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Comment by Gravityloss | Hacker News Reader

Is there a no-bullshit airline with a no-bullshit web shop with no-bullshit pricing?

Like Google did with search.

If you try to run a straightforward business, you have to charge more money than competitors that do shady things. And the people who say they want no bullshit buy from your cheaper competitors.

Yes. Airlines have decades of evidence showing that people will compare comfort, reliability, "shady" practices, etc., and then 99% of the time throw it all out and buy the cheapest ticket. If you wonder why flying sucks so much now (aside from the TSA), it's because airlines literally have no option but to compete on price. Airlines that try to compete another way will inevitably fail.

Airlines literally have no option but to compete on price. Airlines that try to compete another way will inevitably fail.

How do you explain JetBlue? They're not usually the cheapest, but I always choose them over e.g., USAirways or Delta because its a nicer experience.

1. There's some fault with the airlines too in the fact that tickets are cheaper from a third party

2. Many airline web shops are a bad experience with unclear and very high erratic pricing that changes between logins etc

There was. From 2004 through 2005, I used to fly an airline called Independence Air[0]. I used to biweekly commute up and down the east coast of the US. Best airline I ever flew. No bullshit sales, friendly and helpful staff, and nice planes with good legroom. Sadly they went out of business.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Air

It's harder for airlines to start small the way Google did. You have to offer a certain number of flights to achieve minimum visibility, and people cannot try out your offer whenever they're flying, if only because they're taking another route.

For that, you'd need some "unbundling" strategy where not just the Star Alliance (or whatever the companies are called) can sell seats, but another entity can buy seat contingents and sell them at similar conditions. Oh well, phone service, search, and flights are all different, with different rules.

There have been a few over the years. However they seem to have an annoying tendency to go bankrupt.

Easy Jet seem to do ok without descending to the level of doucheness that rayan air do.

If you're in Europe, ryanair are steadily getting better and better. They still don't quite fit the bill, buit they're cheap and reliable and their dirty practices are getting less invasive

Ryan Air is "no bullshit" right up to the point when something goes wrong. If you're on a flight that is problem free they're fine, but if you happen to be so unlucky that you have to deal with delays or cancellations or perhaps just a lost or damaged suitcase then they're bullshit personified.

And are any other airlines any better than Ryanair for that? My last ryanair flight that was cancelled, I spent 3 hours in the airport and was flown home, and got lunch out of it, and when the flight was cancelled the estimated departure time was correct. Obviously, I'd rather get home, but that's not a half bad service. Comparing to Aer Lingus (another Irish airline that offer similar routes) I've been offered nights in a hotel because they decided to overbook my flight, and I arrived on time (~50 mins before departure to Dublin), not early. Which would you prefer?

are any other airlines any better than Ryanair for that?

Much better. Swiss, Lufthansa, SAS and Air Canada for example have all been extremely helpful to me in the past with re-booking flights, dealing with lost luggage and generally fixing things when things go wrong (even when the thing going wrong was my fault).

RyanAir have a fanfare if a flight is on time. Literally. If you land on time, the cabin intercom will play a fanfare and a message along the lines of "This has been another On Time flight!". And they're only on time in the first place because they tend to inflate the durations they advertise: they'll say a 2h flight takes 2h 15m, then act all surprised when you hit the tarmac after two hours.

They're on time because their business model depends on them having minimal turnaround times, and they mostly fly out of small airports with relatively little chance of a holdup (and avoid Heathrow like the plague) and don't have to worry about flight connections. Empirically comparing "on time" performance is an inexact science at best (and most of the delay factors, including those that make a flight regularly take ~15 mins longer than an ostensibly similar one, are outside an airline's control), but efficient flight ops are to Ryanair what effective search is to Google.

If you want an all-bullshit airline you can always fly United.

Easyjet have always seemed low on the bullshit factor.

Southwest.

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