Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 364 posts

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#191

Post by perl4ever »

closeparen wrote: post #124
emiliobumachar wrote: post #108

Ironic. I had heard tales of the old Soviet Union about trains running empty to fill distance quotas. It was presented as the ultimate proof of how messed up their system was.

This is just another instance of the classic Soviet problem. A scarce resource is allocated by a government bureaucracy instead of a market, and the bureaucracy's design is imperfect, so nonsensical incentives fall out of it sometimes. There's no irony. It's just kind of quirky for the West to manage flight/landing slots this way, instead of an auction (as the FCC does with spectrum).

The institution of rules that aren't suitable when unforeseen conditions arise isn't a purely government thing. It happens in private organizations all the time.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#192

Post by danem »

kroep93nd wrote: post #142
closeparen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government can only give away slices of a fixed resource for so long. Eventually it runs out. You literally can't start an airline from scratch. You have to first buy one that already has landing slots, then figure out how to dispose of the planes/staff/operations/debts that come with the package. Is that really better for competition than just having a market for slots?

Only for them to immediately be gobbled up by 1 or 2 big players. How about a market for destinations? Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one player. Hm it seems consolidation is the natural path we prefer towards solving a problem. Why not let the bureaucracy manage it then? Give up the pretense. This is all market capture of finance by low effort grifters who will throw a fit when they don’t get privile…

> Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one player.

According to[1], the average number of competitors per US domestic city-pair is 3.5 and has been increasing over the last few decades.

[1] http://darinlee.net/pdfs/airline_competition.pdf

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#193

Post by perl4ever »

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #17
gpvos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel is being burned, creating more CO2, without any benefit to society.

So if I have a corporation I have to benefit society with it? Else what, the government must expropriate my corporation from me?

Crime or antisocial behavior can be treated as an isolated situation, but if it is profitable and leads to more of the same, it becomes a cancer.

Why would anyone want any organization to exist that on balance harms society? Profitability is one constraint that promotes welfare, but it's far from the only one.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#194

Post by danem »

qubex wrote: post #63
cmcaine wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just give fines to companies that don't run flights on routes then you can impose a penalty without incentivising empty or near-empty flights.

Excellent idea! So now you only have two more problems: lobbyists being paid to influence the fines (so that they don’t cause their clients so much harm as to make their anti-competitive strategies unprofitable); and regulatory capture (where regulatory bodies become beholden to those whom they regulate).

The threat of regulatory capture is present with every regulatory solution.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#195

Post by Ankaios »

qubex wrote: post #30
barry-cotter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a stupid rule. This is not an unforeseeable case. Just sell the slots. You can sell them once and forever or you can auction them yearly or every two, three, five years, whatever. Demanding planes run for no one’s benefit is just setting money, and more importantly resources, on fire.

I don’t think you understand the problems associated with the “just sell the slots” idea. The problem is that big airlines could buy up slots and then not use them. They wouldn’t necessarily have an incentive to sell them, either, because the buyers could be small, regional, or low-cost companies that could leverage them to build up a small but profitable business and later take on the bigger airlines (as happened wi…

To deal with no-show airlines, I'd be (darkly) amused if airports sold somewhat more slots than their gates could physically accommodate.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#197

Post by koheripbal »

reaperducer wrote: post #181
mathattack wrote: post #101

The airlines that are stockpiling capacity at our expense will come hat in hand for a bailout at our expense.

The airlines that are stockpiling capacity at our expense will come hat in hand for a bailout at our expense. Yep. The same airlines that today are crying because of their "razor-thin margins" are the same ones that recorded billions of dollars in profit just a few months ago.

Airline margins are highly cyclic. Making "billions" in one month, might be countered by huge losses in the next.

Evey yearly numbers don't tell the full story - you have to look at multi-year trends in profitability.

...and, indeed, they aren't great for the industry as a whole. Most nations operate a national carrier at a loss.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#198

Post by derrick_jensen »

asah wrote: post #150
Symbiote wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Britain, there's an open market for the landing slots. Slots at Heathrow can be sold for tens of millions of pounds. https://simpleflying.com/flybe-heathrow-slots/

y and this optimizes for the highest bidder, i.e. most profitable and not the airline best serving the user.

Companies are only profitable because they serve their users better than their competitors.

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#199

Post by bluntfang »

refurb wrote: post #162
erik_seaberg wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines is why airlines go bankrupt so often.

The answer is to look at who controls the pilot's union: very senior pilots. The airline management is mostly interested in what percentage of its revenues are paid out to pilots; the distribution of the money among the pilots does not affect profitability. The very senior pilots on the other side of the table say "We need the most senior pilots to get $300,000 in pay and benefits." The airline's response is "The onl…

and what are executives making?

Re: Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

#200

Post by htfu »

reaperducer wrote: post #184
tuesday20 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand this. Can’t we put rules in place to prevent this? How hard can it be to take the slots back from the big airlines if they are not using them?

How hard can it be to take the slots back from the big airlines if they are not using them? The airlines bought them. They're property. Just like the car dealer can't take your car back if you're not using it.

What does this even mean? Of course they could if the law said so, which is what the GP is asking.
Post reply on HN