International airlines have rediscovered the business traveler. This does not necessarily mean that airlines ever abandoned thei

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问题      International airlines have rediscovered the business traveler. This does not necessarily mean that airlines ever abandoned their business travelers, but many airlines were accused of concentrating too heavily in the recent past on attracting passengers by volume, often at the expense of the business traveler.
     Operating a major airline is essentially a matter of finding the right mix of passengers. The airlines need to fill up the back end of their wide-bodied jets with low fare passengers without forgetting that the front end should be filled with people who pay substantially more for their tickets.
     It is no coincidence that the recent two major airlines bankruptcies were among the companies specializing in cheap flights. But low fares require consistently full aircraft to make flights economically viable; and in the recent recession the volume of traffic has reduced. Equally the large number of airliners jostling for the available passengers has created a huge excess of capacity; the net result of excess capacity and cut-throat competition driving down fares has been to push some airlines into collapse and leave many others hovering on the brink.
     Against this grim background, it is no surprise that airlines are turning increasingly towards the business travelers to improve their rates of return; they have invested much time and effort to establish exactly the executive’s demands for sitting apart from the tourists.
     High on the list of priorities is punctuality. In-flight service is another area where the airlines are jostling for the executive’s attention. The free drinks and headsets and better food are other parts of the attention. First-class passengers are now offered sleeperette seats.
     The airlines are also trying to improve things on the ground. Executive lounges are intended to make the inevitable waiting between flights a little more bearable. Luggage handling is being improved. Regrettably, there is little that the airlines can do to speed up the boring immigration and Customs process, which upsets and frustrates passengers of all classes.
     Although it is the airlines’ intention to attract executive passengers from their rivals, the airlines themselves would do nothing to change one bad habit of this kind of traveler--the habit of booking a flight and then failing to turn up. The practice is particularly widespread in Europe, where businessmen frequently book return journeys home on one of several flights. As a result, the airlines throw away empty seats, which cannot be resold. Some airlines have attempted to prevent the practice by offering discounts to passengers who travel on their booked flight. But this inevitably means that the structure of air fares, already highly complex, becomes even more baffling.
From the last paragraph, we can reasonably conclude that offering discounts will

选项 A、inevitably attract more people to travel on their booked flights.
B、provoke a new "price battle" among airliners.
C、ultimately change the habit of booking a flight and then failing to turn up.
D、most probably pose a new problem on air fares.

答案C

解析 归纳题。文章最后一段指出,航空公司对改变这类乘客的一个坏习惯却束手无策——预订了班机却不搭乘的习惯;结果航空公司浪费了空余座位,而这些座位不可能被再出售;一些航空公司试图通过给那些乘坐预订航班的乘客打折来杜绝这种坏习惯;但这不可避免地意味着航空费用的结构将变得更令人莫名其妙。这说明,提供打折将有可能改变预订了班机却不搭乘的坏习惯。这与C项的意思相符。文中没有提到A;文中只是说这种做法将意味着本来已经很复杂的飞机票价结构会更令人难以理解,并没有说会引发票价大战,引发新的票价问题,所以B、D项不对。
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