71–80 of 112 posts
UKs Ryan Air was even proposing ideas of having people stand during flights (yep, its really that ridicolous) and letting people pay to use the lavatories... Not that they would get through with that but still, they are searching for every inch to make more money.
Honestly, after sitting at my desk all day/week... I actually wouldn't mind standing on my usual 50 minute Southwest flight. Not that the FAA would ever allow it.
In addition to the sketchy mathematical foundation, there's another reason to not draw too many conclusions from this observation: your company, product, and customers are probably quite unlike Southwest Airlines. For starters, airline customers care almost exclusively about price. Joel Spolsky was wise to warn against doing what this article suggests ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/11.html ): In one of…
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 penny. The airlines seem to have started to cater for us with things like Delta's "Comfort Economy", but it needs to go further.
If flights are at 80% capacity adding 6 extra seats just means an extra 6 empty seats on every flight. The $733 million number is meaningless - what is actually needed is to know how many post-reconfiguration flights had 5 or fewer free seats, since that is the only situation in which the extra capacity is being used.
80% of 100 is 80 80% of 106 is 84ish
In addition to the sketchy mathematical foundation, there's another reason to not draw too many conclusions from this observation: your company, product, and customers are probably quite unlike Southwest Airlines. For starters, airline customers care almost exclusively about price. Joel Spolsky was wise to warn against doing what this article suggests ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/11.html ): In one of…
>> 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…
In 2006, JetBlue removed an entire row of seats: JetBlue estimates a net savings of $30 million over five years by removing six seats from the A320 fleet, as a result of reducing the inflight crewmember team to three, and by reducing the weight of the aircraft by approximately 904 pounds, which will lower the fuel burn. That figure includes lost revenue opportunities as a result of selling six fewer seats per A320 fl…
coming next, Responsive Seating! per-flight configurable seat modules, for exactly the number of people on board, and can be quickly loaded/unloaded to minimise excess weight. Installed seats adjust their clearance automatically based on available space and user's ticket price/options.
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 bags of meat to an object hurtling along the ground at 80km/h. Now imagine having to do the same for a plane traveling 2-3x that.
In addition to the sketchy mathematical foundation, there's another reason to not draw too many conclusions from this observation: your company, product, and customers are probably quite unlike Southwest Airlines. For starters, airline customers care almost exclusively about price. Joel Spolsky was wise to warn against doing what this article suggests ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/11.html ): In one of…
I fly exclusively on United because they have Economy Plus, which lets me buy an additional 3-5" of legroom at a reasonable additional price. Sure, it's more than Southwest or whatever else, but I'm more than happy to give them my dollars for the extra space.
UKs Ryan Air was even proposing ideas of having people stand during flights (yep, its really that ridicolous) and letting people pay to use the lavatories... Not that they would get through with that but still, they are searching for every inch to make more money.
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.
EDIT: Here's a related article where church seating on pews versus individual chairs is discussed - and airplane seats are even mentioned: http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=2380
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