Bait and switch
sethgodin.typepad.com
sethgodin.typepad.com
In short, consumer behavior isn't going to change, and airlines have no reason to change. Travel sites have the most to lose from these fees and the greatest ability to cause a change. If this trend is going to reverse, it has to come from them.
Also, did you know that the US blocks foreign ownership of airlines? That capital and competition would help too.
It is cheaper for me to book a round trip and just not take the return flight then to fly one way. Huh?
A friend of mine was trying to get round trip tickets from city A to city B recently. He found that it was significantly cheaper to purchase flights from city Z to B with a layover in A. All the flights between A and B were the same, but for some reason adding an extra destination of Z made it cheaper.
Airlines are in huge trouble from factors outside their control. They failed at being in control of their own destiny, and allowed other people/companies to control them.
If you are moving to London for the long term, you'll pay $950 without thinking about it. If you are going on vacation, you might be price sensitive. It worked much better before the internet.
If you skip the first flight intending to only take the return flight, some (all? just Mexicana?) airlines won't honor your ticket, and they won't return your money either. That's stealing.
Why is it that if I have two bags, one weighing 60 lbs. and one weighing 40 lbs. do I get charged an excess weight fee; yet if both those bags weighed 50 lbs. I would incur no penalty.
One ticket agent explained the issue was related to fuel consumption, but charging me for my bag does not make the bag weigh less (and let's not mention my above point that the total weight of the bags -- if distributed evenly -- would cost me nothing extra).
Another has explained it as being an issue with weight distribution, but I'm sure if they put one heavy bag on the left (or front) for two light bags on the right (or back) that the overall weight would distribute fairly even (not exact, but this is a jet airliner not a game of Jenga).
Truly its sad that the airlines have to resort to such penny-pinching measures.
But it doesn't make you think any less of any particular airline relative to their competition, because they all suffer from the same thing. Unless there's some legal way for an airline to circumvent the security lines (and I have to think there isn't or we'd already have that) there's no competitive disadvantage there.
In 20 years oil costs could make flying very unpractical.
Turbine jets are basically the best thing we know of for performing this specific task. We might be able to improve the fuel they are burning, but nothing is going to replace them for the next couple of decades at least.
But there's nothing inherently "lower" about a propeller. They work just as well at altitude as they do as sea level. It's just that market forces have dictated that props are better suited to low-altitude, low-speed commuter routes. But you could design a high altitude prop without difficulty.
As far as credentials go, I'm the author of the "YASim" dynamics model that FlightGear (http://www.flightgear.org) uses. So while I'm a hacker and not an aerospace engineer, I do have at least a little domain expertise.
Turbojets fly as fast as is practical given the market demand they are serving. If airlines offered people the choice of flying half as fast for a lower price the fast flight would still win (up to a certain point, as the supersonic option showed when Concorde was still flying.)
You could do even better by putting your turbofan onto a rigid airship, but that isn't going to happen either :)
We have a long way to go considering the efficiency of the airframes themselves. Fuel consumption could be reduced drastically if we could go a bit slower, or there would be some radical design change (think sailplanes). Most widebody airframes today look like flying buffalos, with the resulting air resistance.
Almost all air transport of people happens on the border of the transsonic regime, where air resistance is a lot higher than it could be. Reduce speed with 30%, and you'll reduce the total energy consumption by a considerable amount. One can only guess how customers would take this.
Market forces today don't look like they are convective to such change, but one can always hope that some startup is able to eat a big piece of the pie. Personally, I am very enthusiastic about companies like http://www.dayjet.com/, who specialize in slightly-expensive but pretty-painless transport.
Sadly, aviation is one of the most ass-backwards industries in the world, burdened by the largest amount of politics, subsidies, bureaucracy and regulation I've ever seen. There are definitely huge business opportunities here, but there are mountains and mountains of shit to wade through before we reach them. I believe that better personal air transport would be the way to go - better and cheaper GA airplanes. The competition and politics here are still in the world class, but not quite as cutthroat as among the airlines. And the capital requirements are survivable, and the existing airplanes are even more ass-backwards.
It says something about an area of business when the military has been driving the bleeding edge for fifty years.
This is one of the (few?) cases where government regulation is appropriate, one airline would go out of business but if every route changed there would be a month of griping and folks would get used to it.
The re-scheduling, route planning, change in maintenance schedules, etc would be a one time cost, but if that's true I can't imagine the airlines are not secretly hoping for something like that to give them some help.
If an airline now flies passengers 20,000,000 miles a day (100 flights x 200 passengers a plane x 1000 miles a flight) and needs 50 planes to do it, cutting the speed at which those planes fly in half will mean that the airlines need twice as many planes. The fixed costs on the planes are the same whether they are going 500Mph, 300Mph, or sitting on the ground, either way the company is still paying the lease or mortgage on the plane. Flight attendants and pilots have to be paid regardless of how fast the plane is moving.
Additionally, for passengers, arriving later isn't merely an annoyance to be endured, it will change decisions. People have alternative uses of their time, mechanics can't fix cars when they are in the air, doctors can't save lives. The (possible?) reduction in ticket cost wouldn't adequately compensate some people for the additional time that they lose. What your proposal just did was to take a private decision (for the airlines - how fast do I want to fly my planes, for the consumer - which ticket do I want to buy from a market of airlines that compete to get me there the fastest, cheapest, or some combination) and have taken that choice away by making a government mandate.
Huh? If it actually produces cost savings, folks who valued that cost savings more than time would flock to any airline that did it. If it doesn't, then why is govt regulation appropriate?
I doubt that minor changes in flight time matter to a lot of passengers, but since it's not my money at risk if I'm wrong, it's inappropriate for me to demand that others try.
If you think that you can run an airline better, do it. If you're right, you'll get rich and force existing airlines to either change or die. However, if you're not willing to risk your money, why should someone else be forced to risk theirs?
They are excellent. They pretty much blow everyone else away. I won't fly anyone else anymore.
Why?
- I can buy one way tickets and get full credit back anytime
- They are very often on time
- Customer service is excellent, they are upbeat and positive
- The website is excellent
- Their prices are very competitive
- I can choose my own seat away from the children and talkers
My advice to any other airline: Figure out what Southwest is doing and do that too. Stop complaining and looking for government bailouts. If one airline can be successful (60+ consecutive profitable quarters, growth, and raving fans), more than one can do it.
While I certainly agree that fuel hedging has played a large role in their current short-term profitability, there's a lot more at work than well timed utilization of financial derivatives.