Deregulation push?

[PCL_128]

Yep, I'm factoring in inflation. Again, you're using a single example instead of average industry-wide fares. That fare has gone down (orbitz shows $404), while many others have gone up. You'd be amazed how much money some people spend on tickets to go to little cities on RJs. Just checking a random flight on Orbitz, I picked DTW-DSM three weeks out. The price? $1,315 on a Pinnacle CRJ!!! Prices on some routes have gone down while prices on other routes have shot through the stratosphere. The average price hasn't changed that much, even adjusted for inflation.

 

[Freddie Spencer]

You do realize that many countries in Europe don't just regulate their airlines, they actually own them, right?

I bet you can't name a single one.

 

[Lear70]

You're looking at a single example and drawing huge conclusions from it. Ridiculous. The data is out there, corrected for inflation, if you want to go look for it. Fares have not come down that much. The consumer has been screwed.

OK... someone stole your FI login, because this is contrary to several conversations you and I have had.

The consumer hasn't been screwed; they've been given a free pass not to have to pay for inflation the last 30 years.

The ticket price has remained fairly constant for 30 years, maybe even dropped just a little, but that's only the FACE VALUE OF THE TICKET, not the adjusted actual price in today's dollars.

That's pretty much the same argument as saying we're better-compensated NOW than pilots were 30 years ago. Sure, the actual salary may look higher, but it spends a HELL of a lot LESS than it did 30 years ago (when a month's salary for a widebody Captain could buy a nice NEW car).

I agree that we need to be re-regulated in some form or fashion, but you're smart enough to know better than to make the argument based on ticket prices being close to the same.

Personally, I just want a requirement for airlines to have to price a ticket AT LEAST what it costs to produce that seat on that SPECIFIC leg.

NO MORE dropping the price on a ticket from East Bumfu*k, MT to MSP below the cost to operate the segment, just to jack it up on the MSP-NRT leg. It costs you $425 per seat per leg to fly the CRJ-200 on that leg, you charge AT LEAST $425. Period.

Watch how fast the unprofitable dregs get dropped and how quickly the price of flying goes up.

ANY fix to this industry is going to be painful. You either fix the cost to produce the good or you raise the price to cover its production. Simple Business 101. You raise the price high enough, and people can't afford to travel. Travel falls off on particular routes, they get downsized to smaller aircraft or frequency gets eliminated.

Reduced frequency means less pilots required = layoffs until normal attrition through retirements take place.

There's no other way to fix it, except for the government to artificially keep airline employees employed during the transition period and the government pays the tab. Our deficit is so bad that getting THAT passed would be very unlikely.

Like everything else in aviation, you tweak one part of the argument, it has an unintended consequence somewhere else. It's not as black-and-white as it looks on here.

 

[JoeMerchant]

I was going thru some of my father's stuff and found some airline tickets he kept from the early 70s.....$358 dollars from SFO to NYC......35 years ago! The consumer has benefited from deregulation and the employees have suffered.....

 

[PCL_128]

I bet you can't name a single one.

Olympic. What do I win?

 

[PCL_128]

OK... someone stole your FI login, because this is contrary to several conversations you and I have had.

Do the research, man. Ticket prices have gone down slightly when corrected for inflation, but it's not a huge shift. Certainly not worth the loss in reliability and quality. From a Morgan Stanley report published a couple of years ago: "What about lower fares? Didn’t deregulation pay for itself with lower fares? Apparently not. Morgan Stanley shows that airline pricing has been falling for 40 years. Eyeballing the chart, the fall in prices was steeper between 1962 and 1978 than after deregulation."

According to Morgan Stanley's analysis, ticket prices fell more in the 16 years prior to deregulation than they have in the 30 years since. Is this what we call a success?

 

[Lear70]

I'm not buying that at all... and I've seen the data. Ticket prices have come down *slightly* since deregulation, but that is NOT corrected for inflation.

A $375 ticket then is equivalent to a $1,200 ticket now. That Morgan Stanley quote doesn't say ANYTHING about inflation-corrected numbers, just that the face value of the ticket has been going down slightly after 1978.

Inflation-adjusted, I guaran-d*mn-tee you they're lower. Dramatically so.

 

[Jon Rivoli]

Bottom line. You are a complete and total loser if you expect the government to save you. Deregulation has benefitted the consumer and "AIRLINES EXIST TO TRANSPORT PASSENGERS!", not to provde you with a cush job. The local company went tits up so of course the Senator is going to have hearings, local jobs were lost. He'll get on his soap box and...... nothing. Have a nice day.

 

[Saabslime]

Re-regulation = Hello unemployment line.

 

[AutoBus]

This would be a very good thing. No more tearing each other's nuts off, breath a little easier, fewer dirtball customers at the airport, etc.

They [Congress] owe our industry an equal look at re-reg as they consider Open Skies.

Oh would that be like the good old days? Not going to happen!

Airlines should have never been regulated to begin with, why do people think regulation is better?