A five-step ‘playbook’ with traveller nudges features in Book early, keep the direct flight, a new 18-page white paper from Thrust Carbon.
The report focuses on insights relating to direct and indirect flights and how to utilise insights for behavioural change in travellers.
One of those nudges is framing actions to avoid losses. Urging business travellers to ‘book by Friday or you’ll lose the nonstop’ is a more powerful incentive than suggesting booking early brings savings, says the report.
Thrust Carbon’s new research shows that on many of the world’s busiest flight routes, booking early saves travellers’ money and, significantly, determines whether or not they fly direct. It breaks routes down into those that are busy and those that are quiet (typically with fewer than three flights a day).
Book late under a standard lowest logical fare policy, and the same rule that was meant to control cost reroutes travellers onto journeys with layovers. For business travellers, booking early is a time and comfort saving, not a cost one. The company retains savings while travellers keep the inconvenience or dealing with spending time in an airport.
Analysing fares on 200 of the world’s busiest routes, both five weeks and one week before departure, Thrust Carbon found that the direct flight is the cheapest ticket on 71% of comparable routes when booked five weeks out but on just 50% a week ahead of departures.
Between Denver and San Francisco, a direct flight cost £154 a week before departure; £24 more than the £130 fare via Salt Lake City. Booked five weeks out, the same nonstop fare was priced at £58; £21 cheaper than the £79 connecting fare.
That impacts the business traveller, who books the connecting flight because it is policy, and spends at least two hours on a layover.
The battleground, suggests the report, is the secondary route network for connections to mid-sized cities plus regional offices and plants rather than hubs. Savings can often be small on connecting flights.
A key finding was that on long-haul routes of longer than 4,000 km, direct flights were more expensive than connections in 86% of cases one week out from the departure date and 77% five weeks before.
Typically, early booking shifts prices in the favour of most direct routes in 77% of busy routes and 61% of quieter routes.
Kit Aspen, Chief Executive Officer of Thrust Carbon, said: “We keep telling travellers to book early because it saves the company money, but that’s not really why it matters. Book early and you keep the nonstop flight. Book late, and youʼll be having a layover. If you want to change traveller behaviour, you need to give them a real benefit.ˮ
Thrust Carbon’s whitepaper is available to download online.
