June 11, 2025 • 24 mins
René and Shawn investigate airline pricing structures and give their unpopular? opinion. And stay tuned a curveball at the end.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to another Curveball production, and we are once again
on the dock of the bay.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are, indeed, and for some reason there was no
doubt in my mind that you would start this podcast off.
Why is that you are fit for bear this time?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm a little fired up, a little fired up. The
uh we're sitting here again. It's a beautiful morning. Fisher
people are out, although the Manitoba wildfire is causing a
bit of a haze.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, I'm not complaining. We don't. I'm not being blinded
by the fireballs. I mean, and we are at the lake,
so it's not unusual to have a campfire smell anyway.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And perhaps the wildfire would that be like the nature's sunshade. Sure,
it's only a little blind that we pulled down anyway. Yeah,
So we were having a very good discussion about the
topic for today's podcast. Today is not going to be
as much. Hey, look, fisher people, he caught something. Today
(01:09):
is actually going to be about substance.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, and here's the deal, though, I don't know that
we're going to have a popular podcast today. I think
that based on some of the information that we're seeing
in the news, we are in the minority, and who's
to say that it might seem that we're on the
side of big business potentially potentially potentially, Well.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
No, in this case, we are. So we had our
conversation last time in the dog Is. It was Memorial
weekend and we're talking about traveling. Most people traveling by car,
but a lot of people that weekend they grab a
flight and take the family and go somewhere. And recently
(01:49):
it has come to the attention of travelers that the
airlines just might be charging a solo traveler more per
ticket than a group travelers.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
The first off, I feel like we should shout out
to Thriftytraveler dot com. I'm an og I've been I
was Thrifty Traveler between before Thrifty Traveler was cool. It
is a fantastic organization. I scored a heck of a
deal to take Tanner to Boston a couple of years
ago by utilizing Thrifty Traveler amongst other trips. Anyway, but
(02:25):
now it's all the rage because they broke the story
and got a ton of publicity for breaking the story that,
like you said, these major airlines are charging more to
individual travelers as opposed to people that buy two or
more tickets. Now, the study was done on one wayfares,
so I don't know. I haven't seen anything that talks
(02:47):
about round trip tickets. But I suppose they have to
like isolate the information to make a true comparison or something,
you know, alleviate all the variables as much as possible. Anyway,
I got us thinking on a walk and I was like,
I really think that we shoul do a podcast on
this because we live in the United States. It's a
capitalist economy, and look, I don't have any compassion for
(03:09):
the big airlines at all. However, I don't understand what
the fuss is about. There's an efficiency in purchasing more
than one ticket at a time that the airline would experience. Therefore,
wouldn't they charge less? I mean, aren't we talking a
volume discount?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
At some point I thought I was the one that
was fired up about this.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, no, I mean I brought it up to you
because I was like, what is this all about?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
I agreed, and it isn't. It isn't a It isn't
a new breaking story. Airlines have had this forever, as
far as long as I've been traveling for business. If
you were booking back in my old company that I
had that I didn't have as part of you know,
there might have been four or five of us that
(03:57):
would be going on to a show site at one time.
And if I, because I kind of managed that part
of it, were to book flights for the four of
us to a location, it would be cheaper for me
to book all four at one time. Then it would
be if I was to book an individual or go
back to that individual, because you know, we would have
(04:19):
it where everybody had their World Perks number, and so
I'd say, you know, to go ahead and book your
own flight because then you get the miles.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Sure, but what we're finding is that I don't want
to call it a penalty, but if everybody's booking their
own flight, in theory on some routes, they're going to
pay more than if you had just said I'll book
all the airfare.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Right, But that's always been the case. It's never It's
like anything else in when you go as a consumer,
if you buy ten of something, it's going to be
probably cheaper per item than if you were to buy
just one.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Right. Well, and if you think about the should see
that the airline's gained for selling more than one ticket
at a time, it's more than Okay, we don't have
to worry about the capacity as much on that individual
plane because we just sold four tickets instead of one.
Certainly there's efficiencies there, they have to work less hard
to sell more tickets. But I think about approaching the
(05:20):
desk when you get to the airlines, if you aren't
automating everything and you have to walk up and get
your boarding pass and drop off your bag and all
of that. I mean, if you walk up, you know,
if you walk up by yourself, give your documentation, then
it's next, next, and the next person goes. That takes
more time. Then if the two of us are traveling together,
we hand our documents over being bad, a boom, We're
(05:42):
out of there. So I mean, for me, look, if
this is a wish list, I wish flying was free. Okay,
I think we all do. Wouldn't that be wonderful if
there was just this? You know?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But here's where and here's where Renee and I differ
with her analogy because I've been standing in line waiting
to go up to check in and get my bag
checked in, and there's a pat family of five ahead
of me at the desk, and it takes forever. Dad's
up there and he's saying, okay, everybody gets your IDs out.
Oh they don't have to have IDs. Oh your bag
(06:15):
is over. Then we got to move bags from here
to here. And there's two here. Yeah, it takes forever.
Whereas if I go up there, boom, drop a bag off.
Here's my da da da da da, I'm out.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Okay. Well, I would make the argument though, that that
is those are those are situations that are built by
a particular individual. If those same five, those same five personalities,
those same five individuals were flying separate, it would take
longer then the one transaction that is chaotic, because what
(06:47):
I'm hearing you say is that family of people, those
people are chaotic. You know, somebody's got too much crap
in their bag, they're overweight, they got you know, somebody
that got their weight right. And now I bet it's
even more of a backle with this whole real id thing,
because some people don't pay attention to the news and
they're shown up at the airport and they don't have
(07:07):
alternate IDs. So if you don't have a passport, you're
up a kirk without a paddle or across a lake
without a current.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Now there's no current generally, not without a breeze.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
At your trying trying to force something here, and it
doesn't always work. It's morning, it's were.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But in reading through some of these articles that are
being published about this whole as, they're calling it trend
in the airlines industry, which again isn't a trend. It's
been that way since the dawn of airlines. I mean,
you think about it. They one of the things that
they talk about is the lack of transparency from airlines
(07:46):
as far as how they are billing. I don't see
a lack of transparency. You can go out onto an
airlineses website and like Delta now has eleven different prices
for a flight to get out to wherever you need
to get to, so you buy from a transparency perspective,
they're putting all the pricing out there. You can go
(08:08):
to a website like kayak one another one of your
favorites I do, like hair and you get information from
almost every airline as far as what it's going to
cost to get I argue some of the transparency is
more around like Ticketmaster these days, when now they have
to have all their fees up front as far as
(08:28):
what it's going to cost and what the actual price
or your ticket's going to be.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, and that's something the airlines were forced to do
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah. It's to say it's going to cost you this
and this and this, so your total price with if
you check, if you don't, if you have to bring
a bag and check, it is going to be x.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I think people are getting frustrated with the lack of
transparency in the profit margin. And I don't really think
that's anyone else's business. I mean, one could argue that
the market will dictate what something's worth, correct, and that's
exactly how airlines book fares and try to fill planes.
It's a supply demand yeah, as well as or at all.
(09:06):
I mean, in my business, if a client says to me, well,
you know, we need to see what your cost is
on this and what your margins are, I say, I'm sorry,
that's proprietary information. I don't have to have that transparency.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Having said that, you know, you know, we don't have
extreme margins or anything. But I'm not even accusing the
airlines of doing that. They are allowed to charge whatever
they want to charge, and you have the choice as
to whether or not you're going to purchase that ticket.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
It's yes, and the airlines, you know, they'll they'll typically
make their pricing based on to your point supply and demand.
If if we were at Delta Hub in Minneapolis and
if there are no other airlines that fly to a
specific location, the flights are gonna be more because they
can charge more for it because there's no competition for it.
(09:53):
Flights to Dallas out of Minneapolis are dirt cheap because
American Airlines flies there out of Minneapolis non stop. Chicago's
the same way. If I want to fly to Bizmarck,
it's going to be more expensive than flying to Dallas
because there's no competition. And that's just the way that
the business works. And the other thing that they were
bringing up in these articles is that how airlines were
(10:15):
penalizing solo travelers. Nobody's being penalized if you're traveling and
you're buy yourself because you have to be paid. If
you pay a bit, you pay more than if you
were in a group of people. It's not it doesn't
That argument to me just doesn't make sense. It's like, again,
it's like saying I'm going to buy I'm going to
buy a ten bananas and it's ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Why do we have to use banana?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Because ten bananas and it's going to be ten dollars
for the banana, So it's one dollar per banana. But
if I want to buy one banana, it's gonna be
two dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I'm sorry, not just the way analogy, because typically in
this maybe is just because of my expertise, bananas are
sold by the pound. They're typically not priced per banana.
I'm just being an argumentative. I do have a problem
with the fact that they've villainized the airline industry. Now, look,
we can talk about how they've reached out to the
(11:10):
federal government for support and all the poor airlines, YadA YadA,
I get all that. I just think, and again I'm
a big fan of thrifty Traveler, but this idea that
this is what he said he said, Look, it wouldn't
matter to me if it's said when you were purchasing
a ticket that you know, multiple tickets, if there was
some sort of transparency that said, you know, multiple tickets
(11:31):
received this discount, or you know you'll pay a search
hard for buying one ticket. And again I don't know
that it has to be called out, and I certainly
don't understand what the difference in why a statement like
that makes any difference or makes this any So I
just think.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right, it's like, so I'm going to buy I'm going
to go on an airlines and I got to fly somewhere,
and I'm going to buy my one ticket. And it
pops up and says, hey, if there's four of you,
it's going to be this amount. I'm like, oh great,
I'm going to find three other people to go on
this business trip with me. No, yeah, he's take it
by myself because I'm going by myself.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I think the guy's name is Kyle, but I could
be wrong because we were talking about the TikToker this
week named Kyle.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Think Kyle Sheeley. By the way, if you haven't looked
him up, look him up for sure. Continue.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We should talk about that too, Actually we could that.
I mean, it has nothing to do with this other
than why it's a Curveball production. It is. It's a
good story. One more quick thing though, The idea that
if they if they marketed it as a discount or
some sort of a deal. Then he felt like it
was okay that this that they hadn't broadcast, that this
(12:35):
was their price in structure was where the problem is.
And I'm like, I don't think anybody is required to
broadcast their price instructure. I mean, if if Delta Airlines
decides that, you know, on Thursday, they want to raise
their rates one hundred percent, they can sure do that.
And if you didn't buy a ticket on Wednesday, your
sol Here's the other thing that I do think is
interesting though. So this story breaks, and it was the
(12:58):
three major American care line, our airlines, so it is Delta, United,
an American and essentially they are all like either no
response or yeah, that's the way it's been American. I'm sorry.
Delta and United immediately didn't about face. Within twenty four hours.
Initially they said nothing like yeah, this is the way
(13:19):
it is. Within twenty four hours they came out and said, Okay,
we're not going to do that utilized that practice, that
pricing practice anymore. A week later, guess what they're doing
it again? Yeah, and I mean and that's okay, I
guess again, just be transparent about it, and they don't
owe us transparency but now once they've commented on it
and come out and said, we're not going to do
(13:40):
it that way. See, now you're getting yourself into well
are they in ethical business? So whatever they do, I
don't care. But now they've been forced into this transparency discussion,
or at the very least, they should be able to
come out and say, you know what, it's none your
business how we price our tickets and then move on
with it.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, And again, it's this all stems back from somebody
all of a sudden realizing that it that there's a
different price if you buy four tickets than if you
buy one ticket or two tickets then if you buy
one ticket. And again that's always been the case, and
it's been that case in every in and every walk
of life. You buy more. Why why do you think
(14:20):
Costco does so well? You buy Anny bulk.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Well, what's funny is I thought when the story broke
that people were going to be outraged because this idea
that if you aren't paired up with someone or you
don't have a family, you're being penalized to explore the world.
But that isn't really what the narrative has been. It's like, well,
think how much more of these companies are paying that
are like the example you gave buying corporate tickets. And
(14:44):
to your point earlier, well maybe that was just on
our walk. It was like a lot of these large
corporations have negotiated travel discounts anyway, right, So, I mean,
but it wasn't until corporations kind of got their honies
in a bunch that they did this quick about face.
And I think once they started talking everybody, they settled
everybody down and said, yeah, we're going to go back
to doing what we did because it is more efficient
(15:06):
for us to sell more tickets at once. I think
we've probably.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
What we have. And really what it comes down to
is it kind of when it really bothered me just
the whole it's non story of this story when it
comes down to it in my world, I mean, it's
just not it's good.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I think. I think it's genius of thrifty Traveler. Well,
like plenty of us were members of thrifty Traveler and
it's a great It really is a great site and
you can score some really great travel deals. However, holy smokes,
they damn near crashed the website. I mean, so many
people know about Thrifty Traveler. Now like, oh, I wish
I don't think they're a publicly traded company, but I
(15:45):
wish I had some sort of ownership in that company
because they're going to go just nuts now.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So good on them to create a profit. And I
don't think they're going to come out and tell us
how much money they made by coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm like, so I have a feeling that the price
of Thrifty Traveler just went out.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
They get that.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Let's talk about Kyle Sheey.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Okay, is it Shei le she Ley she Lely, It's spelled.
The last name is spelled sc h e E l E.
I was just at an event for a client and
he was a keynote speaker there and just it was
one of it. I see a lot of keynote speakers,
and there's some really good ones out there. He ranks
up there as a really good one, not only from
the way he presents his it does his presentation, but
(16:28):
the content of his presentation was fascinating.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, fascinating, especially for someone in our age group. I
feel like the younger generation is like, well, yeah, uh,
if you can go viral on TikTok or you know,
make a name for yourself. That way you can make
a ton of money.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So everyone's trying to come up with the perfect content
for digital media, right, and we are a little late
to that game, right because I mean we absorb digital content,
but we're not content creators. Well we kind of are
with a podcast. Of course, we're content creators anyway.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
So we're on Insta, so that makes it content creation.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I will tell you this that typically when Sean's out
of town, I hear from him about all sorts of stuff.
Rarely does he reach out about a keynote speaker. And
in this case, I started getting random text messages about
this guy, so I took it upon myself to look
him up. And then you came home with even more stories.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, his big deal? Is that? Not big deal? What
he does is he comes up with crazy ideas, and
these crazy ideas he decides to act on them. Versus
most of us when we have a crazy idea, it's like, oh, yeah,
we're not going to do anything with it. But he actually,
he actually takes his ideas and he makes them real
(17:44):
and they go from anywhere from He bought a tandem
bike and he brought it home and instead of you know.
His wife was like, hey, great, we can go bike
riding together and said, no, actually we're not because what
I'm going to do is I'm going to put a
horse's butt on the back and I'm going to ride
around on it so I look like a centaur. And
(18:06):
so then he does this and he he gets followed.
He has followers because it's just a funny, unique story.
He became really famous when he how did he had
a picture of portrait of his family? Right?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He had a portrait? This is how So I didn't
know that I followed Kyle Sheeley until I started looking
into it and I'm like, oh, yeah, I know this guy.
I follow him on TikTok. So he had there was
a family portrait taken and it was a great picture
except his dad's head was tilted to one side. So
his dad hated that photo.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So there's like seven of them in the picture. They're
all looking straight ahead, head vertical.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So to be funny, he photoshopped the photo and straightened
uh or made everyone else's head's tip, and then straightened
his dad's head and replaced the photo on his family
wall and then sort of recorded the reaction and what
did he say, he went from like seventeen followers, like
in a very short amount of time to like one
(19:05):
point something million followers or views or something like that.
So he went viral, as they say, correct, And that's
how I encountered him. And so some of his like
a Viking burial. There's a variety of different things. But
here's the genius thing. Not only is he making money
with all these followers, he did what we He created
an event that we would all like to attend, right,
(19:27):
because we all know runners. I mean, you're a runner,
as we all know. I am not a runner today
but intermittently running, so at various times in my life
I'm a runner.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So anyway, we all know runners, and they're always training
for a marathon or a race or something and talking
about it, and it's like, you know, yeah, we don't
really care, like congratulations, you know what. That's that's what
you like to do in your spare time, kind of
like how we talk about our podcast. Probably correct though,
So Kyle decides that he he's going to invent a
(20:02):
marathon that you can sign up to run. It is
a fake marathon. It's a fake marathon, and he's completely
transparent by the way, with this, so no one thinks
they're actually going to a marathon. But he creates a
website that you can sign up for for free and
they will send you a bib, and then they have
swags so you can get your raised T shirts and
all of this stuff. But he also had to GoFundMe
(20:25):
created for this crazy idea.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Take it over it is, So basically it's he did that.
He's done this a couple of times and the second
time that he did it. Basically, what it is is
people send in videos of themselves either preparing for a marathon,
this fake marathon, or in the middle of running it.
So just for they'll have a video of them running
(20:48):
with their with their runner bib on. They've set up
uh fake finish lines, and these videos are coming in
from around the world. So this this marathon happens on
the same day, but people are faking running it around
the world.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And here's the best part. He took race results from
another marathon, put it on the website, deleted all of
the personal information from the actual participants, and anybody that
signed up to run this marathon was assigned to time.
So not only do you now have your picture on
a website of you crossing a finish line because you
sent it in and people are like missing their face
(21:25):
with water and you know, trying to look like they're
really exhausted, prepping, stretching the whole nine yards, and then
you've got race results, so now you can tell people.
I mean, there's even like those little stickers you put
on your back of your window say you were in.
And it was called the home run Marathon Genius. This
guy had over thirty four thousand participants, more than the
(21:46):
Boston Marathon of fake running participants. The guy is not
hurting for cash, and he's so good at this. He's
a popular keynote speaker. He's done keynote speaking for Walmart
for crying out. I mean, like we're not talking like
this is just a guy, you know, and yeah, maybe
he can come talk to your sales team. We're talking
big profile at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And and again it's just it's it's all about taking
just having an idea and going yeah, I think I
can do that. Why not let's see what happens with it,
and utilizing TikTok. The funny. The funny thing about the
exchange was he shows up for this keynote, and he's
doing his run throughs and rehearsals, and we all know
that we were at the dock of the bay and
(22:28):
Renee had an issue with a tick if you yes,
and so we had the we had our TikTok episode
which t I c K T A l K episode
and so so I'm so I'm going this. He's rehearsing.
And one of the things that he did as a
high school student was he created graphic t shirts and
(22:50):
he sold those and they had funny sayings on them,
and one of them had some I can't remember what
it said, but it was all about a tick. And
his whole talk was about TikTok And so to go
up to him, I said, you have no idea the
serendipity of this whole thing. We just did a podcast
on TikTok. You're talking TikTok with tics, and we had
a great conversation about ticks in general. He's from Missouri
(23:13):
and there's lots of ticks down there, and he talked
all about the alpha gal disease you get from ticks,
which it's not lime disease. It's called alpha gal and
it actually has it causes you to have a reaction
to red meat. So it was just very weird. It
was the whole, the whole an interesting guy. It it
(23:35):
hit home for me, which probably made me pay a
little bit more attention to the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But I know what I feel like. I mean, it's
small business, right, but I feel like he would get
along well with the owner of our company. The owner
of our company is he likes to think of himself
as a visionary, and he is. He has great ideas.
Now he tends to make my life a little more
challenging because he'll be working away or doing something and
(23:59):
he'll have an idea. Yeah, and then I'll be in
the middle of you know, twenty nine other projects and
he'll come over and be like, hey, I was thinking,
let's do this and it'll turn the entire place upside down. Correct,
but you know, and the logistics behind it, and sometimes
they feel like crazy ideas or maybe just difficult to execute.
I feel like he would get along really well with
(24:21):
Kyle Sheeley. I think like, hey, it's an idea. No
idea is a bad idea. This could be really fun
and wacky and whatever. Now we haven't went viral because
we don't do anything like that. But along the lines of,
you know, let's let's no idea is a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Don't be afraid of the crazy ones.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I have a crazy idea. Why don't we wrap this
podcast up and go get ourselves some breakfast. This has
been another Curveball production.
Welcome to another Curveball production, and we are once again
on the dock of the bay.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are, indeed, and for some reason there was no
doubt in my mind that you would start this podcast off.
Why is that you are fit for bear this time?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm a little fired up, a little fired up. The
uh we're sitting here again. It's a beautiful morning. Fisher
people are out, although the Manitoba wildfire is causing a
bit of a haze.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, I'm not complaining. We don't. I'm not being blinded
by the fireballs. I mean, and we are at the lake,
so it's not unusual to have a campfire smell anyway.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And perhaps the wildfire would that be like the nature's sunshade. Sure,
it's only a little blind that we pulled down anyway. Yeah,
So we were having a very good discussion about the
topic for today's podcast. Today is not going to be
as much. Hey, look, fisher people, he caught something. Today
(01:09):
is actually going to be about substance.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, and here's the deal, though, I don't know that
we're going to have a popular podcast today. I think
that based on some of the information that we're seeing
in the news, we are in the minority, and who's
to say that it might seem that we're on the
side of big business potentially potentially potentially, Well.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
No, in this case, we are. So we had our
conversation last time in the dog Is. It was Memorial
weekend and we're talking about traveling. Most people traveling by car,
but a lot of people that weekend they grab a
flight and take the family and go somewhere. And recently
(01:49):
it has come to the attention of travelers that the
airlines just might be charging a solo traveler more per
ticket than a group travelers.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
The first off, I feel like we should shout out
to Thriftytraveler dot com. I'm an og I've been I
was Thrifty Traveler between before Thrifty Traveler was cool. It
is a fantastic organization. I scored a heck of a
deal to take Tanner to Boston a couple of years
ago by utilizing Thrifty Traveler amongst other trips. Anyway, but
(02:25):
now it's all the rage because they broke the story
and got a ton of publicity for breaking the story that,
like you said, these major airlines are charging more to
individual travelers as opposed to people that buy two or
more tickets. Now, the study was done on one wayfares,
so I don't know. I haven't seen anything that talks
(02:47):
about round trip tickets. But I suppose they have to
like isolate the information to make a true comparison or something,
you know, alleviate all the variables as much as possible. Anyway,
I got us thinking on a walk and I was like,
I really think that we shoul do a podcast on
this because we live in the United States. It's a
capitalist economy, and look, I don't have any compassion for
(03:09):
the big airlines at all. However, I don't understand what
the fuss is about. There's an efficiency in purchasing more
than one ticket at a time that the airline would experience. Therefore,
wouldn't they charge less? I mean, aren't we talking a
volume discount?
Speaker 1 (03:28):
At some point I thought I was the one that
was fired up about this.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, no, I mean I brought it up to you
because I was like, what is this all about?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
I agreed, and it isn't. It isn't a It isn't
a new breaking story. Airlines have had this forever, as
far as long as I've been traveling for business. If
you were booking back in my old company that I
had that I didn't have as part of you know,
there might have been four or five of us that
(03:57):
would be going on to a show site at one time.
And if I, because I kind of managed that part
of it, were to book flights for the four of
us to a location, it would be cheaper for me
to book all four at one time. Then it would
be if I was to book an individual or go
back to that individual, because you know, we would have
(04:19):
it where everybody had their World Perks number, and so
I'd say, you know, to go ahead and book your
own flight because then you get the miles.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Sure, but what we're finding is that I don't want
to call it a penalty, but if everybody's booking their
own flight, in theory on some routes, they're going to
pay more than if you had just said I'll book
all the airfare.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Right, But that's always been the case. It's never It's
like anything else in when you go as a consumer,
if you buy ten of something, it's going to be
probably cheaper per item than if you were to buy
just one.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Right. Well, and if you think about the should see
that the airline's gained for selling more than one ticket
at a time, it's more than Okay, we don't have
to worry about the capacity as much on that individual
plane because we just sold four tickets instead of one.
Certainly there's efficiencies there, they have to work less hard
to sell more tickets. But I think about approaching the
(05:20):
desk when you get to the airlines, if you aren't
automating everything and you have to walk up and get
your boarding pass and drop off your bag and all
of that. I mean, if you walk up, you know,
if you walk up by yourself, give your documentation, then
it's next, next, and the next person goes. That takes
more time. Then if the two of us are traveling together,
we hand our documents over being bad, a boom, We're
(05:42):
out of there. So I mean, for me, look, if
this is a wish list, I wish flying was free. Okay,
I think we all do. Wouldn't that be wonderful if
there was just this? You know?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
But here's where and here's where Renee and I differ
with her analogy because I've been standing in line waiting
to go up to check in and get my bag
checked in, and there's a pat family of five ahead
of me at the desk, and it takes forever. Dad's
up there and he's saying, okay, everybody gets your IDs out.
Oh they don't have to have IDs. Oh your bag
(06:15):
is over. Then we got to move bags from here
to here. And there's two here. Yeah, it takes forever.
Whereas if I go up there, boom, drop a bag off.
Here's my da da da da da, I'm out.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
Okay. Well, I would make the argument though, that that
is those are those are situations that are built by
a particular individual. If those same five, those same five personalities,
those same five individuals were flying separate, it would take
longer then the one transaction that is chaotic, because what
(06:47):
I'm hearing you say is that family of people, those
people are chaotic. You know, somebody's got too much crap
in their bag, they're overweight, they got you know, somebody
that got their weight right. And now I bet it's
even more of a backle with this whole real id thing,
because some people don't pay attention to the news and
they're shown up at the airport and they don't have
(07:07):
alternate IDs. So if you don't have a passport, you're
up a kirk without a paddle or across a lake
without a current.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Now there's no current generally, not without a breeze.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
At your trying trying to force something here, and it
doesn't always work. It's morning, it's were.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But in reading through some of these articles that are
being published about this whole as, they're calling it trend
in the airlines industry, which again isn't a trend. It's
been that way since the dawn of airlines. I mean,
you think about it. They one of the things that
they talk about is the lack of transparency from airlines
(07:46):
as far as how they are billing. I don't see
a lack of transparency. You can go out onto an
airlineses website and like Delta now has eleven different prices
for a flight to get out to wherever you need
to get to, so you buy from a transparency perspective,
they're putting all the pricing out there. You can go
(08:08):
to a website like kayak one another one of your
favorites I do, like hair and you get information from
almost every airline as far as what it's going to
cost to get I argue some of the transparency is
more around like Ticketmaster these days, when now they have
to have all their fees up front as far as
(08:28):
what it's going to cost and what the actual price
or your ticket's going to be.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, and that's something the airlines were forced to do
a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah. It's to say it's going to cost you this
and this and this, so your total price with if
you check, if you don't, if you have to bring
a bag and check, it is going to be x.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I think people are getting frustrated with the lack of
transparency in the profit margin. And I don't really think
that's anyone else's business. I mean, one could argue that
the market will dictate what something's worth, correct, and that's
exactly how airlines book fares and try to fill planes.
It's a supply demand yeah, as well as or at all.
(09:06):
I mean, in my business, if a client says to me, well,
you know, we need to see what your cost is
on this and what your margins are, I say, I'm sorry,
that's proprietary information. I don't have to have that transparency.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Having said that, you know, you know, we don't have
extreme margins or anything. But I'm not even accusing the
airlines of doing that. They are allowed to charge whatever
they want to charge, and you have the choice as
to whether or not you're going to purchase that ticket.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
It's yes, and the airlines, you know, they'll they'll typically
make their pricing based on to your point supply and demand.
If if we were at Delta Hub in Minneapolis and
if there are no other airlines that fly to a
specific location, the flights are gonna be more because they
can charge more for it because there's no competition for it.
(09:53):
Flights to Dallas out of Minneapolis are dirt cheap because
American Airlines flies there out of Minneapolis non stop. Chicago's
the same way. If I want to fly to Bizmarck,
it's going to be more expensive than flying to Dallas
because there's no competition. And that's just the way that
the business works. And the other thing that they were
bringing up in these articles is that how airlines were
(10:15):
penalizing solo travelers. Nobody's being penalized if you're traveling and
you're buy yourself because you have to be paid. If
you pay a bit, you pay more than if you
were in a group of people. It's not it doesn't
That argument to me just doesn't make sense. It's like, again,
it's like saying I'm going to buy I'm going to
buy a ten bananas and it's ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Why do we have to use banana?
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Because ten bananas and it's going to be ten dollars
for the banana, So it's one dollar per banana. But
if I want to buy one banana, it's gonna be
two dollars.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
I'm sorry, not just the way analogy, because typically in
this maybe is just because of my expertise, bananas are
sold by the pound. They're typically not priced per banana.
I'm just being an argumentative. I do have a problem
with the fact that they've villainized the airline industry. Now, look,
we can talk about how they've reached out to the
(11:10):
federal government for support and all the poor airlines, YadA YadA,
I get all that. I just think, and again I'm
a big fan of thrifty Traveler, but this idea that
this is what he said he said, Look, it wouldn't
matter to me if it's said when you were purchasing
a ticket that you know, multiple tickets, if there was
some sort of transparency that said, you know, multiple tickets
(11:31):
received this discount, or you know you'll pay a search
hard for buying one ticket. And again I don't know
that it has to be called out, and I certainly
don't understand what the difference in why a statement like
that makes any difference or makes this any So I
just think.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right, it's like, so I'm going to buy I'm going
to go on an airlines and I got to fly somewhere,
and I'm going to buy my one ticket. And it
pops up and says, hey, if there's four of you,
it's going to be this amount. I'm like, oh great,
I'm going to find three other people to go on
this business trip with me. No, yeah, he's take it
by myself because I'm going by myself.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I think the guy's name is Kyle, but I could
be wrong because we were talking about the TikToker this
week named Kyle.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Think Kyle Sheeley. By the way, if you haven't looked
him up, look him up for sure. Continue.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
We should talk about that too, Actually we could that.
I mean, it has nothing to do with this other
than why it's a Curveball production. It is. It's a
good story. One more quick thing though, The idea that
if they if they marketed it as a discount or
some sort of a deal. Then he felt like it
was okay that this that they hadn't broadcast, that this
(12:35):
was their price in structure was where the problem is.
And I'm like, I don't think anybody is required to
broadcast their price instructure. I mean, if if Delta Airlines
decides that, you know, on Thursday, they want to raise
their rates one hundred percent, they can sure do that.
And if you didn't buy a ticket on Wednesday, your
sol Here's the other thing that I do think is
interesting though. So this story breaks, and it was the
(12:58):
three major American care line, our airlines, so it is Delta, United,
an American and essentially they are all like either no
response or yeah, that's the way it's been American. I'm sorry.
Delta and United immediately didn't about face. Within twenty four hours.
Initially they said nothing like yeah, this is the way
(13:19):
it is. Within twenty four hours they came out and said, Okay,
we're not going to do that utilized that practice, that
pricing practice anymore. A week later, guess what they're doing
it again? Yeah, and I mean and that's okay, I
guess again, just be transparent about it, and they don't
owe us transparency but now once they've commented on it
and come out and said, we're not going to do
(13:40):
it that way. See, now you're getting yourself into well
are they in ethical business? So whatever they do, I
don't care. But now they've been forced into this transparency discussion,
or at the very least, they should be able to
come out and say, you know what, it's none your
business how we price our tickets and then move on
with it.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Right, And again, it's this all stems back from somebody
all of a sudden realizing that it that there's a
different price if you buy four tickets than if you
buy one ticket or two tickets then if you buy
one ticket. And again that's always been the case, and
it's been that case in every in and every walk
of life. You buy more. Why why do you think
(14:20):
Costco does so well? You buy Anny bulk.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Well, what's funny is I thought when the story broke
that people were going to be outraged because this idea
that if you aren't paired up with someone or you
don't have a family, you're being penalized to explore the world.
But that isn't really what the narrative has been. It's like, well,
think how much more of these companies are paying that
are like the example you gave buying corporate tickets. And
(14:44):
to your point earlier, well maybe that was just on
our walk. It was like a lot of these large
corporations have negotiated travel discounts anyway, right, So, I mean,
but it wasn't until corporations kind of got their honies
in a bunch that they did this quick about face.
And I think once they started talking everybody, they settled
everybody down and said, yeah, we're going to go back
to doing what we did because it is more efficient
(15:06):
for us to sell more tickets at once. I think
we've probably.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
What we have. And really what it comes down to
is it kind of when it really bothered me just
the whole it's non story of this story when it
comes down to it in my world, I mean, it's
just not it's good.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
I think. I think it's genius of thrifty Traveler. Well,
like plenty of us were members of thrifty Traveler and
it's a great It really is a great site and
you can score some really great travel deals. However, holy smokes,
they damn near crashed the website. I mean, so many
people know about Thrifty Traveler. Now like, oh, I wish
I don't think they're a publicly traded company, but I
(15:45):
wish I had some sort of ownership in that company
because they're going to go just nuts now.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
So good on them to create a profit. And I
don't think they're going to come out and tell us
how much money they made by coming out.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm like, so I have a feeling that the price
of Thrifty Traveler just went out.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
They get that.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Let's talk about Kyle Sheey.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Okay, is it Shei le she Ley she Lely, It's spelled.
The last name is spelled sc h e E l E.
I was just at an event for a client and
he was a keynote speaker there and just it was
one of it. I see a lot of keynote speakers,
and there's some really good ones out there. He ranks
up there as a really good one, not only from
the way he presents his it does his presentation, but
(16:28):
the content of his presentation was fascinating.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, fascinating, especially for someone in our age group. I
feel like the younger generation is like, well, yeah, uh,
if you can go viral on TikTok or you know,
make a name for yourself. That way you can make
a ton of money.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So everyone's trying to come up with the perfect content
for digital media, right, and we are a little late
to that game, right because I mean we absorb digital content,
but we're not content creators. Well we kind of are
with a podcast. Of course, we're content creators anyway.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
So we're on Insta, so that makes it content creation.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
I will tell you this that typically when Sean's out
of town, I hear from him about all sorts of stuff.
Rarely does he reach out about a keynote speaker. And
in this case, I started getting random text messages about
this guy, so I took it upon myself to look
him up. And then you came home with even more stories.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, his big deal? Is that? Not big deal? What
he does is he comes up with crazy ideas, and
these crazy ideas he decides to act on them. Versus
most of us when we have a crazy idea, it's like, oh, yeah,
we're not going to do anything with it. But he actually,
he actually takes his ideas and he makes them real
(17:44):
and they go from anywhere from He bought a tandem
bike and he brought it home and instead of you know.
His wife was like, hey, great, we can go bike
riding together and said, no, actually we're not because what
I'm going to do is I'm going to put a
horse's butt on the back and I'm going to ride
around on it so I look like a centaur. And
(18:06):
so then he does this and he he gets followed.
He has followers because it's just a funny, unique story.
He became really famous when he how did he had
a picture of portrait of his family? Right?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He had a portrait? This is how So I didn't
know that I followed Kyle Sheeley until I started looking
into it and I'm like, oh, yeah, I know this guy.
I follow him on TikTok. So he had there was
a family portrait taken and it was a great picture
except his dad's head was tilted to one side. So
his dad hated that photo.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So there's like seven of them in the picture. They're
all looking straight ahead, head vertical.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So to be funny, he photoshopped the photo and straightened
uh or made everyone else's head's tip, and then straightened
his dad's head and replaced the photo on his family
wall and then sort of recorded the reaction and what
did he say, he went from like seventeen followers, like
in a very short amount of time to like one
(19:05):
point something million followers or views or something like that.
So he went viral, as they say, correct, And that's
how I encountered him. And so some of his like
a Viking burial. There's a variety of different things. But
here's the genius thing. Not only is he making money
with all these followers, he did what we He created
an event that we would all like to attend, right,
(19:27):
because we all know runners. I mean, you're a runner,
as we all know. I am not a runner today
but intermittently running, so at various times in my life
I'm a runner.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
So anyway, we all know runners, and they're always training
for a marathon or a race or something and talking
about it, and it's like, you know, yeah, we don't
really care, like congratulations, you know what. That's that's what
you like to do in your spare time, kind of
like how we talk about our podcast. Probably correct though,
So Kyle decides that he he's going to invent a
(20:02):
marathon that you can sign up to run. It is
a fake marathon. It's a fake marathon, and he's completely
transparent by the way, with this, so no one thinks
they're actually going to a marathon. But he creates a
website that you can sign up for for free and
they will send you a bib, and then they have
swags so you can get your raised T shirts and
all of this stuff. But he also had to GoFundMe
(20:25):
created for this crazy idea.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Take it over it is, So basically it's he did that.
He's done this a couple of times and the second
time that he did it. Basically, what it is is
people send in videos of themselves either preparing for a marathon,
this fake marathon, or in the middle of running it.
So just for they'll have a video of them running
(20:48):
with their with their runner bib on. They've set up
uh fake finish lines, and these videos are coming in
from around the world. So this this marathon happens on
the same day, but people are faking running it around
the world.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
And here's the best part. He took race results from
another marathon, put it on the website, deleted all of
the personal information from the actual participants, and anybody that
signed up to run this marathon was assigned to time.
So not only do you now have your picture on
a website of you crossing a finish line because you
sent it in and people are like missing their face
(21:25):
with water and you know, trying to look like they're
really exhausted, prepping, stretching the whole nine yards, and then
you've got race results, so now you can tell people.
I mean, there's even like those little stickers you put
on your back of your window say you were in.
And it was called the home run Marathon Genius. This
guy had over thirty four thousand participants, more than the
(21:46):
Boston Marathon of fake running participants. The guy is not
hurting for cash, and he's so good at this. He's
a popular keynote speaker. He's done keynote speaking for Walmart
for crying out. I mean, like we're not talking like
this is just a guy, you know, and yeah, maybe
he can come talk to your sales team. We're talking
big profile at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And and again it's just it's it's all about taking
just having an idea and going yeah, I think I
can do that. Why not let's see what happens with it,
and utilizing TikTok. The funny. The funny thing about the
exchange was he shows up for this keynote, and he's
doing his run throughs and rehearsals, and we all know
that we were at the dock of the bay and
(22:28):
Renee had an issue with a tick if you yes,
and so we had the we had our TikTok episode
which t I c K T A l K episode
and so so I'm so I'm going this. He's rehearsing.
And one of the things that he did as a
high school student was he created graphic t shirts and
(22:50):
he sold those and they had funny sayings on them,
and one of them had some I can't remember what
it said, but it was all about a tick. And
his whole talk was about TikTok And so to go
up to him, I said, you have no idea the
serendipity of this whole thing. We just did a podcast
on TikTok. You're talking TikTok with tics, and we had
a great conversation about ticks in general. He's from Missouri
(23:13):
and there's lots of ticks down there, and he talked
all about the alpha gal disease you get from ticks,
which it's not lime disease. It's called alpha gal and
it actually has it causes you to have a reaction
to red meat. So it was just very weird. It
was the whole, the whole an interesting guy. It it
(23:35):
hit home for me, which probably made me pay a
little bit more attention to the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But I know what I feel like. I mean, it's
small business, right, but I feel like he would get
along well with the owner of our company. The owner
of our company is he likes to think of himself
as a visionary, and he is. He has great ideas.
Now he tends to make my life a little more
challenging because he'll be working away or doing something and
(23:59):
he'll have an idea. Yeah, and then I'll be in
the middle of you know, twenty nine other projects and
he'll come over and be like, hey, I was thinking,
let's do this and it'll turn the entire place upside down. Correct,
but you know, and the logistics behind it, and sometimes
they feel like crazy ideas or maybe just difficult to execute.
I feel like he would get along really well with
(24:21):
Kyle Sheeley. I think like, hey, it's an idea. No
idea is a bad idea. This could be really fun
and wacky and whatever. Now we haven't went viral because
we don't do anything like that. But along the lines of,
you know, let's let's no idea is a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Don't be afraid of the crazy ones.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
I have a crazy idea. Why don't we wrap this
podcast up and go get ourselves some breakfast. This has
been another Curveball production.
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