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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

#251

Post by refurb »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #231
refurb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating value requires some combination of labor and capital. Take away any return on capital and that capital goes elsewhere.

> Take away any return on capital and that capital goes elsewhere. Currently, this capital is going to the überwealthy where it remains there and is hoarded there, providing no "value" to society.

Hoarded? Jeff Bezo’s billions are tied up in Amazon. That’s providing no value?

No wealthy people are keeping their cash under their mattress. It’s actively invested and providing capital for future growth.

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

#252

Post by knzhou »

adventured wrote: post #238
MikusR wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in US https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381238/microsoft-power-w...

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…

How about you stop with the nationalism?

People in China are actual human beings, not part of a hive mind. They react to individual incentives.

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

#253

Post by wcarss »

adventured wrote: post #238
MikusR wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also in US https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381238/microsoft-power-w...

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, under the direction of bureaucrats -- gaming a larger economic system designed for efficiency, but here specifically for efficiency of labor to product spend, versus efficiency of product sale.

Curiously, the need to maintain this appearance of productivity is only likely for the sake of capitalist clients who buy the services -- c.f. the classic entrepreneurial slogan, "fake it till you make it!"

Some people are saying in response to this, "only under communism", and in the specifics of who and how and why they may be correct, but waste to satisfy bureaucratic systems is not unique to any economic or social system. People are going to juke the stats under every regime, at all scales, under all circumstances.

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

#254

Post by p_l »

orange_fritter wrote: post #235
redis_mlc wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I have no knowledge on this topic, but weren't most/all *US flights grounded during the 9/11 attacks?

It involved flooding various airports (especially in Canada) with planes that were already in the air destined to USA, others ended up diverting inside USA, generally lots of congestion and abnormal parking.

Slots are used to regulate congestion in normal conditions.

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

#255

Post by Nextgrid »

mycall wrote: post #204
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.

What I don't like is the DoD keeping the best 5G spectrum to themselves (3GHz-4Ghz) while the rest of the world is using it, putting our future lead in communiciations industry at risk.

What's keeping our "lead in communications industry" at risk (and has been for decades) is the broken pricing model for mobile data. With that model, whether you have 4G, 5G or 9G wouldn't change anything because the limiting factor is never the speed but the usage quotas.

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

#256

Post by bogomipz »

mathattack wrote: post #101

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

Yes and if we look how they have behaved in the US since the tax payer last bailout them out one can note they have:

Began charging for basic provisions that used to be included in the ticket price

Began cramming people into narrower and more uncomfortable seats

Added yet more fees

Reduced the frequency of flights on many routes so planes are more crowded

Fought to keep foreign carriers(competition) out of the domestic market

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

#257

Post by natmaka »

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, they simply refuse to see their dotation reduced, therefore just before the end of the period they discreetly use (without any other reason) or destroy all unused goods.

Centralization and bureaucracy excel at breaking human will and things altogether.

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

#258

Post by p_l »

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.

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

#259

Post by anpago »

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…

Airlines are reducing capacity by big percentages and margins are tight they know some people have to travel so will increase prices.

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

#260

Post by EarthIsHome »

refurb wrote: post #251
EarthIsHome wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take away any return on capital and that capital goes elsewhere. Currently, this capital is going to the überwealthy where it remains there and is hoarded there, providing no "value" to society.

Hoarded? Jeff Bezo’s billions are tied up in Amazon. That’s providing no value? No wealthy people are keeping their cash under their mattress. It’s actively invested and providing capital for future growth.

> Hoarded? Jeff Bezo’s billions are tied up in Amazon. That’s providing no value?

Yes, hoarded. You're really bringing up Amazon?

You're talking about the same Amazon that paid no federal taxes last year? I paid more taxes than Amazon did. The same Amazon that encourages a work environment where their warehouse employees wear diapers [0]? The same Amazon that forces its employees to work around a dead body [1]?

Amazon itself started by exploiting USPS.

Amazon is a leach on society. Amazon gets tax breaks to build warehouses where their employees face horrendous working conditions. Tax money that could be used to provide better services not only to their workers, but to the rest of us.. You know, real value.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse...

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/17/amazon-wa...

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