Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by owenversteeg | Hacker News Reader

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There are a lot of theories for why the low-cost carriers are suddenly failing since 2020 in the US, but in my opinion the big one was inflation - of costs, of disposable income, and of expectations.

Pilot salaries and fuel costs both skyrocketed since 2020, and at the same time the US got significantly richer and people got more of a taste for luxury. Expensive, premium things have never been doing so well in the US. All of a sudden, you have a double whammy of low-cost carriers being forced to raise prices and get less competitive, while consumers are more inclined to pay for luxury.

Not to mention - American LCCs were never in that great of a position, structurally, vs the European LCCs. Ryanair thrives on quick turnarounds, cheap airports, cheap pilots, short flights and high population density. The US has none of those. The EU's population density is 112 people/km2 vs 36 in the US, even cheap US pilots are very expensive, turnarounds are slower, and there are few budget airports where the people live. The Port Authority is spending 25 billion dollars on revamping the three NYC area airports. Meanwhile Europe is full of cheap semirural airports like Frankfurt-Hahn, where the most recent renovation cost in the single digit millions. Where do you think you can land a 737 for cheaper?

> he EU's population density is 112 people/km2 vs 36 in the US

Arguments that try to compare population density are invariably wrong. Especially so with flights that go to population centers.

I would be curious to know exactly _why_ you think my argument is wrong, especially when I have proposed a decent mechanism relating to population density: cheap semirural airports and short flights. Frankfurt-Hahn or Paris Beauvais or Girona or Weeze have millions of people living right next door and are dirt cheap (multiple orders of magnitude cheaper than US airports.) Meanwhile, there are far more small rural airports in the US than in Europe, by approximately a factor of three [0] [1], but not enough people live by them to make regular flights efficient. For a great example of this, look at the Essential Air Service and how many taxpayer dollars the US spends to serve the many rural communities that would otherwise have no flights at all.

[0] https://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/airports_with_paved...

[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/european_union/airports_with_pave...

The concept is that it is fundamentally wrong to smear the population of NY across the total area of the US. You make a point to back an argument - the argument might be correct but your point is not.

> Frankfurt-Hahn or Paris Beauvais

Note that they are close to dense population areas Frankfurt and Paris. Not part of average density areas.

I am just saying I have seen the pattern occur repeatedly where "population density" is used to attempt to prop an argument: density is averaging and is often meaningless.

I think a better measure would be an average of averages of adjacent populations.

Define a node as a population center (say NYC) and then edges as cities (Boston, Philly, DC, Pittsburgh) with the weight being the population of the respective city. Average the populations for each mode and then average those averages.

The idea of this number is it would represent the average population of points of interest.

I think transport in the US might be a factor, though. While Frankfurt-Hahn and Beauvais are particularly extreme examples (they're further from the notional place than most budget airports) you can still get to the the relevant city relatively cheaply (if not particularly _quickly_, in the case of those two; about two hours). In many parts of the US, I suspect you'd really have no option but to hire a car, which instantly wipes out any price advantage of the budget airline.

Hmm. So you don't disagree that cheap semirural airports with a population base and short flights are important parts of the model, but you don't think they are related to population density? I don't see how those could be unrelated.

Perhaps a simpler way to convince you of the importance of population density to today's LCC model: Take a look at a map of where Ryanair flies. Under the 58th parallel, on the entire European continent, there is only one place over 250km from a Ryanair airport! Look at all the tiny airports, Limoges or Valladolid or Brive or Osijek or anywhere really. Ryanair flies to 250 airports and they do it with hundreds of 737s operating like clockwork, one short flight to another, not a tiny regional plane to be seen. Meanwhile, Delta flies to a similar number of airports in the US (in the 200s) but the majority of those are with small regional jets which are way less cost-effective than 737s; if you're an LCC, that means that you can forget about flying there. Obviously Delta is flying all those regional jets not for fun, but because they can't fill a 737, because the local population is not large enough to support one. I don't see how population density is not a core part of the issue here.

Ryanair doesn't really fly to those anymore though. They just fly to the low cost terminals at the major airports now. Here in Barcelona they just go to El Prat, not Girona.

Hmm... no? They still fly plenty out of all of those airports. Beauvais has 33 Ryanair departures on the board, Hahn has 8, Weeze has 15, and I see eight Ryanair flights for the day on the Girona departures board right now, in the off-season when most flights there don't operate. Less than El Prat, sure, but way more than you could ever imagine Spirit doing from a comparable area in the US, which is my point.

AIUI low-cost flights work best in an area where there's a lot of sizable city pairs about 1h-3h away from each other. Europe has more such pairs than the US, as indicated by the much higher population density.

> consumers are more inclined to pay for luxury.

Are they? Genuinely curious. With inflation rates we’ve seen lately it’s been my impression that the opposite is the case.

In the US? Absolutely. Look at Apple's market share post-pandemic, the growth of organic food, luxury spending, cars, anything really. There has been an overwhelming shift to luxury. Google the 2020 vs 2023 Prius. Hell, even McDonalds is trying to move upscale!

Exactly, yet they're all whining about inflation and how they don't get paid enough. Bunch of entitled brats.

BNPL a la Affirm/Klarna popped off during COVID

Is the market for those products growing to include more people or are people who consume those things getting richer and consuming them more?

I imagine most non-corporate, non-loyalty fliers use flight search engines where they can easily compare prices. If Spirit has the worst reputation, which I think is a given, consumers have to weigh the price difference between Spirit and a 'regular' carrier against that bad reputation.

That begs the question, how much cheaper is a Spirit flight compared to other carriers for a given itinerary? In my experience, it's maybe $50-$150, compared to a trip that might cost $500-$2000 overall. It's not like fliers are choosing between Spirit and first class on Delta. They're deciding whether or not to spend an extra ~$100 to be slightly less miserable on a trip that may be one of their largest single expenses of the year, and maybe their only trip of the year.

Exactly. In America today people have very little vacation time, a lot of money, and a taste for luxury. With the recent increases in salaries and fuel costs, the delta between the LCCs and the legacy carriers has dropped. You're a consumer in America taking your single yearly vacation. Are you going to save $40 on your several-thousand-dollar trip to fly Spirit? Apparently not. Meanwhile in Europe you're flying shorter distances more frequently, you don't care as much about Easyjet vs Lufthansa, and 40 euros is a lot more money.

On the other hand, when I fly to Vegas, typically Spirit and Frontier are less than $100 round trip. Southwest is $250-$275, and the traditional airlines are over $300. And it’s for the same no-meal, shitty legroom, unpleasant experience. So what am I paying 3X for? A brand name?

Sounds like the extra cost is paying to support a sustainable business model.

The low cost airlines in Europe are very sustainable though. They're doing great and even the old airlines are following their models now, like charging for luggage.

>And it’s <garbage>. So what am I paying 3X for? A brand name?

I feel like this is true for the entry and value priced offerings in a ton of industries.

Also, Europeans have a lot more time off. When you're making a long weekend trip, catching a Ryanair flight and suffering through it (it's not super comfortable, but you get what you pay for) is not a big deal because the flight is short, it probably gets you close to your destination which was maybe picked because of this, and it doesn't matter that much because this might be one of your multiple trips that year.

> single yearly vacation

This is genuinely sad and unhealthy.

“I spend $100 more for the same flight” is not really much of a flex, but whatever floats people’s boats!

It's not the same flight. I avoid American, United and the discount carriers because they have the smallest seats. Spirit is also one of the only airlines without power outlets. Personally, I don't care if it's a 1-2 hour flight. I'd be happy to stand. But on a 4+ hour flight, a hundred bucks isn't so bad for bigger seats, a power outlet and maybe even a TV and free WiFi depending on the carrier.

Caring about seat size makes sense, but power outlets - for $30 you can get a good quality battery that will charge a mobile phone multiple times from its capacity, for $100 you can get one that'll fully recharge a laptop once or twice. So unless the price difference for flying is tiny, it's really not worth paying more because a plane has power outlets when you can pay less to get a device that's not only just as good for the one trip but that you can then use on future trips without paying more (except for the tiny cost of electricity to recharge it before the flight).

I thought I didn't care, but I chose Delta instead of Southwest on a flight and not having to think about it at all (did I charge my laptop? my phone? my headphones? it's okay, I have a portable battery, wait, is it charged? did I remember it? can everyone else get up, I left my battery in the carry-on?) makes flying less stressful. Plus, it's one less thing to carry around for a week. Same goes for assigned seats, it's one less worry while being shoved into a tin can and flung into the sky.

Fair enough - I elaborated here [1] on why it's by far the better option for me, but I completely accept that different people have different priorities and different weightings to the pros/cons, so whatever works best for you is great too.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42129966

Yes, there are novel solutions to many problems, but an outlet is the most reliable and lowest effort solution. And nearly every plane has them these days, so why overthink it.

For me personally, taking into account whether or not a plane had power outlets is the overthinking option.

I've been on planes / trains / coaches that are expected to have them, but who had faulty outlets at my seat for that particular journey and I wasn't able to use them. So I just have a small battery pack (little bit bigger than a pack of cards), and a big one for laptop recharging, and I take one or both (plus my slightly bigger than a lipstick one that's light and fits easily in pretty much every clothing pocket I own) depending on the trip I'm going on, meaning no added complexity as it's just like remembering to take my laptop's power cable, and I no longer have to spend any time thinking about whether the transport will or won't have a power source for me.

I appreciate what works for me won't be the preferred solution for everyone, but for me it definitely leads to less overthinking per trip not more. (And personally I don't notice the added weight of these batteries in my bag; and I would want them for travelling even if I could be guaranteed every flight & train had working power outlets, as I've had times when they were useful to have when visiting a client's offices, or when staying in a hotel with a dodgy outlet, or when going hiking an nowhere near power outlets - so in my case it wasn't even an additional cost caused by not trusting planes to provide a good power supply.)

Unfortunately, the more useless the signal the more effective it is, and the degree of signaling in recent years has only increased. This reminds me of an excellent article from almost twenty years ago: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aggressive-ostentation/

The thing is, comfort is sticky (as I well know sadly, second class is hard to bear for me).

Low-cost companies targeted people with low disposable income at the cost of comfort.

People who used to have low disposable income have now not enough to travel by plane (or at all), and people who had enough to use standard companies have still enough to use them.

A very interesting fact is that median income grew in the US (less than average, but close enough). The standard deviation (from memory, if this isn't the translation of 'écart-type' I'm sorry) grew also, which indicate that the recent economic 'boom' the US experienced since the end of covid took more than 50% of us citizen with it, but clearly not a huge majority. Germany experienced a very similar thing since 2012. To my knowledge, in Germany it was most likely caused by a transfer from progressive taxation to a fixed one, reducing purchasing powers of people with low disposable income. In the US it seems it's a direct income issue.

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