quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
While we seek clarity in air travel costs, someone explain how it is cost effective to fly my ass hundreds of miles in the opposite direction of my destination then back again.

It's the hub and spoke system. As in my last post, the key to maximizing airline profits is keeping the planes flying continuously with all seats filled. To keep all seats filled, you have to match the capacity to demand.

Each airline company have staked out certain cities as their hubs. The large planes service the route between the hubs while smaller planes service travel between the hubs and outlying cities on the spokes.

There's a smaller number of passengers that want to go from one spoke city to another spoke city on the other side of the country. All the passengers from the spoke cities are funneled to the hub enough to fill the bigger planes between hubs. Once it arrives to the other hub, the passengers get distributed to the destination spoke cities. Similar to how UPS and FedEx delivers packages.

To optimize the routes in total sometimes means some routes are going to be less than optimal. They save the most costs by optimizing for the biggest volume and don't mind being inefficient on the smaller volume. If they optimize the smaller volume routes, it will be at the expense of the bigger volume routes and will be more costly.

I learned a lot about the commercial airline business because I stumbled on a strategy during my MBA school. There were going to be a lot of term papers researching businesses for different classes. I just learned that I can research the heck out of the airline industry and use that for the various term paper assignments.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
I would gladly pay twice as much on every flight to have a flying experience that does not resemble riding a peso bus in a third world country.

In all likelihood, I will never fly again, and this ^^^ is part of the reason.

The other part is spelled Tee Ess Aye.

You guys have not really experienced airline/tsa nonsense until fly out of Spokane! By actual count there were some 30 TSA "agents?" on duty the last time I flew out of there. They shook down my carry-on, dumped it out THREE times, wanded and groped me three times. All while there stood one of those brand new "walk thru" systems there, installed and waiting.

I asked why they didn't use it. The answer was that nobody knew how!

I was one of 2 passengers trying to get thru their BS and it took nearly an hour. It got to the point that I was getting concerned about missing my flight.

And I was there more than 2 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave!!

And not the first time they pulled some really stupid shit!

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
If three million people buy air tickets every day , month in and month out .

and the airline people know what it costs to fly these people around .

why wouldn't the airlines be charging customers twice as much to ship half as many people , to cut expenses by half ?

instead of making 90 flights per day , you make 45 flights and bring in the same amount of money ?

In Star Trek computer voice, your question is illogical....

Someone once said "You want to be a millionaire? Start with a billion dollars and buy an airline!"

We do not have enough lifespan left to understand their marketing and operations methods.

RMD

(1) Supply (relatively stable)
(2) Demand (ever fluctuating, from months prior to the time the flight is executed)
(3) Weather / Unforeseen delays
(4) Cantankerous passengers who don't understand 1-3 and think it make sense to fly them from their airport in the middle of nowhere directly to their backwater destination in the middle of nowhere, direct.

Pretty much sums it up.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
If three million people buy air tickets every day , month in and month out .

and the airline people know what it costs to fly these people around .

why wouldn't the airlines be charging customers twice as much to ship half as many people , to cut expenses by half ?

instead of making 90 flights per day , you make 45 flights and bring in the same amount of money ?

Costs are not a fixed amount, and vary widely between aircraft type, route, delays, and numerous other factors from weather to connections. Many airline flights occur on different airlines that "code share" between them. The cost of the ticket goes several ways.

The airline system was once tightly regulated; today, the airlines function on "load factor," which is the ratio of empty seats to full seats. Airlines typically operate at nearly full capacity these days. Airlines operate with connections in a "hub and spoke" system, along with a lot of direct flights. The system is dependent on connections, many of which are between carriers and aircraft types.

There were many communities that didn't have enough passengers to fill aircraft, but airlines served them anyway, subsidized by the government in "essential air service," when it was determined that such services needed to be available in those locations.

For the most part, the need is always for more lift, more aircraft, more seats, and the limiting factor to such expansion is the amount of pilots, the aircraft training department, and airport facilities (airport capacity, gates, ramp space, etc).

A great deal of the revenue to an airline is from cargo, which can include US mail, packages, passenger bags, etc. The lower spaces on any aircraft are an important part of the revenue stream, and also an important part of the logistics stream for many shippers.

There's no point in reducing the number of seats and doubling prices; the idea is to keep the costs down and the service up; the amount of seats required by the public only continues to increase along with aircraft movements, and enplanements and deplanements. Barring a massive recession, that number won't be decreasing.

Airlines will continue to expand as much as they're able and the system will support, with fuel price being a major player in cost, and aircraft acquisition as well; overhead continues to rule the roost. The system is far too complex to cut passenger numbers and jack fares; taking into account the number of flights needed to complete a series of connections, chopping flights would do far more than reduce the number of passengers. All those flights need to connect to get passengers where they're headed; a single flight may affect dozens or hundreds of others, and often does. Apply that to each aircraft in the system and you've got a far, far more complex model than "simply cut pax in half, raise cost 2X."

The goal is to have adequate aircraft to meet passenger demand, and that number continues to increase.

I fly first class as a general rule. If someone else is paying for the ticket (like nonprofit travel), I pay the difference.

I pay more for reasonable flight hours, fewer connections, and better airlines. I mostly fly Alaska Airlines only, and avoid Delta, United, & Southwest at all costs. I also avoid certain airports. Atlanta especially. LAX also. All airports in IL. If I have to go to the East coast, I try to take an extra day somewhere. 16-20 hours of traveling is too much. Sleeping in airports is not an option.

As mentioned, global entry sometimes helps. I use my cane, and will often use a wheel chair service for connecting flights. They hold planes if you have a wheel chair service. TSA is a bit more reasonable when you show up with a cane. This isn't always true, but the public scrutinizes them a bit more when they're giving a veteran with a cane a hard time. Traveling in an airport with a cane helps me with the idea that I've been stripped of ways to protect myself and loved ones. A thick hardwood cane can be very useful.

I use Pelican cases for luggage. I put a gun in every bag. They tend not to lose bags with guns, plus...no TSA locks. My padlocks go on the outside. I have a set of 6 master locks all keyed alike.

With all that in mind...air travel becomes tolerable. Mostly.

If traveling inside Alaska, I use part 135 operations...no TSA.

I don't expect point to point non stop service from the Yoop to anywhere in civilization. But heading in the right general direction would be nice.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
I don't expect point to point non stop service from the Yoop to anywhere in civilization. But heading in the right general direction would be nice.

I have the same problem flying out of Muskegon. I can go anywhere in the world...as long as I go to O Hare first. I have come to realize that a travel day is just that: all day. As long as my luggage arrives in the same town I do, I frankly don't care where I get shuffled off to.

quote:

Originally posted by nasig:

quote:

Originally posted by Paten:

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
I would gladly pay twice as much on every flight to have a flying experience that does not resemble riding a peso bus in a third world country.

I usually buy my plane tickets about 4-6 weeks in advance and it comes out to just a little over twice the price of coach to fly first class on my yearly trips to Texas. So, you can do this.

Excellent. Now if we could arrange to have first class on separate planes and terminals I would be all in.

It was called Midwest Express. 737 sized aircraft, 100% first class seating, topped off with hot,fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Major hub was Milwaukee.

I gladly paid the difference between Midwest and the majors: Albanian, Untied, Northworst etc. when I had to travel for business. Sadly, Frontier bought them and now they look like the rest. "When you HAVE to go there, we HAVE to take you". Every time I get off, I'm tempted to Moo when the attendant says "thank you" for the 168th time.

so you are thinking that it is way more complicated then,

cost of service vs ticket pricing ?

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
so you are thinking that it is way more complicated then,

cost of service vs ticket pricing ?

Stupendous deduction.

As it turns out operating a financially sound airline is extremely complicated. In fact, within the business community, airlines are considered to be financially intensive. Essentially, it takes a lot of financial expertise to keep and maintain a $30-$50 million dollar capital asset profitable. I had a major case study on this subject in graduate school. Some obstacles that have to be overcome:


1. Aircraft costs $30-$50 million dollars
2. Aircraft costs a fortune to fly
3. Aircraft must maintain a schedule....even when there are few or no passengers on board. So you have the extraordinary expenses of flying to your next stop even when the plane is empty.
4. Maintenance is also very expensive and you must perform that activity regardless of your ticket revenues or hours of flight time.
5. Government regulation
6. High profile public image


As it turns out, ticket prices and passenger occupancy, while important and necessary, is only a very small part of the financial picture.

I really can not imagine a bigger logistic nightmare ,
whom ever can accomplish what they do needs to be making a lot more money

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
I really can not imagine a bigger logistic nightmare ,
whom ever can accomplish what they do needs to be making a lot more money

Try retail. The margins are 1-2% and the volume of products, packages, trucks, timing is unfathomable.

Funny, all this complaining about service and cookies and where you fly to first; likely by people who spend days trying to find the cheapest ticket available.

Solution to not knowing that you aren't going in the right direct on the first leg of your trip? Get a window seat and put the shade down as soon as you sit down.

Mad about the food? Bring your own. Yes, you can do it.

Mad about only having 1 hub to connect through? Move out of the middle of nowhere.

And yes, a travel day is just that - a travel day. I don't expect to get anywhere to do any meaningful work on a travel day via airlines, unless I might be luck enough to be doing work at a direct hub or driving a rental car to the jobsite less that 5 hours.

A seat on an airliner has become a commodity, and it being treated as such by airlines. If you need proof just note the ever decreasing space allocated to each seat, and now even to the size of the head on the new 737 Max, photographs of which have gone viral. I was on a flight back from Barbados in the last row against the rest room, and it was half a row. The flight attendants were so embarrassed, they wouldn't look me in the eye. The tray table actually hit me in the chest when you tried to unfold it and it was physically impossible to put my legs in the space in front of the seat.

This is an area where an argument could be made for regulation, as in a seat must allow for certain minimum dimensions. This would take the pressure off airlines to continuously shrink seat space to increase revenue making the experience less stressful for passengers and reducing the violent incidents occurring with increasing frequency.

quote:

Originally posted by jigray3:
A seat on an airliner has become a commodity, and it being treated as such by airlines.

This has always been the case. It's a business.

quote:

Originally posted by jigray3:
This is an area where an argument could be made for regulation, as in a seat must allow for certain minimum dimensions.

Regulate the seat area? That won't be happening.

Free enterprise. If one doesn't like the seat, don't fly in it. Vote with the wallet. Spend elsewhere. As the number of passengers increases, what's needed is more seats.

I don't hate flying, I hate the process to get to flying. That's why I drive most of where I'll go. 17 hours from Orlando to Chicago? Yep, I'll drive.

If airlines sold paint!

Buying paint from a hardware store ...

Customer: Hi. How much is your paint?

Clerk: We have regular quality for $12 a gallon and premium for $18. How many gallons would you like?

Customer: Five gallons of regular quality, please.

Clerk: Great. That will be $60 plus tax.

... From an airline

Customer: Hi, how much is your paint?

Clerk: Well, sir, that all depends.

Customer: Depends on what?

Clerk: Actually, a lot of things.

Customer: How about giving me an average price?

Clerk: Wow, that's too hard a question. The lowest price is $9 a gallon, and we have 150 different prices up to $200 a gallon.

Customer: What's the difference in the paint?

Clerk: Oh, there isn't any difference; it's all the same paint.

Customer: Well, then, I'd like some of that $9 paint.

Clerk: Well, first I need to ask you a few questions. When do you intend to use it?

Customer: I want to paint tomorrow, on my day off.

Clerk: Sir, the paint for tomorrow is the $200 paint.

Customer: What? When would I have to paint in order to get the $9 version?

Clerk: That would be in three weeks, but you will also have to agree to start painting before Friday of that week and continue painting until at least Sunday.

Customer: You've got to be kidding!

Clerk: Sir, we don't kid around here. Of course, I'll have to check to see if we have any of that paint available before I can sell it to you.

Customer: What do you mean check to see if you can sell it to me? You have shelves full of that stuff; I can see it right there.

Clerk: Just because you can see it doesn't mean that we have it. It may be the same paint, but we sell only a certain number of gallons on any given weekend. Oh, and by the way, the price just went to $12.

Customer: You mean the price went up while we were talking!

Clerk: Yes, sir. You see, we change prices and rules thousands of times a day, and since you haven't actually walked out of the store with your paint yet, we just decided to change. Unless you want the same thing to happen again, I would suggest that you get on with your purchase. How many gallons do you want?

Customer: I don't know exactly. Maybe five gallons. Maybe I should buy six gallons just to make sure I have enough.

Clerk: Oh, no, sir, you can't do that. If you buy the paint and then don't use it, you will be liable for penalties and possible confiscation of the paint you already have.

Customer: What?

Clerk: That's right. We can sell you enough paint to do your kitchen, bathroom, hall and north bedroom, but if you stop painting before you do the bedroom, you will be in violation of our tariffs.

Customer: But what does it matter to you whether I use all the paint? I already paid you for it!

Clerk: Sir, there's no point in getting upset; that's just the way it is. We make plans based upon the idea that you will use all the paint, and when you don't, it just causes us all sorts of problems.

Customer: This is crazy! I suppose something terrible will happen if I don't keep painting until after Saturday night!

Clerk: Yes, sir, it will.

Customer: Well, that does it! I'm going somewhere else to buy my paint.

Clerk: That won't do you any good, sir. We all have the same rules. Thanks for flying--I mean painting--with our airline.