G8 wants tax on airline tickets to help world poor

"nobody" wrote in message
...
If the UK *had* high-speed trains people would be more willing to use
them.


The big question is whether the low cost carriers in europe are really
sustainable and whether they end up taking adavantage of subsidies
(airport infrastructrure etc).

Consider BAA which wants to add a runway to Stanstead (or is it Lutton
?) and has/had plans to just slightly raise the passenger charges at all
London airports to pay for the runway that would benefit only the low
cost carriers.

Obviously this is not the actual plan.

STN is not at capacity, LGW and LHR are.
But STN is the one that is easiest (physically and politically)
to expand. So the plan is that STN's capicity should be
significantly improved, the transport links will be improved
and then the other airlines will move more flights there.

Will this work? Dunno perhaps it will, perhaps it wont.
But it will probably never be tested.

BA and Virgin were not keen on seeing their ticket prices
go up to subsidize their low cost competitors.

ISTM that if anybody's airport fees go up then the claimed
justification for the new runway "that it is needed" must be false.
If the runway really is 'needed' then it ought to be self funding
out of future income and the aiport owner ought to be able to
borror the funds to pay for it. If they can't then it *isn't* needed,
is it?

Question now becomes whether the low cost carriers can afford to pay for
that extra runway on their own.

They don't want to, nor need to.

If not, then perhaps they are not
sustainable enterprises in the long term.

They are sustainable because they fly to secondary airports that charge
them bugger all for landing and obtain most of their income on a per
pax basis. STN is one of the few places where they fly to what most
people might call a 'real' airport

Consider the brou-ha-ha with
Ryannair getting subsidies from a Belgian airport and those subsidies
were ruled illegal.

Because they weren't available to everyone.

If you need subsidies from an airport to operate to
that city, is that truly a sustainable service ?

What's a subsidy? Is a moratorium on fees a subsidy? Is
making capital improvements to your airport in return for
the promise of many flights per week a subsidy?

tim

Jim Ley wrote:
proposed passenger charge raises. The BAA monopoly is a problem, but
it's not a government subsidy, it's a government sponsored monopoly.

That isn't the point. If the low cost carriers would benefit from an
extra runway partly paid for by the legacy carriers who don't even use
that airport, it would be a subsidy. (not a government subsidy, but a
subsidy nevertheless).

One can debate whether such a subsidy is good or bad.

But in the big picture, one has to look whether the extremely low prices
set by Ryannair and Easyjet are really sustainable in the long term. Are
they getting more subsidies (or price breaks) from airports than the
legacy carriers ?

There is no question that the LCCs in europe are very efficent and that
their own operations are finely tuned and very low cost. But they are
also extremely low cost because they have chosen airports that gave them
a big price break.

"Lennart Petersen" wrote in message
...
Part of the problem is that air travel is far more heavily subsidized
than trains. If flight and train prices reflected the real costs to
government and the environment, then trains would be much more
competitive pricewise, if not actually cheaper than the planes over
short distances.

What do you mean air travel is subsidized?
-----------
No tax on fuel.

In the UK there is no tax on train fuel (other than VAT which the companies can
reclaim in full). There is no tax on train tickets, unlike airline tickets, and
the railways get big government subsidies.

--
Andy

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 15:23:19 -0400, nobody wrote:

Jim Ley wrote:
proposed passenger charge raises. The BAA monopoly is a problem, but
it's not a government subsidy, it's a government sponsored monopoly.

That isn't the point. If the low cost carriers would benefit from an
extra runway partly paid for by the legacy carriers who don't even use
that airport, it would be a subsidy.

I'm missing how this is a subsidy? a business makes a decision on
what it can charge for its services, its customers then buy those
services, it may use all sorts of justifications for increases, but
they're not really the point.

The problem here is the monopoly, BAA has to keep its customers happy,
it can't charge more at STN now because the service it provides at STN
are inferior to those at LHR/LGW, so an airline would be rightly mad
to accept it. It could charge more in the future when it had offered
better services, so it could borrow the money to fund it. However
because it's a monopoly it can put in an across the board increase
(keeping the differential in prices that is required by the different
services provided at the airports) It's not a subsidy, it's just an
abuse of its monopoly position.

One can debate whether such a subsidy is good or bad.

Only if you accept it's a subsidy.

Jim.

nobody wrote:
Jim Ley wrote:
proposed passenger charge raises. The BAA monopoly is a problem, but
it's not a government subsidy, it's a government sponsored monopoly.

That isn't the point. If the low cost carriers would benefit from an
extra runway partly paid for by the legacy carriers who don't even use
that airport, it would be a subsidy. (not a government subsidy, but a
subsidy nevertheless).

Down this slippery slope lies madness. With this sort of reasoning, I can
argue that pretty much everything is subsidized by someone else. My phone
service is subsidized by the people who lived in this city before me. My
groceries are subsidized by my neighbors who buy more expensive items at the
supermarket.

But in the big picture, one has to look whether the extremely low prices
set by Ryannair and Easyjet are really sustainable in the long term. Are
they getting more subsidies (or price breaks) from airports than the
legacy carriers ?

Unless you expect that BAA will be building new runways all the time, I
don't see how this figures into the LCCs' ongoing sustainability. Once it's
built, it's built.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 36 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Queens Day in Amsterdam; the Grand Canyon; Amman, Jordan

rk wrote:
Well, Mezei, the Washington Post, most definitely not a "rabid right wing"
publication has this to say about your beloved UN:

Yvette and her friends are also called kidogo usharatis, Swahili
for small prostitutes. They loiter outside the camps of U.N.
peacekeepers, hoping to sell their bodies for a mug of milk, a
cold soda or -- best of all -- a single dollar.

Yvette, 14, said she was paid $1 by U.N. peacekeepers to have sex.
"I'm sad about it. But I needed the dollars," she said. "Who will
feed me?" "I'm sad about it. But I needed the dollars.

UN peacekeepers are not robots raised in vats in a lab deep beneath Turtle
Bay. They come from various countries and bring with them the attitudes and
behaviors that they have learned their whole lives. I don't see how this
says much about the peacekeeping program at all; rather, it tells us what
happens when people with disposable income show up in desperately poor
places.

I could tell you a lot of stories about US soldiers and prostitutes. What
would that prove?

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 36 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Queens Day in Amsterdam; the Grand Canyon; Amman, Jordan

rk wrote:
Miguel Cruz wrote:
UN peacekeepers are not robots raised in vats in a lab deep beneath
Turtle Bay. They come from various countries and bring with them the
attitudes and behaviors that they have learned their whole lives. I don't
see how this says much about the peacekeeping program at all; rather, it
tells us what happens when people with disposable income show up in
desperately poor places.

I could tell you a lot of stories about US soldiers and prostitutes. What
would that prove?

14 year old prostitutes.

Yes, there are a lot of 14-year-old prostitutes in some places.

Or stories like this?

"U.N. Battles Sex Abuse by Peacekeepers"
By NICK WADHAMS, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS - Linked in the past to sex crimes in East Timor
and prostitution in Cambodia and Kosovo, U.N. peacekeepers have
now been accused of sexually abusing the very population they
were deployed to protect in Congo.

Again, all this shows is that when you deploy troops to places that have a
lot of prostitutes - young or old - business will be good.

You are kidding yourself if you think that it has anything to do with the
nationality of the soldiers. It's just that US soldiers aren't that likely
to be deployed to countries that are desperately poor, with the recent
exception of Afghanistan (where prostitution is very rare as a cultural
matter) or Iraq (where it's becoming more and more common, and you can guess
why).

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 36 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu
Latest photos: Queens Day in Amsterdam; the Grand Canyon; Amman, Jordan

nobody schrieb:

proposed passenger charge raises. The BAA monopoly is a problem, but
it's not a government subsidy, it's a government sponsored monopoly.

That isn't the point. If the low cost carriers would benefit from an
extra runway partly paid for by the legacy carriers who don't even use
that airport, it would be a subsidy. (not a government subsidy, but a
subsidy nevertheless).

One can debate whether such a subsidy is good or bad.

But in the big picture, one has to look whether the extremely low prices
set by Ryannair and Easyjet are really sustainable in the long term. Are
they getting more subsidies (or price breaks) from airports than the
legacy carriers ?

Sure. SXF went down with airport fees for Easyjet. Well, they had to
apply these lower fees also to carriers already existing at their
airport.

For Ryanair it's more difficult as they mostly use different airports.
However, as airports are public infrastructure (although lots of them
are run by more or less private companies), all conditions of use and
agreements should be made public.

Regards, ULF

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 01:32:07 -0500, (Miguel Cruz)
wrote:
[prostitution]
Iraq (where it's becoming more and more common, and you can guess
why).

Because the evil Saddam Hussein ruthlessly denied women entering the
workforce and the victorious liberators have given freedom and new
opportunities to the people?

Jim.

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:39:22 GMT, (Jim Ley) wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 01:32:07 -0500, (Miguel Cruz)
wrote:
[prostitution]
Iraq (where it's becoming more and more common, and you can guess
why).

Because the evil Saddam Hussein ruthlessly denied women entering the
workforce and the victorious liberators have given freedom and new
opportunities to the people?

According to Mr Rumsfeld, the problems are caused by the 'porous'
(meaning the Americans can't monitor them) borders to Iran, Syria, and
elsewhere. Funny how this mess is now to be blamed on 2 other axis's
of evil.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4090626.stm

Hey Go Fig, JBK and all you other Yankee dickheads, do ya feel proud
at the sight of innocent blood running down the streets of Iraq?
--
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DFM - http://www.deepfriedmars.com
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