An excellent article, Jon.

My son and I groan at all the bull on the "travel shows" about air travel. All we ever see is "Barbara's boobs go to Bali" anyway, with the presenter forefront and little attempt to show us local people and events. Then we get all this guff about special airfares.

Even an intelligent traveller is hard put to make an intelligent choice.

And that's the point. We need more choice.

Roll out Tiger and anyone else.. and hope we get n airport in Sydney NOT run by Macquarie Bank

I see the problem but cannot see any answer in any of your solutions. Whether the extras are add ons or all inclusive we as mere customers are not going to be any the wiser. All one can do is compare prices and not be too concerned if the likes of Flight Centre are creaming extra off the taxes for themselves. As for who oversees this rip off the ACCC or so called consumer watch dog is useless as proven in several other cases of consumer rip offs. If you really want to see overpriced airfares, no matter how they are calculated, go to the number one online airfare web site Webjet and there it is truly catch as catch can. Beware.