Who’s paying, right? Who will splurge for the airfare that reliably rises with the price of oil but that resists parallel price decreases. Airfare that stubbornly defies the price decreases that typically accrue with commonality of use and steadiness of demand…think televisions, transistor radios, calculators, computers…airfare that rejects even the age-old philosophical assurance that what goes up must come down?
Carlson Wagonlit Travel, an industry Player, has issued an advisory warning of another “whopping” 10-12% increase in 2009.
CWT Predicts Whopping 2009 Airfare Hikes
If traveling companions flip a coin for who pays the airfare and who pays for the suitcases, the traveling food/drink and the transportation to/from the airport, to mix metaphors, who has drawn the shorter straw? It depends on how cleverly and how far in advance the airfare is purchased. If you happen to know well enough to commit to it when you’re leaving months before go…in a world where stock prices and spouses change by the hour…it is conceivable that the airfare itself will be cheaper than the various incidental costs of flying.
Does that sound like smart business? To me, it sounds like stingy, uncreative conniving to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
HEY! I have a great promotional concept. If they buy three round-trip tickets, stand on their head while whistling Dixie AND remember a P.I.N. that they never knew had been set, then we’ll “give” them, with six weeks’ notice, a half-price companion ticket that only 65% of them will ever redeem, charge fifty dollars per bag and ten dollars per soda…toilet paper by the square…then accelerate depreciation and delay dividends…naught, naught/carry the two (Beverly Hillbillies has to have been a part of your youth to rightly picture Jethro doing math)…and voila, Better Numbers.
Better than what? Better than last year? Better than nothing? Better than feared?
Lately I read an article about how whichever flailing company’s earnings were better than expected, with scarcely a fine-print mention of the charade by which expectations had been revised substantially downward prior to the report of earnings. Earnings were not so much better than expected as less bad than anticipated.
I will argue that the labyrinth of gimmicks and promotions…which erratically produce “deals” amidst steadily increasing prices and decreasing amenities…coupled with an almost complete absence of customer service is EXACTLY what hobbles cultivation of the reliable consumer bases requisite to sustained long-term growth.
The crews on one-hour flights still dutifully haul out the old beverage cart, impeding the aisle like a blocked artery and banging elbows like a contact sport. ‘Tis true, that some mainly for-pay drinks are now proferred as by cocktail servers, with orders taken in small batches and delivered on trays. But my point would be less which method of service is more interruptive of the passenger experience than WHO CANNOT GO NINETY MINUTES WITHOUT A DRINK?
Who can afford to fly but not afford to buy an overpriced bottle of whatever in the airport? Them there are CONCESSIONS in the airport, businesses with rents to pay and employees to support. Let THEM handle food and drink and let airlines move people. Specialization is a marvelous thing. Therein lie productivity and savings alike.
People will grouse initially. Don’t let all that lip service to Change fool you. Tough shinsky, these are hard times…they will have heard about that, I expect. We all pitch in, or we all strike out. Who’s gonna complain if cutbacks are framed logically, even patriotically? People are not as stupid as Government and Business would like for them to be. Average people can understand, if anyone will put it to them, that frills like complimentary soda are not free.
Frills are like options on cars and, for the broadcloth of Americans, these really aren’t leather interior and tinted window days.
If the airline pays for peanuts and soda and napkins and cups, the expenses are reflected in the price of flying. That’s how businesses work, yes? No business begins from the premise that X is the optimal price…price X it is…now that price X is set, let me go out and buy libations for my customers so that, although it eats into my profit, others will be more comfortable. On what planet?
Here are all of my expenses, INCLUDING drinks and snacks…NOW let me determine the airfare=price.
Airlines charging for even one suitcase…which goes into a hold that is designed specifically for purpose of carrying the bags that travelers are noted for carrying…is rather like a bartender charging extra for the glass.
Here ya go, a brainstorm to enhance restaurant revenue. In an effort to keep our food prices competitive amidst increasing costs for maintaining the dinnerware inventory…considering theft, breakage, dishwashers, water and soap…we now give our customers the option of paying a surcharge for plates and utensils or of having the food delivered at no extra charge directly into their hands. This is common practice in other parts of the world, is it not? Think of it as gastronomic multiculturalism.
I’ve got my eye on the nifty word-count feature off to my right, and I’m getting on toward 900 of them without even having gotten to the point. One of my favorite quotes comes from French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal, “I am writing you a long letter because I lack the time to make it short.”
The point that I am working my way toward, in the circuitous manner of a person who is inclined to procrastination and verbosity and distracted by Campaign-O-Rama, is that the proposed merger of Northwest and Delta Airlines is a superlatively bad idea. America will rue the day that it apprehended salvation from financial woes via Mega Mergers.
A Libertarian asserted to me the other day that monopolies are not necessarily bad.
Malarkey.
Monopolies are to free markets as dictators are to democracies.
And oligopolies are to monopolies as Wanna Be’s are to Rock Stars.