Their goal is to make ever-increasing profit, and they will get more and more efficient at it.
Whenever an article like this comes up I am shocked that it is "news". I thought everyone knew by now things are not what they used to be because everyone is trying to make more money. That is how the Western world functions. The sooner you get used to it, the better.
American consumers routinely choose lower-priced tickets over those on more-comfortable airlines. And when ticket prices go down, Americans fly more.
The real price of a ticket has fallen consistently since at least the 1980s [1]. Full-fare (i.e. first-class refundable) ticket prices today remain around where any ticket price was a few decades ago.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/1...
I guess care was taken to adjust for shorter (and hence cheaper) flights? If short flight started to become more common, I would expect the average price to fall, even if the ”actual" price stayed constant.
I guess they did, but not completely clear from the graph.
The graph shows per-mile costs of flying [1].
If we measure same-route costs, we find "in the 50s, a flight from Chicago to Phoenix could cost $138 round-trip — that’s $1,168 when adjusted for" 2014 prices [2]. A quick Kayak search shows that route now flies for as little at $65 on Frontier or about $120 on e.g. United. That's a 95% price reduction at the lowest tier.
(A P-class full-fare ticket on Delta is about $500. Given $138 in 1955 bought as much as $1,265 today [3], that's still a 60% real price reduction.)
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/15/air-travel-1950s_n_...
er, it certainly is cheaper than the 80s, but not sure what you mean by consistently there. Look at that graph post 2002.
"I thought everyone knew by now things are not what they used to be because everyone is trying to make more money."
People have always been trying to make more money. It's more that each corporation has more staff dedicated to wringing every last drip from the wet rag. e.g., the biggest supermarkets are most optimised and packed with marketing, loyalty incentives and more. Airlines pack in more seats, have in-flight shopping, etc.
"The sooner you get used to it, the better."
This point might've come across as "you have no choice." Probably more a matter of understanding the realities of finely-tuned capitalism and realising that you have choices. You can pay a premium for a better seat, for example. You can fly a cheaper airline and forgo checked baggage or in-flight meals/snacks.
Oh for sure. I didn't mean "you have no choice", I meant "everything in your life is optimized to make more money, so don't be surprised when they change to move towards that goal.
Packages of food are getting smaller, you check yourself out at the supermarket, you don't get plastic bags for free... the list is endless. It's the way the world works, so don't be surprised, and certainly it's not "news".
Airlines are not a very profitable business, and never have been. Most of the time they are flirting with bankruptcy or in bankruptcy.