Booking flights today is not as easy as it used to be

If you want to save money on flights, you need to understand how the airfare shopping experience has been engineered to exploit us. — Pixabay

It's not just you: Shopping for airfare is harder than ever. Choosing between basic economy and regular economy fares and navigating add-on fees makes booking fights more complicated, and that’s no accident. Airlines are harnessing lessons from a still-emerging academic field known as behavioural economics to nudge customers into spending more.

“Behavioural economics was developed by incorporating ideas from psychology into standard economic theories,” says Cait Lamberton, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in the United States.