Regina53 wrote:

I nearly died when I got on Orbitz and looked at flights to London.  $4,200 in Business Class per person- all the major airlines within $10 of that.  (Can you say, "Collusion"?)  We're likely to go in Fall, 2015 so I checked September, October and November dates in 2014- all within that magic $4,200 point. 

Then I checked Virgin Atlantic.  $2,200 pp.  Not chump change but we could do it without raiding the retirement funds.  Back at my old company, the London-based people LOVED Virgin Atlantic Business Class, so it's not like we're looking at the Business Class version of Spirit Airlines. 

Now I'm happy again (although I know plenty can change between now and when we book).  But why don't they charge what the others are charging?


Price matching's a perfectly acceptable and very common form of competitive behaviour! I don't see why matched prices should indicate collusion. You'd expect to see it in a functioning competitive environment.

I'm not sure exactly what you were searching for, but I did find lots of $4,200 fares from your local airport to LHR so these may be what you saw. They're the lowest published fares on the route, so I don't know where the $2,200 price came from. I'd be very suspicious of it - you'd want to check very carefully what you're getting and how the price has been constructed. Make sure that all the sectors are in fact in business class; make sure that you know which the operating airline is; make sure you know whether you're getting a consolidator ticket; make sure you know whether you're being sold two separate tickets together (which can have implications for misconnection protection and through-checking). If you can't reproduce the fare on matrix.itasoftware.com, then be very cautious. It's the usual rule about things looking to good to be true.

Long-haul flying - how to sleep your way around the world.