Basic Economy Fares Don't Lower Ticket Prices, They Increase Ticket Prices
viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com
viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com
A few things they've done:
1. They've created baggage fees for checking bags: That accounts for +$50
2. The YQ/Fuel charge: You're subject on their pricing of fuel
3. Seat Charges: If you want to reserve a seat before checking, some airlines charge for this (Namely AA)
4. Fees for printing a BP (Ryan Air), checking in at the airport (Ryan Air again), Carry on luggage (Spirit), etc
5. Charging for alcohol on long haul flights (I'm rather fine with it.. but it used to be customary)
6. Charging for food on long haul flights. (I'm looking at you US Airways CLT-AUR)
However, banning outside food and drink is ridiculous. I'd get right on ignoring that, and if they were somehow able to enforce it, I'd stop traveling with them.
You can usually tell in whether they offer a true business class cabin or just a first class cabin like other domestic flights. :/
I have a suspicion the issue isn't really the lack of service, it's that either you get nickle and dimed or the next step up is an order of magnitude higher in price.
Which class were you in? IIRC they only give free food in the upper classes, not the basic one.
Also, any 14 hour flight will offer 2 meals and refreshments. The main concern from takeoff to landing is keeping people calm
Many of us routinely take plane flights that are longer than two hours. A cross country flight is 5-6 hours plus 2 hours at the airport before and often a half hour after to get checked baggage. That's an 8-hour day.
Sitting on a cramped airplane for 5-6 hours is pretty unpleasant already. Doing it hungry doesn't improve the experience.
I've had companies crazy enough to ask if they could interview me on a cross-country flight day to save themselves a hotel night (after they were already planning to schedule the cheapest flights they could find), and I can only imagine those people have never traveled cross-country much.
I can't imagine interviewing the day of a cross-country flight. Even without connecting that would be miserable and probably pointless.
[0] http://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-to...
I already pay for that as part of the ticket price. I do not want them unbundled in a way that makes my very necessary breakfast more expensive.
Except that most people want breakfast after a night's sleep.
1. Flying legacy carriers who are more bundled than low-cost carriers
and/or
2. By purchasing business or first class seats, which often still include all the bundled goodies
What I want is an airline that doesn't undermine their own business by making things better for their passengers, but instead have incentive both to make things better and more efficient. If there's no upsell the airline have to make sure things are efficient and there's less reason to hold back on "goodies".
I know there have been attempts to make such airlines in the past, but maybe with the new smaller long range aircraft, that can go from smaller airports, and more competitive taxi market, for transfer, it could work.
That's generally handled by having a cart with a garbage bag attached that comes by, and having people opening their food on the small trays provided.
>"Airports would be even less efficient going through security, vendors trying to sell food to go and people congregating to buy things."
Yes. It is called a "post-security food court".
>"I would definitely pay more if even more things was standardized and included for everyone on the flight (like luggage, security, airport seating)."
That's nice for you. A lot of people don't want that, or aren't willing to pay.
Considerable effort has already gone into making food service efficient. One of the few reason I can imagine to unbundle food is to have fewer flight attendants. But now you're suggesting they should service the passengers in a random rather than sequential order, as not everyone would want to eat at the same time. A tray doesn't really solve the problem of the person shaking their protein drink (which hopefully stays in it's container), the person having to grab the third thing from the over head storage nor someone spilling their to go coffee over you. Food service is efficient. It comes in bulk, everyone gets served, everyone eats, everyone throws things away, done.
> Yes. It is called a "post-security food court".
"Amenities" like food courts and shops is a big reason why airports are annoying. If it wasn't for trying to get you to buy overpriced things airport entry would be as efficient as airport exit and not some IKEA style maze.
Great. If an airline finds that it is more efficient that they bundle food with the ticket price, then more power to them. I just don't see why it should be required that they do so.
>""Amenities" like food courts and shops is a big reason why airports are annoying."
I am sorry that you are annoyed by food courts. On the other hand, I suspect that the fact they are usually full of businesses suggests that many people patronize them and find them useful. Again, I'm not sure what the proposed solution is. Prohibit airports from having food courts?
alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited.
Another issue - many foods are outright smelly and many can't stand some smells (ie -> puking) - imagine 300+ people eating their own stuff inside the plane, on 14 hours flight. ever experienced a strong smell of any airline food? thank god or whoever for that.
as for food courts, they are full of 'businesses' since those have that overpriced and usually seriously crappy food paid by employer as part of trip expenses. they have their place in airports, but definitely add chaos and size - why do I need to wade through countless restaurants and boutiques just to get from checkin to gate? that's cheap. they could be in some designated accessible 'shopping area' for example.
But these would efficiency in the airports, and that's usually not the name of the game these days.
An airline is a paid service. I'm not their friend, I'm their customer.
>"alternative - food stalls in airports serving specific food/packaging for flights. haven't seen a single one in those 30+ airports i ever visited." >"why do I need to wade through countless restaurants and boutiques just to get from checkin to gate? that's cheap. they could be in some designated accessible 'shopping area' for example."
Okay, I get it, you don't like the way airports currently are, nor all of their offerings. I still don't see why this requires that A Law Be Made governing what they are and are not allowed to offer.
Maybe it's a US/California thing, but that's pretty common here
For any flight over 45 minutes I always bring my own food. It's better than anything I can get on the plane and cheaper too. There's nothing special about going through security as it's in my carry on.
Only catch is you can't bring large liquids (so no thermos full of soup). I suppose you could have a set of 3.5 oz containers you eventually merge into a bowl but that's a little too extreme even for me ...
if you mean buy overpriced bottled water then yes, that's an option. but imagine some people want hot herbal tea on that flight, say 1-1.5 litre (ie they are sick). good luck negotiating with some airport 'restaurant' having say 8 tea servings for you (easily costing 20-30 usd/eur together)
If you don't believe me buy a sandwich on a ryanair flight.
On the other hand, I do want to point out a couple of things. It's crazy to charge for printing a boarding pass. That does not cost money (to a first approximation). Also, substantially all the airlines that charge to check bags will gate check for free. It's just more hassle. So what's really happening is that your seat IS being subsidized -- by the people who check bags at at checkin rather than at the gate.
In the economists' world it shouldn't make any difference - a ticket for $200 plus a $20 option for a checked bag is economically equivalent to a ticket for $220 and a $20 rebate for flying without a bag, and if unbundling is really done for the passengers' sake then it will be equally worthwhile under the latter conditions. But I have a sneaking suspicion that if they had to still advertise the price as $220 then the airlines would suddenly decide it wasn't worth unbundling the checked bag after all.
The airlines are incentivised to make it complicated, and just dealing with n different website layouts is challenging enough. Compare to e.g. food labelling, where we require mass in specific units and nutritional information in a specific format, or cars, which are obliged to include mpg and safety information from particular standardised tests in their advertising.
> And there's nothing to say that the standard bundle will necessarily meet that many people's preferences.
It doesn't have to - the point is just to have a point of comparison to be able to compare equivalent offerings from Airline A and Airline B, even if you end up getting a very different bundle from the standard one.
> understanding and
> negotiating terms
> since there's no reason for
> airlines to cooperate with
> such a search engine
What cooperation is needed? These fares are sold under different fare codes, and the meanings of the fare codes are easily available.
So Frontier, Spirit, and now the "Basic Economy" fares charge even more for cabin bags than for checked bags. Problem solved.
One theory I heard about the checked bag fees (back when carry-on bags were no extra charge) was that the fee freed up cargo space so the airline could carry more paid air cargo, purposefully pushing baggage into the main cabin.
Because no one ever travels with baggage? You can argue its "price transparency", but forcing something everyone needs to be an "add-on" is awfully shady.
«One theory I heard about the checked bag fees (back when carry-on bags were no extra charge) was that the fee freed up cargo space so the airline could carry more paid air cargo, purposefully pushing baggage into the main cabin.»
The other theory I've heard is that "unbundling" a lot of these fees and moving them to being charged at checkin and/or the gate has meant that traditional travel agents and corporate booking can't touch or negotiate them (because they aren't direct flight costs anymore). Given most corporate expense systems don't allow for reporting "add-on fees" at an airport (and it took a while for any corporate execs to catch up to a possible need to add baggage fees as an expense that could/should be reported; many companies still seem to have yet to notice), this was a good way for the airlines to increase flight costs across the board without immediately upsetting fat cat corporate clients and choice travel agents by sneakily passing the cost difference directly to employees/flyers who at that point were a "captive audience" to the new fees.
- less of the scarce cabin space used
- less time/complication loading the plane
- less labor to inspect (you have to apply more scrutiny to stuff a passenger can use in flight), although airless don't directly pay for that.
... but less desirable for passengers (other than not having to carry):
- have to wait for it at baggage claim
- can't access it during the flight
- have to risk the stuff being stolen or lost
Not surprisingly, every flight has the overhead bins over capacity, even though this shouldn't be possible! (I think it's because someone will have a regulation size carry-on and then add a second carry-on that takes too much space, and airline employees aren't paid enough to start confrontations by correcting passengers.)
Previous HN comment/replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12438683#12439465
Try getting $50 out of someone as they're boarding a plane.
A major part of these choices involve whether they're feasible in situations with time pressure and frustrated passengers. Luckily airline staff have huge latitude to help defuse situations with angry customers.
Working for an airline is a thankless job
But what happens to, say, the electricity used to melt the aluminum before being poured into molds?
If there's some tax benefit to splitting a fuel surcharge out, obviously taxes on fuel aren't an ordinary VAT...
I assume the airlines have done the math and the time cost is less than the increase in revenue.
All that said, I almost always fly carry-on only, for my own convenience (no waiting at baggage claim, no lost/damaged luggage, etc). I often wonder what on earth some people are taking with them on vacation - I can do a two week vacation with carry-ons (1 luggage, 1 small backpack), and that includes a bicycle kit (helmet, shorts/jersey, shoes, and pedals) on top of normal clothing.
The "right" answer would, of course, be to charge for carry-on luggage too. I think some airlines are starting to do this now. I bet their customers won't be happy though.
Right, but that's an artifact of only charging for one of two "cost-adders", when they're close substitutes.
It doesn't refute the general point that it makes sense in general to charge more for things that add legit costs; the problem here is that they're not being consistent about it. Per previous discussion, charging for carry-ons seems to make more sense than charging for (a moderate allowance of) checked luggage:
The overall matrix of things that apply to a flight is annoying though.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/how-dhl-pioneered-the-shar...
The last time I was stuck flying with them the plane wasn't even 1/3rd full. A few people, sitting near the front, were part of their ridiculous set of reward tiers. The rest of us? Packed in the back. After the attendants closed the doors, we got the go ahead to just move to sensible seats of the exact same size and amenities, but that they'd have wanted us to pay extra for.
The airline knew the flight was empty the night before, and so did everyone that went through the check in process and sees all the empty seats they tried to upsell. Is the chance for an extra fee or two beat having the old black lady next to me look at the empty middle of the plane and ask if we were in American Airlines or in the Montgomery Plane company?
That said, some MCE seats (and some MC seats) can only be selected pre-checkin by AA flyers with status. AA status holders also do not pay extra for MCE seats, whether they are status reserved or not.
My academic institution refuses to pay for any kind of seat upgrades, so from my perspective, the rational response is to fly on another airline. I will probably have to avoid airlines that start "offering" "Basic Economy" fares for the same reason.
They save them pre-checkin for status holders (people who fly 25,000+ miles a year typically). As someone who flies _way_ above that number I appreciate that they do, as I am typically buying last minute tickets (less than 2 weeks out) that are much more expensive. Those seats mean that despite paying more than most people on the plane, I'm not stuck in a middle seat most of the time.
That benefits attracts people like me to try and stay loyal with an airline rather than going with the lowest bidder. I'm willing to bet that people with similar flying habits to me provide the majority of profit for an airline as well.
The MCE seats also serve this purpose.
> I'm willing to bet that people with similar flying habits to me provide the majority of profit for an airline as well.
Well, because it encourages people like you to keep their "status," and people without "status" now have to pay extra for a regular seat, it probably benefits the airline. But it is another fare class that the airline invented to make more money, much like the basic economy fares discussed in the article.
I understand what you're saying, but the mileage programs are not really about "loyalty"; they're about misallocating corporate dollars to more expensive seats to the benefit of the airline and the traveller/employee. I don't feel that people like you providing "the majority of revenue" to airlines should really matter either way. Dollars for seats.
I managed to just cross a mileage program threshold this year but I'll continue ranting about how terrible these programs and the flying experience in general is. Especially because having bargain-basement status on United means nothing when you're flying out of a major hub :)
Well, you're lucky you were not on Air Asia. They don't allow you to move to the seats they charge for (Emergency row etc.,) even if they are all empty and the rest of the leg space challenged aircraft is extremely full.
Normally on airlines like Etihad, people either just take the seat by themselves, or ask the crew and move into the seats.
I no longer pay for specific seats on a plane.
It would be even better if you could specify an arbitrary utility function over the flight properties (total price, bags you want to bring, seat size, departure time sensitivity, etc) and have the results ranked by that function.
I think the lesson here is that the airline industry often operates on very small margins.
You can call them greedy or manipulative all you like for doing this but it won't change the economics. Running an airline is expensive for a multitude of reasons.
Hearing stories of Richard Branson's efforts to create a good airline with Virgin in an industry full of shitty ones, then mostly failing, made me very sympathetic to how hard the problem is in a marketplace like that . And some people think Uber and AirBnB have it hard...
Most people are not software engineers and would prefer to save $50 even if it means a less dignified experience
International business class is expensive, yes, typically on the order of $8,000 to $10,000 for a round-trip ticket. But international is the only place airlines can get away with charging that kind of fare and have people pay it, so that's what they'll continue to do. And when compared to other things people in software-developer income brackets often spend money on, even that isn't particularly gigantic; it's just all in one go instead of spread out over many small purchases the way, say, use of Uber and Lyft would be.
> International business class
> is expensive, yes, typically
> on the order of $8,000 to
> $10,000
For the purposes of this comment I just Google searched "SFO to Shanghai". The default is Jan 21-Feb 3 (so you're not paying a last-minute-booking penalty).
The prices are insanely cheap somehow, but the multiple holds up.
$527 economy $1999 premium economy $2853 business $5340 first
I would fly premium economy every time if it existed on most airlines and the multiple was 'only' 50%. What normal human can afford 4x the price for a couple more inches of elbow and legroom? It's far greater than the cost of the actual space.
AMS-IAD (two airports with good capacity) for the default Google Flight dates show 45k for economy, 99k for PE, and 120k (all INR) for business, all on reasonable airlines
> What normal human
> International business class
> is expensive, yes, typically
> on the order of $8,000 to
> $10,000
Economy: ~400 GBP
Premium Economy: ~1000 GBP
Business: ~1300 GBP
First: ~3700 GBP
So, the "$8000 to $10000" isn’t even in the same ballpark as First class, respectively business class.
The point is airlines are giving people options. Flying is unbelievably cheap if you want it to be but you get what you pay for - a safe flight in a moderately uncomfortable seat. People wanted cheap and they're getting it.
I wish more airlines offered more classes of service though. Flying United to Europe you either have crummy economy (exit rows are fine but the service still is poor) or rather expensive first. More options for mid-tier service where you have larger, more comfortable seating and nice food options similar to Virgins "Premium Economy" service which is is quite nice at a reasonable ask for those that find a couple hundred dollars extra worth it. I find it worth it for 8 hour+ flights to have some extra comfort so I feel better when landing.
Delta has impressed me lately. I may make the switch and just deal with the extra haul to JFK which is about 20 minutes more for me if United can't or won't improve their lousy, outdated aircraft for international flights to Europe.
United does fly nicely outfitted aircraft to Asia and Australia but I don't get out that way nearly as much.
Of the big three legacy carriers, Delta is currently the best combination of price and reliability. You know they want a bit of extra money for the slightly nicer experiences, and you know what you're going to get out of it.
For international travel, though, I've been starting to avoid US carriers entirely in favor of flying the other country's airline (which is something you can do when living near a major international hub -- SFO, in my case). Often it's another small step up, and sometimes it's a big step up, compared to the US airlines.
You're right though, airlines like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are quite a bit more nice. United treats me pretty well as I have the highest status, however.
You're a brave man. How was it?
as an adult it's probably better because there's no recovery time, they just take the nitrous away and you're good to drive yourself home (or to the pharmacy, to pick up your pain meds that you're definitely going to need) 2 minutes later.
the 2-3 weeks following extraction are 1000x worse than the actual procedure, which isn't bad at all.
Domestic first-class cabins in the US have been shrinking (fewer seats), for what it's worth. And while international business-class cabins still usually have 20+ seats in them (and sometimes much more), you're correct in noting that they're much more expensive in relation.
The economics of running an airline hasn't changed. People still -- despite everything they complain about as a consequence -- shop exclusively for the lowest possible fare they can find anywhere, and damn the legroom and extra fees. Airlines, which need to maximize the revenue coming from the back end of the plane in order to stay profitable, know this and have responded by squeezing in more seats (witness the number of carriers now going to ten-across seating on international aircraft, switching to "slimline" seats and shaving more inches out of the legroom in order to add another row or two) and unbundling as much as they can into separate upsells to preserve that low advertised fare.
I recently picked up a business class seat from Australia to LA for 4x the economy price.
Well worth it for the short trip and being able to get some sleep and work done in air.
United has "Economy Plus" which is more legroom. I'm 6'2" and I find it fine. My advice is to upgrade to that and pay extra for the exit row. If there are 2 exit rows then book the one behind the one in front. You can't recline into an exit row so with the second set of exit rows you get a ton of space and no one that can recline into you.
The problem is that increasing the other basic economy tickets by the lost revenue (even all seats regardless of class) prices the seats out of competition, not to mention the costs in actually ripping the seats out, moving all the other seats, and getting the plane recertified/inspected.
> when someone reclines in front of me, the seat is literally 6 inches from my face
Serious question: would 8 inches be any better?
> I think they cram us in as tightly as humanly possible (literally) so that they can cajole more people into the first-class cabin and it's attendant price. It's not just awful; it's manipulative!
I think the intersection of people who can afford first class but who would consider taking basic economy with 8" of room but not 6" is exceedingly small.
They offer this service on most airlines, it's called economy plus on United.
I love a couple inches more wide. Maybe instead of a 3-3 row, they could sell a 2-3 row. Or just make the damn planes wider.
Even when I was skin and bones, 169 lbs and 6'2", I couldn't comfortably fit in these 17 inch wide seats. My shoulders are too wide. Now that I've plumped up, it's basically impossible.
Hell, I'd just appreciate a thin seat divider that clearly makes sure I'm not spilling into someone else's room.
Did you read the article? Because the entire point of the article is that people aren't actually getting it for cheaper.
It assumes that people will automatically buy the next-highest fare bucket in order to avoid the horrors of Basic Economy, but the history of the airline business in the US over the past couple decades suggests that the vast majority of travelers will complain about how horrible the low-fare experience is, then book it anyway.
And the one day you go into the store, and they tell you "We just introduced a new Basic Economy package!". It's still only $60, but now it's 5 pounds instead of 6. Or, for $12 more, you can upgrade to your previous 6 pound package.
May you pay more to upgrade, maybe you pay the same—but either way, what used to be $10/lb is now $12/lb. The price went up.
Now they are finally updating their seating and policy to be in-line with what the discount airlines offer. So they aren't charging more for economy. They're pricing it inline with the level of service you get, something they weren't able to do before.
Hmm, I don't think first class on an aircraft has anything on the better ocean liners in the 'dignified' stakes - if you've got the time to burn.
> Flying United to Europe you
> either have crummy economy
> or rather expensive first
I think they called it "Business First" before they switched to "Polaris".
Once I got on United Gold, I could pick weird flights (undesireable times, maybe the shittier airport) that would automatically upgrade a full ticket to first class. But a full fare economy is basically the same price as a non-refundable first class. So it only works if a business is picking up the tab.
All told, it's easily 2+ hours on top of your flight.
On a train, I get out my laptop, do some work (the wifi is usually free; eat shit, gogoinflight), maybe nap a bit, and arrive in about the same total time. Much nicer.
To Boston though I usually fly. It is actually much faster if you leave at the right times to avoid traffic which you'd want to do if driving too. It's about 100% faster in my experience.
I drove to Chicago once and that was about 12 or 13 hours. I've flown a bunch of times and it takes, door to door (depending on when you leave, etc) about 4 hours total. So it's much faster.
It's a shame really! A high speed track between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg would really improve accessibility for the city and be well used I think. I know there's been some talk of it, but no real progress made.
There is a very good youtube video on this subject.
The Northeast Corridor[1], where the DC-NYC route that was previously mentioned is part of, is owned primarily by Amtrak -- so they get priority on the rails and can run as often (and as fast) as they please. However, they share the rails with other passenger rail lines so both entities cooperate on scheduling and maintenance.
Not to mention that there are sections that are designated as high speed sections, consist of 4 tracks (1 local and 1 express track in each direction), and is electrified. Plus, there are regional transportation agencies (and Amtrak) that operate locomotives capable of 150mph+.
Yes, I know this speed pales in comparison to Europe, but as far as I'm aware, it's still faster than any other rail system in the US.
That's why when Northeast US people rave about Amtrak service (between Boston and DC), and everyone else doesn't, both sides think the other side is crazy due to a myopic view.
What suffers in the Northeast is delivery of freight, so almost all of it needs to go by truck, which contributes to traffic congestion, and drives even more people to mass transit for long distances (which makes it easier to make a convincing case for expanding passenger rail operations). Or to relocate to more densely-populated cities that have rail access.
One interesting by-product of this, is diesel engines are banned in New York City rail tunnels, so the only way to get freight from New Jersey into New York city, is via a 140-mile detour known as the the Selkirk Hurdle[2].
In other parts of the US, the rails are owned by freight companies (BNSF, CSX, etc), so their customers' cargo gets priority, and Amtrak suffers because they don't automatically win the "battle" like they do in the Northeast.
Additionally, in these areas, due to the lack of electrification, Amtrak has to rely on an aging fleet of diesel locomotives[3] that break down often, and when they do, everything gets backed up. Couple this with the fact that the only section of Amtrak's network that's profitable is the Northeast Corridor and there's less incentive to throw good money after bad, and also leads to politicians calling for the defunding or even eradication of Amtrak.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkirk_hurdle 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amtrak_rolling_stock#L...
It was a real eye-opener for me.
Because of this, people frequently spend a lot of non-productive time at the airport, because they are afraid of the (small) chance that they can miss their flight entirely.
I have colleagues that prefer to drive that, and I only do it if it's the last option available. For me, the driving is my full day and them I'm exhausted while taking a flight I can nap or do work - much less unproductive time.
I think a 4-5 hour one-day drive is about my limit before I'll look hard at flight options. I also don't mind taking a flight for work on my "own time" since I find the whole process rather peaceful and can just zone out reading/catching up on news. Driving you'll have to pay me :)
To each their own though - I know without precheck and being able to jump the standby list flying would be much more miserable. It's certainly a race to the bottom that's sad to watch.
the US does a lot of trains, but generally for short distances on commuter corridors, and municipal light rail. we don't do high speed passenger rail, which is probably what you're thinking of.
You can choose from literally hundreds of car seats when purchasing a vehicle, and I have never, ONCE been in a car seat less comfortable than the standard airline economy seats which, despite coming from different manufacturers across different airlines, are universally terrible. Flat as a board so you put pressure on your tailbone, no support anywhere, just terrible. I'd rather sit on a park bench.
Give me the option of paying $200 per ticket to sit in my car's seats on an airplane, I'd do it every time.
Even economy plus is weird because it just means I can't reach the touch screen without leaning forward :D
You can solve most of the other problems by being super late to your flight. Cuts the waiting and queuing but does mean you have to check your bags. Often this is okay or even preferable because less stuff to haul around airport.
Oh and noise cancellation headphones have changed my life. You can actually hear the stewardess when they talk to you because your ears aren't worn out from the engine noise. It's amazing! Easily the best $300 I ever spent in terms of improving airplanes.
Or if you travel a lot for work.
In Delta's case, at least, it depends on how many seats are free, and how you rank. The ranking is based on all kinds of stuff. So for less-flown and less-upgraded routes, it's easy to upgrade. Other routes have more people flying first class by paying and more competition for the free upgrades.
A "normal" person who doesn't rack up tens of thousands of miles a year will absolutely never see an upgrade.
I'm not small, I'm travel size. ;)
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-strangely-successfu...
Just a quick googling got me this: http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/13/news/economy/train-plane-car...
Cars and trucks: 5.75 deaths per billion miles
Commercial air travel: 0.06 deaths per billion milesI feel that's what worries people. Ya, per mile traveled its less likely, but per accident I imagine is a much different story.
honestly that makes no sense
Accidents on country roads are often fatal though, so maybe that is where the difference would come from (and country driving is not an alternative to flying commercial).
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/roadway-and-environment/fa...
So you're right, country driving is more dangerous than urban driving, but both are far more dangerous than flying on a per-mile basis.
And the "cost" outside of that is shuffling around an airport listening to an audiobook for a couple of hours, then a few hours of cramped pleasant conversation with a stranger or mediocre naps or reading a book?
It's not the ideal situation, of course, but the last flight I was on I was able to program my first game (shitty breakout clone in Lua and Love2D) from start to finish.
Some of the fares are really cheap these days. For example a return flight from Manchester to Dublin booked two weeks in advance is £20. That's a journey that can only be done by flying for one hour or driving for two followed by a three hour ferry.
Or perhaps even better, a return from Manchester to Nürnberg for ~£30 in 2 hours instead of a 14 hour drive plus ferry. The fuel for that alone (not including the ferry) would cost £170.
I just don't understand the complaints!
Booking a few months in advance I can get a return trip to the otherside of the world (Australia) for under £700 and get there in less than 24 hours. I find that incredibly cheap and would be mindblowing just 20 years ago.
Here in Australia, I check in on the mobile app, arrive at the airport around 40 minutes before my domestic flight, take 1 minute to walk straight to the automated Qantas Bag Drop point (and there's almost never a queue of more than 1 or 2 other travellers), take around 30 seconds to scan my boarding pass or frequent flyer card, put my (complimentary) checked bag with its RFID baggage tag straight on the machine, 30 seconds later I have my baggage receipt.
1 minute later, I'm on my way through security - I have to take my laptop out of my bag and empty metal from my pockets, but I'm not usually taking off my shoes and there's no LAG restrictions on domestic services. No ID checks either (admittedly a possibility of being stopped for 30 seconds for an "explosives residue" test, though). A minute later, I'm on the other side, and I'm already lining up to buy an only slightly overpriced drink from the cafe.
The whole process is quick enough that when you don't have checked luggage, it's absolutely possible to walk in the front of the terminal and see FINAL CALL on the departures screen, and still make it to the gate in time.
The seat dimensions on domestic aircraft aren't great (and I'm 6'4", so believe me, I know) but it's not really that much more uncomfortable than a car, and it's definitely better than being on a bus for 8 hours. The overhead bin space is way less of a problem when you're on a traditional carrier that unlike the American ones still gives you a complimentary checked bag.
And for anyone who suffers from mild motion sickness (like myself), it's way nicer to be in an aircraft and still be able to read a book than to be on the road.
I can definitely live with this.
Maybe this is a generational thing? I've only been traveling for the past 3 years and to me everything seems normal.
Edit: There is one thing that really bugs me: The insecticide spray they release into the cabin on some routes. What's next? Barnaby Joyce personally raiding the cabin looking for traces of Pistol and Boo?
It's not hard to imagine a scenario where 10 years later whatever chemical they use is linked to some form of cancer and then a class action lawsuit follows.
I'm an American and I travel back to the US as seldom as possible, in large part due to the bullshit you have to go through to travel there. Every time I go back I feel like I'm treated like a criminal, with my only crime being that I need to get on a plane.
And as bad as the normal procedure is, it's much worse if you have to book a flight on short notice - two of the last three trips I've taken to the US were because either a family member had died or was dying. Honestly, when you're just off a 10 hour flight and you don't know whether or not your mother died while you were on the way, the last thing you have patience for is yet another asshole border control guy asking you question after question.
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about airport security in the US.
I've timed it with friends with global entry going through at the same time and they shaved off maybe 5 minutes.
Either ATL, SEA, LAX, JFK, and MSP are way better than average, or global entry isn't worth it except for the tiny percentage of international travelers that commute that way.
Point being, for US citizens, CBP is plenty fast enough without global entry.
The reinforcement of cockpit doors and additional sky marshals are what keep that incident list short today.
In the past, the message was, give the hijackers what they want and no one will get hurt.
Of course you can always do better. But compared to Europe, I've found the TSA to be very quick working and quite friendly. I worried a bit after reading so many bad articles, but then wondered that most of them kept smiling and being polite despite their intense work.
This presumes that the TSA keeps bombs out of the plane, which does not seem to be the case.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/homeland-security/2449...
Shoes, belts, and taking the laptop out are the only significant pain point that America has that the rest of the world doesn't. And the shoes thing is a the result of someone walking through security with bombs in his shoe, so it's hard to be too critical.
If the airport did not have American flags all over, I would have thought that I'm in a third-world country.
Typically I arrive about 30-45min before boarding begins and it's no problem whatsoever. I agree most countries I've travelled to have the security lines figured out a lot better in the US, and I just recently got TSA PreCheck so I don't have to take off my shoes and take out my laptop, but it's more about the convenience than the speed.
Lower fuel costs means budget airlines can compete more aggressively, and major carriers have to lower their own prices to stay competitive. So they have to cut corners other ways to maintain growth.
For me, the upside of much cheaper travel beats these downsides. If you travel light and educate yourself about fees, airline travel really isn't so bad.
Hopefully self-driving or at least largely autonomous cars at an affordable price will make this a no-brainer for everything except trans-oceanic flights. My car has a seat that's more comfortable than any seat I've had on an airplane so far.
Take meat. Used to be you'd go to the butcher for your meat, and you'd get a reasonably good product, from a butcher who knew where the meat came from, probably even the farmer who reared the meat. That was the way almost everybody got their meat, so the fixed overheads of having a butcher shop was spread over a large customer base.
Move along a couple of decades. Supermarkets, with their more efficient logistics, eat into the meat trade. Butcher shops almost completely disappear. But supermarket meat goes through a longer supply chain with larger suppliers that have the efficiencies of scale to cope with the pricing power supermarkets have. The butcher shops that survive turn into boutiques, where their unique selling proposition is what used to be commonplace: that they know where the meat is coming from and probably know the farmer that reared it.
The market bifurcates into two basic strategies, low price and high quality (see also Porter's Cost Leadership and Differentiation).
The consumer who's willing to pay a little bit more for a little bit more quality ends up having to pay a lot more rather than a little bit more, because the pool of people who could spread the fixed costs of the higher quality is split - most go for the lowest priced product. There's a ratchet effect, where slightly higher quality products are, at the margin, increasingly expensive because there's no scale in that strategy: the more expensive they become the less uptake they get, which means they have less scale, which means they become more expensive.
In some ways it's a collective action problem: what would be a better outcome for a large group of people can't really occur because individual actions can't sustain a stable state change. In other ways - many, if not most economists believe this - it's a better outcome overall, because more people get to use the bargain basement product.
But I think people in the middle are usually worse off in commoditized markets.
This is false. 15 percent in the US are at or below the poverty line. The remaining 85 percent certainly aren't at the top.
This shows it more clearly.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Distribu...
I certainly don't.
"nothing in the middle" is a blatant lie and hackernews discussions are much better when they are backed by facts and logical arguments rather than political clap trap.
71% making less than $50k/y.
51% of households.
There's quite a few households and quite a lot of people between $35k and $100k. The claim that there is no middle class is blatantly, provably false. The very, very top has a lot. I don't think anybody is disputing that (I'm certainly not). But there are a lot of people who make a solid, middle class income.
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/...
> In 2015, in the United States, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was at an annual income of US$11,770; the threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was US$24,250.
Do you consider this getting by?
I don't deny that the commodity situation is better for people at the lower end of the income distribution. It's the middle that gets hollowed out.
It's impossible for everyone to be happy when you're making the collective decision.
Airlines have jacked up the prices of comfortable berths people can sleep in on long haul journeys to almost 10x the price of shrinking torture chairs that most of us buy. For a long while business class and coach drew apart in price even as business got more luxurious with flat beds and fancy wines while coach seats in Boeing's newest, most advanced 787 jets are the narrowest trans-oceanic seats ever sold and Spirit/Frontier domestic seats don't even recline anymore.
But that difference was driven by corporate executive passengers whose employers were paying the 10x prices and getting tax breaks for doing so. Corporate sales is complicated and charging more can actually sell more units so the airlines carefully eliminated mid-priced options to force businesses to pay far more for the very profitable business class seats than their marginal cost.
And economic rationality has reasserted itself. Premium economy seating is now common on airlines outside the USA without such easily gamed large corporations to scam. The premium economy is similar in quality to old-fashioned business class seating at prices that middle class leisure travellers can afford. Mostly you can't buy it from the USA without paying a steep premium, but anyone flying to the USA from abroad has been able to for about a decade. Carriers refused to sell it at the same prices in the USA because running the game on corporate purchasing departments is so lucrative. For example, JAL and Cathay Pacific round trip fares between the Far East and USA in premium economy have been about $500-1000 more originating in the USA than in their home countries.
But Delta and American are now outfitting planes with premium economy because it's the most profitable use of space for carriers that have it and supporting the corporate business class sales inflation scam can't hold it back anymore. American is flying the new class on planes already. Even CX and JL prices are starting to rationalize.
So the key variable in airline discomfort has been American corporate purchasing culture irrationality and not the natural division of markets into tiers. Corporate purchasing irrationality and cartel pricing to exploit it are also the drivers of advance-purchase fares, last-minute price gouging, saturday night stay requirements, steep premiums for one-way fares, and lots of other paradoxical and nasty pricing strategies.
Maybe part of the problem is the tendency to hyperbolize.
Most airlines that I've been on have started turning the exit row into a "non-first-class extra legroom" row. On a few occasions I've seen very tall people sitting there. And there's nothing wrong with building a range of legrooms into a plane. But I don't see why there should be some requirement that a costly good - legroom on a plane - be provided to more people than actually want to pay for it.
It costs a much larger premium than the space differential, it largely costs more due to price discrimination, because many fliers in business aren't the ones paying for their tickets. If you're talking about real first class (which can carry up to a 30-50x price premium on the economy rate), there's also very attentive service, nice champagne, multi-course meals made by an onboard chef served on china plates with silverware, seclusion, sometimes even private rooms. I would not characterize it as "largely because of its larger legroom".
If you mean to say that many people choose business/first because of the additional space, that's more correct. But even in business, it's more about lying flat and other factors than simple legroom.
And it's not always as somebody pointed out above that you may chose the door seats for the same price. I had to take a last minute trip for this summer vacation. Those places were part of some "Comfort" plan I didn't even hear of while booking. Fortunately those were the only ones free on the plane and they let me sit there for free. They were booked out for the flight back though...
It's a pain, it got worse through the decades and I fail to understand that development. Was the free market not supposed to make everything better and cheaper? ;)
But a sigificant component of the cost is simply that first class carries fewer people per linear foot than does economy.
Allowing the unbundling of services is much more likely to allow the emergence of an "extra leg room only" class, than is a situation where services must be bundled into a standard package. If the prices have to be the same regardless of seat location, and be packaged with an identical bundle of food, blankets, etc, then that's a strong disincentive to attempt to sell a separate class of legroom seats. And it's much more likely that a "standardized seat" will be too short for very tall people than it will be tall enough - and even if it were, that would mean fewer seats on the plane and thus higher prices.
So what happens with people of below average intelligence and physical ability? They're likely to suffer from lower earnings. Should a person of average height and on minimum wage subsidise a well-paid tall person?
In an ideal world, chairs would adjust so that everyone is comfortable and still allow the same number of people on the plane at the same price. However, in the real world, we probably have to accept that allocating comfort based on ability to pay, with a bit of flexibility on both sides, is the best outcome.
I assume it is ok though that a short well-paid person to subsidize a tall less-paid individual?
I'm not saying it's at all comfortable, just that it's rather hyperbolic to call it 'torture'. I have a book, an MP3 player and some headphones, and then look forward to landing. I prefer to have the money than pay for extra comfort. FWIW, I also have a pretty small car for exactly the same reason. I wouldn't call that torture, and wouldn't expect anyone to subsidise big cars just so I feel more comfortable for the same price.
"Having to pay what I deem a high price for a good and/or service I deem insufficient? Help help, I'm being oppressed!"
Wanting enough space for my elbows to be able to stay within the confines of my seat should not cost me 10x as much.
Economy plus might not be the best thing in the world, but 50% more is at least within the realm of human affordability, and partial recline and my own armrest sounds downright luxurious. For 5x as much as a coach fare, the perks better be things I shouldn't discuss on a public forum.
And I don't really care about the quality of food or service, how many times they bring me a hot towel, etc. Just want a good seat.
Take cheese, for example - it's much easier to taste the difference with cheese. I've never had a UK supermarket Comte comparable to a Comte from a cheesemonger, no matter how premium it was advertised.
Or pastries. The only widely distributed supermarket in the UK with what I would consider edible pastries is Waitrose, and not all branches have a decent range. But bakeries in the UK have their own mass-market pathologies.
What really brought the insight home to me was my experience eating in Morocco. There, bread was baked by street vendors - it was always fresh and warm. You have to get lucky with timing to get the same experience in the UK, even if you go to bakeries. I realised we've lost certain qualities of life with our economic setup, and the more I found out about good food, the more I realised that supermarkets and commoditization had created a mechanism that forced me to work much harder to get good food.
Anyway, this isn't directly related to airline seats, but I do think the ratchet effect is real and it shows up in a lot of places.
Maybe that's just the UK? In Germany, many supermarket and discount store chains have recently been outfitting their stores with bakery stations, where you have a somewhat decent chance of actually getting warm rolls.
Also, I've had a pretty good experience with premium products in German supermarkets. I only rarely buy from a premium store (sometimes for cheese, almost never for meat), but when I do, their performance is pretty comparable to supermarket premium lines.
Mind, I was fortunate enough to live in the best baking city in Israel (something like 53 bakeries in a city of 300000 people, plus supermarkets and open street markets), but still.
It does tie in with two-income families (households are more time-poor) and other changes in the economy, it's not just commoditization.
Or perhaps even better, a return from Manchester to Nürnberg for ~£30 in 2 hours instead of a 14 hour drive plus ferry. The fuel for that alone (not including the ferry) would cost £170.
I just don't understand the complaints!
Booking a few months in advance I can get a return trip to the otherside of the world (Australia) for under £700 and get there in less than 24 hours. I find that incredibly cheap and would be mindblowing just 20 years ago.
When I fly I get a free upgrade to economy plus (it ain't much but the extra legroom is nice) and occasional upgrades to first class, a free check bag, priority boarding, and priority security. And that's only with basic status.
Checking in online and packing only carry-on means I can breeze through pretty quickly. Add a trusted traveler program and it's almost like flying 20 years ago.
My guess is the goal of airlines is to encourage frequent flier loyalty by making conveniences a part of the status benefits, and then squeeze the occasional travellers for more dollars at the same time.
And I even like to fly Ryanair, the service isn't great but they're basically always on time and boarding/de-boarding is much faster than with other airlines (don't understand why only no-frills airlines use both doors for boarding). Don't need food&drinks for a 1-2hr flight, and leg room is enough for me for that time.
I don't really know where ticket prices in the US come from. I often find cheaper fares (for the same distance) in Europe than the US, even with airlines offering free alcohol on board and lounges that are way better than what you find in the US (domestic lounges in the US are laughable).
I always take into account the cost of going to the airport; the far away cheap airport often loses out (as saving e.g. 10 EUR isn't worth the hassle).
Going anywhere further than just the airport by train is expensive. I try to take the bus until 2.5 hour trips. After that I try to avoid unless you can fly. Pretty ridiculous!
150 vs 75 is 2x, not 3x. And it's a bit strange to read that you "would give anything" if 75 euros is too much.
This helps a little: http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/14032/market-econo...
Yeah, just that. Merely taking like 7 hours to get from the US to Europe sitting on a chair in the sky and being fed -- as opposed to a trip that used to take months or weeks, people got sick and/or died in the way, and unless you were rich you were getting terrible food (or what you brought yourself) and bunk beds.
>and the basic human dignity of having personal space
Immigrants from Europe towards the US / Ellis Island: http://www.amicidicapracotta.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/...
Not accepting the current state of things is a good way to improve things. Instead of comparing to the past, compare it to other regions. One commenter compared USA to Europe and said USA is significantly worse, irrespective of how things were loads of years ago.
The other side of this is that without seeing things in perspective we might not appreciate the huge improvements that went into it.
And we might even lament for "first world problems" making mountains out of molehills, or take everything for granted...
But, more precisely, because I found the kind GP's lamentations over the top when speaking of modern air travel, and think that it would only be justified if GP was indeed speaking about pre-airplane travel.
30 minutes to wake up/get ready, 1 hour to the airport, arrive 90 minutes early, 30 minutes to de-board, 30 minutes for luggage/rental car and I'm at 4 hours on top of flight time. Most of that time I'm bothered by what I'm being put through - whether it's a TSA line, one of several airline lines, poor customer service, overpriced ... everything, and the general unhealthy atmosphere I'd happily commit an additional 2 hours to the drive. I get to be in my own car and avoid all kinds of frustration in favor of zoning out on music I enjoy.
I've been flying for over 30 years.
Shopping for tickets is easier. Before you had to go to a travel agency or wait in line at the airport. Now you just buy online.
Checking in has gotten a lot better. The last so many times I flew, I did not even have a wait. Go to the kiosk, get your tickets, and not even a wait to go to a person and have them checked in.
Fighting for overhead bin space is the same. Seat dimensions are roughly the same. Lavatories are the same.
Only security lines has gotten worse.
Fighting for overhead space is indisputably worse since airlines mostly abandoned free checked bags.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/travel/shrinking-airline-s...
While they continue to reduce capacity, load factors increase. They have everything down to a fine science using Big Data and their Algo's to come up with how many seats to oversell, how many folks they can leave behind, what flights to cancel, etc. They have completely embraced this business model of monetizing every triviality that they can possible get away with. The people traveling are just units, not even customers anymore. Everything is about squeezing every penny they can out of every seat mile and who gives a shit whether you are treated like a human. It's not like you have many options. It's either Shit A, Shit B or Shit C, pick one.
How I look forward to self driving cars that can get 800-1000 miles on a single charge. I can sit in the comfort of my vehicle and read, sight see, rest, or even work as I travel to my destination. I would gladly sit in the car for 10-12 hours instead of flying.
I think that that same attitude is responsible for the current state of the higher education and healthcare in the US. As long as the interested parties can present the "us versus them" outlook to the public ("them" is of course poor/lazy/lower class people), they can get away with lots and lots.
But continue to jump to conclusions and create generalizations based on your limited worldview, because that's not at all the same attitude responsible for the current state of humanity.
I'm saying you're generalizing. This behavior is toxic. Instead of saying, 'You know what, you're right, that's really not a representative sample size and I shouldn't have made the generalization.', you doubled down on making it about generalizations.
But at the end of the day, the only person that behavior hurts is you. So, sorry man.
You have, though, have you not? You have picked the side of "don't generalize people ever", clearly, no?
I'm on the side of "generalizations and stereotypes are not inherently bad, it's the actions of the person that are bad"
Do you disagree with that?
You call my actions toxic, but what exactly did i do that was toxic? I'm advocating that we judge people by their actions, not their beliefs. What is so wrong with that?
In other words, Don't assume i'm somehow "against" a group of people just because i have assumptions towards them. My dad is heavily religious, i assume and generalize that most religious people don't want me swearing heavily around them - so what! Generalizations aren't bad. Actions are bad. I don't get your view point, clearly.
Generalizations aren't bad, they're just one persons understanding of a group of people. Clearly, based on his/her experiences he is able to generalize the above statement, and that isn't incorrect - it's just his/her generalization. We all have them, and they just represent our combined experiences.
Generalizations are only bad if you condemn others based on them - but that's not the fault of the generalization, but rather the fault of the person. Generalizations are how you live life. You get mugged 10 times by the same race/class/location/etc, you might start to generalize against that combination, and you're not wrong, it clearly happened. That's not to say that all of that race/class/location will be the same way. Same goes for animals. If i get bit by a snake 10 times, i might start to fear snakes. Are all snaked bad? No, but my experience with them is bad, so rightfully i have a bit of a stigma and fear towards them.
This culture of fearing assumptions is bewildering to me. Can we just blame the actual actions of people, and not assume that because they generalize that might, at some point, be classist/racist/etc? Can we have some sanity here?
If somebody wants to carry a lot of luggage on, or eat a bunch of in-flight meals, that's fine. Doesn't mean they get to demand that these things be included always, for everybody. We could demand that complimentary champagne and cheesecake be included in a flight; that doesn't mean that it wouldn't cost money or that people who didn't want it wouldn't be paying for the people who do.
It doesn't help people, especially those with less money, to demand that only comprehensive and luxurious services be available.
As for your reaction to the comment: you make really great points while maybe neglecting to acknowledge that many services are cheaper at scale. So by providing them to everyone as part of a bundle, the overall cost is way lower for everyone.
The iPhone might be a great example of this.
I mean, what's stopping them from just raising prices for bundled services? Nothing, besides competition. The fact that these services can be paid for separately is not some way for them to "get you" somehow, it's just unbundling.
Yes, there's theoretically economies of scale for some things. But there's also a lot of potential advantages to pricing specific services - especially for things like luggage, where capacity per passenger often has hard limits. If there really are economies of scale, I suspect the airlines themselves will find them more effectively than blanket regulations requiring a particular service level.
How is the iPhone an example?
Regarding the example he gave - I am not sure how the IPhone applies, but I think another example would be the healthcare. When everyone pays for his own healthcare through a system of private insurers you get the horror that is American healthcare. When people just pay taxes, which collectively pay for medical expenses you get Western European system.
This is a very different argument to me than healthcare though. In my world view, healthcare and education have widespread, socially beneficial properties. I pay my local taxes to fund a highschool that i don't have kids in, because i don't want morons in the work force next year. Likewise, i want to pay more taxes for healthy educated people in the work force, because i feel it benefits me.
This is very different than how much an airline is charging for their service. An airline is no different than a hotdog vendor to me, and they should be able to charge whatever they want for their services.
Granted, i will admit that there is a bit of a slippery slope - a good example being Comcast. I loathe Comcast's business practices because we (many of us) feel trapped by them, as we only have one choice, due to the difficult nature of laying pipes. Same goes for airlines i imagine. If all airlines started to gouge us, many people can't simply drive instead - so clearly some regulation is needed in the case of airlines that the hotdog vendor doesn't have to worry about.
The heart of the argument made in the article is that somehow, by unbundling services that were bundled, airlines are somehow able to raise prices above what they were otherwise able to do. I don't think that's true at all.
I mean, I sure like a pop and a box of chocolate-covered raisins when I go to the movies. Therefore I demand that all movie tickets include food.
I like to watch streaming videos on my phone. Therefore I demand that all phone plans include unlimited data.
I like big comfortable seats and laptop plugs when I travel on the inter-city train. Therefore I demand that municipal buses include these things.
You see where this goes?
And US healthcare is totally not the same. Firstly, the majority of US healthcare expenditures are tax-funded, about 65%, mostly through Medicare, Medicaid, tax subsidies and other programs. Secondly, it is effectively cartelized by the government, through incentives that make it extremely tax-advantageous to get healthcare through employers, to limits on the training and numbers of doctors that drive up prices, to now, a system of exchanges that require that people purchase insurance from approved insurers at government-set prices. It is so, so incredibly far from "everyone pays for his own healthcare through a system of private insurers".
There are plenty of countries that operate on a more private (less regulated) platform that have excellent health care opportunities, e.g. Thailand. Likewise, there are plenty of countries that operate on a publicly-funded model that have inferior healthcare, e.g. Russian Federation.
And yes, original commenter, I'm American and I'd prefer an unbundled pricing model because I don't use or need most of the things that get bundled into the price.
The idea that an airline can simply include many more services while maintaining roughly the same prices seems very false: there would never have been budget airlines in the first place if it worked.
Are you saying you can get the same prices for components as Apple does, regardless of quantity?
Or are you willing to admit that Apple, given its demand for greater quantities of components, is able to obtain better pricing for the components than an average Joe?
And would you further entertain the idea of an airline buying, say, peanuts, is in a similar position to pay less than the average consumer, given they are purchasing in much greater quantities?
That's not inherently a bad thing. Companies are allowed to raise prices. If the prices are noncompetitive, then people will choose other carriers.
Flight is not a right, nor is flight at a given price point. If there is room for cheaper airlines to capture fares at $300 while AA/DL/etc are charging $350, they will do so.
I want to fly in a bigger seat, with checked luggage and a carry-on, eat, and have an alcoholic beverage or two. If someone wants to be on the same place with a single bag, the smallest seat, and not eat or drink, they should absolutely have a much cheaper experience than me.
That's not classism, it's common sense. I shouldn't get free drinks at their expense.
In the end everyone wants to make money, but at certain point it starts bordering on unethical, this squeezing of money out of customers. I am pointing out that if one spins these practices in a certain way, one can even get the customers to support the initiatives which are not in their interests.
Or: "the companies are pricing competitively while maintaining a profit. Take a look at Southwest's profit margin.[0] 7-10% is nothing, especially when you look at the huge maintenance and regulatory costs surrounding commercial carriers. At 7% an unexpectedly bad month could be disastrous. I mean look at the margins moving into the 10th anniversary of 9/11. From 3.9% profit to 3.3% loss.
> I am pointing out that if one spins these practices in a certain way, one can even get the customers to support the initiatives which are not in their interests.
It's in my interest to get everything for free but that's not realistic, is it?
You're acting like the airlines are a dark cabal of billionaires trying to trick passengers into giving away money for nothing in return. It's totally within their right to raise prices for whatever reason they want, and it's totally within passengers' rights to shop elsewhere. There are a lot of carriers at every point on the price spectrum.
I did a ton of travel in my 20s out of Denver, where I was a United frequent flyer. In my experience they have one of the smallest seat pitches in the industry, which even though I'm 6'4" didn't matter much at the time due to the free upgrades, but when I started travelling less, I simply didn't have a lot of freedom to just go to American on a whim.
Is unbundling + keeping the base price constant any more unethical than increasing the bundled price? If so, why?
The people paying these fees are actually subsidizing the person who pay the vanilla fare.
It costs essentially nothing for the airline to let me pick a seat, but they now want 20 dollars a flight to do it.
If someone is willing to pay the airline $20 more than you to pick a given seat, free seat picking costs them $20.
As a non-USA person here I was also amazed with some of these comments. But I am not sure it is only about "subsidizing" others (which it also is). If you read a lot of these comments, they go into great lengths into describing their particular live choices, their very deliberate little decisions they make while traveling all the time, and how these makes them special. I feel that there is another side to this individualism: the pride on ones choices, on being unique and in some way, standing out of the masses through their clever use of their options.
It reminded me about another thing that surprised me in the USA: food menus are lengthy, and everything is customizable! You have to choose ingredients, topping, side, everything!
I guess, for a lot of USAmericans this feels empowering. Interestingly, coming from the other side of the Atlantic, it had the opposite effect on me: I felt overwhelmed, that I was required to do make decisions and do too much thinking, that at the end, it was the chef's job to offer me a menu with dishes that make sense and taste good! In fact in Europe, good restaurants tend to have very few options, you go there because you acknowledge that the person that designed the menu knows more about those dishes than you...
I guess, I am also ok about "subsidizing" others... I know that some days I will eat at the flight, some days I won't, some days I will need extra luggage, some days I won't... It is just easier if we don't have to go through all the bureaucracy of managing these decisions. It is cheaper too, since the accounting and planning becomes easier. Some people might be getting be getting more or less out of it, but it evens out with time anyways. I can get my "feeling of importance" by other means.
There is something more this might show us about the "customization" vs "just works" in how different people prefer their software. But I will think about this some other day...
Culturally we've lost the idea of tastemakers, whether it's food, music, film, or whatever. Everyone's free to enjoy what they like and having any kind of sophistication is faux pas.
Having strong opinions about what is good and what sucks will quickly get the ire of others.
Expressing said opinion might get the ire of other. Besides, Americans seem to enjoy ire, so that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Yep. American business seems to have convinced the population to recategorize management and decision-making onto ourselves. It's a perfect example of "shadow work": work that was moved from a company's employees to the customer in order to de-skill the job.
I'm theoretically fine with taking a trip by booking a flight, booking a rental car, and booking a hotel room all separately. I did it just this past summer. Being able to give some loose descriptions of what we needed to a travel agent and then just get an email asking for final approval would have been kinda nice, though, especially if it makes economies of scale available so that lower-end customers can have nice things too.
As it was, booking my honeymoon was a bit of a hassle.
I guess meticulously optimizing every aspect of the flight could be seen as a way of staying ahead of the curve and in this context not wanting to pay for someone else's baggage is understandable. If you do think of yourself as just an average "customer" (and majority of other does) then the costs will even out in the end.
you mean "greed"
We already have people dying of deep vein thrombosis due to inadequate leg room. Now they want to take away the restroom. When train systems of old did that, people started defecating in the cabin. That and overcrowding spread disease. I'm sure the thread of cholera will get another 10% of the population to pony up $50.
Next step (based on railway abuses) is to pipe "more" oxygen into first and economy plus. (The rails stopped covering the economy section in some areas, but I don't think airlines could get away with depressurizing coach).
After that: Livestock!
(I had a reference for this railway stuff, it was a famous historcal book. Can't find it right now.)
Also, the US air system used to be heavily regulated and much nicer from a customer service perspective. A lot of Americans still remember those days.
"Global warming is causing problems that we need to fix, and that needs money. How should we get the money:
A) Fixed, $1000/person head tax
B) Carbon tax"
I think you'd be pretty livid about paying the same, regardless of how much you economize on your carbon emissions.
Health care is a special case because a majority of the ballooning-cost stuff is randomly distributed and it's effectively set up as (social) insurance, where everyone is paying for the risk of needing that care.
In the story two bears agree to meet that evening in Fitchburg. Henry decides to spend the day hiking the thirty miles to Fitchburg, and his friend decides to spend the day earning enough money to buy a train ticket to Fitchburg. It's a takeoff on a Thoreau passage, but it's a great way to talk to kids about what we're working for in the end.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Hikes-Fitchburg-D-B-Johnson/dp/...
[1] The US Airline Industry is Highly Profitable https://airinsight.com/2016/08/18/us-airline-industry-highly...
[2] The Most Hated U.S. Airline Is Also the Most Profitable https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-10/spirit-ai...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_bankruptcies_i...
If you look at the profits of existing airlines over the past decade then you're suffering from selection bias. You're also looking at a period soon after a bunch of big airlines were able to unload a lot of debt through bankruptcy. Between 9/11 and 2006, five major US airlines went through Chapter 11, so some of their subsequent success is funded by their former creditors. I don't know if any of that overcomes their recent profits or if the industry has become profitable even accounting for those things. It's certainly possible that they've finally figured out how to consistently make money in the long term.
Furthermore, a lot of international carriers have historically been government subsidized.
It certainly hasn't been a great business for most of its history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/energy-environmen...
If the airline didn't have the option to introduce 'basic economy' prices alongside 'economy' ones, they would either reduce the services offered to economy passengers, or charge a slightly higher price than their competitors.
I've heard of someone occasionally getting a good deal but usually you are paying close to full retail for the perks.
I suspect space is the main factor - I'm usually on LAX or IAH to AKl and it's almost always full.
Other than that I haven't noticed any difference such as special seating etc.
Suppose there was a local flight from local airport moving at such speeds, would you want to take it ?
There are occasions when crews will dial-in a higher Cost Index ( CI ), which tells the flight management computer to bias towards higher speed rather than lowest fuel consumption. But in general they are instructed to use specific CIs that reflect the airline's costs.
With the drop in oil prices some airlines have chosen to raise their default CIs, keeping costs the same whilst slightly increasing speed, whereas others have chosen to keep the CI unchanged and to profit from the additional margin.
The airlines are not making huge profits. In fact, they seem to file for bankruptcy constantly. Even though bankruptcy is sometimes a ploy to renegotiate union contracts, they are clearly not making big profits. So if the (overall) higher price is not going to profits, it's going to increased costs of some kind.