag for international travel, so if the traveler
needs to check a bag, that could be as much as an additional $120 in hidden
costs, but that's not factored into the flight search budgeting.

Since our policy bases everything off the flight search, I'm in a bit of a
quandary on how to handle this problem.  Obviously a preapproval exception
can always be requested, but these are becoming more common, particularly
for international flights.

There hidden random fees in Basic Economy fares are not standardized, so
it's more difficult than it used to be to compare costs between airlines.
Some airlines (e.g., Wow) also *only* offer Basic Economy-style travel, and
have even more complicated "a-la-carte" pricing rules.

(BTW, I wasn't really worried about this when these fares were first
introduced domestically and intra-Europe, as they don't impact the
short-haul prices so much that an exception is required.  (I know from my
own flight searches domestically -- I often can find a within-fare-search
budget fare that is regular Economy instead of "Basic Economy" even though
the flight search is offering me "Basic Economy" pricing).  But, it seems
that recently, airlines have begun "Basic Economy" pricing for long-haul
flights too.

 I'm not sure how to solve this problem.  For the moment, the advice is "be
on the lookout for this and when in doubt, just ask for a flight cost
exception", but I'd love if folks have ideas on how we can solve this
problem more formally. I guess my first question is whether folks have found
a search tool that allows excluding of these Basic Economy fares?
-- 
Bradley M. Kuhn
Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy
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