I love traveling. I enjoy seeing new places, tasting exotic food, learning different cultures and languages, seeing the beauty of nature etc. I get all these privileges in traveling for work or simply for leisure. Of course, there is more fun in traveling to have purely R&R. And speaking of R&R, we usually book a flight in advance to avail of the “promos”. At the end of the day, we enjoy our R&R at low cost. Efficient!
Airfare promo prices are normally offered one month before travel. There is 50% or 75% cut in regular airfare. At times, airline companies offer one peso airfare anywhere in the country! Anyone who gets this one peso airfare has certainly won a jackpot. Because of these promo offers, travelers swarm the internet to get the best airfare deal. And, we fail to remember that airline companies are doing business as they offer these best deals.
Surely, no airline company would make profit and sustain its operation if it keeps on offering low airfare. There should be some ways by which they can achieve their target income despite the promos. The losses in the promos should be compensated. Hence, the question is: How?
The answer is this: Increase the selling price of tickets purchased on the day or a few days before the travel to the highest limit and call it the “Regular Airfare.” But actually, had there been no low airfare promos, the Regular Airfare could have been lower than what we normally know as “Regular Airfare.” This would be so as the cost of travel of one airplane would be equally distributed to all of its passengers.
If the promo airfare were availed by travelers for R&R, then who buys the very costly “Regular Fare”?
They are those who need to travel because a family member is sick, dying or, worse, already dead. They are the people who have meager resources which have to be used in order to address a very important concern, normally a matter of life and death. They are the people who do not travel for R&R. They are the people who badly need help.
Yet, what help do they get from airline companies and from us travelers? Nothing. They are forced to accept the unjust “Regular Fare.”
With this realization, my heart was broken when I had the chance of traveling by plane and seated beside a man who had to go to Manila to assist her mother who should undergo heart operation. He purchased his plane ticket on the same day of travel and his ticket was five times higher than mine! This sad man, whose mother was almost dying, actually paid the greater part of my airfare. Unconsciously, I snatched him and his mother some amount which they could have used to pay the hospital or buy medicines. My R&R added pain and burden to them.
Indeed, that was my travel with a broken heart.
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