Three of the three US airlines, Delta, American and United, found flight deal websites last week, more than one domestic ticket booked last week, with some domestic tickets booked for one or more passengers.
As pointed out first by the Thrifthty travelers on the website of Points and Miles on May 29th, searching for the same flight on a particular airline will give you very different results depending on how many people are flying. Kyle Potter, the site’s executive editor, first noticed the inconsistency of Delta Flight, which he was priced.
“After double checking and searching several times, it became clear that Delta was looking for one passenger instead of two, so he was charging me more,” Potter said. Washington Post.
Here is one example. This was noted by Thrifty Traveller and confirmed far on Friday. An 8:55am American Airlines flight from Charlotte, North Carolina to Fort Myers, Florida on October 16, 2025 shows a $422 fee for one-way ticket for one seat in the Main Cabin Economy. However, for two people, the price drops to $273 per person. That’s a nearly $150 difference. Interestingly, booking 2 cost $263 per person, even cheaper, and didn’t show up in searches for one ticket.
Other flight fare tracking services such as the Dollar Flight Club have also noticed and reported on this price inconsistency since the first story was broken last week.
“We observed that searching for solo tickets would allow for fares that cost between $50 and $100 (or more) higher than two or more passengers booked together,” said Jesse Neugarten, CEO and founder of Dollar Flight Club, calling Solo Traveler Fee “absolutely real.”
Therefore, on flights with major US airlines, on bookings with two or more people, passengers will automatically enter another fare bucket and appear to qualify for a lower fare.
These types of fares are sometimes referred to by the industry as “attached fares.” For example, in the example of American flights from above, the US fare rules stated that the fare that it involves, and that passengers “must accompany all sectors of the same compartment by at least one adult.” You can view the rules by clicking “Freight Rules” when viewing a specific flight.
The accompanying fares appeared to be visible only for certain flights on a particular route. In other words, it was not a broad practice. It also appeared to appear only mainly on one-way domestic flights. Apart from that, it’s difficult to find a clear pattern for flights associated with fares. Like Thrifty Traveller, none of the sources covering this story found the same type of fares on Delta, United or non-US airlines. No accompanying fares were found for flights booked through JetBlue Airways, Alaska Airlines, or Southwest Airlines.
No matter how you look at it, the difference in fares for the same flight is surprising, as taxes on solo travelers and discounts for group travelers, and it has attracted a lot of attention online, including blogs in the aviation field, such as the view from the wing, known as “solo travelers surchege.”
Has this been effective for years without the masses buying the flight realising it? Certainly it’s hard to know.
“It’s hard to say exactly when this started given what opaque airlines will be like, but the signs suggest it’s been longer than most travelers realize,” says Neugarten.
Airlines appear to be primarily targeting business travelers, Neugalten says, and the solo leisure traveler has been caught up in the crossfire. He noted that people traveling for business are more likely to be alone, less likely to be price sensitive, and less likely to book at the last minute when prices rise.
Since last week’s Hubbu, Delta and United appear to have pulled back the agreed fares, according to reports from both Thrifty Traveller and the Dollar Flight Club, but the Americans still seem to be making it public at the time of writing. None of the three airlines responded to Afar’s request for comment.
It’s not clear what the airline will do next, but Neugarten says customers need to recognize and recheck all search tools, such as Google Flights and the ITA Matrix.
“As scrutiny installation and solo travelers are upset, the airline may pause or reconfigure how this will be implemented,” he said. “That being said, as revenue management strategies become more refined, these segmentation tactics can evolve rather than disappear.”
