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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

Airlines are sub 5% profit margin businesses, with huge risk factors.

As the joke goes, “how do you become a millionaire? Start with a billion dollars and buy an airline”.

It is only recently the airline business has had steady positive years, due to consolidation, and even then, COVID hit and almost wiped them out were they not bailed out.

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Right. So they should ignore their core competency and operational excellence and become banks. Got it.

Source that they are they ignoring their core competency?

Modifying a rewards programs should require a very miniscule portion of ann airline’s available labor hours, and aligning rewards to be proportionate to profitability seems like a common sense business move.

5% margins? Becoming banks? Scarce innovation in the space? Lack of cleanliness on airplanes? How depressed every other attendant seems to be these days? The safety issues we’re seeing with counterfeit parts?

What is your point?

That they should spend more money and lower profit margins even more? Or that they should increase prices so that they can spend more money to improve the things you listed?

Surely, airline employees are more knowledgeable about how much customers are willing to pay than non airline employees.

Airlines

Shouldn’t

Banks

Banks are the convergent evolutionary endstate of business, much like crabs are observed to be somewhat of a hobby of Nature in terms of the end state of evolution of many crustacean species. Or the capacity to send email is the evolutionary end state of software. Or politics is the end state of most fotms of online rhetorical discourse.

There is one step, and it is bank (Past a particular threshold).

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financialization.asp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html

Those observations aside, I do agree with your rough rhetorical position.

They should be broken up to increase competition. European (and asian) airlines provide better service at lower cost. The US airlines get bailed out every 10 years and so there is no incentive for them to improve their companies at all.

> Source that they are they ignoring their core competency?

Have you flown on an airplane in the last 10 years? I'd rather drive 15 hours to Florida than deal with the fucking airlines

Yes, often. It has been the same experience (satisfactory), except some have newer planes. Avoid buying the lowest tier pricing (stick to economy, or whatever has free carry on and lets you pick a seat).

I end up paying roughly $50 per hour of flight plus or minus, and it’s been consistent for my adult life (15+ years). Which is surprising considering inflation.

The only problems I have with flying are TSA and airport runway congestion itself.

> Avoid buying the lowest tier pricing

Easy to say when you have money

If you're flying at all, it's likely you are going to be spending some amount of money. In reality, it would be wildly unlikely that a person could afford a $200 ticket and not a $300 one with proper planning.

I'd rather not go to Florida in general if we're all speaking in extremes.

I jest, but which airlines have you been on? I've enjoyed my airline experiences more now than in the past flying Delta, American, United.

It's really about the whole expereince. Once I'm on the airplane, it's usually pretty OK. The security anal exam and general airport experience of modern-day air travel is what makes it unpleasant and is largely not the airlines' doing.

But yeah I agree, if it's less than 6 hours I'll almost always just drive.

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