Air Malta’s Stephen Gauci replied to Roy Martin’s “interesting question” (‘Airline fares’, June 23) by giving us a fabulous lecture on the inner workings of booking engines, which leave airlines at the mercy of their natural propensity to fix prices according to incidentally advantageous demand and supply forces.

He also assures us, in the usual fashion of business-minded people, that the variation in fares is “a complex matter”.

Oh, a complex matter? Is it now? Then that must be the reason buses and other transportation services do not implement the same system and provide fixed pricing instead.

Quite strange though. I am sure that, in 2014, we have computers fast enough to carry out the complex algorithm.

One can understand how demand and supply rule the market but one need not be a genius to realise which factors are behind the pricing system when demand controls every transaction, with one seat costing a fortune more than the next, on the very same flight!

Gauci assures us that this discrepancy is in the customer’s interest because if tickets were to be priced similarly, “the fares would be too high for most people to afford”. In fact, as it stands, even the “low fares” gently offered by conscientious Air Malta are quite high for the average plebeian.

It’s a system very convenient for the rich guy who decides to fly to New York on a whim, paying half an average man’s monthly salary, and as convenient for the airline pocketing the cash but not so convenient for the poor labourer wanting to visit his relatives.

This is the algorithm I believe airline booking engines around the world work by: more cash is directly proportional to more happiness, also known universally by the symbolic formula $ ∝).

Now please respect your clients’ intelligence.

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