Just have to share this here because of how unbelievably tone-deaf it is.
I have an upcoming flight with Lufthansa, booked cheapest economy class. Now I get a mail that says I am eligible for an upgrade.
Correction, I am eligible to make an offer to maybe maybe get an upgrade. When I click that link I get to the page above in the screenshot where I can now choose an amount between 90 and 300-ish EUR per passenger, per flight, to maybe upgrade to business class.
Just look at the slider, it is almost hilarious that it says poor when you leave it at the low amounts. Is any other airline doing that?
Seeing how similar this interface looks in all the examples makes me think this is not something the airlines did come up with themselves, but rather might be a something offered by a third party that they implement in their booking process.
I.e. not only milking the customer as much as possible by having them bid instead of fixed price upgrades, but maybe even having a third party taking a fee or commission, which will ultimately be passed on to the customer through higher prices.
This is just speculation though. Does anyone have insight into this?
I don't have any insights but I agree that if there are similar things offered across airlines, even with similar interfaces, then some startup somewhere is probably selling this "key-in-hand" solution, they probably have a sick PowerPoint deck!