If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
American Airlines - Last one standing
"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message
... "John Mazor" : I'm not disagreeing with your premises here, just amplifying on them. "Jay Honeck" wrote in message news:rY4We.351954$xm3.256217@attbi_s21... Anyway, it seems like some more consolidation among the majors will be needed in the future. There isn't really a need for more than three major airlines, probably AA, DL (merged with CO and NW), and UA (merged with US). Absolutely. The reason the airlines are in this mess is because Congress refuses to let any major airline FAIL. Well, there is the minor matter that until the US Airways/America West merger, the administration also refused to allow mergers. Mergers provide a rational, orderly reduction of capacity. Bankruptcy is a weapon of mass destruction if reducing excess capacity is your goal. Unfortunately, that's what capitalism requires for success. In a truly free market, ...the government would have been open to proposals for mergers. the surviving airlines would feed on the carcass of a truly bankrupt airline, plucking the profitable routes and leaving the deadwood behind. That already happens. You don't need bankruptcy for that. In our current dream-world of "protected deregulation", Congress keeps bailing out failing airlines, allowing them to continue operating at below-profitable levels That goes all the way back to the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, where Congress hedged its bets by providing "Essential Air Service" subsidies. The problem has been that Congress and consumers want it both ways - competition resulting in cheaper fares, while maintaining the expectation of service levels that were possible under regulated pricing. -- which means they can continue to charge less than what it really costs to fly the routes, which, in turn, means that NONE of the airlines can charge what it actually costs to fly. True as far as it goes, but there are other factors that have undercut airlines' ability to set pricing or clear a profit, such as Internet fare shopping (which the airlines foolishly embraced at first), the rising cost of oil (even the carriers in bankruptcy would have had operating profits except for rising fuel prices), the way that the government has treated airlines as a cash cow (the taxes on a typical airline ticket are higher than the "sin taxes" on alcohol and tobacco). The irony here is that allowing airlines to go into bankruptcy allows them a competitive edge over solvent carriers. The solution is to reduce the period for management to have exclusionary control over the enterprise, and not allow a bankrupt carrier to expand operations. Until the Feds let Northworst and Delta fail, this situation will continue to get worse. That's one solution, but not the only one. There are more rational approaches to the capacity problem. Best solution is to limit it to the types of people that used to fly. People that needed to. People that could afford to. People with class. Bring back the DC-7, I say. Oh wait, wrong problem. Bring back the Connie. Now THERE was an airplane to fly in. As to the pax, a simple literacy test would filter out the worst of the riff-raff. |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
"Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message
... "John Mazor" : "Robert J Carpenter" wrote in message ... I recall that at the time of the previous rash of airline failures, 1991???, Mr. Kahn ? - the chief architect of airline deregulation - said that foreign airlines / owners ought to be let in to show how to run an aitline. Back then that was particularly silly since most European airlins still had protected turf and some subsidies (real or hidden). To compound the idiocy, we still hear proposals to allow foreign airlines to compete in U.S. domestic markets (cabotage). Hey, US airlines do it in Europe.... *Originate* a flight that *starts out* in, say, Paris, and drops them at the final destination of, say, Bordeaux, with the flight not stopping or continuing elsewhere? That's cabotage. Many countries allow lesser freedoms, such as if a United flight originating as JFK-Bordeaux makes a stop in Paris - the next leg could pick up Paris-Bordeaux riders. You just can't have a United flight that starts and ends as Paris-Bordeaux, which would be cabotage. I may be wrong, but I can't recall any nation that allows that, except maybe for some minor countries where they're glad to have any service at all. |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
John Mazor wrote: "Bertie the Bunyip" wrote in message ... "John Mazor" : "Robert J Carpenter" wrote in message ... I recall that at the time of the previous rash of airline failures, 1991???, Mr. Kahn ? - the chief architect of airline deregulation - said that foreign airlines / owners ought to be let in to show how to run an aitline. Back then that was particularly silly since most European airlins still had protected turf and some subsidies (real or hidden). To compound the idiocy, we still hear proposals to allow foreign airlines to compete in U.S. domestic markets (cabotage). Hey, US airlines do it in Europe.... *Originate* a flight that *starts out* in, say, Paris, and drops them at the final destination of, say, Bordeaux, with the flight not stopping or continuing elsewhere? That's cabotage. Many countries allow lesser freedoms, such as if a United flight originating as JFK-Bordeaux makes a stop in Paris - the next leg could pick up Paris-Bordeaux riders. You just can't have a United flight that starts and ends as Paris-Bordeaux, which would be cabotage. I may be wrong, but I can't recall any nation that allows that, except maybe for some minor countries where they're glad to have any service at all. About the only recent example I can think of is the pre - 1991 intra - German services from West Germany to West Berlin provided by PA, AF, BA...but it was a special case as that monopoly service was set up by the victorious Allies post - 1945; air rights to West Berlin were technically administered by the US, France, and the UK. -- Best Greg |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Airline information on-line on the Internet FAQ | John R. Levine | Air travel | 3 | July 5th, 2005 07:28 PM |
Airline Ticket Consolidators and Bucket Shops FAQ | Edward Hasbrouck | Travel Marketplace | 0 | April 17th, 2004 12:28 PM |
Airline Ticket Consolidators and Bucket Shops FAQ | Edward Hasbrouck | Travel Marketplace | 0 | February 16th, 2004 11:03 AM |
Airline Ticket Consolidators and Bucket Shops FAQ | Edward Hasbrouck | Travel Marketplace | 0 | January 16th, 2004 10:20 AM |
Airline Ticket Consolidators and Bucket Shops FAQ | Edward Hasbrouck | Backpacking and Budget travel | 0 | October 10th, 2003 09:44 AM |