Posted on 06/16/2008 6:19:08 AM PDT by chessplayer
Several large carriers will likely be forced into bankruptcy by the end of the year, according to a new study.
(Excerpt) Read more at crainsnewyork.com ...
I wonder how hotels are doing? I’m planning a trip soon. Normally I would stop. Due to gas prices though...I’ll leave earlier and drive longer to compensate for the extra money for gas.
Why don’t they raise fares?
I think they have. There is only so much that the customer can/will absorb though.
You are correct. The Greens want to destroy the economy ... because it creates pollution.
Why do politicians listen to Greens, Gays, La Raza and other radical groups? Because they threaten to disrupt.
Eventually conservatives are going to have to get activated and began playing hardball with the politicians.
Look at John McCain. Other than on Iraq, he listen to the Leftish Radicals as well.
....but upon further cogitation on the subject, I would speculate that Southwest wouldn't touch AA with a 10 foot pole.
AA et. al. muckety mucks had the model of how to run an airline company right before their eyes for decades, and either didn't pay attention, or were too arrogant to realize that there were people who were smarter about running an airline company than themselves.
“Libs should be elated by this, considering they believe airplanes contribute to global warming, destroy the ozone, etc.”
The goal of whoever is deliberately orchestrating this is to get us all on elecricity alone, whether electric cars or mass transit. That way they can have complete control over us. All they have tdo to get our compliance is to threaten to throw the switch!
It’s the law of diminishing returns. Higher fares cause the budget traveler to rethink his plans and fewer seats get filled. Also, some of the planes being flown now lose money at current fuel prices even if they fly full.
I nominate this post as the dumbest one on the thread.
Dream on. They'll be happily sticking their probes up our arses in perpetuity. Now that they're federalized, they will remain on the payroll long past when they have assumed room temperature.
We traveled last week. Right after getting thru the security gauntlet, as we were re-assembling ourselves, one of the TSA goons yells "BRAVO" into his mic, and TSA goons ran everywhere, and they wouldn't let anyone move in any direction. And I heard them give a description of the person they were looking for. I thought, "uh-oh, they're going to end up emptying out the airport for 3 or 4 hours". We were lucky -- guess they found their missing person, as they soon let us peasants go about our business again.
So if you hear TSA goons say "BRAVO" ... Look out!
You just watch — the goobermint (aka taxpayers) will be bailing out one or more bankrupt airlines to the tune of bajillions of dollars.
Good luck getting one of those Southwest 737’s to fly to Hong Kong or Paris or Rio.
Thank you jerk.
Let me guess. An 80 year-old white-haired grandmother of 16 in a wheelchair who didn't want to go through the new detailed view body scan machine?
Of course.
Same reason that raising taxes doesn’t always raise revenue. Fewer people will fly.
agreed.....if you buy something for a dollar and sell it for .99 cents, and expect to make up the difference in volume, sooner or later the piper is going to want to get paid.....
Why don’t they raise fares?
They have. Fares have gone up about 14% while at the same time fuel cost has gone up around close to 50%. Do the math. If they double the fares to match the cost of fuel people will stop flying and the Net result is the same. Bankrupt airlines.
I think we could end up seeing down the road one national airline, just like what they have in other countries.
You should see this.
Libs should be elated by this, considering they believe airplanes contribute to global warming, destroy the ozone, etc.
__________________________________________
At least the celebs will still have their private airplanes. I mean there has to be a silver lining here, right? Writing with sarcasm on high...
Hell of a way to run a railroad.
Or an airport terminal, either.
I suppose we are fortunate, as yet, not to be required to show an internal passport, with a visa to make a temporary visit to the destination in another part of United States. There is a continuing reason to keep our personal transportation, i.e., automobiles, which still permit embarking upon a journey without too much bureaucracy involved, and certainly without an intrusive inspection that serves no useful purpose other than to make travels continually difficult for people who have no intention of making trouble, but absolutely miss the real perpetrators.
I probably will not take an airplane anywhere again in my lifetime.
uh...
that’s too simple!
whining and going out of business are more fun.
I second that.
I question this. Physical disruption(s) can be countered with force. The disruption they threaten is financial. Though the numbers in these groups -- the Greens, Gays, Poverty-Pimps, etc.-- are minute, they are focused like a lazar, while the rest of us are a scatter gun.
Whining and lobbying for a Federal bailout is more profitable.
I’ve never been on a plane and don’t forsee a time when I’ll need to be on one.
If they are precluded from discussion pricing by law, they will have to do it by merging. Some way has to be found to raise prices.
Unless and until our elected officials get off the backs of “Big Oil” and turn them lose to find and produce oil in this country for use within this country, matters will only get worse.
You really need to try it once just to see how bad it is.
Hopefully another form of mass transit like railroads will be able to take up some of the slack, at least on domestic runs.
This is why some airlines like Continental and United are grounding their 737-300's. United is getting rid of all their 737's, because all their newer planes for that size and mission are A320's and A319's. Continental is keeping its Next Generation 737's, the 700, 800, 900, and 900ER which they bought instead of switching to the Airbus A320 series.
Coal to Oil is approved for the C-17 and the F-15 and F-16 if I am not mistaken.
To support our airpower and land transportation via the trucking industries, an immediate effort to get the trucking and airline industry and our air-power on this fuel source should be done, 100% domestic sourced.
It would probably clean out the short speculators big time and the price would drop in half so fast it would make your head spin.
But hey, nobody listens to me anyhow....
I am acquainted with a guy who works for the TSA. He is the husband of a friend of my wife’s. The guy apparently has some wires crossed in his brain or something, really, I kid you not. He puts words together to make sentences that just make no sense, and in your head you are going, “WTF!!?” — Like Yogi Berra, but without any wisdom or common sense. And, he is all thumbs. He literally hardly knows which end of a screwdriver to use. His wife won’t let him near tools, for fear of what will happen. And they give this guy a friggin’ probe ...
So there you go ... this is one of the guys on the front line at our airports, making you safer, ferreting out terrorists.
Feel safer now??
Thought so ...
“Hopefully another form of mass transit like railroads will be able to take up some of the slack, at least on domestic runs.”
And fortunately we have finely-tuned government-supported machine in Amtrak just waiting to seize the opportunity.....
After a suitable wait, line them up and, one at a time, let them walk out and get in your car. Make sure at least one has a cranky, crying kid. After your car is full, with one rear seat left for you, tell the rest of your friends they will have to go back to the living room and wait for another car tonight.
Now, get in the car, and have the persons in the front seat slide them as far back as possible and recline them, so your knees are crushed. Try and enjoy the ridiculous gift catalogs thoughtfully crushed by your knees.
Now ride like this for hours. Oh, you forgot to put your bag in the trunk? Too bad. At least you'll get half a Coke and some peanuts, right? Not anymore.
Thank you for flying SimulAir.
I parked my car on the US side of the border and took a taxi to the airport.
Checked through security and on to the counter within 3 to 5 minutes with no problems.
Saved over $243 dollars by going across and flying Mexicana.
BTW, the security folks were very courteous not like the TSA dummies who have let power go to their heads.
Some of the insane and inane tricks these folks are doing is right out of the book of Keystone Kops.
Do I feel any safer because these guys abuse the inspection process,shut down the airport for any reason and are rude to the passengers, not really.
I hadn't heard that British Airways or Korean Air were in trouble....I thought we were talking about domestic dinosaur airlines run into the ground by poor management.
You are quite welcome. Your response confirms my nomination.
I nominate this post as the dumbest one on the thread.
Au contraire! D-Man has it exactly right. The buck stops with those at the top.
I learned a simple, yet powerful, creed when I was a young Air Defense Artillery Platoon Leader: everything that my unit does or fails to do is my responsibility.
If only our "Captains of Industry" would follow the credo of every unit leader in our military.
They don’t travel?
And the problem is that the field of competition is not level. Our airlines must compete against government subsidized national airlines plus abide by USG regulations.
A rational criticism of my post might be that it is so obvious that it didn’t need to be said. But the guy who reponded to it show that maybe it did need to be said.
Would you like to expand on your comment? Top management is not supposed to find ways to overcome problems?
From the article:
“In better economic times, a gap in service left by the failure of one airline would be immediately be filled by another. With so many airlines struggling under the weight of escalating fuel costs, however, “You can no longer expect immediate backfill [of those flights],” Mr. Mitchell said.
As a result, airline service will be even less reliable, according to the study, and any conveniences afforded to business travelers would suffer. “
Without some kind of drastic action (akin to marching into Saudi Arabia and assuming control and pricing of production ourselves), I don’t see petroleum prices coming back down. If anything, they may continue to creep upwards.
Nor do I see the airline industry surviving in its present form. Commericial aircraft gobbles fuel at too high a rate for airlines to absorb the costs yet still be able to operate profitably under their current business model, which is to provide air transportation to the masses.
Until the 1960’s, air travel was prohibitively expensive for anyone other than business travelers with expense accounts, and the well-heeled. Most middle- and working-class folk didn’t fly, except in extraordinary circumstances.
That changed, ushered in by an era of cheap fuel and big planes. Remember “People Express”? I remember flying from Newark to Oakland for $88 back in 1980.
What I expect to see is the collapse of “air transportation for the masses” and a return to the model of the 1950’s: a much smaller core of commercial airlines, providing [compared to today] limited service to major cities at prices affordable only to the upper echelons or business travelers.
ASIDE:
This is why passenger railroading collapsed starting in the 1950’s - the costs of operating the service began to outrun the fares that could be charged that would attract sufficient ridership to keep the services running. It’s also why Amtrak continually operates at a loss - the costs of assembling, maintaining and operating a fleet of equipment, properly staffed, exceed the revenues that can be reasonably charged in order to attract ridership. Even in the heavily-traveled Northeast Corridor, passenger revenues alone cannot sustain the service.
The rising cost of fuel is going to do to the airlines, what the emergence of low-cost air transportation did to the railroads.
One thing seems certain - by 2015, commercial air travel will be much-changed from what it is today.
- John
Sounds like a global govt sort of thing.
It is not a level playing field. To blame mismangagement as the reason why the airlines are going bankrupt fails to acknowledge some basic issues like rising fuel costs, USG mandates in terms of route allocation, etc. All of our major airlines are having problems. Many have already gone under or merged.
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