Three of the biggest U.S. carriers—Delta Air Traces, American Airways, and United Airways—have been charging extra for some home tickets booked for one passenger than for a similar home tickets booked for 2 or extra passengers as just lately as final week, a flight-deal web site found.
As first identified by the factors and miles web site Thrifty Traveler on Could 29, looking out for a similar flight on sure airways would yield vastly completely different outcomes relying on how many individuals have been flying. Kyle Potter, the positioning’s government editor, first observed the discrepancy on a Delta flight he was pricing out.
“It grew to become clear after double-checking and rerunning the search a number of instances that Delta was charging me extra as a result of I used to be looking out for only one passenger reasonably than two,” Potter informed the Washington Put up.
Right here’s one instance, as identified by Thrifty Traveler and confirmed by Afar on Friday: An 8:55 a.m. American Airways flight on October 16, 2025, from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Fort Myers, Florida, exhibits a $422 cost for a one-way ticket for a single seat in the principle cabin financial system. However for 2, the worth drops to $273 per particular person—a distinction of almost $150. Apparently, reserving for 2 additionally permits entry to a primary financial system fare, which is even cheaper, at $263 an individual, and didn’t seem in a seek for one ticket.
Different flight fare monitoring providers, akin to Greenback Flight Membership, have additionally observed and reported on this worth discrepancy because the preliminary story broke final week.
“We noticed conditions the place trying to find a solo ticket yielded fares $50 to $100 [or more] increased than if two or extra passengers have been booked collectively,” Jesse Neugarten, CEO and founding father of Greenback Flight Membership, informed Afar, calling the solo traveler charge “completely actual.”
Thus, it seems that for flights with main U.S. carriers, bookings with two or extra folks routinely put passengers into a unique fare bucket, making them eligible for decrease fares.
A majority of these fares are typically referred to by the business as “accompanied fares.” As an example, on the instance American flight from above, American’s fare guidelines acknowledged it was an accompanied fare and that passengers “should be accompanied on all sectors in [the] identical compartment by no less than one grownup” for the low cost to take impact. You possibly can see the principles by clicking on the “fare guidelines” when viewing a specific flight.
Accompanied fares appeared to seem solely on sure flights for choose routes. In different phrases, it wasn’t a widespread observe. It additionally largely appeared to point out up solely on one-way home flights. Other than that, it’s robust to search out any clear sample to the flights which have accompanied fares. Not one of the sources protecting this story, like Thrifty Traveler, discovered the identical sort of fares on airways aside from Delta, United, or American; accompanied fares weren’t discovered on flights booked by JetBlue Airways, Alaska Airways, or Southwest Airways.
Regardless of the way you have a look at it—as a tax on solo vacationers or a reduction for group vacationers—the distinction in fares for a similar flight is stunning and has garnered loads of consideration on-line, together with from blogs within the aviation house, like View from the Wing, which known as it a “solo traveler surchage,” and well-liked Reddit threads with mainly unfavourable sentiment on subreddits akin to r/travelhacks and r/solotravel.
Has this been in impact for years with out the flight-buying public realizing it? It’s robust to know for positive.
“Given how opaque airline pricing might be, it’s robust to say precisely when this started, however the indicators recommend it’s been round longer than most vacationers notice,” Neugarten stated.
Airways appear to be concentrating on enterprise vacationers largely, Neugarten says, with solo leisure vacationers caught within the cross fireplace. He famous that those that journey for enterprise usually tend to be alone and fewer prone to be worth delicate and infrequently guide last-minute, when costs have risen.
For the reason that hubbub final week, Delta and United seem to have pulled again their accompanied fares, in keeping with experiences from each Thrifty Traveler and Greenback Flight Membership, however American seems to nonetheless be publishing them as of writing. Not one of the three airways responded to Afar’s request for remark.
Whereas it’s not clear what airways will do subsequent, Neugarten says prospects must be conscious and double-check all search instruments, akin to Google Flights and ITA Matrix, to ensure they’re getting one of the best deal.
“With scrutiny mounting and solo vacationers getting upset, airways might pause or reframe how they implement this,” he stated. “That stated, as income administration methods develop more and more refined, segmentation ways like these are prone to evolve reasonably than disappear.”