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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

#301

Post by SECProto »

mcarmichael wrote: post #287
SECProto wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

I did a quick skim of that wiki article (skimmed a couple sections, ctrl+f'd for "regulat" and "monopoly"), but couldn't find anything about a unique regulatory regime. There has been regulatory issues with the Toronto Island Airport (where porter wants to extend the runway to allow jets to land, but no one* else wants this), but I don't see where they required a unique regulatory regime?

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

#302

Post by woofie11 »

zulln wrote: post #246
wutbrodo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the purpose of the "fully crewed" requirement?

Guess it is because this > (some) jobs are kept secure

Seems like that could be done by paying people, even if they don't show up.

"Paying people" seems like a good way to define "crewed"

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

#303

Post by mytherin »

derrick_jensen wrote: post #198
asah wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or because there are no competitors. Allocating parking slots based only on bidding has the potential for one company to become a monopoly by purchasing all the slots, allowing them to charge ridiculous prices while providing bad service.

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

#304

Post by [deleted] »

wcarss wrote: post #253
adventured wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not also in the US. They're entirely different situations with entirely different goals by the people doing it. Microsoft was trying to avoid a penalty for itself, one company. The businesses in China (not all obviously) are conspiring with the bureaucracy to fake economic activity on a massive scale, to put on a veneer for the outside world. This is about appearances to the world, because China is very scared right…

I think the thrust of the comment above was that this is not a class of behavior restricted to China or to communist states. Microsoft was secretly wasting electricity to avoid fines -- gaming an economic system designed to encourage efficiency under bureaucrat-designed rules that make sense within market capitalism, and Chinese companies are secretly wasting electricity to avoid a loss in confidence, ie. business, u…

[deleted]

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

#305

Post by forkexec »

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,…

"Use it [budget] or lose it." End of the year buying 100 $2500 toilet seats and 1000 $100 spools of wire. Welcome to government!

PS: My mom was a civil service accountant with the Navy, and my dad and both grandfathers were USAF.

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

#306

Post by jl2718 »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #117
jl2718 wrote: post #81

I’ve been waiting for airlines to give up on scheduling altogether and move to JIT routing. Maintaining schedules seems fragile, and I think demand would increase dramatically if customers didn’t have to plan ahead. This will definitely happen when the industry gets disrupted by cheap autonomous and electric mini-planes, but it seems that schedules are so broken already that the biggest thing keeping up the facade ar…

> I think demand would increase dramatically if customers didn’t have to plan ahead I think customers won't be a fan of showing up and waiting 17 hours or whatever until the next flight has enough people to fly. > This will definitely happen when the industry gets disrupted by cheap autonomous and electric mini-planes Battery energy density is a looooong way from matching jet fuel, especially since the weight of the…

Sure. Inter-city electric is a no-go. Autonomous, however, is way past due, and the price of aircraft could easily drop by an order of magnitude. That means an oversupply of planes waiting for passengers. Anything that grows addressable passenger demand above the lowered cost basis will take over the industry.

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

#307

Post by mikro2nd »

dtech wrote: post #2

This seems like a sensible rule that leads to unwanted behavior in this unforeseen case. Would make sense to grant a temporary exemption.

The rule is under review for temporary suspension following a nudge from the EU and/or IATA. People are not always totally stupid, but bureaucracies work slowly.

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

#308

Post by yzmtf2008 »

salawat wrote: post #103
yzmtf2008 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, what do you expect happens after airlines die from a price war? It’s not lower prices.

Generally speaking, I'd hope it wouldn't be "Everything consolidates without bound." Doing that just sets the stage for a monopoly to form, just add time. The price war should be won by the airline that can most efficiently manage resources and adapt different business models to provide stable service with fewer inputs. That is what the Market is purportedly for, no? Consolidation is not good. High variety distribute…

> The price war should be won by the airline that can most efficiently manage resources and adapt different business models to provide stable service with fewer inputs.

And then what? Is that not a monopoly? I know the classic response to this is newcomers will come up with lower prices, but what if there's economy of scale, and newcomers just can't compete?

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

#309

Post by Talanes »

barry-cotter wrote: post #83
sho wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't address the issue at all. They would just buy the leases and keep the competition out that way; no difference.

That means one of two things; the slots aren’t worth that much or they were sold for less than they were worth. If they’re almost worthless, as not using them suggests their not being used is no great loss. If they are worthwhile then either they’ll be used, someone else will buy them or the owner is setting money on fire by not using a valuable asset, in much the same way as someone who uses a vacant lot in Manhatta…

If you're an established player, keeping essential assets out of the hands of new competition has value in itself. Example: when the Vons and Kmart from my hometown got together and opened a new shopping complex together, they both retained their prior leases for years, knowing that those locations were the only real estate in town large enough to house a real competitor. The fact that neither could utilize that real estate didn't make it worthless, and in this case actually made it more valuable to them: the town couldn't support multiple large retailers simultaneously, so any competition ran the risk of putting them out of business.

The same concept easily applies to airline slots, an established player that is at capacity on how many slots they can profitably use still has some incentive to keep other airlines out, because any new players will be tapping into their existing market.

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

#310

Post by kalleboo »

kortilla wrote: post #279
eyegor wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead? Telecom in the US is an oligopoly, with most of the major spending backed by government grants. Many areas are still supported by rotting copper and old 2g/3g towers because there's no incentive for providers to upgrade them. Unless you meant something else by "communications industry".

Yeah, go check out what type of ISP service you can get in Australia for comparison of a similarly sized country. Get ready for ADSL and quotas.

It has nothing to do with size and everything to do with politics. Plenty of small countries have crap internet too.

Australia's internet sucks because the conservative government nerfed the NBN plan.

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