Cost Saving Idea

[hoover]

Had an idea occur to me that I wanted to run up the flightinfo flag pole and see what saluted. Tell me what you think of this.

We all know that hotel costs for RON crews are a big expense. I don't know how much an airline spends on hotels, but I venture to guess that it is at least $50 a night per crewmember per city. That is an expense of $4500 a month to overnight a single crew in a single city. Now multiply that by however many overnight cities and crews an airline has, and you can see it adds up to big chunk of change pretty quickly.

My thought is this: Instead of buying hotel rooms, lease a 3 or 4 bedroom condo in a location wherethere are restaurants and other typical amenities. Furnish it with with some decent beds and furniture. Hire a maid service to do a daily cleaning and linen change. Hire a taxi company to transport the crew back and forth to the airport.

Advantages would be
Fixed costs
Always having accomodations available
Better quality accomodations
An extra room (if you rent 4 room condos) for unexpected needs

What do you think?

 

[LowlyPropCapt]

Hmmm... I actually think I read someplace that airlines used to do something akin to this a long time ago.

I wonder what a really good maid service would cost? Could we get the ones in the little skimpy outfits and watch?

 

[shamrock]

I'll stick with hotels. Been there, done that with the roomate thing and I'm not all that interested in crashpad living, which is what this would end up being like. Sharing a bathroom and living room might work in college or when you're young but I wouldn't want any part of that right now.

With all the whipsawing and juggling/swapping of flying going on nowadays you can never be sure where your airline will even be flying to let alone overnighting at from month to month anyway.

 

[Say Again Over]

It's a great concept except that when you are paired up with someone for three or four days, you will need some privacy, not achievable in an apartment or condo, it's nice to have some private space to make phone calls, some people like to stay up late, some people don't, who controls the TV, who washs the dishes?

 

[The_Russian]

Liability!

 

[tomgoodman]

Good deal

It works well when the airline needs to house you for an extended period, like initial training. Delta rented several 2BR apartments (and cars) in Seal Beach for the initial MD-88 crews attending the "factory school". That was so much better than a hotel on Virginia Avenue in Atlanta!