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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

#331

Post by jessaustin »

viburnum wrote: post #299
refurb wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know, pro sports are all unionized and they make money. Blaming the workers seems like rightwing nonsense to me.

Who is blaming anyone? Link above is just observation. Senior pilots don't have less of a moral right to enrichment than e.g. airline stock investors. If anything the hope would be that the senior pilots might share more equitably with the junior pilots...

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

#332

Post by nicoburns »

masklinn wrote: post #321
forkexec wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's absolutely not a "government" thing, it's an issue in every large organisation and large companies are absolutely not immune to it. Government just happens to be the largest of the large.

Yep, and the really interesting thing is when you combine libertarian principles with this insight. If large corporations (and large concentrations of individual wealth) are as undesirable as large governments, then the economic model starts to look very different!

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

#333

Post by crispyambulance »

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,…

Just goes to show the mentality of bean-counters in times of abundance. Their ledger is the world and the world is their ledger, no exceptions.

It's sad that we as organizations and citizens accept and perpetuate this kind of behavior.

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

#334

Post by someguydave »

maxfan8 wrote: post #296
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,…

I'm not too familiar with the practice, but Zero-based Budgeting (ZBB) seems like it can solve this problem. It basically requires constant justification of the budget (as if you were making a budget from scratch) rather than looking at relative changes year-over-year. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_budgeting for more.

That would only save money if the zero-based-budgeter is willing to fire all the humans who are making up bullshit to justify their budget.

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

#335

Post by jimktrains2 »

redis_mlc wrote: post #155
gruez wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's really the issue, why are they constantly making ghost flights? Surely there are places to park planes in bulk (eg. same place where they're parking all the 737 MAX)

> Surely there are places to park planes in bulk No, there aren't for airliners. Most are in the air at any given time. There's boneyards and mfg. airports, and that's about it. A possibility would be a non-operating airport in a friendly country - thinking about the new Berlin airport. Boeing likely finally stopped making the 737 MAX after they ran out of parking space, which forced a decision. To park even one airl…

We ended up having to do this during 9/11. I don't know if there are relatively more or fewer planes than then now, but I do remember that many/most airports had Jets parked on the runways and we're nearly all of their taxi- and runways for storage.

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

#336

Post by maxfan8 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #329
mehrdadn wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I ask, what do your numbers represent? And I said, it's right there if you actually take 5 seconds to Google. Literally the top result [1] says [2] that for a medium-haul flight (3,240–6,300 km), a 747-800 burns 9.9 kg/km of fuel, which at 917 km/h and 0.81 kg/L density, comes out to 0.82 gal/s if I'm doing my math correctly. So I guess my bad for being off by a whopping... 20%? Like I said, I'm all ears if you…

I mean, didn’t this entire thread start because you took issue with the word “thousands” in the headline, even though it’s technically correct? :)

It sounded like dataflow was doing a Fermi estimate, which usually need to be within one order of magnitude of the real answer to be considered decent.

I think the reason why they didn’t like the headline was because it seemed like it was several orders of magnitude off.

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

#337

Post by fatbird »

Ankaios wrote: post #195
qubex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Five pilots lined up.

"Ok, we're offering a $300 voucher to the airline willing to give up this slot... $300... ok, United, we're bumping you, you can pick up your voucher at the information desk."

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

#338

Post by sova »

nicoburns wrote: post #332
masklinn wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's absolutely not a "government" thing, it's an issue in every large organisation and large companies are absolutely not immune to it. Government just happens to be the largest of the large.

Yep, and the really interesting thing is when you combine libertarian principles with this insight. If large corporations (and large concentrations of individual wealth) are as undesirable as large governments, then the economic model starts to look very different!

Out of curiosity, how would a "libertarian" propose we achieve economic anything without large individual concentrations of wealth?

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

#339

Post by masklinn »

sova wrote: post #338
nicoburns wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and the really interesting thing is when you combine libertarian principles with this insight. If large corporations (and large concentrations of individual wealth) are as undesirable as large governments, then the economic model starts to look very different!

Out of curiosity, how would a "libertarian" propose we achieve economic anything without large individual concentrations of wealth?

The wording of your question confuses me, it's not clear whether you're asking about "large individual concentrations of wealth" as a cause or effect of "economic anything", aka are you asking how one can achieve economic anything without a pre-conditional individual concentrations of wealth or are you asking how one can achieve economic anything while avoiding the subsequent trap of large individual concentrations of wealth.

In context and logically I would assume the latter as those large concentrations are why you get large organisations to manage them, but I wanted to be sure.

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

#340

Post by o-__-o »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #317
o-__-o wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IMO mining costs are dominated by chips, nobody has idle data centers on standby for such an occasion.

You need to look up China mining operations. They pop up “data centers” anywhere there is free or cheap electricity. Sounds like a perfect operation for factories that must use electricity
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