With a Hurricane Approaching Florida, Airline Algorithms Show No Sympathy

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and days before Hurricane Irma churns reaches Florida, a $300 flight flying out from Miami would boost up to over $3,000. Airlines are regulated by federal agency and laws prohibit price gouging during a state of emergency. However, the change of price for the airline tickets is due to the demand and supply. After the pressure from both social media and the news, each major airlines had overridden the algorithms and used their human powers to manually lower their fares out of Florida.

The news interests me because it closely relates to my own experience. Last Christmas, when I was trying to fly back home for the break, snow storm hits and all tickets boost up significantly. I think this is also a tradeoff for travelers if airline manually lower the ticket price. Since the price is lower, those travelers who are less urgent to leave would buy the ticket for earlier time since the price is back to normal or even lower than normal. Those who are urgent to leave the city and willing to pay the premium price might be stuck due to the shortage of tickets.

Each business is managing an entire business to achieve sustained superior performance by having higher profitability and profit growth. Disregard moral standard, event like this would be the best time to make money since travelers had no other options other than paying the outrageous price. Airlines knew this would happen at the moment of the hurricane, but they would not adjust the price until after the pressure from the social media and would entirely blame the algorithm.