AirbusA310
Member
- Aug 19, 2009
- 60
- 31
Republic will eventually to buy US and merge it with F9.. keep Frontier name and get rid of this US Airways since it seems to be hated all over.
Whats wrong with building the company the old fashion way?
- Thread starter InternationalDan
- Start date
jimcfs
Veteran
Let's all take a moment and remember what happened after that big triple merge 20+ years ago. The new US then had the LAX-SFO "California Shuttle", along with other shuttle type routes in Cali and the west coast. Why someone decided to kill that off still blows me away. We all know how this story played out... first UA tried their version of the shuttle, then WN came in, kicked ass, and never looked back. US retreated back to the east coast, where it stayed until the Sandcastle came along.
Why have the LGA-BOS, LGA-DCA and to a lesser extent DCA-BOS shuttles held on? No WN perhaps? Not for much longer.
Tempe has made it clear... US is now a hub and spoke airline. Except for some express routes, there aren't many mainline non-hub flights anymore. I don't expect them to look outside the box and add any point-to-point service.
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VAflyGal
Guest
*SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP SLAP*
U wanna see a labor issue??? Let that one try to get through...
Gimme a flippin' break already.
nycbusdriver
Veteran
Ramp Rogue
Veteran
- Aug 19, 2002
- 724
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wings396
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 3,672
- 1,122
Because the "old fashion way" will only compound the industries problems. There are already many more seats available than there are passengers to fill them. This results in low fares that don't cover the cost of providing the service in most cases. Mergers permit a bit more pricing power with less players in the market. Sad to say, but mergers are the new way to grow the airlines today. Too many airlines offering too many seats for cheap fares. Look back 20 years at where the average cost of an airline ticket was, and compare it with todays cost. Overall it is about the same, or even less in most cases. What other product that consumers purchase cost the same or less than they did 20 years ago? I'm willing to bet NONE.
jimcfs
Veteran
100% full of HIGH fare paying passengers, i.e. high YIELD passengers.
Hey, I'll admit. I was on a $78++ RT fare on CMH-LAS last week. Yield was about 1.6 cpm. There's no way in hell that US made anything off hauling my big butt out to LAS and back last Tuesday. I checked no bags, had 1 or 2 legal carryons. So US lost $$$ on me.
Last week, during the MasterCard pressure pitch on my LAS-CLT redeye (which cut into my sleep time, another story for another time), the FA on the PA made the observation that the $79 annual fee wasn't much more than the fare many were paying on that flight. So, you can't tell me that some of you on the front lines don't have an understanding of what's going on out there. Knowing some of the fares that had been around for those dates, I'd be willing to bet that US lost $$$ running that flight, yet the flight was almost completely full on that 321.
As long as US and the others continue to run fare structures in this way, these things will continue. Is it really better to run flights 95% full with 70% of those at fares below cost and the rest well above cost? Logic and simple math tells me no, but perhaps I'm missing something out there that someone can enlighten us on. WN seems to do it, so can some of the other LCC's. Why can't the other legacies figure it out?
robbedagain
Veteran
- Oct 13, 2003
- 11,125
- 2,676
Ive heard from a lot of my coworkers that may be the airline industry should go back to being regulated I dont know how that would be in todays world but......
SS255
Veteran
What other product that consumers purchase cost 1X for the passenger sitting in the aisle, and 10X for the passenger sitting in the middle?
For every 8 jimcfs's who paid $78 CMH-CLT-LAS, there are 2 who paid $1,000 for the exact same product, and a worse seat. The airlines brought this problem on themselves just as surely as they brought the tarmac delay fines on themselves.
The only way to fix the problem of the airlines losing money is to rationalize fares and charge reasonable change fees. WN is an excellent example of a pricing business model which works.
You would think that by now the industry would have learned that the only way to prevent government regulation is to self-regulate. Maybe instead of using their brainpower to think up new fees and merger scenarios, US Airways can take a leadership position in this effort, because if somebody doesn't step up, the government will surely step in.
Color televisions and personal computers are two products that cost much less than 20 years ago. Of course, with TVs, they keep getting bigger and better and keep costing less. Computers get faster and screens get larger yet they keep getting cheaper.
Overall, I agree with your point. Airfares have dropped substantially in the 30+ years of deregulation, especially when adjusted for inflation.
Airways does not know how to hire.For seven years at pdt,I saw people hired that burger king would reject.Then saw people promoted to managers who had no people skills and refused to learn what was needed to manage the department. While flying through phl,I approached the express gate to ask a question,I was dressed in a sport jacket so the employee did not know I was non rev..She would not acknowledge me and just pointed to the other agent a few feet down.
I do not mean to imply this applies to all airways employees,but the ones out there are enough to cast a bad image and the ones i saw at the maintainance base were inept,lazy,took ten smoke breaks a day and did not follow proper procedures which many times caused flights to be cancelled and repairs to take much longer due to wrong parts sent and not shipping parts on the next flight out.
I witnessed many times parts transfers not being sent the same day and even several days leading to more road trips which some people would milk it for the overtime by stopping for unrelated personal reasons and one base would send two people on a road trip while the others only one.
On a mainline flight,one flight attendant spent the entire time kneeling next to a non rev pilot talking about labor negotiations while paying passengers were being ignored.
This all stems from airways not having a clue as what to look for in a prospective employees,what questions to ask,and how to spot bad employment history.
An airline is only as good as its people.
I do not mean to imply this applies to all airways employees,but the ones out there are enough to cast a bad image and the ones i saw at the maintainance base were inept,lazy,took ten smoke breaks a day and did not follow proper procedures which many times caused flights to be cancelled and repairs to take much longer due to wrong parts sent and not shipping parts on the next flight out.
I witnessed many times parts transfers not being sent the same day and even several days leading to more road trips which some people would milk it for the overtime by stopping for unrelated personal reasons and one base would send two people on a road trip while the others only one.
On a mainline flight,one flight attendant spent the entire time kneeling next to a non rev pilot talking about labor negotiations while paying passengers were being ignored.
This all stems from airways not having a clue as what to look for in a prospective employees,what questions to ask,and how to spot bad employment history.
An airline is only as good as its people.
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VAflyGal
Guest
Who's hiring around here? Certainly not the East f/a's or pilots. I was a f/a at PDT before I came to mainline and would have been better off staying there. I personally thought our interview process was extrodinarily intense and training was stressful and difficult. When you say the mainline f/a was "ignoring" customers, was this before or after the service was done? I'm not defending his or her publically chatting with a pilot about our negotiations, but what should she have been doing if the service was finished?, offering everyone foot massages?
I know I'm being a bit over the top but I take offense to your post. The people I work with 95% of the time are consummate professionals, especially after 2BK's, multiple base closures and displacements, pay cuts, endless reserve, abuse by the company and some customers, etc. There are always the ten percenters who are jerks, lazy, rude, etc. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, please.
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VAflyGal
Guest
And PS, "Airways" does not hire the Express folk - the Express folk do. Start there. The former recruiter for PDT f/a's did much recruiting at the strip clubs he frequented on his recruiting trips. One of his stripper hires was in my class and she was a psycho nutjob who was released in week 4.
The more we scope out to lower cost companies the less the employees get paid. What do you expect?
The more we scope out to lower cost companies the less the employees get paid. What do you expect?
