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Airlines flying empty planes to keep flight slots during coronavirus outbreak

businessinsider.com

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

#281

Post by zbentley »

formercoder wrote: post #172
Reedx wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be happening in China with electricity quotas. Running AC and machines in empty factories to make quota. "Local companies and officials are fraudulently boosting electricity consumption and other metrics in order to meet tough new back-to-work targets" https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Lights-go-on-but-no... "Video evidence. In #Wenzhou, factory manager told they must consume 3000 kWh electrici…

When a metric becomes a target

They used the wrong metric, but an easy one to measure. The right metrics (are the factories producing things correctly? Are those making it to consumers? Are the consumers paying for them?) are too difficult to measure discretely. And so we end up here.

Reminds me of "the 'return 200' health-check endpoint is working; how can the site be down?"

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

#282

Post by maxerickson »

kortilla wrote: post #276
Nextgrid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the auction model doesn't seem to work well when it comes to spectrum. What you end up with is a few big players delivering awful service while having enough money to outbid anyone, essentially preventing any competitor from ever breaking into the market to provide better service.

To be fair, it seems to work just fine. I can choose from at least 5 carriers in my city for cell phones alone, multiple of which offer unlimited data now. That’s only cell phone spectrum. For other spectrum, it’s easy enough to acquire spectrum that microwave ISPs are able to get into local markets with very limited capital. I graduated with 2 folks who started an ISP together and the spectrum was cheaper than the h…

Yeah, the problem with cellular in the US is that it is moderately expensive.

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

#283

Post by refurb »

toxik wrote: post #209
derrick_jensen wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You cannot seriously believe this. Is a parking company only successful due to how well it serves its users? No, it extracts rent.

Is the parking company the only option? If not, then yes, it's serving it's customers better than competitors.

The proof is the fact that if they charged $100 per hour, they'd have no customers.

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

#284

Post by refurb »

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.

Just because profits are measured in the billions doesn't mean that they aren't still "razor-thin".

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

#285

Post by baryphonic »

partiallypro wrote: post #152

The oddity I've personally had, is I had been planning a summer trip to Germany for the Euro 2020 tournament (assuming they don't get cancelled.) However, I hadn't bought plane tickets yet. Due to the virus, I figured I might get cheaper rates. The opposite has been true. The round trip went from ~$1200 up to ~$1800 in just a month or two. I'm still tracking flights, but so far I haven't seen a good dip in pricing. I…

Yeah, someone has to pay for running a bunch of empty planes all the time.

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

#286

Post by skybrian »

p_l wrote: post #258
skybrian wrote: post #236

It seems like this could be fixed with a bit of economics? One idea would be to have airlines pay reservation fees for unused slots, where the cost is slightly lower than flying planes in that slot. I also wonder how the waste compares with Bitcoin?

The point of the rule is "use it or lose it" - if you don't fly routes that can be boarded by passengers, you have to make space for another airline to compete. Making it possible to just reserve space would result in obvious approach of squatting, especially when it's cheaper than flying a plane in.

Squatting is already effectively allowed by flying an empty plane. The airlines figured it out.

This would make squatting only slightly cheaper and avoids the waste of flying a plane. Plus the airport gets the revenue and there is less airport congestion.

The fee is still an incentive to give the slot up if they're not going to use it eventually.

It's somewhat similar to a land value tax discouraging vacant lots.

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

#287

Post by mcarmichael »

SECProto wrote: post #202
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?

> You literally can't start an airline from scratch. Gonna need a citation on this one. I would guess the actual reason airlines are hard to start from scratch is the massive capital required, but would be interested in having this guess proven incorrect. Porter Airlines in Canada (which presumably has a very similar regulatory regime) was started from scratch about 20 years ago.

Porter Airlines appears to have started in an entirely unique regulatory regime, actually:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Airlines
In particular, airline monopoly control over allocation of terminal resources at an airport is not a useful prerequisite to generalize from.

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

#288

Post by o-__-o »

zbentley wrote: post #281
formercoder wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a metric becomes a target

They used the wrong metric, but an easy one to measure. The right metrics (are the factories producing things correctly? Are those making it to consumers? Are the consumers paying for them?) are too difficult to measure discretely. And so we end up here. Reminds me of "the 'return 200' health-check endpoint is working; how can the site be down?"

And THIS is why crypto markets are dropping, because China is flooding the network with miners to meet energy quotas

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

#289

Post by natmaka »

joe_the_user wrote: post #270
natmaka wrote: post #257

AFAIK this is common practice in many armies, where each group obtains a predetermined amount ('dotation') of goods (gas, ammo, clothes...) for a given period (often a year), uses whatever it needs, then an accounting process takes into account whatever wasn't used in order to calculate the next dotation. It seems consistent and efficient. However it neglects human nature. The soldiers want to avoid missing anything,…

The US and West were once bureaucratic but somewhat efficient societies - able to pivot beyond the average. But indeed, it appears things have degenerated to "what armies have done through the ages".

This may be related to group size.

If everyone knows at least remotely everyone, if as a consumer (of some product) or producer (of another product) I see those consuming/producing it... we aren't anymore cogs in The Huge Machine.

Leopold Kohr was right.

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