Airlines Providing Less Service?? OOOH No! NOT!

[Metro752]

I watched the news today, and if I see another report about airlines providing less service in the past year I might stroke out!

THESE PEOPLE PAY LESS money than they did for tickets 10-20 years ago!

Despite the fact that fuel prices are going up like crazy!!!!

THEY WANT EVER LOWER FARES!!!

I understand most of us here can't stand this either, but come on. HOW STUPID do these people have to be to expect a Meal, Hot Towels, On Time Departures, Eye Cover thingys, Baggage getting where it needs to be, and good customer service when THEY REFUSE to pay more than $100 round trip from Chicago to Los Angeles?!

How much does it cost you to get to LOS ANGELES in your car from CHICAGO? It takes two days of driving non stop (2000 miles nooo traffic!, 60mph!), and lets say you pay $2.30 a gallon and get 29 miles to the gallon, which most of these whiners don't because they drive massive SUVs that just consume gasoline and turn it into wasted energy, noise and excess pollution. It will cost them over $160 in gasoline alone. Not to mention where they will sleep, another $50 AT LEAST, thats $210, + food, another $20, thats $230.

The convienance of riding on a plane for a little under 4 hours vs driving like an insomniac mad man for 2 days straight or 48 hours (48 hours with breaks and traffic) (nonstop...which is pretty much impossible, it would take 3 days). So travelling non-stop you get to LA in an airplane in 1/12 the amount of time it takes by car!!! Is that ALONE, not worth something. You could take it as the airline is selling you 44 hours of your life back, AT LEAST!!!


I say all the airlines talk to congress, do some law stretching, and jack up all the fares!

That way we can give the toothless mother of 10 an all you can eat buffet on a 2 hour flight from Mobile to Nashville on a Legacy carrier that her "credit card gits miles on."

They always interview stupid people, it's like someone from Skokie just north of Chicago trying to talk NASCAR with some guy who lives 30 minutes west of Daytona Beach out in the middle of nowhere!

Keep your mouths shut when your bags get lost, or you get bumped off a flight, you're the one who paid next to nothing, and is forcing airlines to screw over thousands of employees in the past 4-5 years just so you can ride on an airplane somewhere and not even pay half of what you would in gasoline in your own freaking car!!!!!!!!

 

[Cardinal]

F 'em.

 

[MONKEY]

If you shop at Walmart, even once a year, you have no room to talk. It's not the customer who is the problem. They are the one's paying your wage. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. When we are the customer compitition rules, when we are the other end it sucks.

Just think about it for a minute.

 

[dabandermac]

Although I believe that fares are below where they should be, I fail to agree w/ your poor rationale of what the airline industry should be. Your views on on-time departures and baggage just prove what little you know, and I pray that no one ever puts the fate of airline X in your hands. These factors should not depend on your ticket price. If you pay less for a ticket you should expect your flight to push back late, and your baggage to not arrive at your final destination? Please.

I will be the first to admit when flying by PBI to JFK that I fly JBLUE b/c they charge $150 when everyone else charges >$200. You'd be crazy not to.

The root of all evil is the mgmt. I dare you to blame the passengers when you "make it". They are paying your salary kid. The mgmt. on the other hand sees the pilot salary as one of the few costs they can vary (the airline has very little control over oil prices, gate fees, etc.) So when airline X is hurting the employees (i.e. pilots) are the first to see their wages go down. If the airline charged as little as $5 extra per person on a regional jet (assuming a 50 seat jet, that's $250). More than enough to give the pilot + captain a livable wage instead of cutting pay. But I'm sure its way more complicated than that. Just a thought.

But next time you decide to knock those paying your salary, use ur noggin'

CV

 

[Metro752]

Well it looks like we all got opinions....................and I promise next time I'll use my noggin' when all the rich people come to pay my "salary" which is non-existant because the prices kept getting driven down.



$250 extra a flight = Pilots Pay Raise? Are you on crack? It might pay for the fuel spent on running the APU!

 

[TIGV]

If you shop at Walmart, even once a year, you have no room to talk. It's not the customer who is the problem. They are the one's paying your wage. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. When we are the customer compitition rules, when we are the other end it sucks.

Just think about it for a minute.

Been thinking about it for the last 10 years, We're in one of the most regulated industries on the planet, as such, let's regulate the price of a ticket, can't be too hard.
Then I don't have to listen to folks who paid $70 for a ticket, complain to the media how overpaid I am.

I just don't get that a guy ( true story ) with a duelli pickup toting an airconditioned 4-horse trailer and getting 5 miles to the gallon having just completed a 12 hour round-trip to West Texas was pi$$ed that his ticket to Dallas cost him $150 and found me to take it out on.
( pocketing my ID I gave back a verbal tongue-lashing to match the physical expenditure I would have liked to have taken with a punch to his fat face and sent him on his way with a flea in his ear )

The sucky thing is I actually feel guilty about that now.....what a career...

 

[eggman76]

I do not understand how it is the customer's fault that fares are low. The average joe goes to travelocity, enters info and chooses tix that meet time/price requirements. If it is too expensive for them they don't go, if it works they go. How as a consumer can I demand you lower your fares? Isn't this just plain old capitalism? If Ford and GM don't produce a product that is suitable to the public or costs too much they will go broke. I'm in a business that is heavy oriented to commodity pricing. If I'm not the low cost guy for the equivelent product I don't get sales and I'll go broke. How is that my customer's fault?

 

[enigma]

Ya'll will love this. I bought a SWA ticket to get out of South Florida today.

While in the jetway, standing there with the rest of the pax, I overheard one pax tell the other............."Man I really love JetBlue, their planes have more room, they continue to serve drinks and snacks all flight long, the people are nice..........blah, blah blah. But I bought a ticket on this flight (SWA) because it was a hundred dollars cheaper"

I don't blame passegers for buying the cheapest ticket possible. I don't blame passengers for expecting to be treated with some respect and courtesy. I DO blame passengers for expecting to get first class service in a coach seat. Actually, I don't blame em, I just wonder what they are smoking when they start b t hing about the lack of service. And, at least this SWA customer understood and acknowledged what he was giving up to save a C note.

This guy just reinforced my opinion that SWA won't add any inflight entertainment any time soon.

regards,
enigma

 

[secks]

Does anyone else think this is an absolutely retarded thread?

First, why do you care if your pax complain? Just nod and smile. All pax low ball airline tickets, including myself. Why on Earth would I spend an extra $100 to get coddled a little extra on a 2 hour flight? Sure, you've got some girly men who love that extra level of service, but joe six pack just wants to go from point A to point B.

Second, if you really want the bitching to end, then make the level of service clearly enumerated on these ticket purchasing sites. That way, people know exactly what they're getting for an extra $100. The way it is now, people just err on the side of caution and assume that spending extra for a ticket will do nothing to improve the service level.

That being said, even for a $10 round trip from KJFK to EGLL, people should expect a bare minimum level of service .. punctuality, courtesy, and no lost bags. Everything beyond that is just frills.

 

[414Flyer]

If you shop at Walmart, even once a year, you have no room to talk. It's not the customer who is the problem. They are the one's paying your wage. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. When we are the customer compitition rules, when we are the other end it sucks.

Just think about it for a minute.

Yep, a lot of pilots want government to step in and artificially increase ticket prices, or otherwise want regulation or suspension of the market.

But I sure havent seen any pilots pay more than they needed to for anything. There are plenty of threads though looking for discounts, or services for free though. They blame customers for buying tickets for less than it costs to fly, but are always looking to get something for as cheap as possible.

There is a certain irony when pilots are calling anyone cheap. I admit I am known for my abilities to strech a dollar, but I am certainly not going to criticize anyone else for it.

 

[urflyingme?!]

Hey I got an ideea. How about the dudes running the airlines figure out that price wars are freaking idiotic! The fact that it should take government intervention to correct a flawed business plan is ridiulous. We're like a buch of lemmings, WITH TIES!

 

[Big Duke Six]

Gov't intervention won't fix our problem. Since the airlines got rid of travel agents people have been free to check prices on their own, via the internet. The internet, great as it is, has taken much of the fat out of many industries, not just ours. People will put up with almost anything for two hours, so price becomes the only significant factor in their decision to buy ticket A over ticket B.

As long as there are airlines out there who can do it for less and still make money, then we ALL have to adapt to their revenue model. It's a fact of life. It's called competition. But SWA proves it can be done, and their pilots still make good wages. Jet Blue and Frontier too, they just don't have good hedges in place. It's the look of the future guys.

If you want to scream, scream at your management. They are the ones responsible for your troubles.

 

[TIGV]

Well......about this competition thing...in a perfect free market economy wouldn't FedEx and UPS be breaking even instead of banking billions ? After all the product they sell ( generalization ) is basically similar, wouldn't we as a shipping consumer be paying about 2 bux for a next day air delivery in a perfect world ?
Sometimes it's not about price, prior to the post 911 downturn the Pax bitched if:

There was no food
There was food but it was inadequate
There was no movie
The movie choices provided were inadequate
Turboprops were small and noisy
Now RJ's are small and noisy
As are about everything with seats that flies
The list goes on and on and on

Let's just work on the assumption that by and large most folks just thrive on misery, require it, breath it, because it defines their very existence, provides a balance on which to weigh out that which represents the good, the happy.

Based on this model we can assume that by increasing ticket prices we will increase the misery of our customer which in turn will force him/her to seek more pleasure in an attempt to balance out the scale......

I say up the price, pax are gonna complain no matter what we do but at least this way we will have increased the amount of happiness in the world.


In no way does the above statement represent any logical conclusions or even an iota of common sense representative of the author, there are some interesting between the lines thingamagiggies but that's about it

 

[414Flyer]

No, because there is more than enough demand for the services that Fed Ex and UPS do. There is so much of a need for their services, they dont really have to fight over it. They have found a niche, adapted to it, and have a cost structure and capacity designed to take advantage of it.

And there is also too much than one one of them to do. It isnt like they are flying with planes mostly empty, fighting over each others packages, or underbidding each other, flying at below cost. They just dont have to.

If there was a large oversupply of capacity, then it would be a different story. But its a finely tuned system, built for efficiency.

So much of our economy is built on market economics, supply and demand, and thats the way i like it. I see no reason to start going towards a command economy, or regulating ticket prices. What would the uproar be if a lot of things us pilots like, the government decided to step in and raise the prices for those particular industries? There would be quite an uproar. What if the government stepped and said we need to double all the prices on domestic made autos so that GM,Ford, Chrysler can make a profit and insure stabilty and good pay for the lives of the employees?

Me thinks pilots would not be clapping and celebrating. They would probably be saying those companies need to compete and take care of their own problems, instead of just passing it on.

 

[TIGV]

Next time read the Disclaimer.

Well, somethings gotta give, the way things are going we're all going to be eating rice and riding a cast iron bycicle to work at the Chong-Hai rubber turd factory in ( Insert any and all American and European Cities )
Seriously though a rapidly expanding third-world economy like China will see us through times a lot worse than these before things balance up.

Our market economy could in fact completely collapse.

I say we grab some boats, head over there and put those heathens to the sword before it's too late.

Till the impending Armageddon arrives, I want mine, that means I want a ' me ' surcharge on all tickets and I want it now, no ???

 

[414Flyer]

Thats interesting, last I heard incomes in the US were still going up, and our economy was still increasing faster than other developed countries.
Europe has a lot more to worry about in its future than we do.

So are you proposing we ditch our market economy and more towards something else?

Would you be willing to see a "me" surcharge on other purchases, like houses and cars?

 

[LXJ31]

Till the impending Armageddon arrives, I want mine, that means I want a ' me ' surcharge on all tickets and I want it now, no ???

Try voting.

 

[TIGV]

I heard China Air were hiring............ Now do you get a choice there between losing your pension or a labour camp turning large rocks into small ones...but I digress...........

 

[Jump Pilot]

As a professional pilot, an airline traveler, and manager of over $1,000,000 in annual travel spend I feel your pain from all sides.

As a pilot, I want a liveable wage for a professional job. The food bill for my family last year was 2/3 the starting salary of my last job offer.

As a regular (3-4 trips per month) airline traveler, I want the best (read lowest) fare, the least amount of hassle, and at the right schedule.

As a travel manager, raise my ticket prices enough and our people (business travelers) will travel less which hurts the industry.