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Give them an inch and they take $773 million

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Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#101

Post by mseebach »

Nursie wrote: post #86
mseebach wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the "almost" in "almost exclusively". I am too. When I was younger, I had more time than money, I travelled many a long hour in "cattle class", but I have some pretty awesome experiences to show for it. These days, I've got less time, but much more money, so I'll spend it for more comfort - but I'd be a damn hypocrite if I wanted airlines to do any less than their best to make sure young people of today can ge…

True, true, necessary travel is necessary and unnecessary travel is worthwhile and a broadening experience and definitely to be recommended. Pricing it out of mass market reach would be a bad thing . I guess to get food that isn't just crap you need to pick your airline. Singapore aren't too awful, and Delta's chicken salad the other week on my ATL->LHR flight was perfectly OK, but that seems the exception rather tha…

To get food that isn't crap, you need to eat a good meal at the airport, for longer flights bring a sandwich. For all their faults, I love London airports for the ubiquity of Pret shops.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#102

Post by rayiner »

edent wrote: post #91
Nursie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> For starters, airline customers care almost exclusively about price. I wish that wasn't the case. I'd gladly pay an extra £20 on an international flight for decent food, and I regularly do pay an extra £50 or so for more room or an exit row seat. I know there's a market of people like me, for whom business class is way to expensive just to make a few hours a bit more pleasant, but who aren't just counting every pe…

The trick for decent food on airlines is to specify a meal preference. I'm usually say I'm "Asian Vegetarian". On most flights I get a reasonable curry, or something a bit more interesting than the usual slop they hand out. As a bonus, special meals are usually served first and in some cases are specially prepared. As it happens, I am a vegetarian, so I don't "miss" the meat - YMMV.

I remember traveling back in the day, when airline food was actually good. Curried prawns on Thai Airways FTW.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#103

Post by Nursie »

mseebach wrote: post #101
Nursie wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, true, necessary travel is necessary and unnecessary travel is worthwhile and a broadening experience and definitely to be recommended. Pricing it out of mass market reach would be a bad thing . I guess to get food that isn't just crap you need to pick your airline. Singapore aren't too awful, and Delta's chicken salad the other week on my ATL->LHR flight was perfectly OK, but that seems the exception rather tha…

To get food that isn't crap, you need to eat a good meal at the airport, for longer flights bring a sandwich. For all their faults, I love London airports for the ubiquity of Pret shops.

Hehe.

If it's a morning flight I like to start the day with a plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc. For this they charge an arm and a leg but it makes the whole thing just that bit nicer...

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#104

Post by astrodust »

endtwist wrote: post #12
Construct wrote: post #5

Not quite. The extra seats only provide additional revenue when the flights would have otherwise been full. From the article, the average flight is only 80% full, which means those six extra seats aren't providing any additional revenue. To determine the actual revenue increase from those six extra seats, we would have to know how frequently flights have less than 6 empty seats.

While these numbers will never be perfect, per se, RITA[1] shows that in 2011, Southwest's loadfactor was 80.8% while in 2012, loadfactor was 80.4%. So, the flights remained around 80% full on average. I took this into account in my calculation and assumed roughly 4.8 more seats were filled on average per flight, not a full 6. [1] http://www.transtats.bts.gov/carriers.asp?pn=1

This is still a gross mis-representation.

The extra seats are only utilized when the plane is beyond the capacity of the old configuration. You'd need to know how often this event occurs in order to produce a meaningful number.

Until you can separate cause from effect, you have no way of knowing if the change in loading was due to reconfiguration of the seats, or other policy changes that occurred around the same time.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#105

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kunai wrote: post #92
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between economy and business class is 3-5X. Its like a completely different world/price level, that those of us stuck in economy can only dream of. To sleep on a 12 hour flight...that would be great!

I don't understand why economy is so berated by passengers. It's fine for me; I'm 5' 11" and I have plenty of legroom and the people I sit with are generally polite and well-groomed. All of the nightmare stories I hear just do not make sense to me. Perhaps it's because I fly internationally; and people are more willing to be neater. Although, I must say one last thing: do not bring an infant onto the plane. They're m…

On a 12 hour flight, you want to sleep, but its impossible in economy. At least we can watch movies now during our flight, but the level of comfort between economy and business is vast.

I've never had a problem with babies on flights. I travel between the states and China often, and there are always a more than a few of them on.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#106

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tptacek wrote: post #95
kunai wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why economy is so berated by passengers. It's fine for me; I'm 5' 11" and I have plenty of legroom and the people I sit with are generally polite and well-groomed. All of the nightmare stories I hear just do not make sense to me. Perhaps it's because I fly internationally; and people are more willing to be neater. Although, I must say one last thing: do not bring an infant onto the plane. They're m…

I agree, and think that when you move cross-country for that new job you got, you should just tell your baby to drive himself and meet you there.

Or take a boat if travelling internationally.

The kongjies always handle babies pretty well. And to be honest, a crying baby isn't going to add much to your discomfort 6 hours into your flight.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#107

Post by Dylan16807 »

StavrosK wrote: post #83
josefresco wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they maintained the same occupancy rates but with a higher total capacity. 80% of 100 is 80 80% of 106 is 84ish

Why would the average number of passengers suddenly change just because they installed six more free seats?

Look at the post right next to the one you're replying to. More seats makes it easier to get more people on board without risking filling up.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#108

Post by yardie »

freehunter wrote: post #88
yardie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can already see the logistics and engineering nightmare of a flight devoid of seats having to bump an entire group of passengers because the next leg doesn't have enough inventory. Seats are fixed because bolts are easy. Once you get into the whole latches and levers business you compound your points of failure. Ever look under the last row of foldable seats in an SUV? A lot of engineering goes into securing 100kg…

Does speed really matter, though? I mean, the issue with cars is that they sometimes come to a very sudden stop, and in those situations the passengers need to be bolted to the ground. Planes don't often come to very sudden stops and when they do, bolts don't matter much. The seats need to be secured, yes, but not in nearly the same fashion.

Yes. I would say even more so than cars. Even at its slowest a plane is traveling at 3x the speed of a car or 9x the kinetic energy. Then you have the problem of a compounding failure. If even one passenger gets lose the seat in front has to do 2x the work. A plane with 30-70 rows can have a domino effect if the bolts don't hold.

Also cars don't instantly stop. Most of the energy is dissipated by shedding the engine under the body and crumple zones. They have a dramatically shorter runway than planes.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#109

Post by StavrosK »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #107
StavrosK wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the average number of passengers suddenly change just because they installed six more free seats?

Look at the post right next to the one you're replying to. More seats makes it easier to get more people on board without risking filling up.

But if they could get more people on board, they wouldn't be 80% full. Or are you referring to the times they're completely full, which would go up by 6 seats? Then 6 doesn't get added to the entire average.

Re: Give them an inch and they take $773 million

#110

Post by Dylan16807 »

StavrosK wrote: post #109
Dylan16807 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the post right next to the one you're replying to. More seats makes it easier to get more people on board without risking filling up.

But if they could get more people on board, they wouldn't be 80% full. Or are you referring to the times they're completely full, which would go up by 6 seats? Then 6 doesn't get added to the entire average.

It's probabilistic. You can't just sell 100% of tickets ahead of time and be done. Some people don't show up. Some people buy tickets at the last second. The more tickets you sell the more you risk running out of space and having angry customers that need to be compensated. Even if you assume every flight has the same demand, having more seats lets you sell more tickets which lets you get more people on board, without needing flights to be full.

On top of that, you have uneven demand causing completely full flights, and while it doesn't add 6 to the entire average it adds a notable fraction of 6. Note that nobody actually claimed they added a full 6 more passengers.

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