FAQ - FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
FARE SHARE REPORT
3) WHAT IS THE GRAY LINE AND THE DOLLARS ON THE RIGHT SIDE?
4) THE AVERAGE FARES SEEM TOO HIGH OR TOO LOW?
8) HOW IS REVENUE CALCULATED? WHAT HAPPENS WITH BAG FEES AND SUCH?
2) WHAT IS INCLUDED?
This is point-of-sale domestic revenue market share by airline by fare band, back to 1993. Data is not available before that. Point -of-sale only includes ticket sales in the city listed and not ticket sales of visitors to that city or passengers connecting through the city. All fares are stage adjusted to 1,000 miles for comparability. This is passenger share by fare band, unlike the Marketshare report which is revenue share. Ancillary revenue is added to fares (bag fees, etc). Four graphs are included: 1) AWARD Tickets are tickets with fares from $0 to $8. This really shows how much control an airline has of the market as evidenced by frequent flier award share. Arguably this is more important than anything as it implies how vested residents are in each frequent flier program as reflected in most award tickets redeemed. 2) The remaining three fare groups are split evenly. If there were 1000 tickets sampled and 100 were AWARD tickets, the LOW FARE tickets group would the first 300 lowest priced tickets after the award tickets. 3) Then MID FARE slide would reflect the next 300 lowest priced tickets. 4) The HIGH FARE slide would be the highest 300 tickets.
3) WHAT IS THE GRAY LINE AND THE DOLLARS ON THE RIGHT SIDE?
*) The gray line is the average one-way fare for that category using the labels on the right size axis, remember it is adjusted to 1,000 miles distance like everything else.
4) THE AVERAGE FARES SEEM TOO HIGH OR TOO LOW?
Using an industry standard algorithm fares are adjusted to reflect a 1,000 mile trip length. For example, if Airline A only flew routes under 500 miles and Airline B only flew 2,000 mile routes that would push Airline A passengers to the LOW FARE group slide and Airline B passengers to the HIGH FARE group slide. By using distance adjustment the inherent differences in trip distance is adjusted out to make fare comparable between trips of wildly different distances.
5) WHY NOT INTERNATIONAL?
There are legal restrictions imposed by the DOT that makes release of DOT international demand data on a website like this infeasible. The INTL TIER offers international data based on a different source, but this level of ticket detail is not available from that source.
6) HOW ARE MERGERS TREATED?
All previous merger/acquisitions are combined, otherwise it would be too hard to read. For example, J7 (Air Tran) becomes WN (Southwest) through subsequent mergers. Most mergers were determined using this page from the airline trade group.
7) WHAT IS POINT-OF-SALE?
Resident Point-of-Sale means passengers living around the specified airport are included, not visitors to the region nor people connecting through the airport. Visitor Point-of-Sale would include all passengers not living around the specified airport but flying to/from the airport, while still excluding those connecting through the airport. Point-of-sale in this context is determined by where a passenger began a roundtrip. If they flew SEA-ORD-LGA (overnight in LGA)-CLT-SEA then SEA is the point-of-origin. Point-of-Sale market share is important because an airline may have a lot of flights or seats at an airport, but not be winning the local resident passenger, or may be winning only visitors.
8) HOW IS REVENUE CALCULATED? WHAT HAPPENS WITH BAG FEES AND SUCH?
Ancillary revenue is included in order to make sure ULCCs are properly counted. All transport-related revenue, excluding cargo/mail/charter, is included at a network level to get an average % of ancillary revenue. That % is added for the appropriate quarter to the ticket price.